What if we were to send someone on a long term mission, with plans to bring him back in, say, 10 years? That way, we have some time to work on the costs and technical difficulties. I think the public support would be there if they thought the guy would be coming back. Plus, I'm sure it would be a lot easier to fundraise for the second mission to ensure his safe return!
Couldn't Google use their vast database of image tags in reverse. . . as in present the user with an image, then wait for a response that scores highly as a potential tag?
This would obviously not defeat the human-automated exploit.
It is a technology that allows anyone on almost any language, to interact with and integrate with any other device, network resource, app, GUI or OS that is SOM/DSOM enabled. Almost 8? 10? years of little to no development on SOM/DSOM and there is still nothing half as powerful for any PC based operating system.
Smalltalk / Squeak has been doing something similar for years. Anything in the system can message anything else. System components / GUI elements can be freely inspected, subclassed, modified - and all on the fly while the system is running. Of course, this means that all source is very literally open (other than virtual machine primitives).
The OLPC also allows programs to be written in eToys/Squeak. For those not familiar, Squeak is a free implementation of Smalltalk, created by the original architect of Smalltalk, Alan Kay. In many ways, Squeak is the true spiritual successor to the Logo project of Seymour Papert. Squeak is fully object oriented, reflective and runs with a bit identical virtual machine across diverse platforms. It also has an extremely low keyword count. Personally, I am very happy to think that programmers of the future may be trained on such a platform.
Although, the Michael Kandel translations of Lem's work must rank amongst the best translations ever created. I only found out after finishing the Cyberiad that it was indeed translated - I found it hard to believe, given the richness and originality of the language.
How about the One Laptop Per Child project? Surely getting a couple of million kids learning a dynamic, reflective, truly object-oriented language like Smalltalk (Squeak) has to count for something, although the reinvention may be a couple of years from now . . .
Learning Logo as a kid certainly broadened my experience of computing.
I think this could be made to work if genetically defective mutants are identified and killed by some kind of maintenance immune system (the way cancerous cells are killed in most healthy animals). Of course, it's debatable how long the immune system could carry on the task until some unidentifiable/pathological mutations occur (in the immune system itself, too). Most humans don't seem to be able to last much beyond about 90 years and stay cancer free.
One thing I "know" for certain is that I am conscious. I say "know", but I believe it as an act of faith. Why I'm conscious is a mystery: I have no idea why what I feel and experience should be apparently localised to one body in one tiny corner of the universe for a brief moment in time. I don't know why I feel what "I" feel, and not what some other human being does. But I do... Is the "soul" a explanation of this hidden link?
As as matter of faith, I also believe that other humans are conscious, and my experiences tend to back up that assertion.
Whether animals are similarly conscious is not directly open to my experiences. They appear to act similarly to humans, have similar biological origins and so I believe one could make a case that they should be treated with similar respect. As a Christian, I believe that part of mankind's commission is to care for the world and not cause it undue harm. Arguing with the Bible as a basis, it appears that only humans are given the knowledge of "good" and "evil", which may or may not be the same as having non-physical souls. I don't think it is possible to argue (biblically, anyway) that animals have souls. Although I am open to debate...
As someone who has examined AI algorithms extensively, I have absolutely no reasons to believe that mankind's computing creations should have souls or be conscious in even a fraction of the way I am. I therefore feel free to treat them in pretty much any way that I find useful, although I would prefer to avoid treating them in vastly nonproductive ways.
While I know they perform many, many computer simulations, I think aerodynamics is still regarded as one of the "black arts" in the field. Wind tunnels are still used extensively (it's often about who can build the better wind tunnel, never mind car).
Maybe complete solutions of fluid movement will mean some odd-looking cars in 2007!
When I was about 8, we started learning Logo (which has pretty deep roots in Lisp). Logo has some solid theory behind it regarding education - Jean Piaget was the major protagonist. We learned on the good old BBC Model B, here in South Africa. We also had turtles and robots and all kinds of cool stuff (speech synthesizers, etc). The BBC's had colour graphics and multichannel sound long before PC's did. Logo is still not a bad choice - since it encourages some really neat and elegant solutions to problems.
Alan Kay (search on Google videos for some of his thoughts regarding education) created the Squeak language to help teach kids thinking in general (not just programming). "Doing with images makes symbols"
Squeak (which is a direct descendant of Smalltalk) would make a much better choice as a "pure" object-oriented language, rather than some of the other imperative-algorithmic languages being mentioned here.
My personal favourite is Prolog, which is actually quite simple to teach to kids at first (although it becomes a bit more challenging when getting into recursive predicates, cuts, etc).
Squeak is now morphing into a full 3D collaborative environment called OpenCroquet. All code is interactive, and the environment is written and executed dynamically in Squeak.
Alan Kay is a great guy. His ideas deserve a lot more recognition (or at least *implementation*) than they get . . .
Slashdot Mirror
And for even younger kids, eToys: http://www.squeakland.org/
What if we were to send someone on a long term mission, with plans to bring him back in, say, 10 years? That way, we have some time to work on the costs and technical difficulties. I think the public support would be there if they thought the guy would be coming back. Plus, I'm sure it would be a lot easier to fundraise for the second mission to ensure his safe return!
Couldn't Google use their vast database of image tags in reverse. . . as in present the user with an image, then wait for a response that scores highly as a potential tag? This would obviously not defeat the human-automated exploit.
Smalltalk / Squeak has been doing something similar for years. Anything in the system can message anything else. System components / GUI elements can be freely inspected, subclassed, modified - and all on the fly while the system is running. Of course, this means that all source is very literally open (other than virtual machine primitives).
The OLPC also allows programs to be written in eToys/Squeak. For those not familiar, Squeak is a free implementation of Smalltalk, created by the original architect of Smalltalk, Alan Kay. In many ways, Squeak is the true spiritual successor to the Logo project of Seymour Papert. Squeak is fully object oriented, reflective and runs with a bit identical virtual machine across diverse platforms. It also has an extremely low keyword count. Personally, I am very happy to think that programmers of the future may be trained on such a platform.
Although, the Michael Kandel translations of Lem's work must rank amongst the best translations ever created. I only found out after finishing the Cyberiad that it was indeed translated - I found it hard to believe, given the richness and originality of the language.
"MAC," an acronym for "Media Access Controller," . . . or Multiply-Accumulate, where I come from.
How about the One Laptop Per Child project? Surely getting a couple of million kids learning a dynamic, reflective, truly object-oriented language like Smalltalk (Squeak) has to count for something, although the reinvention may be a couple of years from now . . . Learning Logo as a kid certainly broadened my experience of computing.
I think this could be made to work if genetically defective mutants are identified and killed by some kind of maintenance immune system (the way cancerous cells are killed in most healthy animals). Of course, it's debatable how long the immune system could carry on the task until some unidentifiable/pathological mutations occur (in the immune system itself, too). Most humans don't seem to be able to last much beyond about 90 years and stay cancer free.
One thing I "know" for certain is that I am conscious. I say "know", but I believe it as an act of faith. Why I'm conscious is a mystery: I have no idea why what I feel and experience should be apparently localised to one body in one tiny corner of the universe for a brief moment in time. I don't know why I feel what "I" feel, and not what some other human being does. But I do... Is the "soul" a explanation of this hidden link? As as matter of faith, I also believe that other humans are conscious, and my experiences tend to back up that assertion. Whether animals are similarly conscious is not directly open to my experiences. They appear to act similarly to humans, have similar biological origins and so I believe one could make a case that they should be treated with similar respect. As a Christian, I believe that part of mankind's commission is to care for the world and not cause it undue harm. Arguing with the Bible as a basis, it appears that only humans are given the knowledge of "good" and "evil", which may or may not be the same as having non-physical souls. I don't think it is possible to argue (biblically, anyway) that animals have souls. Although I am open to debate... As someone who has examined AI algorithms extensively, I have absolutely no reasons to believe that mankind's computing creations should have souls or be conscious in even a fraction of the way I am. I therefore feel free to treat them in pretty much any way that I find useful, although I would prefer to avoid treating them in vastly nonproductive ways.
While I know they perform many, many computer simulations, I think aerodynamics is still regarded as one of the "black arts" in the field. Wind tunnels are still used extensively (it's often about who can build the better wind tunnel, never mind car). Maybe complete solutions of fluid movement will mean some odd-looking cars in 2007!
Alan Kay's demo of Squeak and Croquet on Google Video gives an idea of what is possible: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-905553676 3288165825&q=alan+kay
When I was about 8, we started learning Logo (which has pretty deep roots in Lisp). Logo has some solid theory behind it regarding education - Jean Piaget was the major protagonist. We learned on the good old BBC Model B, here in South Africa. We also had turtles and robots and all kinds of cool stuff (speech synthesizers, etc). The BBC's had colour graphics and multichannel sound long before PC's did. Logo is still not a bad choice - since it encourages some really neat and elegant solutions to problems. Alan Kay (search on Google videos for some of his thoughts regarding education) created the Squeak language to help teach kids thinking in general (not just programming). "Doing with images makes symbols" Squeak (which is a direct descendant of Smalltalk) would make a much better choice as a "pure" object-oriented language, rather than some of the other imperative-algorithmic languages being mentioned here. My personal favourite is Prolog, which is actually quite simple to teach to kids at first (although it becomes a bit more challenging when getting into recursive predicates, cuts, etc). Squeak is now morphing into a full 3D collaborative environment called OpenCroquet. All code is interactive, and the environment is written and executed dynamically in Squeak. Alan Kay is a great guy. His ideas deserve a lot more recognition (or at least *implementation*) than they get . . .