Slashdot Mirror
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."
Finally a good use for tech!
I didn't mean to im
According to Wikipedia, Maimonides lived Passover Eve, 1135 to December 12, 1204; how was he able to write a document in 950?
The summary states "Among the documents, some dating from 950 ...". It is pretty clear that the "950" refers to the earliest known date of any of the documents, not the date of all of them.
I think it's just a matter of trying to cram two ideas into one sentence:
1. Some documents were from as far back as 950
2. There were letters from Moses Maimonides found in the entire set of documents
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the earliest documents were related to Maimonides, just that there were very early manuscripts and also his documents were also discovered there. When I was at the British Museum they had a letter of Maimonides prominently displayed. I wonder if it was acquired from the Cairo Genizah trove.
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
Meh, they once had it, and the universe still existed. Rediscovery of it is unlikely to result in its destruction.
I am John Hurt.
People made stuff up and years later, hundreds of millions of people thought it was real ...
Some of the documents are religious texts, but many others are bills, receipts, inventory lists, and even personal letters. These mundane documents often shed a lot of illumination on how ordinary people lived their lives. Archeologists often learn far more from looking at a civilization's garbage dumps, than from their treasures.
"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."
I always suspected the hats were to cover bald spots, is there a formal reason for them other than tradition?
Basically humility before G-d. Though I guess bald spots are kind of humiliating in and of themselves.
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.)
Should all of mankind's endeavors grind to a halt until the world is in a state of perfect harmony and prosperity?
Humans, in our great numbers, are capable of multi-tasking. Is every penny not spent on helping the helpless a selfish waste?
An infinite amount of money cannot solve all of the world's problems in a day, and there are more problems everyday. More often it is not a question of money but of resources, money is only a means to trade for such finite resources. With finite resources like time, energy, innovation, and persuasion, every do-gooder has to pick their battles.
To answer half your question, because this works scales nicely in that the work is parallel. It can be broken down and run on multiple computers, cores, threads, VM, clould, whatever. So that explains the number. And a computer that is a 100 times faster then a normal computer tends to be over a 100 times more expensive.
As why not to the cloud? I am going to take a wild guess that it's the data – there is a lot of it so access could be a bottle neck. In this case you want your data and cpus to be physical close to each other. I am sure something could be rigged up in the cloud, but that might be more expensive, but now I entered the realm of serious speculation.
All you morons who are modding this troll, please turn in your geek cards. Then go read "The Nine Billion Names of God"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
They should have used 40 computers. Its a biblical number, which would make the resulting prophecies more believable.
Meanwhile, work is underway to recover old Slashdot posts on a 666 node cluster.
Have gnu, will travel.
Using Slashdot?
I'm sure some AC complained about it being out of date then as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
Are any shopping lists? Can of kraut? Tuna? Bring home for Emma?
I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a bagel somewhere in there.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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!"
I always suspected the hats were to cover bald spots, is there a formal reason for them other than tradition?
There's nothing in the Torah about head coverings, so it is a tradition and not really biblical Jewish law. One source is that Christians had the practice of always removing their hats when they went inside. Just to be different, the Jewish tradition of always keeping your head covered was started.
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).
The mods missed the obvious Arthur C Clarke reference. Pretty sad for a Nerd News site.
I came here to post that exact thing. Sad indeed.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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".
Probably no 666. That's Christen New Testament stuff – a completely different standards fork then the stuff we are talking about here.
This is one of those times where I'm glad I RTFA. I assumed it was a bunch of useless Torah fragments, but it actually looks like an interesting project instead. Rather like how excavating a trash midden will reveal more about life during a time period than restoration of a castle would, this promises to reveal more about trade and economics of the time than most of the (extremely biased) historical documents of the period.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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.''
yea but fortunately there are only a few thousand of those, vs hundreds of millions of the other
its howard you dipshit, says so in the loards prayer
you must be new here
it is their fault, for some, the notion that childeren can not go out and do something productive until they hit the arbitrary made up age of adulthood is compete tripe
hey billy, you live in a hut made from garbage, your hungry, what are you going to do... sit on your ass begging for handouts like your parents? fine, why should I feel sorry for you?
sounds overcomplicated for something that has been sitting around doing nothing for 117 years
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.).
Yarmulke are worn as a sign of subservience to God. Back in the day, when the tradition was adopted, servants wore head-coverings. Jews adopted the head coverings as a sign of service to God. I imagine the Catholic Pope's & Co. wear them for a similar reason. Today, they have the status of "minhag", effectively meaning they're an adopted tradition that now has the status of law.
It's cold up here send more socks :D
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Technically, they are going out, all the time. :-) And yes, people usually don't make fuss about it.
Ezekiel 23:20
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
Damn, so much stupid in such a short post. That's quite a talent.
"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.
Even overcooked it is hardly a great food. And cooking does nothing to mitigate the health threat of living pigs in the area. Pigs are noted for how similar their flesh is to that of humans - this is why they are so useful in medical research aimed at human ailments, and also why it is relatively easy for diseases to cross the species boundary - in either direction. A pig stye in the neighborhood is a considerably more serious threat to public health than, say, cattle, goat, or sheep husbandry would pose.
There is ample reason to think that pork tastes like human flesh as well. Havent sampled the long pig myself and not recommending it, but historical records indicate that when cannibals are no longer able to procure it they universally determine pork to the be the only substitute. This has happened in Mexico and Papua in very different time frames. So there is certainly a potential spiritual issue as well for those that think 'bacon is delicious.'
There is plenty of apparently crazy stuff in the Torah to blame G_d for without dissing one of the rules that DO make sense both scientifically and spiritually.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The only reason you want his identity is so you can launch personal attacks
Perhaps it was the GP's reason, but some of us would like to label the ACs (at least the coherent ones) because it is hard to hold a meaningful conversation with a horde of Spartacuses.
Funny? Clearly the mods have never read A Canticle for Liebowitz.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.