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Computer Network Piecing Together a Jigsaw of Ancient Jewish Lore
First time accepted submitter aravenwood writes "The New York Times and the Times of Israel report today that artificial intelligence and a network of 100 computers in a basement in Tel Aviv University are being used to match 320,000 fragments of documents dating as far back as the 9th century in an attempt to reassemble the original documents. Since the trove of documents from the Jewish community of Cairo was discovered in 1896 only about 4000 of them have been pieced together, and the hope is that the new technique, which involves taking photographs of the fragments and using image recognition and other algorithms to match the language, spacing, and handwriting style of the text along with the shape of the fragment to other fragments could revolutionize not only the study of this trove documents, which has been split up into 67 different collections around the world since its discovery, but also how humanities disciplines study documents like these. They expect to make 12 billion comparisons of different fragments before the project is completed — they have already performed 2.8 billion. Among the documents, some dating from 950, was the discovery of letters by Moses Maimonides and that Cairene Jews were involved in the import of flax, linen, and sheep cheese from Sicily."
According to Wikipedia, Maimonides lived Passover Eve, 1135 to December 12, 1204; how was he able to write a document in 950?
...destroy the universe. /just sayin'
Finally a good use for tech!
"That pork thing is just to make sure you don't get sick, cook it really well and you'll be fine. Bacon is actually delicious. Also, the little hats... those are to keep you baldies from getting a sunburn. That's it. Don't go overboard with this stuff, guys. Lates, G-D."
People made stuff up and years later, hundreds of millions of people thought it was real and decided it would be better to kill anyone that doesn't believe the same fantastic tales as themselves. Repeat for all major land masses since Mesopotamian times.
And how will this help the 10,000 children who die of starvation everyday through no fault of their own?
Hands up who misread the title as 'Cartoon Network'.
Why do they need 100 computers? Why can't they just use one computer or, more in vogue, rent from amazon or some other cloud computing service?
The media are a little different than usual, but this is essentially an attempt to piece back together a 1000-year-old database/mail archive.
Case in point: The name that God used for himself when dealing with humanity in the 2500s-500s BCE was "Yahweh", meaning roughly "he who causes being". It appears nearly 7,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and not one of those uses caused the universe's destruction. (In English, God's name is often rendered "Jehovah", just as the name of his only son "Yeshua" became "Jesus" after passing through Greek, Latin, and French.)
Is this like Venezuelan Beaver Cheese?
"around the world since it's discovery"
*its
Wasting Money and Machines on this nonsense? Who benefits from this? Is there a lost way to make money buried in those pieces of Garbage?
In Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge talks about a hypothetical technology to digitize books that involves sending them through a shredder which flings the confetti up in the air where high-speed, high-res cameras digitize it and the computers de-puzzle piece it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Didn't Stephen Dorff do this in Blade?
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Not all Christians interpret the Bible to teach a "trinity". Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, interpret John 1 to mean that in the beginning, God (i.e. YHWH) created the Word (i.e. Michael), created all other things through the Word, and later the Word became flesh (i.e. Jesus). Thus Jesus and YHWH "are one" (John 10:30) in the same sense that Jesus and the congregation are one (John 17:21-23).
All Religions are dumb shit for dumb shit feces brains.
I have seen it before. They will put in all their hopes and angst, only to find that the text reads: "Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine".
Surely this will be modded down by the JIDF, but stop covering Israel until they ease up on the human rights violations.
Perhaps it's a fear of the end of the world that leads to such superstitions such as not saying god's name, or in Harry potter stories the continual references to "He who shall not be named" for [spoiler alert!!!] Voldemort (vol-de-mort? flight of death? orgasm? wtf???]
The summary from wikipedia:
This short story tells of a Tibetan lamasery whose monks seek to list all of the Names of God, since they believe the Universe was created in order to note all the names of God and once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which they calculated they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about 9,000,000,000 ("nine billion") and each having no more than nine characters. Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combinations, would take another 15,000 years; the monks wish to use modern technology in order to finish this task more quickly..
They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that ''overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.''
So what happened? Did someone invent a paper shredder in 1895?
Thanks for the story. I'm sure Arthur C Clarke got the idea of the (alleged) power of God's name from Judaism. Anyone who knows anything about Judaism knows this (although that is becoming increasingly rarer in the West as it progressively comes more 'Judenrein' [Jew free] as the Jews flee persecution today [eg. Arab countries are becoming more and more jew and Christian free as time goes on; all the Jews have left Norway due to Muslim immigrant persecution and the fact the native Norwegians are too politically correct/weak to stand up and stop it], etc.).
I wonder if these 'new' documents will tell Jews that they are even more important than they already think they are- perhaps, as well as telling them that they are "God's chosen people" (how modest), they will say that the life of a 'goyim' (that's a non-Jew) isn't worth even the fingernail of a Jew, something crazy like that...
www.prothink.org
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets 29 standing ovations from Congress:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asGvjbfIASA
Just sell them as jigsaw puzzles and offer a reward for the correct solution. Honestly, people think too much about things sometimes.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/puzzling-together-the-past-new-computer-program-to-reassemble-shredded-stasi-files-a-482136.html
.. for my pron collection. Need to sort and assemble.
Sorry, but the Jews were not the only religious group to place inordinate importance on discovering the 'true' name of something and thereby exerting control over it. I'm sure you'll claim that European Wiccan tradition and Asian magical traditions got the idea from Judaism, but there are many Native American stories of Crow or Coyote discovering the name of a new animal and accessing its power. I believe the Aborigines of Australia have similar stories. It's more likely that Clarke got his inspiration from Asian traditions (which he was very interested in) than Judaism.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
the entire book of Job, where God is the one responsible for inflicting all manner of bad acts upon Job's family.
God isn't responsible for inflicting ills. Satan is responsible for it; God allows it to happen. See chapter 11 of "What Does the Bible Really Teach?" for one denomination's view of the problem of evil.
Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, and presumably all-good God choose to create beings that MIGHT do evil?
If God wanted robots, he would have made robots. Instead, he wanted creatures who sincerely love him back, so he made creatures capable of acting on free will.