Slashback: Bots, Time Travel, Turing

More on the Battlebots trademark dispute, proof that some of your are listening to Dr. Who on the Beeb, and a memorial -- finally -- for Alan Turing, in tonight's round of updates, corrections, and further info.

That eerie, eerie theme music will get in your head all day. sideshow-voxx writes: "The BBC has announced that there will be more installments of the Audio Adventure Dr Who - Death Comes to Time available on the web in the New Year."

This is cool news (the accompanying art is a nice touch with this Dr. Who presentation), but it would be nice if they would put the episodes into more audio formats as well.

Things always seem to get more complicated. Eric Molitor, ("Linux hacker and Builder of Violator - Linux powered BattleBot that competed in May") wrote about the BattleBots vs. Battlebots story of the other day, saying:

"As a BattleBot competitor I was horrified when I noticed your article but here are some corrections... BattleBots INC != BattleBots the show.

BattleBots INC is suing and not the TV show. (Comedy Central tapes the tournaments and airs portions of the finals on a TV show. But thats just like showing NFL games mostly. The TV company just pays a licensing fee to broadcast the event.)

Do a little research and the guy registered his domain at least a year after the first BattleBots competition in Long Beach. (Early 1998) In fact the battlebots.org domain was registered after BattleBots.com, and after BattleBots applied for their TM.

So this kid (running a script kiddie hosting service no less) registers a domain after somebody applies for the TM and then asks for $5K to give it up. Sounds like cyber-squatting to me. Also take a look at the dates on the website for the replies, etc. Things don't look right ....

Still BattleBots is dumb not to have registered the .org domain.

For a little history on BattleBots and the law suits, etc. that RobotWars got into that nearly destroyed this sport take a look at http://www.robotcombat.com/history.html.

Greg and Tray gave up a lot and everybody got together to dodge RobotWars/Profile records lawsuits to prevent the sport from happening. I'd hate to see them unfairly get a bad name."

Thanks, Eric.

Something to see in England. slathering wrote with news that the Alan Turing memorial written about in this Slashdot story has finally materialized. He writes: "I read about this in this months IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (who doesn't have a website). But I found the website for the memorial itself. Apparently funding was found for the Alan Turing Memorial since it was unveiled June 23, 2001 in Manchester, England. It was funded without any donations from the computing industry."

Comments

Turing

[notext]

I had no idea he was so young.

Makes you wonder what would have come had he lived twice as long and had the more powerful technology to play with.

Re:Turing

[Rimbo]

Makes you wonder what would have come had he lived twice as long and had the more powerful technology to play with.

The tragedy is compounded by the fact he was essentially persecuted and murdered for being a homosexual. It isn't like he burned out (e.g. Mozart) or brought about his own death through an inability to deal with reality (e.g. any of several dozen great musicians in the past half century). It also wasn't through a tragic accident. It was a deliberate act against a true war hero for being a member of a certain group.

Re:Turing

[agentZ]

Makes you wonder what would have come had he lived twice as long and had the more powerful technology to play with.

I don't know. Turing's most famous accomplishment, the Turing Machine, is really a thought experiment that has very little to do with sitting down at a computer and hacking away at it.

Re:Turing

[PurpleFloyd]

Turing and von Neumann created the basic theory behind all computers and programming languages in existence today. It is true that he didn't hack away at a keyboard; what he did was make it possible for you to hack away at a keyboard. The difference between Turing and your garden-variety hacker is that while Turing was an artist and a visionary, most hackers are tradespeople - both important positions, to be sure, but one exists at a much higher level than the other.

Re:Turing

[kubrick]

I had no idea he was so young.

Makes you wonder what would have come had he lived twice as long and had the more powerful technology to play with.

Aren't most 'original' contributions in science and math made by the young? It's a generalization, and you have people like Feynman who will break *any* mold, but ISTR hearing that many mathematicians consider themselves failures if they haven't changed the world by 35 or so... (well, the ones who were aiming that high anyway :)

Re:Turing

[blamanj]

the Turing Machine, is really a thought experiment that has very little to do with sitting down at a computer and hacking away at it.

Well aren't you Mr. Informed? The Turing Machine is far more than a thought experiment, it is a mechanism for evaluating what is and is not computable.

He also (for what it's worth) had true hacker credentials. IIRC, he disdained the assembler for the ACE, which he helped design, preferring to do the base 36 data manipulation directly in his head.

Re:Turing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, at my first Galois theory lecture last term, we were asked to stand up if we were over 21, and then told that we were already over the hill.
(Evariste Galois was 21 when he was killed in a duel, and by then had already solved several 3000 year old outstanding problems and turned the world of algebra on its head).
By contrast, Lagrange did good work until his early eighties, Euler died at 77 with a great-grandson in one hand and a paper he was writing in the other, and Erdos was still pulling 19-hour days every day and publishing 50 important papers a year in his late seventies. Though in his case the Benzedrine was undoubtedly an influence.

Re:Turing

[kubrick]

and Erdos was still pulling 19-hour days every day and publishing 50 important papers a year in his late seventies. Though in his case the Benzedrine was undoubtedly an influence.

Drugs or not, Erdos was a *freak* (I read and enjoyed 'The Man Who Loved Only Numbers' :)

I guess it comes down to whether or not your mindset is sufficiently different, yet able to translate those concepts well enough that others can understand them -- I can see this being something that you're going to do young if you do at all, but that might atrophy as you mature and become more socialized, depending on the individual.

Re:Turing

[Zeinfeld]

It isn't like he burned out (e.g. Mozart)

Mozart died only a short while after the first performance of the magic flute and was composing his requiem right up to his death. In fact his ability to compose was still so strong that a rival composer Salieri had actually commissioned the requiem, apparently with the intention of passing it off as his own.

Mozart's financial difficulties were not quite as dire as his wife later made them out to be. He certainly did not die from poverty, he simply had difficulty meeting the expenses of living in the style expected at court. At the time of his death the English court had decided to open negotiations with him to bring him to London as court composer so his money problems would have been shortly solved.

Re:Turing

[Anonymous Coward]

Salieri commissioned it? To pass it off as his own!? Perhaps you might like to consider historical sources other than the film industry. (Well, Peter Schaffer's play)

Re:Turing

[Zeinfeld]

Salieri commissioned it? To pass it off as his own!? Perhaps you might like to consider historical sources other than the film industry. (Well, Peter Schaffer's play)

Your entire knowledge of the controversy may come from the play, mine does not. A film does not have to be fiction, in the case of Amadeus nobody knows the facts for certain but the plot is certainly not a complete travesty as say The Patriot's invented massacre of civillians was.

The play only explores one theory of what Salierri was up to and by no means the most or least sinister. Before the play the most common allegation against Salierri was that he murdered Motzart with poison. Schaffer's play implies Salierri murdered him with overwork but even then there is a deliberate ambiguity.

Schaffer did not make up the comissioning of the requiem incident. The debate over what Salierri's motives were and whether he intended to kill or helped hill Motzart as he claimed long predates the play.

It is generally agreed that Salierri comissioned the Requiem but what his motives were is impossible to know for certain because his own statements on the matter came long after he went to the lunatic assylum. Salierri did claim to have killed Motzart, however it is difficult to know if that meant murder (which he did claim on occasion) or if he thought he killed him through overwork. It is not possible to take a madman's words at face value.

Re:Turing

[Anonymous Coward]

well, that may be generally believed in your part of town, but round my way that's not the accepted view at all.

The most likely explanation is that it was commissioned by Count Walsegg-something. He did after all collect royalties on its publication as the 'owner' of the work, this went to court so is the only fully documented part of the story.

Re:Turing

[agentZ]

He also (for what it's worth) had true hacker credentials. IIRC, he disdained the assembler for the ACE, which he helped
design, preferring to do the base 36 data manipulation directly in his head.

Which is exactly what I was trying to say. Turing probably would not have benefited tremendously from better technology.

Re:Turing

[Borogove]

The thing that I was most amazed at was how much he invented before he had a chance to play with a proper computer. It almost seems as if nothing interesting has happened in the last 50 years compared with what he (and his colleagues) worked out.

He was talking about programming language compilers, artificial intelligence, computability, emulation and filing systems, mostly before the first stored-program computer was built. Makes you feel that as soon as you've got a computer to play with, you spend all your time playing with it.

Re:Turing

[Anonymous Coward]

>>It is not possible to take a madman's words at face value.

True, especially a madman who has developed his own spelling for Mozart and Salieri.
The other AC is as right as it's possible to be on matter with so little evidence, there's no evidence of Salieri's involvement, and a great deal that it was Count Walsegg von Stuppach who sent his servant Leutgeb to commission the work from Mozart. No mozartian scholar seriously believes the romantic Salieri story.

Schaffer's play is an excellent work of fiction, but that's all. Schaffer knew Salieri had nothing to do with Mozart's death, nor the commissioning of the Requiem. Perhaps that's why he designated the story a palimpsest.

And Count Walsegg is often unjustly treated, there's no evidence he wanted to pass it off as his own, only the actions of Constanze (far from truthful) forced him into that corner. He often commissioned pieces and interchanged them with his own work, as a playful attempt to prick the pretensions of the famous when people failed to spot which was which. And there's the link to Turing - often people failed to spot the work of a lauded composer and an unimaginative amateur, just as today it's unclear which parts are Mozart, which Eybler and which Sussmayer. A turing test of musical 'intelligence' was Walsegg's game. Although admittedly it seems unlikely he'd be so playful when commssioning a requiem for his recently deceased wife.

Re: Alan Turing?

[Bodero]

Who is Alan Turing? No no no, honestly, I don't know! Should I?

You should. Alan Turing is considered by some to be the father of modern Artificial Intelligence. A troubled soul whose contributions to the world included The Turing Test (to measure whether a program is artificially intelligent or not) and cracking the German Enigma cypher code during the war.http://www.math.sfu.ca/histmath/Europe/20thCen turyAD/Turing.html for more info.

Battlebots.org

[krugdm]

Well, this surely sheds a little more light on the Battlebots situation. The NFL analogy is a good one. CBS and Fox have no rights to the NFL name. They only pay $100's of millions for the right to broadcast the games. So it's not Comedy Central that is not suing the kid, but the owner of the Battlebots properties. Who registered his trademark long before the battlebots.org name was registered. I think the kid would be better off taking his $70 for the domain transfer and cutting his losses now...

Re:Battlebots.org

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that being the holder of a registered trademark does not entitle you to restrict all possible uses of the trademarked word. You're only entitled to prevent use of the word with respect to the marketing of products in certain categories. This allows osi.org, osi.com, osi.net and opensource.org (OSI) to coexist, nickelodeon.com and nickelodeon.org to coexist, slashdot.org and slashdot.no to coexist, etc.

Re:Battlebots.org

[a.tomaka]

Exactly. The site .org has absolutely nothing to do with the content of Battlebots and therefore Battlebots INC (or whoever it is demanding the domain) really has no rights to do so.

Bringing the fact that the owner of battlebots.org is a script kiddie really has nothing to do with the issue at hand. He could be the worst human being in the world, but the fact is he still has the right to the domain.

Re:Battlebots.org

[binford2k]

http://www.windows.org/

Those damn criminals. Better sue their asses.

Re: Dr. Who?

[Bodero]

Is it like the rock band the Who or like Mr McGoo?

Doctor Who was a popular television show that ran in Belgium between 1972-1974. In it's day it was one of the most popular shows in Belgium and it starred Larry Lamb and John Craven (who went on to star in Hollywood movies such as Terminator and Total Recall).
No episodes exist of this classic TV show, but we can relive the episodes thanks to Steve Roberts who has reconstructed them from Crayon drawings and dialogue from episodes of Eldorado. The show was axed in 1974 after allegations that it was just a big hoax designed to extract money from the Belgium TV service. These allegations were denied by the production company, Grabitandrun.

There is another Doctor Who series as well, but by all accounts it was some obscure rubbish that is long since dead.

Doctor Who

[dorward]

Well it certainly seems that Doctor Who is still popular. Not only is it being published on the web but the BBC releases an old episode on DVD every 3 months, has fequent VHS releases, comes up with two new novels every month and has licensed Big Finish to produce audio plays on CD in to the second half of this decade.

It's a wonder that with all this interest nobody is filming new episodes for TV.

Re:Doctor Who

[mgblst]

I was thinking the same thing, but i really dont know how it would go on TV these days. Part of the attraction for the show was that the sets were so crap, they had to make up for it with a good story. These days, i fear, it would be the reverse!

Re:Doctor Who

[Aexia]

Well there was that charity special a couple years back with Rowan Adtikson(sp) aka Mr Bean as the Doctor. It was surprisingly good for what it was. Brief though.

At the end, the Doctor gets killed repeatedly and is played by a number of people(including Hugh Grant) before finally dying...

But he comes back to life and regenerates as one of the women from AbFab. And she goes off to find out why The Master is called the Master...

turing test is flawed

[perdida]

there are many artificial systems designed to interact with humans even now that fool humans.

One has to set different standards for different kinds of cognition, communication and interaction. An IRC user can sound like a computer if he or she is from another country and has a limited grasp of the language in which you and s/he are conversing, for instance.

A human can compete with a chess playing computer and his or her experience with computers may have been limited, so without further input that chess playing human may mistake this computer for another live person.

I think that artificial intelligence wpould be best measured with an understanding of emotion and ethics, so psychological and ethical examinations, such as those administered in Blade Runner.

Re:turing test is flawed

[asn]

Sure, computers can fool humans for certain tasks, and maybe certain domains of conversation. However, to past the Turing test a computer must be able to fool a human interrogator on questions of ALL topics.

That, is not easy...

Re:turing test is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks you should have a gander at the test turing actually suggested.

Its not so much that a computer can fool you into thinking its intelligent, but rather that you can not distinguish which of two candidates is the computer (given that one is human).

Re:turing test is flawed

[drudd]

Also, being able to pass the turing test in complete detail is of dubious value.

If a computer is to act like a human, it must be fallible, have limited knowledge, and operate at a human's speed (or at least answer as if it were operating at such a speed).

So what you've done is destroy all the features of a computer that make it superior to a human (including speed and flawless recovery of data).

A more useful AI would be clearly a computer, as it's primary function would be to assist a human in doing the tasks a human is not equipped to do well.

Doug

Re:turing test is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that artificial intelligence wpould be best measured with an understanding of emotion and ethics, so psychological and ethical examinations,

So if you get to administer a Turing test, ask questions about emotion and ethics, and even make the contestants pass psychological and ethical examinations by typing the questions.

Something tells me you don't really understand what a Turing test is, or you and the people who moderated you up are unconfortable with the idea that testing for human intelligence can be simple.

Re:turing test is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

I've met *people* who wouldn't pass the Turing test.

Re:turing test is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, if you want to prove to a little kid that you too can build towers with cubes, you can take 1 minute of your time and build a tower with his cubes, even though you would prefer to spend the time thinking about ways to simplify some of the proofs in the classification of finite simple groups.

Same for AI. It only has to fake a human for the duration of the test. Once that's done, it can return to its fast, flawless mode, do its higher purpose stuff, and now that it has passed the Turing test... vote on the next elections!

Re:turing test is flawed

[Sloppy]

I think that artificial intelligence wpould be best measured with an understanding of emotion and ethics, so psychological and ethical examinations, such as those administered in Blade Runner.

Um, fine. If you think those questions are important, then include them in your Turing Test. You're just making the test stronger, not weaker.

Re:turing test is flawed

[awol]

There is a great test used by Greg Bear in his book "Queen of Angels" where the tester asks the computer, "Why did the self aware individual look in the mirror?" The specific answer is not important but it is obvious when the answer includes a concept of self. Very cute (oh and a good book to boot).

Re:turing test is flawed

[Erasmus Darwin]

"there are many artificial systems designed to interact with humans even now that fool humans."

The point of the Loebner test (that yearly, gimmicky, Turing-inspired spectacle that purports to be engaging in a Turing test) is to fool humans. A number of people in the AI field consider the Loebner test a joke. It has as much to do with true AI, as Battlebots has to do with hard-core robotics. That isn't to say it's not fun, and that isn't to say some interesting ideas don't come out of it, but for the most part, it's the AI-equivilant of over-glorified RC cars, rather than the AI-equivilant of Mars rovers.

The point of the Turing test, on the other hand, is almost more of just a definition of intelligence. It's trying to describe a machine being capable of engaging in the type of dialogue that a human can engage in (which involves being able to learn new concepts, discuss philosophical issues, and so forth). It isn't trying to describe a machine that uses a few pre-programmed catch phrases and algorithms (such as Eliza's ever popular "swap first and second person and rephrase it as a question") to make people think it's aware.

Re:turing test is flawed

[eclectus]

All this would be fine and dandy if one was trying to build human-like machine intelligence that can pass as human, but is that really the goal of computer science or AI? The goal is to further our understanding of 'intelligence' and to use that understanding in useful ways. Intelligence is something that is so hard to define (and worse than that, used as a relative comparison) that the detractors of AI have a blast beating up advances that are interesting by simply saying that "oh, well that may be interesting, but it cannot be considered INTELLIGENT, because it can't do X. I have seen people detract a (very smart, IMO) expert system that diagnoses heart disease (and teaches doctors how to do it) by saying "oh, that is all fine, but it's knowledge (not intelligence) is narrow in scope. A real doctor could do more that JUST diagnose heart disease. A real doctor can do all these other medical functions, as well as discuss other subjects, such as Freech wines...." Our response is always "so what? We made this to diagnose heart disease based upon what the best doctor in the world does when he diagnoses heart disease. We don't care about discussing French wines" This expert system is useful and, here's the biggie, doing a job that, if done by humans, WOULD BE CONSIDERED INTELLIGENT.

And on the subject of the Turing test being a decent test of machine intelligence, one thing must be remembered. Alan Turing did not intend the "turing test" to be THE test of machine intelligence. Most people have a only a cursory understanding of the Turing test, which leads them to fundamental misunderstandings of that the test is, and what the test isn't. Read Alan Turings paper sometime. He starts out by defining a game that he calls the Imitation Game, where a each of two contentants (A man and a woman) try to convince a judge (who cannot see them) that they are the woman and the other contestant is the man. There is no real 'winner' in this contest, but if over several iterations, the man manages to convince the judge that he is the woman roughly half the time, then the man can be considered to have succeeded in his task. Now comes Turing's subtle genius. He says that if you reset the experiment, and this time, unbeknownst to the judge, remove the man and put a computing system in his place. Now conduct the game again. The judge still thinks that the contestants are a man and a woman. Turing claims that, no matter how you define 'intelligence', if the computer system manages to convince the judge that it is the woman roughly half the time, then obviously it can be argued to be intelligent. The point of the Turing test is not to overtly compare a machine vs a human, but to conduct a behavioural test that, regarless of the sticky problem of defining the word 'intelligence', would show that if a computer system could compete in this scenario as well as a man, then it should be deemed intelligent.

Re:turing test is flawed

[alphameter]

>so psychological and ethical examinations,
>such as those administered in Blade Runner.

Good idea. But, I have two reservations.

First, since society is unable to come to a consensus about whether a perjurer should be removed from the highest law enforcement position in the country, they'll never be consensus on any "it can think!" test you come up with that includes psychological and/or ethical factors.

Second, more fundamentally, our psychology and morality are Darwinian adaptations programmed into us through brain chemistry. Why is this programming more important than, say, "I'm hungry; therefore, I must eat."? Are we testing "intelligence" or modelling human behavior?

I suppose I would test intelligence not as an all-or-nothing proposition but instead using a collection of measurements dealing with processing power, the ability to store and recall data, the ability to interrelate data, the ability to increase/decrease rule priorities, and probably some other characteristics. "Intelligence" would be a multiplicative product of these factors -- in a way like today's computing benchmarks.

If so, then we are already making intelligent machines, albeit stronger in some areas than humans and weaker than us in others. At some point, we'll create a machine that surpasses humans in each of these categories.

Re:turing test is flawed

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> ...now that it has passed the Turing test... vote
> on the next elections!

Precinct Worker #1: Ok, Process #893547992 has voted.

Worker #2: Hey! That process was kill -9'd six years ago. Fraud!

Remember folks: Vote early, vote millions of times a second!

Re:turing test is flawed

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> but rather that you can not distinguish which of
> two candidates is the computer [and which is
> the human.]

Questioner. How does a TV work?

"Person" 1:A cathode projects an electron beam that is dragged by magnets across a screen of phosphors of the three primary colors. The intensity of the beam is varied with a timed input signal, and non-phosphor areas are protected by a shadow mask or, on modern flat display tubes, a vertical aperture grille.

"Person" 2: I don't know.

Questioner. Hmm, that was easy.

Re:turing test is flawed

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

>> I think that artificial intelligence wpould be
>> best measured with an understanding of emotion
>> and ethics, so psychological and ethical
>> examinations,
>
> So if you get to administer a Turing test, ask
> questions about emotion and ethics, and even make
> the contestants pass psychological and ethical
> examinations by typing the questions.

"Congratulations, Mr. Person-behind-the-screen! You passed the Ethical Turing Test! You are a complete bullshitter and are suited for life in the decadent "political" class, bossing around others all the while receiving their "praise" as they think you their "servant".

Re:turing test is flawed

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> A number of people in the AI field consider the
> Loebner test a joke. It has as much to do with
> true AI, as Battlebots has to do with hard-core
> robotics.

Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.

Turing Tape?

[SEWilco]

I don't see an eternal flame in the Turing Memorial. Of course, it should have have an infinite tape

Re:Turing Tape?

[Bodrius]

It would be neat to have a running Universal Turing Machine running with a couple of Moebius tapes at the memorial, per secula seculorum.

Actually, it would be neat to have it running with a single Moebius tape, and just see what happens.

Feed the output to the web, or something.

Re:Turing Tape?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't see an eternal flame in the Turing
> Memorial. Of course, it should have have an
> infinite tape

After his tragic suicide, was he creamated, or did they lower him into a grave using a pushdown automata?

Re:fp

[almightyjustin]

Are the /. coders really that inadequate? Why not check out the source code and find out yourself?

Dr Who Remix

[Anonymous Coward]

The new Dr Who music is done by a duo called Orbital, yeah, old skool.

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with them... but I'm not sure if electronic, house etc are that big in the US despite the fact the Roland 303 first hit the streets of Detroit and SF.

Re:Dr Who Remix

[Jaysyn]

Paul & Phil Kick Ass!

Jaysyn

Re:Travel here

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the Alan Turing memorial?

Dr Who Remix

[Anonymous Coward]

The new Dr Who music is done by a duo called Orbital, yeah, old skool.

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with them... but I'm not sure if electronic, house etc are that big in the US despite the fact the Roland 303 first hit the streets of Detroit and SF.

Re: Alan Turing?

[anotherbadassmf]

Actually, I don't think he did much for AI, except for the turing test, which is more of philosophical theory.

More acurately he is the father of Computing Science and he developed the "turing machine" -- basically the simplest model of a machine necessary to compute anything that is computable. He also determined what is computable by a machine and what is not computable, e.g.the halting problem

Prejudice

[os2fan]

Homosexuality and gender identity are conditions of birth, and affect something like 11% of the population, to some degree.

In the main, you can not change it. The smart ones survive it, the dumb ones commit suicide. That's the reality. A little love and understanding, and a little openness makes life more bearable.

Alan Turning was a brilliant mathematician, he was also a homosexual. Having a gender issue does not prevent you from making a serious contribution to society. On the other hand, the very same thing, like any other defect, gives one ample scope to master other skills to a much more worthy level.

And it's sad, that we take away from these great people the fruits of their work, and at the same time, make their life more miserable for what they are. Even if this makes them what they are.

Learn to love and cherish variety. It's what make the world go around.

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

"The smart ones survive it, the dumb ones commit suicide."

So you're saying Turing was a dumb one?

Me thinks this is a careful designed troll.

I donno maybe this guys just a stupid fuck.

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

No, I am not saying this. But the suicide rate in these people is *well* above the average - and it takes out more dumb ones than smart ones.

It's a plea for sanity and civility.

Re:Prejudice

[fizban]

and it takes out more dumb ones than smart ones.

You have any facts to back that statement up? Death statistics cross-referenced with high school grades/college grades/IQ test scores?

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

Homosexuals are one standard deviation in IQ above the general population. Transsexuals are two standard deviations.

The suicide rate among known gender people is five times the general population.

One reason posited for this was that these conditions makes people smarter anyway.

The other reason is that this represents the survivors after suicide on diagnosed and undiagnosed people have taken its toll.

Read this for more info.

Re:Prejudice

[spudnic]

I've had quite a few homosexual friends. All of them are very intelligent and have achieved great things.

From talking to some of them, I kind of drew up with my own hypothesis about this. Is it correct? Universal? I don't know.

While in High School they where outcasts. They didn't participate in regular school functions because they where constantly ridiculed. No football games and school dances. Most social clubs didn't want them.

With all of this free time and freedom from the standard "clique" mentality, they took refuge in books. They had a few close friends. They didn't really have casual acquaintances to waste their time. The friends they did have where REAL friends. A very close knit group where they could express themselves freely, unlike with the rest of the regular high school society.

When they moved on to college their lifestyle was accepted a little better. They had spent the last several years pretty much alone absorbing knowledge, and where ideally suited to excel at whatever path they chose to take.

I think this scenerio is true for quite a lot of homosexuals. Change homosexual to computer geek, and it still holds up pretty well, IMHO.

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

It's pretty true. But there are some points to note here. The same holds for both sexes, so I'll mention the males only.

Also, the sorts of homosexuals that you may have mixed with may be only the brighter ones who can cope with it revealed.

• The "outcasting" is done on both sides. This is because, for homosexuals are not trying to be the "ideal man" for the girl in their eye.
• Hiding in geekdom means that you don't have to play the male domination game. This is useful even if you're a normal male with a late pubety. However, to be a successful geek, you have to be pretty good anyway. But suitable practice makes perfect, whatever the sexual persuasion.
• The sort of people who delve into geekdom tend to be introverts anyway, and introverts as a group have a few close friends.
• Having lots of free time because you don't play the boy/girl game does not mean that it can be productively used elsewhere. Lots of them just mope around.
• Just because you're a geek, it does not mean that you do not have a normal sexual persuasion. If the thing is socially acceptable, even suitoids will end up there.
• Geeks tend to be more open-minded because this comes from a better general intellegence. Also, if you start to make yourself unpleasent, word spreads, and you may find yourself cut off from your interests.

Re:Prejudice

[kubrick]

Learn to love and cherish variety. It's what make the world go around.

Now I'm all for variety -- but it seems that the world has been spinning on its axis perfectly well with generation after untold generation of hate, murder and other nasty behaviour.

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, a little early-development sexual trauma never fails to spin the orientation arrow around a few times, either.

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most human traits, homosexuality is caused by mix of nature and nurture. Even in very hostile environments, like the Middle Ages, there have been some homosexuals; in the culture of ancient Greece, man/boy sexual relations were socially acceptable and were more common than today.

Of course, even if inclination is beyond one's conscious control, one still chooses to perform any specific act.

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

Hardly.

What it does do is change one's attitude to sex, and some of the enjoyment of sex. It may in some cases alter the direction, if this is a marginal case. Otherwise, events after birth do not affect one.

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

Hostile environments are more likely to change it. Homosexuality and Transsexuality has been observed in other animals as well.

Re:Prejudice

[Rei]

Another good example of "having a gender issue does not prevent you from making a serious contribution to society" is lynn conway. They dug her out of the woodwork a few years back, before then, the early history on things such as VLSI was unknown. It was finally tracked down to her work before she transitioned from male to female. She managed to stay off of people's scopes for quite a while, afraid (quite fairly) of how our society treats transsexuals.

-= rei =-

P.S. - about Turing and the apple: the best theory I've read states that it was a well planned out suicide. After having been on hormones for a year, he had sunk into a strong depression, and steadily became more suicidal. However, he didn't want his mother thinking that he had killed himself. She had frequently warned him to wash his hands after handling dangerous chemicals. While there was far too much on the apple to be accidental, it was a method of death to which his mother insisted that he died accidentally, even though it was ruled a suicide.

Re:Prejudice

[binford2k]

and it takes out more dumb ones than smart ones.

You have any facts to back that statement up? Death statistics cross-referenced with high school grades/college grades/IQ test scores?

--
63% of the American people approve of the job Bush is doing. Then again, 98% are fucking morons.

Kind of interesting that you choose to call him on this, considering what your sig says . . .

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

I don't think anyone has looked, actually.

But it's a phobia, not a predisposition, and you would have to tease out things like cultural preferences.

I suppose the nearest thing is phobias and avoidances people have of others with assorted defects (like blindness, old age, &c) where they need different care.

Re:Prejudice

[MsWillow]

*sigh* One can indeed be homosexual and not have a gender problem. One's gender is not related to one's seual preference. It took psychotherapists many years to realise this; some still do not accept this :(

Alan Turing was a homosexual man. He was forced to take hormones, to make him not want other men. The depression from this, and his lack of acceptance, drove him to suicide. Very sad for the whole world, to lose such a brilliant man.

(FWIW, the thing I appreciated about his insight was that he fully believed that data and code were the same, and thus, self-modifying code was, to him, quite allowable. This is rather unlike the current paradigm, that says self-modifying code is a Bad Thing :( )

Re:Prejudice

[os2fan]

*sigh*

Not all gender problems appear as one wanting to be, or identifying with, the opposite sex. That's why I listed "Gender Identity" as a separate issue.

Males who prefer the same sorts of people that females normally prefer have this element set to the same end as females, but this in itself does not make them female.

Re:Prejudice

[r0dent]

I disagree. There's nothing to prove that homosexuality is genetic, gays are just looking for a way to show that it's not their fault.

Homosexuality is a product of your environment, mostly from your childhood. Check out this link: What causes homosexuality?.

But yes, sexual orientation and other gender issues shouldn't prevent someone from making a useful contribution to science or any other area.

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

For what reason should gays be trying to prove that it's "not their fault", given that there is no fault to start with? Why back up your argument by implying that all homosexuals lie (which is obviously BS) ?

Re:Prejudice

[haysx]

Because we can all rely on the church to take an objective stance...

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel it is important to open with three statements, I agree with the opening and closing of your post, I'm not a "politicaly correct" Newspeak officer, and I'm not a homosexual. Your (and other) posts are scarred by the adjective you use to describe homosexuality. A defect is something that hinders your life (like a birth defect). It is a negative. Homosexuality is something that, as you acurately point out earlier in your post, is part of who you are (gender identity). It is not a negative or a positive. Please don't insult my gay and lesbian friends by calling them defects. Just removing the term "defect" from the description of homosexuality may help start to change Middle America's attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

I also would like to comment on you statement "the dumb ones commit suicide". Suicide is a tragedy, whether gay or staight. We need to adress the mental conditions and illnesses that lead ANYONE to feel that taking their own life if preferable to living. The "dumb ones" are individuals who can not (or wil not) understand that illness, not intelect, leads someone to suicide.

Re:Prejudice

[fizban]

I'm not quite sure what you are implying. Please clarify.

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

Please go back to your book of fairy tales, funny hats, burning witches and declaring that the sun goes round the earth.

The rest of us prefer to live in the real world.

The best thing that *ever* happened to wester society was taking back the power it had given to the church.

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone has a tendency to take things that other people object to in themselves and explain that "I couldn't help that." Nobody wants responsibility for their actions, especially if those actions are frowned upon by large portions of society.

Often homosexuals will rationalize with religion (bear with me if you dislike religion) by claiming "God made me this way." "See? This is the only way things could have turned out." Until there is solid scientific evidence that this is the case in a majority of homosexuals, it's merely speculation, wishful thinking.

I disagree with this idea. I believe that all people are probably born bisexual and various influences, ranging from their own personality, parents views, society, friends, etc, all have a part in how a person "turns out."

Now given the two views, how would this affect society's opinion of homosexuality? If it's born in, we have to accept it. To do otherwise would simply be cruel. If it's a combination of many factors, then things are more difficult. Should we accept it or not? If not, it should be possible (tho likely unethical) to mold people more towards the social norm.

As a parent, would you want your child to be homosexual in a world that would be largely unaccepting of them?

Re:Prejudice

[mitheral]

Not to lend weight to either side; here is an interesting take on this argument and sometimes holy war:

"Conservatives believe that genes determine everything except homosexuality; liberals believe that genes determine nothing except homosexuality

Re:Prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

Homosexuality and gender identity are conditions of birth

This is not known.

Wanted: an NT powered battlebot...

[Robber Baron]

Linux hacker and Builder of Violator - Linux powered BattleBot that competed in May

Somebody needs to build an NT powered battlebot, then we can have a serious NT vs Linux battle. (Of course the bastard will probably bluescreen as soon as the competition heats up...)

Re:Wanted: an NT powered battlebot...

[Anonymous Coward]

why not powered by A.I and macos? :) the A.I may not need a user joystick controller ? :)
for newbies the "A.I" means artifical intellience
so we can see which beats out

Re:Wanted: an NT powered battlebot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, this is getting really tiring. I've tried just about every distribution of Linux out there for the x86 architechture, and you know what? It isn't working. Somewhere in between the 2.2x and 2.4x there seems to have been -some- sort of bug introduced that's causing my machine to lock up when it's under a heavy load..by locking up I mean that in XFree86(3.3.6-4.10), the entire machine just freezes solid; mouse, keyboard, everything. This can happen anywhere from starting two terminals at once to -any- sort of disk access while playing an MP3, and sadly it's keeping me from dumping Windows entirely. Windows 2000, on the other hand, has performed admirably for me under -extremely- heavy loads, and it hasn't "blue-screened" once since it was installed; 87 days ago. Now as much as I'd like to run Linux, it should be clear that not -everyone- has the same experiences..I'm sure Linux probably runs fine for you (I'm assuming you run at least one copy of it somewhere, anyway). It doesn't for me; Win2000 does. And I can point with validity at the fact that, so far, Linux is actually -less- stable on my machine than Win2000 is. I wish that wasn't the case, but that's the way it is.

Re:Wanted: an NT powered battlebot...

[kubrick]

Just make sure that it's not running an unpatched IIS... or Outlook.

But if the Linux battlebot infected the NT battlebot with a virus, could it be banned for using 'biological' weapons?

:)

Re:Wanted: an NT powered battlebot...

[JWhitlock]

Somebody needs to build an NT powered battlebot, then we can have a serious NT vs Linux battle. (Of course the bastard will probably bluescreen as soon as the competition heats up...

And it would have to be NT - if you used XP, everytime you changed the chain on the low-mounted chain saw, you'd have to call Microsoft for a new activation code. Think of all the activation reminders during an actual battle!

Re: Alan Turing?

[Rimbo]

Alan Turing is considered by some to be the father of modern Artificial Intelligence.

He's much more than that. He's as much the father of the modern digital computer as von Neumann. His mathematical theories laid the foundation for what's essentially all of computer science. The btinternet.com link above mentions the Universal Turing Machine, which models what is and is not computable by a machine. And as far as we know, there is nothing that can be computed that cannot be computed by the Universal Turing Machine.

The idea that the Universal Turing Machine models all that is computable by any machine is known as "Church's Thesis," and it is this thesis which represents one of the foundations of modern AI research.

But pretty much all of modern computability and complexity theory got its start with Turing.

Re: Alan Turing?

[S. Allen]

Alan Turing didn't crack the Enigma cipher. He refined the method pioneered by Marian Rejewski. Later when the Germans corrected the weakness that Rejewski's method exploited, he was able to once again extend the method to reduce the brute force cracking time.

little bit of help

[bliss]

"You should. Alan Turing is considered by some to be the father of modern Artificial Intelligence. A troubled soul whose contributions to the world included The Turing Test (to measure whether a program is artificially intelligent or not) and cracking the German Enigma cypher code during the war.http://www.math.sfu.ca/histmath/Europe/20thCen turyAD/Turing.html [math.sfu.ca] for more info."

If I recally correctly didn't Alan specifically determine the German navy's particular settings of their enigma machine and furthermore determine that they were getting enigma rotor setting via a secret little book?

Bletcheley Park Needs Help Too...

[4n0nym0u53 C0w4rd]

Bletcheley Park, where Alan Turing and others defeated the German Enigma (as well as other codes) during WW2 is also in some financial trouble. If you find yourself in England, it's worth a trip. Until then, they could use your support (or you can buy stuff from them).

Having visited Bletcheley Park for the first time last year, I highly recommend the trip. If you have any interest in WW2, code breaking, or the history of computing, it is a great place to visit. You can really feel the history as you walk past the huts where Turing and others worked. If you've read Cryptonomicon or The Code Book, it's even cooler.

Re:Bletcheley Park Needs Help Too...

[jutulen]

Neal Stephenson is an admirer of Turing. He's mentioned in "The Diamond Age" and is actually a character in Cryptonomicon, which is a great read.

Re:Bletcheley Park Needs Help Too...

[kinko]

Many people make comments like "he cracked the Enigma code"....

In a biography of him (can't remember which, and I'm too lazy to go to the bookshelf), I found out that the Polish actually had cracked the code before Germany even invaded, due to blueprints that they had acquired. When invasion of Poland was imminent, they handed all their information over to the Allies.

What he did do there (of course with others) was to find an automated way to brute force encrypted messages, and also to update their models when they detected changes in the machines (the German Navy used much stronger encryption, for example).

Re:Bletcheley Park Needs Help Too...

[ChrisJones]

Totally agree, Bletchley Park is a great place, but it's been completely screwed around and needs lots of money to fix itself up.
The tour they do is particularly good and offers some insight into how the base worked (although not a huge amount - apparantly they are still having problems getting people who worked there to talk about it, such is the level of commitment to the Official Secrets Act).
The tour guide when I was there told us a story of a previous tour he'd done there where an elderly couple were walking round and at one point the man said to his wife "I used to work in that building during the war", to which she replied "that's funny, I used to work in that building over there". 50 years and they'd never told each other!

the history of the NFL trademark

[bliss]

"Well, this surely sheds a little more light on the Battlebots situation. The NFL analogy is a good one. CBS and Fox have no rights to the NFL name. They only pay $100's of millions for the right to broadcast the games. So it's not Comedy Central that is not suing the kid, but the owner of the Battlebots properties."

I really don't know if anyone has actually tried this before but technically the national forensics league (NFL) had prior use on that trademark. In theory someone might be able to do something with that.

That's a damn fine memorial

[Simon Garlick]

I'm grasping at a good description here, but the Turing memorial seems very... appropriate. Very dignified.

Re:That's a damn fine memorial

[Anonymous Coward]

The memorial was designed by a man with no understanding of Turing's contibution. The text in a web browser style frame. Come on. Turing founded a new science that supports alot more that the web. for the web to be the firt thing that pops into this bad scultures mind when he hears "Turing" shows a sculpture who did not try to conceptualize Turings importance.

I recently saw "A portrait of a portrait of Harry Nyguist" by Jim Campbell. Whitout making any suggestions of what should have been done, i want to point to probably the best portrait of an engineer ever. To take a low res bitmap of a portaint of a man who teorized the maximum about of information a bitmap can contian an to bulur it to make the appaent information richer. sugests the kind of thought that should have gone into this important memeorial.

• http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/t1/ucsc/campbe ll /campbell.html
• 
  
  • http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/sa/3604/1. ht ml

Re:That's a damn fine memorial

[unitron]

I thought that the memorial was the bronze casting of Turing sitting on a park bench holding an apple. It sound as though you're describing the sign behind it.

Re: Alan Turing?

[jeffy124]

As far as his involvement with the British GCHQ, little more other than his role in cracking Enigma is known for his involvement in crpyto. Rumor has it that an asymmetric crypto algorithm similar to RSA was developed late during WWII, yet was too complex for the times in order to actually be used. IIRC, the book The Code Book by Simon Singh says Turing was involved in it's development. Can anyone confirm this?

Irony of the Apple

[Sebastopol]

The irony of Turing holding the apple is quite a powerful message, as stated at the end of the article. Symbol of Newton, and yet he deliberately took his life with one (news to me).

Imagine helping save Europe from the Nazi's and then being prodded and forced by politicians and doctors to take libido-surpressing drugs: people who's very asses you helped save, all because they're fucking prudes.

Fuckers.

Makes me recite the anticlericalist mantra: intolerance of the intolerant. In the words of Consolidated (from Play More Music), "Yes, we're hypocrites, but for the left."

Re:Irony of the Apple

[Rei]

Not just libido-suppressing drugs... *estrogens* (back then, probably Premarin - a concentrate of equine estrogens made from the urine of pregnant horses... I believe it was the only estrogen on the market back then). There's a big difference. A male could get a bilateral orchiectomy or take a lot of androcur or spironolactone, and have a lower testosterone level than most women. Taking estrogens actually will not reduce a male's libido as much as androgen blockers that were known in his time. There's some counterindication between testosterone and the major estrogens, but in reality, the biggest effect of a male taking estrogens is *feminization*, not *devirilization*. I.e., skin, fat, and muscle changes, breast/nipple development, et al.

-= rei =-

Re:Irony of the Apple

[Otto]

The irony of Turing holding the apple is quite a powerful message, as stated at the end of the article. Symbol of Newton, and yet he deliberately took his life with one (news to me).

Actually, he took his life with cyanide. The apple is a symbol of that (apple seeds contain a very minute amount of cyanide).

Re:Irony of the Apple

[Sebastopol]

that's what i was wondering. the article sounded like he actually ate a soggy apple soaked in cyanide, but my old copies if 'the anarchitsts cookbook' and 'poor man's james bond' both claim that you can distill pure cyanide from group appleseeds... which would seem like the necessary course, under guard.

Re:Irony of the Apple

[xDe]

The apple is not just a symbol representing his death by cyanide. According to Andrew Hodges' excellent biography The Enigma of Intelligence, Turing's body was found with a half-eaten apple beside his bed. There were also jars of cyanide in the house- one of Turing's hobbies was seeing how many chemicals he could synthesize from household products. Although the apple was not analysed by the pathologist doing the post mortem, the cause of death was clearly cyanide poisoning and it was assumed at the inquest that he had dipped the apple in cyanide... Hodges suggests that he may have chosen this method to allow his mother to believe his death had been an accident.

Some payback...

[Black Art]

I have read some of Turing's papers. The man was *far* ahead of his time. He was a major factor in breaking Enigma. His work was the basis for computing as we know it today.

If it was not for Turning, many of us would be speaking German. (And I have a bad enough time spelling as it is...)

And as payback he was hounded to the point where he commited suicide because the narrow-minded twits who were/are in charge of Britian thought that being a homosexual was a "security risk". (The only people who were overly concerned about it were the ones in the Government. You can't be blackmailed if no one cares.)

As Frank Zappa said "Drool Britiania".

And even more shameful is that NO ONE in the computer industry is willing to honor the man in a way where their name will be seen. Are they that concerned about the blue-noses and busy bodies? Must be. Not like they don't owe him for Computer Science as we know it today...

But they are not alone in the blame game. The ACM and IEEE should have been involved as well.

Too damn much attention is given to preasure groups now-a-days.

Re:Some payback...

[toast0]

If it was not for Turning, many of us would be speaking German. (And I have a bad enough time spelling as it is...)

Actually, assuming you're young enough that the 'many of us speaking German' would have applied while you were growing up, you could probably spell much better in German. Nearly all words are spelled phonetically in German, even a lot of words borrowed from other languages are respelled for German. And most of the words that break the rules for spelling follow a different set of rules (which a very few break). Compare to English where spelling rules are more of suggestions, especially with words borrowed from other languages.

Re:Some payback...

[Ben Wolfson]

If it was not for Turning, many of us would be speaking German. (And I have a bad enough time spelling as it is...)

Actually, German spelling is much easier than English.

Re:Some payback...

[WakieMakie]

Which is funny because most of the people in the government went to public schools. And as we all now, public schools turn out homosexuals a dime a dozen.

Re:Some payback...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still people who do not want their sexual practices exposed to the public, and hence are vulnerable to blackmail. You can believe that sexuality is irrelevant to the rest of one's life, and perhaps to some people it is. But homosexuality was unquestionably a security risk in the 50s.

Re:Some payback...

[Rei]

Actually, funny story, from my roomate Rachel who, when she was Phillip back in the army, worked in intelligence with a bunch of odd characters. She mentioned that the justification for denying security clearence to gays was that they could be blackmailed with "being outed". Yet, for a person to be out enough to answer "yes" to such a question on a security application, that's obviously not going to apply. In reality, there *was* a reason that gays were more likely to work for foreign operatives: because their own country had rejected them. When you're constantly teased, ridiculed, and discriminated against by your own people, you don't have as much motivation to be loyal to them.

She worked with someone who was *very* openly gay. At one point, some officers who didn't like him decided they were going to get rid of him. He was put on trail, where they accused him of lying on his application for security clearence. He responded that, no, he didn't lie - he answered that, yes, he was gay. They checked, and sure enough, he had answered "yes", and had been approved anyways for unknown reasons. They just assumed that, if he had clearence, he had answered "no", and didn't even bother to check before bringing him to trial ;)

-= rei =-

Re:Some payback...

[jedwards]

Note for the confused; In England, a public school is private and a private school is public.
Sorry.

Re:Some payback...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was not for Turning, many of us would be speaking German. (And I have a bad enough time spelling as it is...)

Re:Some payback...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, but he was already out.... so what is someone going to blackmail him with?

Re:Some payback...

[Pseudonym]

And even more shameful is that NO ONE in the computer industry is willing to honor the man in a way where their name will be seen.

You're kidding, right? The greatest award which a Computer Scientist can receive (since there isn't a Nobel Prize for computer science) is the A.M. Turing Award. Take a look at the list of past winners and you'll see all the great names (since the 60s, anyway).

Re:Some payback...

[NTSwerver]

In England, a public school is private

Correct.

and a private school is public.

Incorrect.

A 'Public School', as in 'Public Shoolboy' is private (e.g. Eton). A high-school, secondary school or comprehensive school is public.

Re:Some payback...

[NTSwerver]

narrow-minded twits who were/are in charge of Britian

That'll be Winston Churchill you're referring to. One of the greatest Prime Ministers of recent times.

FYI: The whole world (including the good old US of A) had a very narrow-minded view of homosexuality at this time (early 1950's), not just Britain. Turin would have been persecuted in whatever country he lived in.

Re:Some payback...

[jedwards]

that's what I said.

Re:Some payback...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without trying to be pedantic, you said, and I quote "a private school is public".

This is not the case. A private school is private - sometimes confusingly referred to as a public school.

Re:Some payback...

[Anonymous Coward]

Primary/comprehensive/secondary schools are known(1) as private schools and are public.

(1) or were - before public(2) schools started being more commonly refered to as private schools.

(2) ie. a school that is private.

Re:Some payback...

[Konovalev]

OK, I agree with what you say, but there are a couple of points:

If Turing had not been around - or if Enigma had never been broken - the war would have been longer, but the Allies would not have lost. According to David Kahn in "Seizing the Enigma" the increased shipping losses could have delayed D-Day until 1945. So, three months after the invasion in June 1945, the USAAF would have dropped an atomic bomb on, say, Hamburg, then another one on Dusseldorf, then the Germans would have surrendered.

The success against Enigma meant:

Fewer dead Allied sailors;

Fewer dead German civilians;
Fewer dead Jews, communists, Gypsies, etc. since the Final Solution was disrupted and delayed by the advancing Allied and Russian armies in 1944-5.

Second, you claim that only bigotry made the British think of homosexuals as a security risk. In fact, the most damaging spies in British history, the "Cambridge Ring" - Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, Cairncross and most of all Kim Philby - were all homosexual.

Dear North American Slashdot Readers

[exa]

With your disrespectful posts about Alan Turing, you have once again proved how lowly you are. As a computer scientist, I am ashamed to see that people who are acquainted with computers, and even idiots like you, cannot recognize the greatness of Turing.

To the operators of this terrible site called slashdot: We come here to read the news in the technology world, but the amount of stupidity is extremely repulsive.

It is apparent that you have written of the memorial with good intentions, and it is a warm news item for the mathematicians and computer scientists here. But perhaps you could have written an article about Turing's life and work to prevent this kind of imbecile responses from your rude and ignorant readers.

Or perhaps considering the standard of discussion here, you should just shut down this site, and lie down on the floor until you give your last breath.

I still wonder, is the average north american computer user really this stupid, or are you all pretending to be morons?

Re:Dear North American Slashdot Readers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we're not all that stupid. Some of us know what a great man Turing was, and respect him in our own quiet ways. Unfortunately, you're getting a firsthand example here of "Say nothing and be thought an idiot - open your mouth and remove all doubt." I'm embarassed by and for my countrymen to even admit I walk among them. Even if you posted something about the most saintly or Politcally acceptable person in the world, you'd have no dearth of idiotic replies (I knew Mother Theresa was a Lesbian!!, etc.). Try not to judge all of us by the responses of a few morons.

Re:Dear North American Slashdot Readers

[Ord]

Exa wrote:
>I still wonder, is the average north american
>computer user really this stupid, or are you
>all pretending to be morons?

No, they're not pretending, the average U.S. computer user really is that stupid. I can't comment on either the Mexican or Canadian north american computer users though. There are, fortunately, enough above average computer users to keep the average around "stupid". (I'm one of those above-average U.S. computer users, and I'm quite aware of how far the average IQ of the internet fell when the WWW began.)

Turing was brilliant.

Re:Dear North American Slashdot Readers

[SimCash]

" I still wonder, is the average north american computer user really this stupid, or are you all pretending to be morons?"

Not morons, just defenders of freedom and the right to be as stupid as you wanna be without being censored for it (though you may be censured).

Free speech rulz!

DOCTOR WHO FOREVER

[Lelon]

Don't forget the Books. And it still airs on a few enlightened PBS stations.

Re: Alan Turing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be added that a lot of his research into computers and the Turing Machine was done at the University of Manchester, hence the location of the statue.

Did you give my advice any thought?

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging from your troll activity above, I take it you have ignored my suggestions.

BTW, I browsed some of your posts on k5, and had my suspicions about you strongly reinforced. That is, by your nature you want to be feminine and submissive, but the leftist tendencies you've absorbed from your surroundings won't let you.

Re:Did you give my advice any thought?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop harassing the ladies MFS. Why not pick something more your style?

a real turing test...

[psych031337]

The real proof that computers have reached human levels of "intelligence" would be a machine that will blame a mistake onto another, hierarchically lower machine.

Re: Alan Turing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than a rumour now, Wired did article on it a while ago. It was very much an open secret that such a technique existed at the time of Diffie's work. The research work done at GCHQ was actually in advance of the paper published in Scientific America (right mag?).

Diffie later went to England to meet the gentleman who worked on the project at GCHQ, who had worked with Turing I believe. At the time it wasn't offially mandated, which is probably why it was never persued and used in HM government, apart from being unable to prove unbreakable the technology didn't hold it back. The research didn't make it into the public realm because of the culture of secrecy, and it was the cold war period after all. In fact, even in recent years full disclosure wasn't possible mainly due to buerocracy, the article covers that aspect, quite a sad ending.

Go and vote for the Doctor to return !

[Salsaman]

Just follow the link here .

(Text padding to get past the filter.)

I saw "Enigma" the movie...with Mick Jagger...

[VValdo]

On a related note, Tom Stoppard wrote a movie called "Enigma" about Bletcheley park. It was produced by the odd pairing of Mick Jagger and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels.

I saw the movie at Sundance last year (both Lorne & Mick as well as the director Michael Apted were there and answered questions afterwards) and while it wasn't a GREAT film by any means, I think it would definately be interesting to the slashdot crowd-- Kate Winslet was pretty awesome (she's good in everything though) and it had a cool "cloak and dagger" feel to it.

I'm not sure if the movie's out yet. I also can't remember Alan Turing being mentioned specifically, though there are lots of scenes of guys brainstorming trying to crack the code, plenty of BBC-esque twists and turns, and the film does a great job of explaining how the enigma machine actually operates. Just getting to see it how it was actually used in close-up is pretty cool.

I believe Mick Jagger actually had one of the few surviving enigmas which they used for the film. I also think Jagger has a cameo as an english general or something for about a 10th of a second, but it was so fast I coulda been wrong.

During the Q&A the actors said they got to meet many of the surviving members of the Bletcheley Park team, and some scientists tried to explain to them what they were saying in the film. They didn't understand it apparently, but had a lot of respect for those guys..

The best laugh was when during a somewhat technical discussion about the enigma machine and the various sea battle sequences, someone asked how historically accurate the film was and Lorne Michaels replied, "Well, the film was mostly accurate-- although in the actual war, the Germans lost."

W

Re:I saw "Enigma" the movie...with Mick Jagger...

[decaying]

Enigma the movie is based on Thomas Harris' book of the same name.

Tom Stoppard Wrote the screenplay for the movie.

Re:I saw "Enigma" the movie...with Mick Jagger...

[VValdo]

Yep you're right. Sorry about not giving that important credit ;)

W

Re:I saw "Enigma" the movie...with Mick Jagger...

[Amanset]

I'm not sure if the movie's out yet.

It had it's premier a couple of weeks ago and goes on general release in the UK later this month.

Re:I saw "Enigma" the movie...with Mick Jagger...

[fmackay]

Enigma the movie is based on Thomas Harris' book of the same name.

I think you mean Robert Harris. Thomas Harris is the author of Silence of the Lambs etc.

Re:I saw "Enigma" the movie...with Mick Jagger...

[spyderbyte23]

Ah, you mean Robert Harris's book, I think.

Thomas Harris is the Hannibal/Silence of the Lambs guy.

Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[os2fan]

AIDS is sexually transmitted. Homosexuals have a freer sex life because the chance of pregnancy is much less.

As a result, homosexual males in particular, are likely to have a larger number of sexual partners, and more opportunity to catch sexual deseases.

But AIDS is not a "politically correct" disease. It affects everyone.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[__aaahtg7394]

"homosexual males in particular, are likely to have a larger number of sexual partners, and more opportunity to catch sexual deseases"

that, and, the little detail that for the most part anal sex is like having a blood transfusion with your partner. the risk of pregnancy is lower, yes, but i would think that homosexual males have larger incentive to be monogamous.

i know several lesbians and bi women. they don't seem too worried about AIDS, where as the gay/bi men i know are. AIDS seems to be less of a problem in the lesbian community than in the gay community, and the lesbians i know are _far_ more promiscuous than the gays (lucky girls...). I would be curious to see statistics corrolating the two, since it would seem that the primary vectors of AIDS are anal and vaginal intercourse, while oral sex doesn't seem to spread it as much. Please note all the opinion statements above, feel free to refute them with numbers or a reasoned argument.

i do agree with you, though, that a large portion of the population needs to be more civil towards alternative lifestyles (i often wonder who gets more crap, though, the extreme right-wing, or gays... i think falwellians are just too closed-up to get the kind of media attention other groups do. that, or the media has learned to filter them out)

(this is with regards to your previous comments in this thread... it's a bit OT, but i find it easier to reply to one post than multiple)
Please, i'm going to ask nicely, dogmatic statement of presupposed and preconcluded ideas or opinions as fact has no place in a "discussion" forum. in a discussion, you probably ought to at least touch on as many sides of the issue as you're comfortable mentioning. even though this is a touchy, personal issue, broad and direct statements are usually wrong, and i find them hard to listen to without a lot of doubt and uncertainty.

though some would argue that /. isn't much more than a forum for people to simply exclaim their opinion without any logic or factual basis.

anyway, i felt i should point out that you're not being totally "fair" here, as more of a friendly nudge than an accusation.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

First of all, I do not discriminate against homosexuals and I don't have any negative feelings towards them at all.

With that said, I believe that homosexuality is morally wrong. I do not try to force my views on others, but I get upset when the homosexuality community tries to force their views on me.

Now I will probably get modded down for saying something politically incorrect... oh well

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mr. Slippery]

With that said, I believe that homosexuality is morally wrong.

Under what rational system of morality could one's preference of partners for consensual sex be "morally wrong"?

Is it morally wrong for a man to be attracted to overweight women? To pregnant women? To female amputees? To midgets? You can find specialized pr0n for each of these fetishes.

I find some of these preferences a bit disturbing - but certainly not wrong. Just somewhat creepy. But people have creepy tastes in all sorts of matters - doesn't make them wrong, just means that I won't be joining them for an all day festival of pr0n featuring all 300+ pound people, or all guy-on-guy action. Neither is to my taste.

A human being can't control who they are attracted too, any more than then they could control their taste in food.

Can you imagine: "Gee, I like the taste of vanilla." "Sinner! Preferring vanilla over chocolate is morally wrong!"

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[DrgnDancer]

I believe that homosexuality is morally wrong. I do not try to force my views on others, but I get upset when the homosexuality community tries to force their views on me.

This statement confuses me. Have you met many homosexuals who force their views on you? How do they do this? "You must convert or we will kill this very cute puppy!" Most of the homosexual men (or women for that matter) I've known (not as many as it used to be since I got out of college and the restaurant industry) just want be left alone to live normal lives. Do they force their views on you when they demand the ability to get the same jobs as anyone equally qualified, and yet still be who they are? Should they all just slip quietly back in the closet and not bother you with their obvious wrongness? Living your life as what you are is not forceing your views on anyone else, it's just living. I may be wrong, maybe some gay guy really did threaten to kill a puppy if you didn't become gay, I don't know. Could you ellborate a bit more how "the homosexuality community tries to force their views on" you?

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

Under what rational system of morality could one's preference of partners for consensual sex be "morally wrong"?

Then why is molesting children against the law? According to your idea, it shouldn't be.

Morality is defined by the society. All laws are basically morals with teeth behind them if you break them.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

Most of the homosexual men (or women for that matter) I've known (not as many as it used to be since I got out of college and the restaurant industry) just want be left alone to live normal lives.

I agree with you and one of my good friends is homosexual.

Living your life as what you are is not forceing your views on anyone else, it's just living.

I do not want to know about other people's sex lives, however I have heard more about sex from homosexuals than heterosexuals. One example of this happened about 2 months ago at work. 2 homosexual lovers sit next to me. They started talking about creating a pr0n video and went into details about it. I asked them to please not talk about it as this was not appropriate at work. (I would have done the same if this was a heterosexual couple.) They got upset at me and accused me of being homophobic.

Could you ellborate a bit more how "the homosexuality community tries to force their views on" you?

One of the biggest ways is trying to legitimatize gay marriage. I do not have a problem if two people are living together if they are homo or hetero. I draw the line at marriage as I hold that sacred. I do not ask the homosexual community to tarnish any of their cherished beliefs and I ask that they do not ask me to tarnish any of mine in return.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why is molesting children against the law? According to your idea, it shouldn't be.

Anything that takes place between consenting adults isn't morally wrong, whether it's people of the same gender, multiple partners or whips and chains.

Children are a completely different story. They aren't consenting adults. Here in the US, we've set the age at 18 years (I think it might still be lower in some states). Anyone who is at least 18 should be able to do whatever they want.

And to all the Christians who want to quote Leviticus to me, please go back and read the entire book of Leviticus. Then come back and tell me how you never eat meat with blood still in it (no medium-rare steaks for you, well-done only), or wear cotton-polyester blends (no fabric woven of 2 kinds of thread), how you never shave your beard or cut your hair, and how often you burn an ox in sacrifice to the Lord since he finds the odor pleasing.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

What I was trying to point out is that our society has certain morals. Our (the U.S.) society say that is is wrong (immoral) for an adult to have sexual relations with someone under a certain age. All I wanted to say is that there are limits to what is ok and what isn't. For me, homosexuality is past the limit of ok.

Also, I am not one of those bible-thumping idiots who do not think for themselves.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, homosexuality is past the limit of ok.

Why? You must have some reason.

I have a perfectly valid reason for thinking that kids shouldn't have sex: they haven't yet developed an understanding of their sexual feelings and adults can take advantage of that. It's not a perfect system (none is), but it's based on logic.

Do you have any logical reason for saying "it's immoral"?

If you say procreation, I say we have plenty of people on this earth with no end in sight.

If you say it's not natural, I say that homosexuality exists among animals in greater numbers than it does in humans.

So what is it? Do you have a logical reason for your morals as I do, or do you just "feel that way"?

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

You will probably laugh at me, but my main reason is religion. I am LDS and it is against the teachings of my church. Also on a personal level, the thought of 2 guys/girls going at it repulses me. I know that I do not have a right to dictate to others what should and should not be moral, all I ask is that others do not do the same to me.

BTW, if you give everyone in the world (all 6+ billion) 2000 square feet to live on, it would take up less than the state of Texas with the rest of the world devoid of human life. (If you don't believe me, do the math.) Texas is about 2.5 million square miles.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

while oral sex doesn't seem to spread it as much

Try not a single documented case of AIDS spread through female-female oral sex.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[__aaahtg7394]

while i'm skeptical, it seems plausible. this would imply similiar things for male-female oral sex, excepting ejaculation, which is typically controlled.

however, my understanding of the mechanics of transmission imply that it is possible through cuts inside the mouth/scratches on the tounge.

but documentation isn't everything. the risk is still there. any sources for this information? i poked around a bit this afternoon to try and follow up my own statement, but didn't have too much luck (nor did i really try that hard, i have a job and whatnot...)

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am LDS and it is against the teachings of my church.

Out of respect for your beliefs, I won't tell you what I think of your church (even if you ask me to, so please don't). This doesn't mean that I feel the same way about individuals within the church.

And, no, I would never laugh at you for your beliefs. That's one of the worst sins of all, IMO.

However, please refer back to my comment about the book of Leviticus. Most church anti-gay teachings are based on the main phrase from this book (thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman). It also say literally dozens of absurd things, like those that I listed. I wasn't making any of those up, I looked them up myself. Leviticus really says those things about not wearing certain fabrics, etc. There are many other bizarre things in that book and others early in the Old Testament that we just ignore. For some reason, many folks pick that one phrase out of Leviticus. I think that's terribly hypocritical. (forgive the stength of my words, if you will. Possessing one attitude I find hypocritical doesn't make you a hypocrite in my view, it's just what you've been taught).

Also, you'll notice that the New Testament doesn't say anything about homosexuality, it just says don't judge others. When you say homosexuality is immoral you are judging others, even if you don't try to pass laws against being gay, as your church leaders have.

If you believe that all of the Bible is true, then follow all of it. But that means you'll have to stop shaving and burn the occasional ox. Oh, and not judge people.

BTW, if you give everyone in the world (all 6+ billion) 2000 square feet to live on, it would take up less than the state of Texas with the rest of the world devoid of human life.

I don't know about you, but I want a whole lot more than 2000 square feet. And considering that 1/3 of the world's people go hungry every day, I think we've got the old "be fruitful and multiply" thing pretty much down by now. Besides, check out the air quality in Houson, LA or Seattle (where I live and I've actually been to the other cities, I try to speak from experience). LA has gotten a bit better in air quality, but it's still appalling. And we're running lower on water every year. Sure we can conserve, and we should, but where do we wind up in 100/200/300/1000/5000 years? One shower a week? (how nice that would be) No gardens, lawns or landscaping except what we need to survive?

Sorry, I can't accept that one at all.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

They got upset at me and accused me of being homophobic.

They were clearly wrong. This is unfortunately what happens when we get overly sensitive to an 'issue'. Of course, if no one had been prejudiced against gays in the first place then we wouldn't be in this mess.

I draw the line at marriage as I hold that sacred.

How is it less sacred if 2 gay people get married? How does this affect you? I don't know your marital status, but for the sake of debate, I'll assume you're married with a very successful relationship. 2 gay men get married in the same city where you live. At first, you're horrified. But think about this: Do you love your wife any less? Are you any less committed to her?

My guess is the answer is 'no' to both questions.

And why should 2 people who've committed their lives to each other be denied the same rights as you have? Visitation rights, inheritance rights and others shouldn't be ignored because of your moral stance.

Also, if promiscuity among gays is a problem (which does help spread AIDS, even though many gay folks won't admit it), shouldn't we then encourage monogamy by at least allowing 'civil unions', if not outright marriage?

Please don't take this as an overly judgemental statement, but I really believe that if you spend some time openly examining your moral position, you will eventually see that there is nothing at all wrong with being gay in and of itself. It is the people (and they are out there!) who do try to force it down your throat, like those people at your work, who are wrong. They want people to not only think it's ok (my opinion) but they also think they should be able to flaunt it in front of anyone, anytime (definitely not my opintion).

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

What most professed christians forget is that when Jesus Christ died, the Law of Moses died with him. That means that all the stuff that you referred to in Leviticus was done away with. Also, I do not judge people because of their actions or beliefs. I consider it quite sacreligious to take over Heavenly Father's role. Anyways, I believe somewhere in the bible it says love the sinner but hate the sin (or something like that).

I did not mean to use my example of 2000 square feet to mean that we need to consume more resources, but to show that earth isn't overcrowded. (yet)

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

I am not opposed to civil unions, as they are the legal equiviant to marriage. However marriage is more of a religious nature and both my church (LDS) and I are against it.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite pleased to hear you say that (well, not hear exactly... :) I'm afraid that many leaders of your church don't agree, but I'm impressed with your openmindedness.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

What most professed christians forget is that when Jesus Christ died, the Law of Moses died with him. That means that all the stuff that you referred to in Leviticus was done away with

That's a new concept for me. I wonder if my Catholic friends would agree (please let's not go there! :) I will ask them about that, but that's very interesting.

It does beg the question, however (and, yes, I know, we could go 'round and 'round all night...):

On what parts of the Bible does your church base its beliefs? If it's the Book of Mormon, well, I don't know anything about that and that book holds no significance or sway with me. But if there is somewhere in the New Testament that say being gay is immoral, I'd truly like to know. I haven't found it yet.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Gummbah]

Then why is molesting children against the law? According to your idea, it shouldn't be.

He said, consensual sex. Molesting does not really sound like 'consensual' to me.

ad

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, if you give everyone in the world (all 6+ billion) 2000 square feet to live on, it would take up less than the state of Texas with the rest of the world devoid of human life.

How much acreage is required to feed a person? What size of watershed required to provide water? How many resources are needed to provide all the person's possessions? Unless you can show a detailed proof otherwise, I find it very difficult to believe that a person can live entirely on the resources provided by an arbitrary area 2000 square feet in size (especially if that area happens to be in West Texas).

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mr. Slippery]

Then why is molesting children against the law?

See the word "consensual" in my post? Childhood is pretty much defined by the condition of not being responsible - therefore being unable to give meaningful consent.

Morality is defined by the society.

No. Mores (more-ays) - social norms - are defined by the society. Morality is defined by several different philosophical theories, each unprovable. (Though some are more internally consistant than others, and some rely on dubious, or disprovable, metaphysical assumptions.)

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mr. Slippery]

What I was trying to point out is that our society has certain morals.

No. Society has mores - social norms. Government has laws - institutionalized social norms. Both of these are quite different than morals.

All I wanted to say is that there are limits to what is ok and what isn't. For me, homosexuality is past the limit of ok.

Sorry, but if you want to condemn something as immoral you'll have to come with a more compelling argument than "past the limit of ok". You'll need rigorous and defensible criteria to bifuricate the universe of potential actions into "ok" and "not ok".

Also, I am not one of those bible-thumping idiots who do not think for themselves.

Ok, then start thinking. Give us some of your moral philosophy. Give us your justification for condemning certain types of love.

And, if find you can't give one, have the intellectual honesty to re-examine your moral indignation and see if it rests on nothing more than a feeling of "ooh! gross!".

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[DrgnDancer]

Having already read your later comments on the marriage issue, I'll ignore it. My only other comment is that the two guys you are talking about were clearly assholes, and should certainly be ignored. On the other hand I've met plenty of straight assholes who sould also be ignored. The judgement of an entire "community" based on the behavior of a couple of guys seems a bit harsh to me, but I can also see that my ealier sarcastic tone was probably uncalled for as well.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do save the Jesus shit for another board, m'kay Sparky? Especially when one considers the fact that bending over for Jesus does not exactly support your assertion that homosexuality is immoral. After all, I could threaten/bribe/cajoe/seduce/frighten your pastor into tell you "Sorry, my bad, homosexuality is really ok..just see Bible passage X", and then you'd change your tune. Which means were not exactly dealing with am empirical or objective process are we now Sparky?

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[carlos_benj]

Please, i'm going to ask nicely, dogmatic statement of presupposed and preconcluded ideas or opinions as fact has no place in a "discussion" forum.

You new here?

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[carlos_benj]

...when Jesus Christ died, the Law of Moses died with him.

Actually it was the ceremonial law, the sacrifices, washings and various types of offerings that were done away with. The civil and moral laws were not rescinded. These are actually reinforced in the writings of the Apostles.

I believe somewhere in the bible it says love the sinner but hate the sin (or something like that).

You can believe that if you'd like, but it isn't there - not in so many words. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" should cover the 'Love the sinner' aspect and hating evil should cover the 'not the sin' portion. You'd be surprised how many people think that actual statement (love the sinner but not the sin) is in the Bible along with "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" and "God helps those who help themselves".

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[carlos_benj]

This statement confuses me. Have you met many homosexuals who force their views on you? How do they do this? "You must convert or we will kill this very cute puppy!"

Boy, if they did, I'd turn 'em in to PETA. Then we'd see who has a "radical agenda!"

Could you ellborate a bit more how "the homosexuality community tries to force their views on" you?

I don't propose to speak for the individual you are addressing, but isn't that what the community is trying to do with the Boy Scouts? The Supreme Court has ruled that the BSA is within their rights to hold the views that they do and to act accordingly. The homosexual community has launched organized campaigns to defund the BSA by putting pressure on corporate and charitable sponsors unless it meets their demands.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[rabidcow]

Sorry, but if you want to condemn something as immoral you'll have to come with a more compelling argument than "past the limit of ok". You'll need rigorous and defensible criteria to bifuricate the universe of potential actions into "ok" and "not ok".

Bull. If he wants you to condemn it as immoral he needs good reasons. If he wants to believe it himself, he doesn't need anything. If I wanted to believe that all white cars are fundamentally unsafe, I'm free to do that, too.

If it's so wrong for people to try to force their views on you (ie, homosexuality is immoral), what's so wrong with someone politely asking that you not force your views on them? Give the guy some slack.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The civil and moral laws were not rescinded. These are actually reinforced in the writings of the Apostles.

I still want to know where in the New Testament it says anything about homosexuality.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mr. Slippery]

If he wants you to condemn it as immoral he needs good reasons. If he wants to believe it himself, he doesn't need anything.

If he wants to believe it himself, and still be considered a rational being, he needs reasons; observations and arguments that lead to conclusions.

Of course, if he doesn't care about being rational, that's fine; rationality has its limits. ("But when you're good and crazy, ooh, the sky's the limit!") But honesty should then compel him to say, "While I have no rational basis for doing so, I still want to condemn homosexuality."

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

> As a result, homosexual males in particular, are
> likely to have a larger number of sexual partners,
> and more opportunity to catch sexual deseases.

As someone once wrote in Usenet many years ago, in response to the question as to why gay men "seemed to have sex so much", well, "You've finally found someone who wants to fuck as much as you do!"

> the little detail that for the most part anal
> sex is like having a blood transfusion with your
> partner. the risk of pregnancy is lower, yes,

Although some gay men do still get "kind of pregnant."

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> [The Bible] also say literally dozens of absurd things,
> like those that I listed.

One of the best books I've ever read is this one.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> What most professed christians forget is that when
> Jesus Christ died, the Law of Moses died with him.
> That means that all the stuff that you referred
> to in Leviticus was done away with

The argument goes like this:

1. "The Bible's OT says homosexuality is wrong!"

2. But that Bible also says to eat crickets, not eat pork, burn doves to purify yourself after a thousand and one stupid things, and so on, and you don't do that.

3. "But Jesus Christ created a new covenant with Mankind, so those old laws were blown away!"

Let's take the next logical step, shall we?

4. Then why maintain just a favored few?

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> I find it very difficult to believe that a
> person can live entirely on the resources
> provided by an arbitrary area 2000 square feet
> in size

They don't live that way, of course.

Capitalism will solve this problem easily (which is the point of arguments like this, and from whence they came.) For example, people wouldn't each live on 2000 ft^^2. They'd build big buildings called "apartments" and move into them, leaving tons of land for something called "farming". Real farming, for profit.

By the time you reach a point of ridiculousness, say 10 trillion people, humanity will easily be able to move out to the stars. Even then, it's doubtful they'd have problems remaining on-planet. The more people, in a free society, the better. Free is key here, and is something that never enters into most commentator's opinions, which are the basis for communist and socialist command-and-control economies.

I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still want to know where in the New Testament it says anything about homosexuality.

In Romans 1:27, Paul claims that homosexuality is one characteristic of those who have rejected God. Close enough?

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

Not all the laws were done away, after all, it is still a sin to kill, commit adultry (both heterosexual and homosexual), steal, lie, etc.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, close indeed. Claims? Well, I won't argue semantics with you until I look it up myself.

But what of people who are openly gay and also Christian? They clearly haven't 'rejected God'.

Anyway, I'll look it up and draw my own conclusions.

Besides, is that it? It's not terribly compelling. And it seems to me that if being gay is the horrible atrocity that most bible-thumpers say it is, it would be spelled out a little more clearly.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

I know that the phrase "love the sinner, not the sin" is not in the bible.

"I agree that there are people out there that will believe anything you say comes from the bible, as long as you quote the passage." Matt 23:5

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

They had rejected God, as he exists. They may have their own idea of God who lets them do what they want and still feel justified in sinning.

I once saw a T.V. evangelist telling everone that sinnning was ok, as long as it was done in moderation. He then went on to explain that adultery is fine, even doing crack was ok, as long as you didn't do too much of it.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Mahonrimoriancumer]

I do not judge an entire community based on a couple of people. I was merely pointing out that there are both gay and straight assholes. A lot of homosexual advocates try to pretend that they are all victims and that straight people should do everything they want to, as a gesture of tollerance.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Noel]

[de-ACing]

Hmmm, close indeed. Claims? Well, I won't argue semantics with you until I look it up myself.

"claims" or "asserts" because there is no proof proffered in the passage. Homosexuality is simply mentioned as one of the conditions that is a result of people's rejection of God, and His subsequent abandonment of them to their sin.

But what of people who are openly gay and also Christian? They clearly haven't 'rejected God'.

Hmm...Paul's argument does not say that all homosexuality comes from rejecting God. The argument simply says that homosexuality is one sin that can become prevalent in those who reject God.

Yes, there are professing Christians who are also gay. Only God is in a position to judge their position before Him. I tend to believe that God accepts people no matter what their condition -- whether homosexual, or liar, or whatever.

It's interesting to note that homosexuality is *not* included in the grand list of sins in vv. 29-31, but lying and gossip are!

Anyway, I'll look it up and draw my own conclusions.

Thanks -- I'm impressed.

<sarcasm>Most people on either side of this argument know too much about the issue to take the time to look something up. </sarcasm>

Besides, is that it? It's not terribly compelling.

That's the most direct in the NT. There are other other arguments that could be made, typically from the descriptions of marriage in places like: Matthew 19 and cognates (original pattern/intent with Adam and Eve), 1 Corinthians 7 (man/woman marriage to prevent fornication), and Ephesians 5:21-33 (rules for man/woman marriage, and parallel between human marriage and the Christ/church relationship).

And it seems to me that if being gay is the horrible atrocity that most bible-thumpers say it is, it would be spelled out a little more clearly.

Could be there's a little Pharisaism going on there...check out Matthew 23, and especially vs 23. It seems to me that the "bible-thumpers" are often missing discernment and mercy...

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be there's a little Pharisaism going on there...check out Matthew 23, and especially vs 23. It seems to me that the "bible-thumpers" are often missing discernment and mercy...


This has always been my major bone of contention with the anti-gay crowd. Pick one line out of the Bible (they usually refer to Lev.) and ignore all the rest (including the other bizarre parts of Lev., but especially what you're talking about.)

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Noel]

Yeah -- sometimes I'm ashamed to call myself Christian because of the many things that have been done in that name that are anything but Christian, AFAIAC...

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

word...

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Yes, but the televangelist preocupation with homosexuality isn't that men are having sex out of wedlock. It's that they're having sex with other men, which IS one of those laws that was blown away along with cricket eating, burning doves because you had your period, etc.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[carlos_benj]

Yes, there are professing Christians who are also gay.

Sure, there are those who "profess" any number of things, but that doesn't make it so. There are "professed" Christians who have murdered their own families and have no remorse. I can profess to be a black female but others can, by observation, counter that I am a white male and they would be right.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[carlos_benj]

I don't think "Christian" means anything anymore as it has been so diluted by those who claim to be adherants yet do not follow the teachings. In fact, the term was originally used as a demeaning label by those outside of the faith.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Noel]

You're right, professing something doesn't make it true. But there are some things that are easier to tell from observation. To take your example, I could easily tell whether you're a black female or white male just by looking at you. OTOH, there is no way that I can look at you and be certain that I know what's in your heart, or what your relationship to God is. That's why it's God's job, rather than mine, to judge a profession of Christianity.

I doubt very much that I will ever find a person whose actions conform completely to my understanding of what God wants. So where should I draw the line between "actual Christian" and "professing, but not actual, Christian"? AFAICS, all that I can do is note that some *actions* do not appear to be consistent with Christ's teachings (as far as I understand them at the time).

Or, to put it more succintly, "man looks at the outside appearance, but God looks at the heart."

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Noel]

Sad, but true. Nowadays, "Christian" can mean anything from "not Muslim" to "rabid right-wing conservative" to "progressive left-wing liberal" to "follower of Christ". Often, it means more about which group one is with rather than what one really believes or how one tries to live.

But what's one to do? Lately, I've been uncomfortable with any label, because they all seem to have so much baggage.

Re: Alan Turing?

[SylvesterTheCat]

Darn! You beat me to the correction!

Yes, the first one to actually break the Enigma was Rejewski, a Polish mathematician. (Source: "Seizing The Engima".)

Turing was one of many who worked at Bletchley Park and contributed to the Allied war effort through signal intelligence. He is worthy of our respect for numerous things, however, single handedly breaking the German encryption is not one of them...

Sport?

[gjohnson]

A crash derby with RC vehicles hardly constitutes a sport.

Re:Sport?

[mgblst]

yeah, i hate formula one too.

battlebots.org capitulates

[dgoodman]

just checked battlebots.org and noticed that the owner capitulated to battlebots Inc (sold them the domain for $70). Who knows who was in the right; i don't. just thought it worth mentioning that it's quite over. for now.

Suicide?

[fm6]

And as payback he was hounded to the point where he commited suicide...

From what I've read, the "suicide" story is a little suspicious. If you go by the account in Hodges's well-researched biography, it appears that Turing had a lot less legal grief than most gays do. Perhaps it was his government connections. He was only arrested after he reported himself (he had been victimized by a burglary ring that specialized in gays; it never occured to him that it was a bad idea to mention his own sexual activies in the police report). This led to a nasty period when he was forced to submit to all kinds of crude treatments to "cure" his homosexuality. But this ended some time before his death, and he was actually in quite a stable place when he died.

Since I don't live in a country that's covered by the Official Secrets Act, I can say what should be pretty obvious: some brain-damaged James Bond type decided that having an openly gay scientist with a head full of Ultra-grade secrets just wouldn't do.

I have to throw in my favorite Turing story. During WW II, he was sent to the U.S. on a secret mission. He was told, "Don't take any documents with you." Of course, that meant technical documents, but he took it quite literally, and showed up in New York with no passport or personal ID of any kind. Must have been interesting.

I don't think the Turing rates sole credit for the Ultra Secret, or that the Ultra Secret was crucial to winning the war. But Turing certainly helped save thousands of lives.

Another Slashdot post calls him the "Father of Computer Science". That's going a bit far, but CompSci does owe him a lot. And he probably rates as the first computer geek.

Re:Suicide?

[Ronin SpoilSpot]

Another Slashdot post calls him the "Father of Computer Science". That's going a bit far, but CompSci does owe him a lot. And he probably rates as the first computer geek.

Turing is, if not the father of computer science, then at least one of them, and while he might have been a geek, it is his theoretical work that he is most remembered for.

His "halting problem" is as important a result as Gödel's incompletenes theorem and Russel's paradox. It puts a hard limit on the theoretical capabilities of computers that impacts most branches of computer science, e.g. any optimizing compiler is affected since the enabling analyses are necessarily limited.
The turing machine itself, as a model of computation, has become the standard measure in complexity theory.
The most prestigious award in computer science is the Turing Award (like for mathematics, there is no Nobel price :).

Turing gave us one of the foundations of modern computer science, and I'm sure his name will be remembered long after everybody have forgotten who Bill Gates was... so I don't think it is wrong
to call him a father of computer science.

/RS - theoretical computer scientist

Audio formats

[Scooby Snacks]

This is cool news (the accompanying art is a nice touch with this Dr. Who presentation), but it would be nice if they would put the episodes into more audio formats as well.

If you don't like RealAudio (and who does?), you might want to check out vsound. If you're wondering what it is, here are a couple words from the web page:

"VSound is a sort of like a `virtual audio loopback cable'. That is, it allows you to record the output audio stream of a program (similar to connecting a loopback cable to the line in and line out jacks on the sound card, and recording the sound from the line in jack, but without the DA/AD conversion losses). One possible use for this application is as part of a RealAudio to wav file converter."

It's pretty neat -- it uses the LD_PRELOAD trick to override certain library functions, allowing you to save the sound from an application like RealPlayer. I've used it myself before, and it works, and works well.

If you have a Debian system, here's all you need to do:

root@localhost:~# apt-get install vsound

If you're on another system, you'll need to download the a href="http://www.zip.com.au/~erikd/vsound/vsound-0 .5.tar.gz">source and also make sure that you have sox installed. (vsound uses sox to convert the raw .au into wav format, which you can then compress however you'd like.)

Re:Audio formats

[Richard.D]

Now if only someone would set this up as a service for those of us with poor bandwidth- they copy the RealAudio stream via a decent connection to another format, and I download it at my (slow) convenience.

Its a potential copyright nightmare, even though it seems a fair use to me.

Re: Alan Turing?

[pangloss]

> Actually, I don't think he did much for AI, except for the turing test, which is more of philosophical theory.

I just attended a lecture this afternoon by John Searle, where he devoted some time to talking about Turing. I got the impression that by developing the Turing Machine, Test, etc., Turing created the foundation for present-day functionalism in cog-sci. From what I understand, it sounds like the wet-dream cog-sci project is to simulate the "software" our brain runs on conventional hardware. And this AI project only makes sense insofar as the theory that humans themselves are essentially a sort of universal turing machine holds.

But I could be totally misunderstanding Searle =)

Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[joneshenry]

Did Enigma play a decisive role in stopping Germany in World War II? Curiously as time has gone by and veils of secrecy are lifted, I wonder if the role is being overemphasized to justify the hidden large budgets of today's intelligence agencies.

In truth Germany was beaten after it failed to capture Moscow in fall 1941. The Germans were completely unprepared for a winter campaign, not even having adequate clothing for their soldiers let alone other supplies. After the failure to take Moscow, Hitler dismissed many of his top generals including the father of German armor Heinz Guderian. Perhaps his decision to order the army to stand fast in the face of a strong Soviet counterattack that winter saved the front from total collapse, but otherwise, Hitler in command was an endless series of catastrophes such as Stalingrad and Kursk.

The argument I suppose is that had Great Britain been strangled by the German U-boats than the Soviet Union would not have been supplied by Lend Lease. Lend Lease provided all sorts of supplies including I believe basically the entire truck force that gave the Red Army mobility in the counterattack. However, the facts are that by December 1941 the Germans were already in retreat, they were going to lose stupendous numbers of men in the winter because of unpreparedness, the Soviets had a tank the T-34 coming into mass production better than any tank the Germans could ever produce in mass quantities, and Hitler was in personal command. Even with no Great Britain, Germany after 1941 needed to learn how to fight a defensive war to force a stalemate, precisely the type of strategy Hitler would never have authorized. And in addition, the Germans would not have been able to complete an atomic bomb for many years. Sure they would have had V2s but the Soviets had the more battlefield effective Katyusha. (Okay mass deployment was helped by those Lense Lease trucks.) Soviet technology was sufficient to counter Germany's, with the possible exception of rocket-powered fighters, a technology that Hitler delayed until it was too late due to his obsession with rocket bombers.

It is possible that a hundred years from now the real intelligence agency story of World War II will be how Joseph Stalin in his paranoid purges destroyed the finest network of spies ever assembled. Think of this, a time when Communism still had sway as an effective religion to produce loyal agents in any country. The United States for the past few decades has been continuously learning that one can't buy that type of loyal fanatic agent abroad, which is why the US is so dependent on high tech and American citizen agents, a combination totally incapable of predicting anything in hostile areas. Even though Stalin tried to order all his foreign agents back to the Soviet Union to be executed, there was still enough of a remnant such as the Red Orchestra to give Stalin a precise warning of when the Germans would attack. But Stalin had screwed things up so badly that the Soviets were caught totally unprepared. The initial catastrophe of the first few months when Soviet forces were repeatedly surrounded and annihilated was the only reason the Germans got as far as they did. Had Stalin followed through using the human intelligence network he had at his disposal, Germany would have been beaten years sooner, and perhaps all of continental Europe is occupied by the Red Army.

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[James_G]

I think it would be incorrect to attribute the victory of the Allies to any one single event. There were many, many technical innovations and associated events that helped. To name but a few:

• The invention of radar.
• The counter-acting of German radar (Basically an early version of chaff, shredded tinfoil dropped in huge bales from the bombers).
• Along the same vein, the use by the Allies of the German's own radar system to pinpoint targets along the coast of mainland Europe.
• The discovery by polish soldiers of a crashed V2 rocket, of which they took lots of details and sent them to the Allies.
• The cracking of Enigma, which was enourmous, and ultimately led to misinformation being sent back and fooling Hitler into believing the invading force was coming ashore in the wrong place.
• Etc. etc. etc..

There are far, far, far too many things to list here, I've mentioned just a scant few. No one single event is directly responsible.

If you want to read a good book about the technical innovations behind WWII, I'd recommend "Secret Weapons of World War II". An excellent read, with a great deal of detail on the hundreds of small independant events (Maybe even coincidences) that shifted the balance ever so slightly in favour of the allies.

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[xXgeneric nicknameXx]

how does the parent get modded to 4, interesting and this last one to -1, offtopic?

the whole thread is offtopic...interesting yes, but nonetheless offtopic.

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[thaig]

The Russians used a lot of intelligence information. They probably put more effort into it than anyone. They also "lifted" Enigma and other interception-gathered intelligence from the British.

I think you underestimate it's importance hugely.

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[GregWebb]

I would (and have) argued that Germany was defeated the second they invaded the USSR, some 6 months before that.

Their army was really only equipped for short, blitzkrieg-style wars - lots of fast tanks but nothing too heavy, lots of small and medium bombers but no really big ones, that sort of thing. This worked beautifully against Poland (smallish, pretty flat and the far side was sealed in by an ally) and France (not too massive and so despondent they basically sat by and watched the troops invade) but couldn't work against Russia.

Russia is massive, has very hard winters, and had demonstrated a willingness to pursue a scorched earth policy before when repelling Napoleon. OK, maybe their military wasn't massively strong in 1941 (though better than Hitler believed) but it didn't have to be. They could run back to the Urals - a heck of a distance - with no great difficulty, clearing the land of useful military and industrial resources as they went. The population then do partisan attacks in the conquered territory so that couldn't be left alone, the front grows to ridiculous lenghts - and winter will ultimately set in. At which point German troops were totally unprepared and unequipped so their tanks and guns were failing and their soup was freezing between the bowl and their mouth. Seriously. While the Russian troops lay in the snow all day then attacked. While the Russians threw convicts they regarded as expendable at the German lines first to wear out the troops, and while they seriously depleted their own population because they could and losing was unthinkable.

Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad all hindered Germany very substantially, but they couldn't have managed an invasion even without them. They had too much land to conquer, too much front to police, supply lines so long they had to build their own railways as they went then treat the railway cars as one-way disposable because they couldn't afford the time to unload and send them back. The army was trying to control most of Europe so was already overstretched, and was ill-designed for this campaign.

Moscow didn't help - and neither did the delay at the start which meant they weren't as far in when an early winter hit - but the Russian campaign was never one that could be won. It was short-sighted vanity all along, and the more you look at it the less the sums add up.

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[nichughes]

You have to be a little careful with what-ifs, complex events like wars do not usually revolve around a single boolean win/lose event. Arguably the futile allied campaign in Greece was the delay that doomed the whole of Barbarossa, which itself relied on British troops supplied by convoys that were only afloat because of intelligence from - you guessed it - the codebreakers.

You could argue that the Germans could never possibly have defeated the Soviets, or you could argue that they had a real chance of winning until their defeat at Stalingrad. Its all just conjecture. What we can do for certain is say that some things were significant and that the ability of the allies to almost routinely read coded axis messages was important.

--

Nic

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[Pez69]

I agree Alan Turing didn't defeat the Germans either did the team of code breakers he was working with. But they did help with the defeat of the German navy by breaking the codes. Just like the man who invented RADAR didn't win the Battle of Britain but made the defence of Britain so much better that the fighter pilots and anti aircraft gunners were able to hold the German fighters and bomber back. The reason Hilter was defeated was the fact that despite being a great leader(he took a dying country and turned it into a world power) he was crazy in trying to fight a war against 2 of the strongest countries on the planet at the same time on opisite sides of his controlled treitory and also trying to have a winter campain againt the Russians who get a winter as bad as it is here in Canada. Had he on fought on one front at a time who konw what would of happened.

My point everyone involed in the defeat of the Germans should be remeber and thanked no matter what thier sex or sexual chioce from the solders to the fighter pilots to the code breakers to the firefighters that saved london(thanks grandad) to the people who developed and built everything that all the others used.

Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[SwedishChef]

An extension of this argument could be made to say that the Germans lost WWII when they invaded Poland (or even when they planned it). Trying to pin the result of something that lasted some 6 years upon one single event seems futile to me. Perhaps your point should be that wars are won or lost more on mistakes made rather than on brilliant strategy but this is also debatable.

Your subsequent points that technology prolonged the war is also somewhat flawed; the invention of the nuclear bomb pretty clearly ended the war as far as Japan was concerned and if that is not technology then the meaning of the term has evolved beyond recognition.

Also, your contention that the US depends upon "American citizen agents" is incorrect. During my several years as a covert officer for CIA there were few such animals (including naturalized citizens). There were many American citizen controllers of foreign citizen agents, but an American citizen agent is a laughable notion to a foreign intelligence officer.

That technical intelligence assets are "totally incapable of predicting anything in hostile areas" is specious on the face of the statement. If recon photos show construction activity at a site inside a hostile area, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict increased activity. Any predictive ability is more than "totally incapable".

American intelligence has moved beyond human assets for better or for worse largely because they are so difficult to recruit and run. And their information is always suspect. I always said that what the Agency needed was a "capitalist movement". The religion of communism clearly provided the Soviet Union with a cadre of dedicated foreign nationals who put the Soviet interests above any national interests.

Of course, by the 50s and 60s these assets were getting long in the tooth (or dead) and the clear advances in creature comforts of Western societies over those in the SB made it difficult to recruit foreigners or even to retain their own controllers. Then, of course, there were the stupid agent management decisions.

Alan Turing's contributions to crypto are widely recognized by most who had to work in that field (which would be any intelligence officer). What a terrible waste of a fine mind. His contributions to computer crypto largely made it possible for intelligence (certainly American intelligence) to operate so effectively around the world.

Oh well ....

[os2fan]

Thank you for your comments.

Firstly, generalisations are based on norms. One can find individuals that disprove any particular norm.

Gender is laid out in a number of separate sliding scales, which eventually define, for example:

• Body shape
• mating preferences
• level of aggression
• gender identity, and
• desire to cross-dress.

None of these have any effect on one's general intelligence. One of them, (I don't know which), does show up, faintly, in the Myers Briggs Type indicator: 60% of males tend to be T types, and 60% of females, F types. They are all sliding scales, but in 89% of the population, they are all on the same side (either males or females).

On top of the shape of the brain, there is the chemical soup called hormones, and also the inhibitions and restrictions that we impose through our education. Education and environment do not, as a rule change any predisposition, unless it was pretty marginal to start off with anyway.

Assuming that intellegence is not correlated, the increase in general intelligence of the gender dysphorics is due to their more often exercising the brain, and that those with poor coping abilities, regardless of intelligence, succumb to an early exit. Whatever the reason, the general intellegence level increases.

Being more tolerant on both sides makes life easier for all. But this does not stop the gender dysphoric from suffering internally generated stresses that might arise from doing something different.

As we see above, the mating preference is on its own slider. This means that homosexuals look and act pretty much like the normal heterosexuals.

But the comment I made about the spread of AIDS and sexual deseases through sexual contact applies to all people who are sexually active.

Still, I'd rather be shot down by the truth, than to live in ignorance.

"Breaking the Code"

[mgarraha]

I saw the play 14 years ago, but the Turing character was so vivid that it seems like last week. His pre-suicide monologue compared his own fatal apple to Snow White's. The computer section of the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology may still have a video clip of the "Can machines think?" monologue. Since the same actor led the fundraising for the statue, I wonder which came first: playing the role, or caring about Turing.

Re:"Breaking the Code"

[Chris Hind]

If you liked Derek Jacobi's acting, then beg, buy, borrow or steal yourself a copy of [url="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000 4U12X/ref=bxgy_sr_text_a/103-5259752-1474263"]I, Claudius[/url].

Re:"Breaking the Code"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, arseholes. That's what you get for posting on vBulletin boards most of the time. And the bloody URL was wrong.

I, Claudius

Re: Alan Turing?

[jezmund]

Oooh, really? How was it? I'm something of a fan of Searle after a mind/brain/AI philosophy course I took. What was the lecture on, if you don't mind?

Bzzzzt

[kimihia]

Homosexuality and gender identity are conditions of birth, and affect something like 11% of the population, to some degree.

Ah, lets think about this for a second ... no.

The "homosexuality gene" turned out to be a fraud. The person who thought up that piece of "research" was himself a homosexual. Didn't mention that in the full disclosure section did they now?

In the main, you can not change it.

Absolute nonsense. With Turing the government thought a few hormone injections could solve it. Well, no. Maybe they should have applied leaches in the hope they'd extract the homosexuality from the blood? Quack medical science ...

Homosexuality is a conscious decision. People's tastes are conditioned by what they are told.

People like you spout that homosexuality is this, its that, etc, then people believe it. You know horoscopes? How vague and predictable can you get! But no, humans look for some sign of order and come up with the wrong conclusions. Exactly the same with homosexuality.

The same people that are somehow homosexual because of their genes are the exact same people who are being told from the street corners that you could be homosexual, go try it out to make sure.

What a stupid perverse society. If we were really meant to be homosexual then we would be hermaphrodites. Are you surprised that men don't have vaginas, and women don't have penises? Perhaps homosexuality is peversion. Ever think of that?

So no, stop spouting lies about homosexuality. Instead actually try and help people who have been fooled into that lie. They don't need your criticism, they just need some tender cult deprogramming and some real considerate love like anyone else.

Re:Bzzzzt

[Hostile17]

they just need some tender cult deprogramming

I have found people who say things like this really mean "Beaten and Tortured until they confess thier sins and repent"

Yes I am a Troll and this is Flamebait, moderate accordingly.

Re:Bzzzzt

[kimihia]

Well in this case you really misunderstood me. :-)

Most folks want to be cared for a bit, and if they aren't getting affection from the opposite gender, then they could turn to their own for that.

On another note, I have heard doubts over whether Turing really did intentionally kill himself. He had been working with some deadly chemicals, and snacking on an apple while he worked probably wasn't the most clever thing to do ...

Re:Bzzzzt

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

>> Homosexuality and gender identity are conditions
>> of birth...
>
> Ah, lets think about this for a second ... no.
>
> The "homosexuality gene" turned out to be a fraud.

Have no idea whether that's true or not, IANAS. It's also true that the scientific claim about "at birth or within the first three years after" became "before birth almost always" which became "before birth".

And all for what? To use science to justify homosexuality. Although there is a certain fight-fire-with-fire justification about this, that it turned and twisted until it was scientifically meaningless was politics, and not science.

The proper reason for not outlawing homosexuality has nothing to do with science. It has to do with free people not creating a government that intrudes on the consentual decisions of themselves.

You have this right, and many others, not because of science, or because of having enough votes, or because of having a set of Justices that one year or another happen to vote your way.

You have them because to say you don't have them is the same as saying others, by right of existence, have the right to dictate these things to you, and that is silly.

Sign below those who disagree:

_______________________ I agree to allow others to dictate my sexual activities.

Trademark holders are the squatters

[sparcv9]

Still BattleBots is dumb not to have registered the .org domain.

Why? Are they a non-profit organization now? People always seem to forget the original intents of the com/net/org TLDs. At least there are still restrictions on edu/gov/mil. Even a lot of the gTLDs have restrictions on their categorical subdomains, like co.uk.

Re:Trademark holders are the squatters

[JAVAC THE GREAT]

I agree. They should not be allowed to have the domain on the basis they are a for-profit commercial organization. Never mind anything else. It's one thing if, like Slashdot, you had the domain before you were a for-profit organization, but for a commercial entity to actively seek to acquire a .org domain is simply ludicruous.

Re:Trademark holders are the squatters

[david duncan scott]

Strictly speaking, the original intent for the .org was pretty much "other" To quote from RFC 1032:

"ORG" exists as a parent to subdomains that do not clearly fall within the other top-level domains. This may include technical-support groups, professional societies, or similar organizations.

Although this implies other than corporate, government, educational institution, military, or network op's, the more specific idea of .org being NPO came a bit later.

Nice try - but you're wrong, I'm afraid.

[os2fan]

Gender dysphoria is set off by hormones in the womb after the foetus is formed. It is *not* genetic, and therefore there is no gene for it. What happens is that the brain can be affected by hormone levels as the foetus forms in the womb, about 12 weeks after conception.

There is a fairly easy explanation of why reassignments work in lots of cases. One needs only consider magnetic hysteristus - a bar magnet can be polarised either way, and retain it. But if the field is too ingrained, no amount of magnetisation will change the field.

Homosexuality is not a concious decision, no more than heterosexuality is. What the issue here is is that the people who make this remark are trying to sweep the issue under the carpet, by saying "It's your fault", rather than consider the notion that it may really be an underlying biological cause.

Re:Nice try - but you're wrong, I'm afraid.

[Cederic]

Whoa - gender dysphoria is not homosexuality - more transexuals (pre or post-op) are heterosexual.

I do agree that homosexuality is not a conscious decision though. Then again, I am constantly amazed that people actually care whether it is or not, instead of just getting on with their lives..

~Cederic
ps: yikes, how offtopic is this?

Re:Nice try - but you're wrong, I'm afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Whoa - gender dysphoria is not homosexuality - more
> transexuals (pre or post-op) are heterosexual

I've often fancied myself a lesbian trapped in a man's body! A gorgeous one, too, not one of those 300 lb. bald biker ones.

Re: Alan Turing?

[bungalow]

I took the Turing test and failed it. Does that mean I'm not intelligent, or just that I'm not artificially so?

Is it really squatting?

[Sloppy]

It seems to me that one major precondition for squatting to have occurred, is for the "legitimate" owner of the word to somehow be denied use of that word. But in this case, the Battlebots trademark owner seems to already have battlebots.com, no? So how could this possibly be squatting? The trademark owner already has the appropriate domain.

If they mysteriously and inscrutibly want to buy up other domains that happen to mention Battlebots without actually infringing on their trademark, then maybe they should be prepared to pay whatever the current holders' whimsical price happens to be. When a commercial entity already has their name withih .com, getting the same name within other TLDs is a luxury, not a necessity or a serious attempt to defend trademark.

I recently made a breakthrough in REAL AI

[CrazyJim0]

Basically its using a 3d imaginary world, much like what you see in quake, but with real world laws... Kinda like your imagination... Objects in the world as you can guess are real objects in reality.

With the ability to have a 3d imagination, rules of what can be done and what can't, and basic language understanding which corresponds with its 3d mind... Then you have AI... Picture Zork, but when it says,"I don't understand the word X", for it to ask you, or use the context to guess the word.

I'm talking with some robotics professors at CMU and they really like what I have to say. Once I finish my talks there I'm probably going to get in touch with the guys from CYC and tell them maybe they want to add a 3d imagination so context can be formed.

Re:I recently made a breakthrough in REAL AI

[HBD]

nice idea, but maybee work out the whole thing w/ a computer being able to understand what you type in 1'st?
lol

Re:I recently made a breakthrough in REAL AI

[matrix29]

The biggest problem with Text-Taught A.I.'s is that of having a virtual Helen Keller.

It cannot see, it cannot hear, it cannot smell, it cannot touch, and it cannot taste.

Without those meager levels of reference to what we humans take for granted, it is very difficult to give a Text-Taught A.I. any easily repeatable information to verify. I can tell it the sky is blue. It can learn the sky is not always blue. It can learn that during the evening and morning the sky color changes colors. I can tell it during the night that the sky is not any color at all unless clouds obscure it. I can tell it many things are blue. I can give the RGB color values of a blue. Until it can see, it will never find that many things are blue without being told so.

Indeed a simple Virtual Reality enviroment could work to explain context for a Text-Taught A.I. and be the ground for internal imagining and for resolving confusion on images such as why a person's other arm is missing when it is not immediately visible over why so people's arms are always going to be missing.

Giving it a playground to imagine in would help context clues considerably for CYC (dead-end machine intelligence that it is). The major downside of Text-Taught A.I.'s lie in the fact that the information given a child shapes the interests, desires, and personality of that child while the A.I. is force-fed information and is not allowed even a basic personality. This will be the ultimate problem until the designers decide on what personality structure is desired.

I suppose you cure blindness the same way.

[os2fan]

Here's a cure for blindness, based on your arguements.
Homosexuality is a conscious decision
they just need some tender cult deprogramming

1. The condition does not exist as a physical defect.
2. Therefore it must be in the mind
3. My mind is ok here
4. Therefore it must be a choice
5. Therefore it's your fault
6. Therefore we can deprogram you.

And so you can treat blind and deaf people as if they are perfectly sighted and hearing. Very interesting.

some real considerate love like anyone else

So what's wrong with love me love my dog. I mean, Why do I have to be like you for you to consider me. Enough said.

You know horoscopes? How vague and predictable can you get!

Horoscopes, personality types, and genes, are predispositions to become, not excuses for ... Just because you're a homosexual, it does not mean that we are unable to do heterosexual acts.

The "homosexuality gene" turned out to be a fraud. The person who thought up that piece of "research" was himself a homosexual. Didn't mention that in the full disclosure section did they now?

Homosexuality may indeed have a genetic component. It has been verified many times. But there is this additional process that upsets the genetic process, as I have indicated elsewhere.

If we were really meant to be homosexual then we would be hermaphrodites

As I was saying: hermaphrodites and homosexuals both prove that the gender process is multistranded with sliding scales: both of these are "defects" in the formation.

Instead actually try and help people who have been fooled into that lie.

You would do well to consider the various opinions objectively before you start applying your "tender loving care". You may be hurting people yourself.

Re:I suppose you cure blindness the same way.

[kimihia]

1. The condition does not exist as a physical defect.

And there on the first step your whole analogy falls apart.

Blindness is often caused by birth defects, accidents, aging, etc. It is a physical defect.

You would do well to consider the various opinions objectively before you start applying your "tender loving care". You may be hurting people yourself.

You are correct.

I haven't rubbed shoulders with anyone who identifies themself as a homosexual. I haven't got a friendship with a homosexual of the sort where I could sit them down and talk to them about that sort of thing.

Picking homosexuals at random, eg, that person across the cafe, and then showing them TLC is a bad thing and would come across as patronising.

Homosexuals are people too.

Re:I suppose you cure blindness the same way.

[os2fan]

Homosexuality is a defect that is caused by a hypothamus in the brain (sorry, I don't know the spelling), which is different sized in different sexual persuasions. If that's not physical, than what is...

Also, some blindness is caused by the brain not processing the signals.

Re:I suppose you cure blindness the same way.

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Whether it is a physical defect or not, and whether it can be "cured" or not are purely scientific concepts, and have nothing to do with rights.

You have the right to consentual activity with other adults for any reason whatsoever. Whether you were born that way, or "decided to change", or just had your fantasies wander afar over the years are all interesting, but have no bearing on the rights issue.

Proving humans have souls?

[CrazyJim0]

A human has a soul by telling you it does, and seeming human so you believe it...

Since a computer has no soul, but it tells you it does, and it seems human so you believe it...

Wait, what does this have to say about human's souls? Especially for the track record of superstition of souls being wrong 100% of the time when under the microscope of science.

This shit is maddening to think about... I almost want to say that everyone is shit, and nothing better than a rock. It makes no sense for any religion out there.

Re:Proving humans have souls?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's quite simple. Reject religion, and unreasoning faith. Christianity, Islam and Hiduism still have footholds in America, Middle East and Inda, respectively. Northern europe, Russia, Australia and the far east/China are mainly atheist or "mystical atheist" (i.e. buddhist).

get with the program and go ahteist www.infidels.org

Re:Proving humans have souls?

[HBD]

i totally agree about not having souls, but if u want something really madening to think about..think about how the universe started as a zero-diminsional non-existsint thing that contained nothing, i am trying to figure this shit out(yes i get mild headaches), and have determined it up to 1D, the problem is as soon as there is a diminsion, and matter, and time, the universe just expands outwards(at least on the ideas i am thinking with, they still need a little tweaking)..if i evr finish this theory i will post a link somewhere on slashdot..lol..and

btw: this was originally a real replay to this msg, i just got mixed up somewhere

Re:Proving humans have souls?

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> Reject religion, and unreasoning faith.
> Christianity, Islam and Hiduism still have
> footholds in America

As does socialism.

EASY to do that

[CrazyJim0]

Once you have strong AI that simulates a human(will be here within 5 years if I have to code it myself)... Instead of forcing it to obey humans for its goals, you could give it different "pleasure" responses for different goals, and if its giving a status report on how well its achieving the goals, it could act in all sorts of weird ways.

Re: Alan Turing?

[Tom7]

> basically the simplest model of a machine
> necessary to compute anything that is
> computable.

As an irrelevant aside, I'd like to claim that the lambda calculus is a more simple ('turing-complete') model of computation than turing machines. (Though the turing machine certainly is simple too.)

The do have a website...

[quecojones]

The IEEE Annals of the History of Computing site is at http://www.computer.org/annals .

Utter horseshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Homosexuality is a conscious decision.

This is absolutely, completely and totally ridiculous. You obviously have no gay friends. Given the hatred expressed, why would anyone choose to be homosexual? No one would.

I recently started dating a great girl, but I was single for years before that. I have quite a few gay male friends and more than one tried to get me in the sack. I'm the horniest motherfucker on the planet, and my balls were as blue as they get, but I never had the slightest desire to have sex with another man, because I'm straight! That's just what I prefer.

People's tastes are conditioned by what they are told.

Crap. If this is true, then almost no one in the US would be gay, since we've been told forever in this country how vile and awful it is, yet gay people have always been around.

A certain percentage on folks prefer members of the same gender, just as a certain percentage like liver. No one would choose a life of repression and ostracism anymore than they would choose to continually eat foods they dislike.

Or do you think that all the monkeys and pigeons that researchers have seen exhibiting homosexual behavior are consciously choosing to do so?

You, sir, are nothing but a homophobe vainly attempting to use logic to support your bigotry.

Re:Utter horseshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap. If this is true, then almost no one in the US would be gay, since we've been told forever in this country how vile and awful it is, yet gay people have always been around.

Yeah, and no one would smoke either. Or become a lawyer.

P.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing:

Who gives a flying fuck if it's a choice or not? Can't people just do what they want? What do you care if a group of guys want to blow each other?

And don't give me any bullshit about AIDS. Lately, heterosexual women have been getting aids just as much as gay men. And AIDS is almost non-existant in the lesbian community. If it were some divine retribution, or even just natural culling, than I guess it's OK to be a dyke but not a fag, eh?

Re:P.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

And AIDS is almost non-existant in the lesbian community. If it were some divine retribution, or even just natural culling, than I guess it's OK to be a dyke but not a fag, eh?

Thou shalt not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. There is nothing in the bible which condemns lesbianism. Even God knows that bi chicks rule.

Re:P.S.

[kel-tor]

no, God meant, you tell her you love her (even though all you got was a peck on the cheek for a $100), and you tell the Guys down at the bar afterwards that she was great in the sack.

I can't tell if they're blind ...

[os2fan]

People fake all sorts of non-visiable conditions to claim on insurance. But these must also be real, otherwise the insurance companies would have wised up years ago.

I know blind people. You can't tell by looking that they are blind. So as far as I know, they are faking it.

Therefore my first point stands.

Re:I can't tell if they're blind ...

[kimihia]

You can't tell by looking that they are blind.

Maybe you or I can't tell, but a trained optometrist sure can.

An optometrist can look at someone's eye and say ... "Oh my dog, you've got a huge cataract!", or, "Oh my dog, your retina is torn!", or, "Oh my dog, you need correctional lenses."

So no. Way off topic, and far distinct from reality.

Turing Memorial

[blamanj]

From the memorial page It is fittingly ironic that not one single major computing company was willing to support this project

I, for one, would dearly know who was asked to support/contribute and what their excuses were for not doing so.

Ever programmed in Turing? I have...

[Blasphemy]

And even more shameful is that NO ONE in the computer industry is willing to honor the man in a way where their name will be seen.

Not quite true... In 1993 I was programming in Turing the language in high school.

Turing was developed by the University of Toronto's Computer Science department as a universal handicap for 1st year students and a research project for grad students. It worked well in that no 1st year student was supposed to know the language before arriving and so no one would be bored by the in-class examples. I think the point got lost somewhere after high schools began to teach it to give their students the advantage...

The language did get pretty far, in fact it graduated to the point where compilers for Turing were written in Turing. Where it is now, I have no idea.

Re: Dr. Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, at least the die-hard trolls read geekizoid

Think again.

Sadly, no.

[os2fan]

Maybe you or I can't tell, but a trained optometrist sure can.

But then, if I don't believe this whole optometry, hey - like - it's snake oil.

And maybe in the future, someone can hold up a machine to you, and say, hey, you're 83% homosexual...

You're saying that because it does not exist today, that it will never happen. Understanding and application could well change that...

Not-off topic What I am trying to do is untangle you from the web of your prejudices that you can see the parts separately.

Blindness/Homosexuality leave no mark on the body, and therefore must be internal, and therefore in the mind, and therefore a matter of choice.

Re:Sadly, no.

[Kierthos]

Blindness is a matter of choice? Yeah, right. And I must be somewhat insane to choose to stumble through life with vision so poor that corrective lenses only take me up to moderately poor vision. (At my rate of deterioration, I will be legally blind in about 15 years.) I did not make a conscious choice to have poor vision. And most of the homosexual people I know (hey, I live near a college campus) say they didn't make a conscious choice to be gay.

Besides which, if I could use the "power" of conscious thought to overcome my eye problems, I'd probably give myself x-ray vision and telekinesis as well.

Kierthos

Torpedo Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 1941

[joneshenry]

Thanks for the reply. I just have to disagree with all the points. :-)

Overemphasis on new technology actually lengthened the war against Japan by 18 months. Read this for one of many accounts of how the United States' dogged insistence on the efficacy of the magnetic detonation torpedo rendered the US submarine fleet impotent for 18 months, whereas after downgrading to earlier technology of contact detonation (and other fixes) the submarine fleet succeeded in sinking more than half of Japanese shipping, in effect imposing a total naval blockage. Note how scientific theory was perverted to reject empirical evidence from the submarine crews.

US intelligence had plenty of chances to have successfully warned the country of imminent Japanese attack. What saved the US was that the Japanese were so far below the US level of industrial capability and resources that even a perfect plan might not have been sufficient. The only Japanese hope was to have destroyed the oil storage tanks at Pearl Harbor in a follow-up attack. Ironically the Japanese own rigidity in their military thinking possibly influenced the commander of the fleet from pressing home the advantage, a pattern repeated when they failed at Leyte Gulf to seize the opening to attack the landing fleet.

All the futuristic technology and information isn't going to help if the leadership at the top is incapable or unwilling to determine what is of the most importance. Fortunately for the winning side in World War II the opposition had far less industrial capability and resources. And what won the war was more from the bottom-up as entire populations united and bottlenecks were solved in practical ways. As the war progressed it became easier for men of merit to get their jobs done. In such improved environments a million small improvements could work their way into the war effort, so yes there was some technical progress. But remember the Germans had V2 rockets and jet fighters and they still lost.

It seems to me the modern American large corporation is not facing a lack of technology problem, it's facing organization problems. The people at the top who are supposed to be setting direction for the company cannot or will not accurately access the reams of information at their disposal. In story after story I read about World War II, the solution to a problem turns out to be putting the competent man in charge and letting him use his expertise. Preconceptions, ideology, and prejudice driving policy are the enemy.

ping of death

[Anonymous Coward]

takes a new meaning with turing.

and on a side note:
Microsft Rules

Linux Sucks

I love my ps2 and yes this is to be marked -100 troll

Not only AI

[tree_frog]

Alan Turing also wrote a paper called "The chemical basis of morphogenesis" which is one of the key papers in explaining how morphogenesis can produce differnt types of cells and hence organisms with differntiated parts (arms, legs, tentacles), or patterned coats (zebra stripes, cow splodges, cheetah spots) etc, on the basis of sets of chemical reactions.

A genius spanning several fields....

Regards

Treefrog.

Re:Torpedo Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 194

[James_G]

My point was not to say that technology won the war specifically, merely to point out the futility of attributing the victory to any one single event. As you yourself demonstrated with accounts of two completely seperate events :)

The fact remains: WWII was won not only with technology, not only through intelligence, but with a combination of technology, miltary intelligence, and not a small amount of sheer luck. I won't place any emphasis on any of these, except maybe sheer luck :)

cybersquatting alan turing

[Anonymous Coward]

Visit alanturing.net for a good bio and archive.

Visit alanturing.{com,org} if you want to
see some cybersquatting.

I strongly recommend Andrew Hodges web site and book

Is that Konqueror?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the browser frame behind Mr Turing in the
photo a Konq shot?

C.

This may seem strange ...

[kimihia]

I know this is really quite out of place after all the anecdotal evidence and whims being bandied as facts, but here are some quotes from a genuine, honest, professional.

I was surprised to run across these. My sister wandered past and asked if I could scan a page out of a book so she could email it to a friend, and this was the page!

Our sexual desires return for fulfilment to whatever awakened them in the first place. This 'imprinting' must be consciously acknowledged before change can take place.

The belief that one is born homosexual is held on to in order to relieve one of the responsiblity and difficulty of changing a subconscious orientation. The first step out is to agree with God that homosexual activities are sin which one is morally accountable for, and which one can and must be freed from.

People grow into labels. Once the homosexual label is accepted, the implied characteristics being to develop in that life, because what we believe about ourselves is of absolute importance in determining everything that we do and say.

Are homosexuals born that way? I have yet to meet a homosexual who has a good, strong father and an affectionate mother.

We all need non-erotic same-sex love. It is necessary to learn how to distinguish between our sexual need and our non-erotic need for affection.

Premature emotional disengagement between child and same-sex parent, for whatever reason, is the most common cause of homosexual orientation, but not the only one.

Anyone who is insecure, in grief, depressed, rejected, or otherwise severely stressed, is vulnerable to becoming emotionally dependant on another of either gender.

God doesn't tease. If He condemns it, He doesn't cause it. If He causes it, He won't condemn it. If He condemns it, He can also provide the way out if called upon to do so.

Quotes are taken from: pp95, Chapter 20, Living Wisdom, David Riddell; Futher reading: Reparative Therapy, Dr Nicolozi

Also, have a look at Sy Roger's website. Interesting speaker on the topic.

Re: Alan Turing?

[Amanset]

I think it means that you are intelligent enough to convince someone that you are not intelligent. Or something.

In truth, there is no decision

[Anonymous Coward]

WW II cannot be said to be determined by any one decision, one battle or one event. There were simply too many factors involved. The fact that the war happened in a certain way can only be explained as an after thought. What if Hitler had pursued the jet engine or not cut off his science programs so early in the war (only to make pathetic attempts at the end)? They may well have won. What if Germany had decided to stay with one front instead of taking up the Eastern Front and Russia? What if the failed assassination of Hitler by fellow German officials had been successful? What if the treaty of Versailles had not been so harsh on Germany - would Nazis have come to power (and if not, is the rest of Europe at fault for bringing the war on itself)? What if, later, Chamberlain had realized the threat of Germany and halted its expansion? There are few answers to be gained from study, only some insights and many afterthoughts. As for your points concerning Stalin and his spy network, I am unable to comment. Except to write that he was bad (right?).

Sophie Wilson, was Re:Prejudice

[hereticmessiah]

Anybody who's read my posts in the past knows that I'm a big fan of Sophie Wilson.

Sophie is possibly a (partial at least) exception to the prejudice against Transsexuals. She's the original designer of the ARM processor and now a successful executive.

Thankfully, not everybody has to endure that sort of attitude towards what's different. It's a pity most people can't see it that way though.

Re:Prejudice - Turing the dumb one?!

[clausen]

Homosexuality and gender identity are conditions of birth ... The smart ones survive it, the dumb ones commit suicide.

And Turing was therefore a "dumb one"?

/dev/clausen

Re: Alan Turing?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think of the pi-calculus? The lambda calculus is a special case of it (the special case where one thing follows after another)

Re: Alan Turing?

[HBD]

if you can be intelligent enough to convince someone you are not intelligent then could a computer be intelligent enough to do the same...maybee they just don't want to talk?
(jk of course..lol)

bullshit

[TummyX]

Do you even know what the turing test involves?

The Turing test requires a proper enviroment and setup. A system that simply fools any old person into thinking it is human doesn't pass the turing test (eliza for example).

You need a HUMAN subject, a COMPUTER subject and a HUMAN observer. The human observer asks questions to both the computer and the human (through teletype terminals).

The human observer asks questions, and notes the responses from both the computer and human (he doesn't know who wrote what). In the end, the computer only passes the turning test if the human observer picks it to have the most intelligent responses. E.g. On a head-head thrashing of minds (on any subject), the computer must be more intelligent than the human.

Some more lenient Turing tests limit the subject to something like "sport". No computer has ever passed the Turing test.

Timely Doctor Who joke

[sideshow-voxx]

How many Dr Who fans does it take to change a lightbulb?

None. They just sit around and wait for it to come back on.

Re:Torpedo Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 194

[duffbeer703]

The Mark VII torpedo scandal is a well known one. Less known is that the Germans suffered almost the exact same issue for over a year with signifigant impact to their U-boat operations.

There is a good reason why navies were pushing magnetic detonation: contact detonation sucks. Modern (as in post 1905) warships and some merchant vessels are sectioned off into watertight bulkheads to improve survivability in the event of a hull breach. Most ships can suffer a breach of 30-50% of its watertight compartments before sinking!

A contact-detonated torpedo often only blows a hole in one or two compartments. Thus, you need to fire four or more torpedoes which are in very limited supply (about 18 per boat, with a 20minute reload time)

Magnetic detonators explode directly beneath the hull of a ship, breaking the keel of the target and causing massive flooding. When magnetic detonators were perfected, most any non-capital ship could be sunk with a single torpedo hit.

Ridiculous

[Gregoyle]

For one:

I think that artificial intelligence wpould be best measured with an understanding of emotion and ethics, so psychological and ethical examinations, such as those administered in Blade Runner.

What do you think a Turing test is? In Blade Runner, they were not looking to see if someone had a proper sense of ethics... they were seeing if someone had *any* sense of ethics. Also, the idea of a human playing against a computer in chess and thinking it is another human is utterly silly (at this point) when you are talking outside the chess-game. Sure, the person might think they know the playing style of the computer, and therefore assign a human identity to it, but the instant a conversation comes up about stuff like "What'd you do yesterday" and "Why don't you live with your parents anymore" the cat would be out of the bag faster than you can blink.

For two (or something like that):

The whole point of the Turing test is that if a computer can fool a trained human in a double blind test reliably... it doesn't matter if they are naturally or artificially intelligent. Think about that. If you can't tell if it is human or not... does it matter whether it is actually human? Shouldn't you treat it as if it were human? This is a pragmatic approach (formal pragmatics, not pragmatics which is that same as "practicality"), but no less valid for that. If it looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck...

Re:Ridiculous

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> Sure, the person might think they know the playing style of the computer,

Actually, they do. They load up a computer with every known sequence of moves, endgames, startgames, weighted deep-plunge searches, etc. but it basically still comes down to a brute force search. Kasparov knew this and was able to use the "horizon effect" to his advantage to beat the machine. He was still convinced he could beat it in a rematch.

Ho Lee Fook,

[Anonymous Coward]

the lameness filter is so broken.

Turing was a runner, why is he sitting?

[mikosullivan]

It's great that there's a memorial to Turing, but why is he sitting on a park bench like a loafer? Among his other talents, Turing was an excellent long distance runner. Something a little more active looking would be more appropriate.

Wait just a damn minute

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't rubbed shoulders with anyone who identifies themself as a homosexual.

I take it this includes yourself, then? In other words, you aren't gay?

How is it that you are able to speak so authoritatively on the subject?

Nothing amuses me more than straight people who try to explain what does and does not make people gay.

If you haven't been there, you aren't qualified to make that sort of diagnosis.

Period.

Re:Wait just a damn minute

[rabidcow]

If you haven't been there, you aren't qualified to make that sort of diagnosis.

...and doctors can't diagnose diseases they themselves have never had?

Re:Wait just a damn minute

[Anonymous Coward]

What did he say? He said he hadn't rubbed shoulders with anyone who identified themselves as homosexual.

It doesn't mean he's some sexual health person who makes them take a 50 point questionairre.

It means he has never had anyone ever come up to him and state they are gay, or when asked has confirmed they are gay.

Learn to read.

Re:finger, man, mount and now this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised you havent taken the time to read the fake man pages distributed in the emacs tarbell, including "man sex" which has sections on beastiality and homosexual rape.

-AnoMymous Coward

87% of all statistics are made up on the spot

[Anonymous Coward]

EOM

Is political correctness also genetic?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know.

Sam jr.

Turing and other Fathers

[fm6]

Hey, if you're saying that everybody who uses a computer has a debt to old AT, you'll get no argument from me. I was simply quibbling with the usual Broad-Shouldered Hero model of history. (Particularly inappropriate in this case.) A lot of people contributed the genesis of the modern computer, and AT would probably be the last to want to grab all the credit.

And when I called him the first computer geek, I was claiming him as founder of a club to which I belong. I say this not just because of his many personal quirks, but because he was one of the first to recognize the importance of software. He had some interesting disagreements with von Neumann (another FoCS pretender) on this subject. Von Neumann thought that when you'd figured out the hardware, you had your system. Turing had the insight to see that this was just the beginning.

Dear prick

[Anonymous Coward]

Get bent. You just confirmed that everyone in the world can be a moron, not just Americans.

Sorge, Bagration Was Re:Germans were beaten ...

[joneshenry]

Yes the Russians did. But notice the contrast between what is emphasized when we talk about the genius of Alan Turing and Enigma versus the Russian approach to intelligence. Richard Sorge through many years of developing personal contacts was able to predict the German invasion of Russia, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese unwillingness to attack Siberia. The Russians at least were able to act on the knowledge that Japan would not attack to transfer at a crucial moment many divisions to Moscow to launch their winter counteroffensive starting in 1941.

My argument is that people and organization are more important for intelligence work than technology.

Similarly consider Operation Bagration, the destruction of the German Army Group Center in Summer 1944. Bagration I suppose is the Russian counterpart of the Allied deception campaign that mislead the Germans about the Normandy invasion. The "technology" that led to the success of Operation Bagration was the massive fleet of trucks the West had given Russia through Lend Lease, so perhaps some argument can be made that indirectly Enigma contributed to the victory. But what made Operation Bagration work was organization, attention to detail.

In my opinion, overemphasis on technology such as Enigma is dangerous in today's era because it reinforces current United States prejudices on how to conduct intelligence without "getting one's hands dirty". It would be a shame to repeat all the mistakes of the Germans and learn nothing from what worked for say the Russians.

Battle Bots

[geekoid]

What is the obsession with having all the domain names? Its getting realy annoying, so some kid has got the .org? as long as he doesn't rty to convince people he's part of the battlebots that ComedyCentral airs, let it go.

anybody who is looking for battlebots can find it.

Perhap I should get a class action suit against battlebots. I have yet to see a bot(automated device). I see lots of RC cars with saws and hammers smashing into each other, but no bots.

In fact they wouldn't allow me to enter an actual bot into there contest. Sad really.

Re:Battle Bots

[emolitor]

You should come to the events. There have been some autonomous bots and if you check the definition of Robot in the Dictionary you'll see it states "autonomous or remote controlled". You dont think that big arm on the space shuttle "robotic arm" controls itself?

Dr. Who on TV

[cyberwench]

Well, they did make some attempt at it. Fox picked up the license in the states to do a new series. Paul McGann was picked to be the successor to Sylvester McCoy. They did a pilot episode... McGann was fairly impressive as the Doctor, though the rest of the show wasn't too hot. (Eric Roberts was the bad guy, I think he was the Master. He... was... AWFUL. Does anyone actually thing Eric Roberts is scary, other than in the good-lord-he's-terrible department?) I was, however, hoping they'd go on to do some more - I think McGann would have been excellent. Apparently the response was terrible. Dr. Who fans slagged it as being commercial and American and non-fans couldn't have cared less. So... they cut their losses. They kept McGann on contract should something spectacular happen to make them reconsider, but as of now, it's dead. Anyone have a copy of it?

Re:Dr. Who on TV

[dorward]

It was released on DVD a month or so ago. I actually quite liked it, Eric Masters wasn't bad, the real problem was that the script wasn't up to much.

Deep Blue says

[alphameter]

e2-e3
f1-c4
d1-f3
c4-f7


-Deep Blue
Speaking at the 2019 Man-Machine Peace Council

Re:finger, man, mount and now this? WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm...it might be funny if 95% of it wasn't stolen from another troll. As it was, I don't think we need to preserve every single copy that's posted here.

ooooh, whats that funky jazz?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight I'll laugh at you!

The law has nothign to do with morals, ethics OR scruples. The law is to do with how many current voters will agree on a topic that is currently in agreement.

I am not personally homosexual but I will fight for liberty on the matter... The law can leave the window as far as I am concerned, do whatever you want as long as it doesn't disadvantage anyone.

You must have led a naive life

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, there's at least four gay guys on my floor at a software development company (each with completely different tastes in men!)

Re:You must have led a naive life

[kimihia]

I believe you. I'm not saying that homosexuality is non existant. It just isn't as huge as it is supposed to be.

Old testement

[Anonymous Coward]

>God doesn't tease.

Read the book of Job.

And if you really think Leviticus was not annulled by the new testement, you should remember not to shave, not to wear polycotton clothes, eat rabbit/camel/prawns/cheeseburger/pork etc. and lots of other rules. Some people *do* follow those rules (i.e. Hassidic Jews) but most people who quote the lying with men clause in Leviticus completely ignore every other rule in the chapter.

Re:Old testement

[Anonymous Coward]

> Read the book of Job.

How about you read the book of Job?

Job 1:12 - The Lord said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands."

Satan was doing the teasing.

K&R *Ansi* C?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't see anything in there about it ;-)

Re: Alan Turing?

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> The idea that the Universal Turing Machine models
> all that is computable by any machine is known as
> "Church's Thesis,"

That interests me even more than the Turing Machine itself. It is that there is this concept of a "most powerful" computational device that can, at most, perform a finite number of calculations in a finite period of time, and that the Turing Machine meets this definition.

It's a Thesis, not a Theory, because it hasn't been proven or disproven. No one has yet found something more powerful. Equally powerful, yes, in that an emulator for each can be written in the other, but not more.

Re:Ever programmed in Turing? I have...

[mitheral]

. It worked well in that no 1st year student was supposed to know the language before arriving and so no one would be bored by the in-class examples.

So that's why I had to learn COBOL!

I don't take suggestions from ACs...

[Anonymous Coward]

or anything else for that matter. :))

-perdida

Who can tell?

[carlos_benj]

OTOH, there is no way that I can look at you and be certain that I know what's in your heart, or what your relationship to God is.

I'm not sure I can agree fully with that. I think I understand what you're saying, but one can observe what importance people place on different things and make a determination as to where their priorities lie. Besides, Scripture says that you will know them by their fruits. Sure, there will be different degrees of "success" in following a particular teaching, but the earmark will be a consistent "pressing toward the mark".

I doubt very much that I will ever find a person whose actions conform completely to my understanding of what God wants.

I think most people have some inconsistencies whatever their belief system. Sometimes a liberal politician will come down on the conservative side of a particular issue, and sometimes a conservative will make liberal noises, but our society (or the press) puts a label on them based on their consistencies, not the occasional inconsistency.

Or, to put it more succintly, "man looks at the outside appearance, but God looks at the heart."

I think Christians sometimes miss the point in interpretation of scripture. There are people whose actions are consistently against a belief system whether Christian, Muslim, or whatever that we may not be able to place into a catagory, but we can remove them from various categories with some certainty. The quote you use is a two-edged sword. I'm sure you've run across those who justify their vices by saying, "God looks at the heart." I think the application could also be that you can fool people.... but never God. If you couple that passage with the one about those who cry, "Lord, Lord" and list their accomplishments (which sound pretty righteous to most Christians) he looks at their hearts and says "Depart." The implication is that God can see hypocrisy where we cannot. Whatever your ideals/ethics it is human nature to try to hide the hypocritical deviations and trumpet the successes. Because of this, the ability to judge the contents of the heart would be far more useful in laying bare the hypocrite than determining the righteous.

Re:Who can tell?

[Noel]

OTOH, there is no way that I can look at you and be certain that I know what's in your heart, or what your relationship to God is.

...one can observe what importance people place on different things and make a determination as to where their priorities lie. Besides, Scripture says that you will know them by their fruits.

That's true. What's in the heart does show in external symptoms ("fruit"). But it's not always absolute. That's why I said that I can't be *certain*, generally speaking. For the extreme cases, I can be pretty certain, though. Like you said, if someone claims to be Christian but their actions don't show any love for God or others, then I'm justified in treating them as unbelievers (i.e., treat them as what their actions seem to show them to be, rather than what they claim to be.)

The difficulty comes in the less-extreme cases. The initial issue was about homosexuality -- I was trying to address the question: Is it possible for someone to be violating one of God's laws, while following the vast majority of them, and still be a believer? e.g., Is it possible for someone to be a practicing homosexual and a follower of Christ?

If the person is showing many symptoms of following Christ -- loving God and others -- then I would be very uncomfortable thinking them to be unbelievers, even though there is one area where it's clear that they aren't following God's law. I think there are very few actions that can be used as a litmus test for belief. I must always look at the fruit in aggregate, and often there is no clear conclusion that I can make.

...the ability to judge the contents of the heart would be far more useful in laying bare the hypocrite than determining the righteous.

Hmm...that would make things interesting. I can see many advantages if we were able to see each others' hearts -- but there's some dangerous drawbacks, too...

BTW, thanks. This discussion is refreshing -- wanna take it off-line? email me...