AI is much less in the mainstream spotlights than it was thirty years ago but is still progressing. Maybe you could even say it is progressing much better away from the hype. I've helped work on and used AI's that were real enough to be a little scary. Virtual pets are fairly common these days and human-level intelligence/emotions are almost within reach so possibly a psychological test is appropiate. I think building strong psuedo-emotion systems into AI's is obviously an important and oft forgotten part of creating realistic systems that act like living creatures. Luckily Eliza is far from the bleeding edge these days.:)
First off there is a major difference between a trademark of a unique name and a generic term. Things like Windex and Klenex are obviously pretty unique while things like Windows and Illustrator are pretty generic. If they had been named Windex Cleaner or Kleenex Tissues and someone made a product called KCleaner or KTissue would they be stealing their name? What next, going to let Microsoft sue over the XWindow name? Or maybe Microsoft and Microprose should have sued each other over daring to steal the term 'micro' from each other just because they both wrote software for micro computers.
Also FreeMWare changed their name to Plex86 some time ago and the VMWare code was 'borrowed' in part from previous code written by those leading the Plex86 project so they'd be quite stretching things to try to challenge over the name simularities.
Damn and all this time I've been having my girlfriend pose for the porn. Maybe I can make an avatar skin for her of herself nude. Would make the male users of the system happy eh? I wonder how you could make the system work for connections with other systems. What would be the equiv of a remote shell for thisd system?:)
The next logical step I think would be to take that Doom engine and this Zork configurator and mix them into some distros installation program. Make it so you can select your key maps, hardware, packages, etc all by running around and flipping switches and such. It might not be the most practical way to install but it might be enough to make some gamers try it out and prove that Linux isn't just for servers before the user even gets the OS installed.:)
Hell I'd like to see a graphical multi-user shell enviroment on Linux. Not to replace the cli or gui but to go along with it and make it more fun for users and help them learn how different parts of the OS interact. They'd need to be able to do everything the shell usually allows as well as interact/chat with other users. They'd start in their home directories and be able to browse the filesystem from that point (seeing anything that was visible to them from the normal shell) and be able to teleport to different directories directly. They'd need to be able to create a new file or directory as well as delete them all in real time. They'd have to be able to run commands, edit files, etc. I'd have a little CLI part under the MUD-UI where they could type/edit commands they were selecting from the MUD-UI as well as chat with fellow users. I'd make it so any program could be written with the ability to interact within the MUD-UI in the same way programs can interact with X to create windows, menus, etc as appropiate for the enviroment. You could really do a lot with it if you don't get silly and think most people will want to replace their CLI/GUI methods with the MUD-UI and treat it as an addon. Start with something simple and well known like the Doom engine (the nicely cleaned up version) and first try to do everything Bash does for a user and then extend from there.:)
So you're saying that any student that links to a library not also owned by their school is violating the law because the school in all their assholishness forces them to cough up their right for their schools use (as if students werne't price gouged enough)?
I for one would just release my programs as GPL works and post them online before turning them in. I'm not sure if this would qualify as dual-licensed or not but once the code is spread they can't get it back. They can blame you all they want but they can't take it away from the public.
Tools like apt, Red Carpet, and the Apache Toolbox are doing a good job of handling this problem for me. I constantly run the newest versions of applications without any extra legwork.
Since the majority of Linux software comes in packages we'll never enter the DLL Hell in the way Windows has because you can always see where each file comes from and how they relate just by bothering to do some legwork.
Upgrading is no big hassle for the most part. Use something like one of the above mentioned tools to stay updated or if you must resort to a program that is none-standard try something like wget (or in many cases just plain old ftp) to suck all the needed files in.
Maybe but I disagree. For me at least I had a much better grasp of programming because I was forced not to visualize problems in a single language. I taught myself to use flowcharts and psuedocode first and then could code into several languages. These are important steps skipped over by teaching with a single language. Intro classes should concentrate on theory and steps of breaking a problem into logic flow and not on programming.:)
Programming languages that try to make programming to easy tend to be slow to use and a lot more work in the long run than just learning to program well. Programming in human-language is painful. You'll find the human language very unspecific. You often won't get what you meant. It's at least as bad as using visual programming techniques.
Highschool and/or intro to programming classes should start with the basics of how a computer works, some theory, and into to a couple different languages. I'd suggest short stints in C, PHP/SQL/HTML, and Python to start. Then after the intro classes you can take a more in-depth approach and add things like C++, Java, and Asm.
I'd agree I spend a good deal on Slashdot and similar sites and use Google quite a bit. I do a decent amount of online shopping and auctions so I hit Amazon, Ebay, etc every few days. A lot of the things I get online for are technical resources so I spend a lot of time looking at PHP, Python, SQL, Linux, etc sites. I've seldom been to Napster's website but I do use it often to download songs along with a couple similar programs. I use some webmail, when I don't want my real email addresses shared (to cut back on spam) so I suppose once a week or so I hit a couple of those sites. I use Jabber and ICQ and old fashioned shit like MUDs for chatting online. I like to browse small sites about movies, music, games, anime, people dogs, etc when I get the chance but I like to avoid most big sites that have generic information everyone has and to many ad banners. Mmmm then there is always shit like online porn. I don't bother with web sites and such. I wrote some spdier programs that just suck the stuff off the web and usenet and then I can just sort and view it locally without ad banners, popup windows, spam, etc.
I wouldn't say I was trolling.. just posting an odd idea to see if anyone had anything interesting to say on the subject. Other than the poke at my bad spellin the posts have indeed been informative. I doubt I'd need a semi sized vehicle but I will agree I'd probably need something a lot bigger than my vague idea.:)
My actual tinker project for this summer is an electric motorcycle that can be recycled in the field by a retractable solar panel. Someone from the solar car team mentioned people who've built models that worked well and that sounds awesome to me. Hehe I can handle solar panels much easier than radioactive materials.:)
Any alternative powered vehicle is interesting to me though.:)
I've been toying with the idea of making a nucleur powered car as a tinkering project. I'm fairly sure I know how to do most of the design and production but I'd be interested in any suggestions Dave might have on obtaining the needed nucleur material and not killing myself handling it.:)
What a creative and well funded Linux dist would do is follow AOL. They are annoying and horrible about adding plastic discs to landfills but hopefully the superiour Linux folks could do much more targeted mailings as well as some sort of sticker on the cd that would encourage people to pass it to a friend if they didn't want it rather than trash it. What AOL does is very effective. We need to package a Linux dist to be as simple as an AOL disc (or more so), not to bother their Windows installation, and to give them everything the desktop user wants in a cute little free package that magiclly arrives in the mail. Our culture likes free stuff (woah big surprise) and in general will be curious to see what the disc has on it as long as your clearly specify it isn't an AOL disc. Another cute thing AOL did was those mini discs at Blockbuster a couple years ago that people could pickup for free. That might work and be better for the enviroment.
I'd say he is probably right for developments within the next five years but after that I think writers like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling predict better. Snow Crash, Distraction, and The Diamond Age are our future over the next fifty years or so. Anything after that is so different from what we know now as to defy explanation. Everything will change.
I'd like to see it so each time I buy a Mandrake product I get a certain amount of stock with it. I can't afford to spend $1000 on stocks but I would be willing to buy boxed sets, manuals, tshrits, etc which I usually wouldn't if I got the stock too. This would essentially make it a customer owned company. Along with giving stock to employees and opensource developers I think this would create a net of interest in the company that would not be likely to sell off on a whim as the average investor might.
Exactly. I was never limited on what I could do or see and feel that is why I am well rounded. I remember seeing porn from about the time I was two. As a teen I watched lots of those weird R rated 80's movies that these days would be at least rated NR. I grew up in an area where 13yo girls gave blow jobs on the street for $2 to buy drugs. At about the age of 14 I had online access to unlimited porno. Despite all of that, or maybe because of it, I didn't bother having any serious relationships or having sex until I was in my twenties. All teenagers will, and should, experiment sexually some but proper exposure and discussion on the topics give teens the ability to make smart decisions for themselves. Teach your child, give them your morals, and then trust them.
A fairly easy solution would be to have every site scanned by one crawler and verified by another (possibly in browser mode so it looks just like a browser to the web server) so that the search engine would assume any page that was different between the two was dynamic and therefore shouldn't be cached.
Hrm idea.. why couldn't you hook up a spider that searched the Net in this distributed way and added all files to FreeNet along w/ some sort of search system. Wasn't there something about an SQL engine for FreeNet posted the other day? That sounds interesting.
I've used Netscape under every WM you can imagine and have done a lot of tests on it. Pretty much if you have a lot of memory you'll seldom crash but if you have very little memory you'll crash and often pull down everything unless you have set limits to how much RAM Netscape can hog.
Netscape has major problems with certain plugin's, Java, and especially forms. If you open up a memory monitoring tool of some kind and use nothing but Netscape you can watch it's memory usage climb endlessly. I think it's network layer also has memory leaks because sometimes when you try to open a page it zooms way off the charts.
I guess I like keeping my gaming off my computers for the most part as I usually have something better to waste my spare cycles on. However I did finally get around to buying Heroes of Might & Magic III for Linux and have been quite pleased by how well it runs. I've been playing several days without any kind of a crash. It's as reliable as playing on a console it seems. Because of this I'll probably be spending a lot more money on Linux/PC games. Can't wait for some of the new stuff like Black & White to get ported over.:)
I have a handy library that can convert XML documents to HTML, text, Postscript, and PDF including inline PHP and data processing. Currently is implemented in PHP and I'm trying to port it to Python too. Is currently functional and I'm working on a newer version that is easier to extend.:)
Did you see that Junkyard Wars (TLC show where people build groovy gadgets from spare parts and compete the gadgets against each other) where they built the gas-effecient vehicles? Now that was impressive.
I've been looking at the Honda Insights because they get around 70mpg which I think is impressive but yeh 3000mpg just blows that away! To bad I'm to big to sit on a model plane.:)
At a recent LUG meeting we had a guy from our Universities solar car team give a talk and he mentioned that some people have built motorcycles that are entirely solar powered. To me that would be the best. I'm seriously considering trying to build one for myself. Has anyone experience in such things? My biggest question is the legality of driving such a thing on the highway. It'd be awesome to take roadtrips and never have to buy gas though.:)
Oh please! The dot com crunch was because stupid suits started companies with no business model and lots of funding and lots of idiots rushing in to buy the companies over inflated stock. It had almost nothing to do with the geek employees.
I work extremely hard. Much harder than most employees. Monitoring systems, hacking together code, etc. Usually on a wage much less than I deserve. A lil time to relax here and there is required to keep me from stressing out and burning out.
This is the same reason I tend to not give a damn if I come in a lil late or take long lunches. When I am at work I am being battered from all sides to keep things running smoothly and don't need the extra stress of following a strict schedule. My brain is usually working through problems no matter where I am so I am working even when I'm not actually at work. Doing something else helps relax me and makes it easier to grasp complex problems.
So how does someone being in a foreign country give our spooks the right to invade their privacy? So suppose some Russian spooks think I'm doing something that breaks their laws.. maybe not even our laws.. just theirs.. and so decide to hack into my machines and spy on me or destroy my files.. is that supposed to be okay?
I for one think our country should keep it's police in our country and think that other countries should do the same. If that other country doesn't give our country permission that is even more of a reason not to do it. It sounds like these FBI agents are nothing more than criminals.
Isn't the CIA supposed to handle international stuff? Or in this case possibly the NSA?
If you have growing traffic and you don't actually offer merchandise or any other business plan of your own then you should try looking for sponsors. This offers a way for companies that can actually profit in good old-fashioned ways to have a pleasing advertising channel. I beleive this is probably why VA Linux bought Slashdot and similar geek sites at least in part.
You don't need to actually be bought or display ad banners to make this work. Simply find a company profiting off a similar theme as your site that won't actually conflict with what you offer and ask them to sponsor you and offer to put 'Sponsored by...' buttons here and there in obvious but non-obtrusive spots on your site linking back to your sponsors site.
If you can't find a sponsor consider making one for yourself. For instance I am a web developer so to help sponsor my non-commercial sites I have links from those sites to my business homepage. Some of these sites were created just for that purpose.
I have thousands of MD5 sums stored from web pages and various files linked to web pages along w/ many of the original files. I've been sucking such info off the net and using MD5 sums to verify unique these files for a couple years at least. Never even considered the lame ass idea of patenting such a thing. Damn maybe I should patent all my shell scripts.:)
Slashdot Mirror
AI is much less in the mainstream spotlights than it was thirty years ago but is still progressing. Maybe you could even say it is progressing much better away from the hype. I've helped work on and used AI's that were real enough to be a little scary. Virtual pets are fairly common these days and human-level intelligence/emotions are almost within reach so possibly a psychological test is appropiate. I think building strong psuedo-emotion systems into AI's is obviously an important and oft forgotten part of creating realistic systems that act like living creatures. Luckily Eliza is far from the bleeding edge these days. :)
First off there is a major difference between a trademark of a unique name and a generic term. Things like Windex and Klenex are obviously pretty unique while things like Windows and Illustrator are pretty generic. If they had been named Windex Cleaner or Kleenex Tissues and someone made a product called KCleaner or KTissue would they be stealing their name? What next, going to let Microsoft sue over the XWindow name? Or maybe Microsoft and Microprose should have sued each other over daring to steal the term 'micro' from each other just because they both wrote software for micro computers.
Also FreeMWare changed their name to Plex86 some time ago and the VMWare code was 'borrowed' in part from previous code written by those leading the Plex86 project so they'd be quite stretching things to try to challenge over the name simularities.
Damn and all this time I've been having my girlfriend pose for the porn. Maybe I can make an avatar skin for her of herself nude. Would make the male users of the system happy eh? I wonder how you could make the system work for connections with other systems. What would be the equiv of a remote shell for thisd system? :)
The next logical step I think would be to take that Doom engine and this Zork configurator and mix them into some distros installation program. Make it so you can select your key maps, hardware, packages, etc all by running around and flipping switches and such. It might not be the most practical way to install but it might be enough to make some gamers try it out and prove that Linux isn't just for servers before the user even gets the OS installed. :)
:)
Hell I'd like to see a graphical multi-user shell enviroment on Linux. Not to replace the cli or gui but to go along with it and make it more fun for users and help them learn how different parts of the OS interact. They'd need to be able to do everything the shell usually allows as well as interact/chat with other users. They'd start in their home directories and be able to browse the filesystem from that point (seeing anything that was visible to them from the normal shell) and be able to teleport to different directories directly. They'd need to be able to create a new file or directory as well as delete them all in real time. They'd have to be able to run commands, edit files, etc. I'd have a little CLI part under the MUD-UI where they could type/edit commands they were selecting from the MUD-UI as well as chat with fellow users. I'd make it so any program could be written with the ability to interact within the MUD-UI in the same way programs can interact with X to create windows, menus, etc as appropiate for the enviroment. You could really do a lot with it if you don't get silly and think most people will want to replace their CLI/GUI methods with the MUD-UI and treat it as an addon. Start with something simple and well known like the Doom engine (the nicely cleaned up version) and first try to do everything Bash does for a user and then extend from there.
So you're saying that any student that links to a library not also owned by their school is violating the law because the school in all their assholishness forces them to cough up their right for their schools use (as if students werne't price gouged enough)?
I for one would just release my programs as GPL works and post them online before turning them in. I'm not sure if this would qualify as dual-licensed or not but once the code is spread they can't get it back. They can blame you all they want but they can't take it away from the public.
Tools like apt, Red Carpet, and the Apache Toolbox are doing a good job of handling this problem for me. I constantly run the newest versions of applications without any extra legwork.
Since the majority of Linux software comes in packages we'll never enter the DLL Hell in the way Windows has because you can always see where each file comes from and how they relate just by bothering to do some legwork.
Upgrading is no big hassle for the most part. Use something like one of the above mentioned tools to stay updated or if you must resort to a program that is none-standard try something like wget (or in many cases just plain old ftp) to suck all the needed files in.
Maybe but I disagree. For me at least I had a much better grasp of programming because I was forced not to visualize problems in a single language. I taught myself to use flowcharts and psuedocode first and then could code into several languages. These are important steps skipped over by teaching with a single language. Intro classes should concentrate on theory and steps of breaking a problem into logic flow and not on programming. :)
Programming languages that try to make programming to easy tend to be slow to use and a lot more work in the long run than just learning to program well. Programming in human-language is painful. You'll find the human language very unspecific. You often won't get what you meant. It's at least as bad as using visual programming techniques.
Highschool and/or intro to programming classes should start with the basics of how a computer works, some theory, and into to a couple different languages. I'd suggest short stints in C, PHP/SQL/HTML, and Python to start. Then after the intro classes you can take a more in-depth approach and add things like C++, Java, and Asm.
I'd agree I spend a good deal on Slashdot and similar sites and use Google quite a bit. I do a decent amount of online shopping and auctions so I hit Amazon, Ebay, etc every few days. A lot of the things I get online for are technical resources so I spend a lot of time looking at PHP, Python, SQL, Linux, etc sites. I've seldom been to Napster's website but I do use it often to download songs along with a couple similar programs. I use some webmail, when I don't want my real email addresses shared (to cut back on spam) so I suppose once a week or so I hit a couple of those sites. I use Jabber and ICQ and old fashioned shit like MUDs for chatting online. I like to browse small sites about movies, music, games, anime, people dogs, etc when I get the chance but I like to avoid most big sites that have generic information everyone has and to many ad banners. Mmmm then there is always shit like online porn. I don't bother with web sites and such. I wrote some spdier programs that just suck the stuff off the web and usenet and then I can just sort and view it locally without ad banners, popup windows, spam, etc.
I wouldn't say I was trolling.. just posting an odd idea to see if anyone had anything interesting to say on the subject. Other than the poke at my bad spellin the posts have indeed been informative. I doubt I'd need a semi sized vehicle but I will agree I'd probably need something a lot bigger than my vague idea. :)
:)
:)
My actual tinker project for this summer is an electric motorcycle that can be recycled in the field by a retractable solar panel. Someone from the solar car team mentioned people who've built models that worked well and that sounds awesome to me. Hehe I can handle solar panels much easier than radioactive materials.
Any alternative powered vehicle is interesting to me though.
I've been toying with the idea of making a nucleur powered car as a tinkering project. I'm fairly sure I know how to do most of the design and production but I'd be interested in any suggestions Dave might have on obtaining the needed nucleur material and not killing myself handling it. :)
What a creative and well funded Linux dist would do is follow AOL. They are annoying and horrible about adding plastic discs to landfills but hopefully the superiour Linux folks could do much more targeted mailings as well as some sort of sticker on the cd that would encourage people to pass it to a friend if they didn't want it rather than trash it. What AOL does is very effective. We need to package a Linux dist to be as simple as an AOL disc (or more so), not to bother their Windows installation, and to give them everything the desktop user wants in a cute little free package that magiclly arrives in the mail. Our culture likes free stuff (woah big surprise) and in general will be curious to see what the disc has on it as long as your clearly specify it isn't an AOL disc. Another cute thing AOL did was those mini discs at Blockbuster a couple years ago that people could pickup for free. That might work and be better for the enviroment.
I'd say he is probably right for developments within the next five years but after that I think writers like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling predict better. Snow Crash, Distraction, and The Diamond Age are our future over the next fifty years or so. Anything after that is so different from what we know now as to defy explanation. Everything will change.
I'd like to see it so each time I buy a Mandrake product I get a certain amount of stock with it. I can't afford to spend $1000 on stocks but I would be willing to buy boxed sets, manuals, tshrits, etc which I usually wouldn't if I got the stock too. This would essentially make it a customer owned company. Along with giving stock to employees and opensource developers I think this would create a net of interest in the company that would not be likely to sell off on a whim as the average investor might.
Exactly. I was never limited on what I could do or see and feel that is why I am well rounded. I remember seeing porn from about the time I was two. As a teen I watched lots of those weird R rated 80's movies that these days would be at least rated NR. I grew up in an area where 13yo girls gave blow jobs on the street for $2 to buy drugs. At about the age of 14 I had online access to unlimited porno. Despite all of that, or maybe because of it, I didn't bother having any serious relationships or having sex until I was in my twenties. All teenagers will, and should, experiment sexually some but proper exposure and discussion on the topics give teens the ability to make smart decisions for themselves. Teach your child, give them your morals, and then trust them.
A fairly easy solution would be to have every site scanned by one crawler and verified by another (possibly in browser mode so it looks just like a browser to the web server) so that the search engine would assume any page that was different between the two was dynamic and therefore shouldn't be cached.
Hrm idea.. why couldn't you hook up a spider that searched the Net in this distributed way and added all files to FreeNet along w/ some sort of search system. Wasn't there something about an SQL engine for FreeNet posted the other day? That sounds interesting.
I've used Netscape under every WM you can imagine and have done a lot of tests on it. Pretty much if you have a lot of memory you'll seldom crash but if you have very little memory you'll crash and often pull down everything unless you have set limits to how much RAM Netscape can hog.
Netscape has major problems with certain plugin's, Java, and especially forms. If you open up a memory monitoring tool of some kind and use nothing but Netscape you can watch it's memory usage climb endlessly. I think it's network layer also has memory leaks because sometimes when you try to open a page it zooms way off the charts.
I guess I like keeping my gaming off my computers for the most part as I usually have something better to waste my spare cycles on. However I did finally get around to buying Heroes of Might & Magic III for Linux and have been quite pleased by how well it runs. I've been playing several days without any kind of a crash. It's as reliable as playing on a console it seems. Because of this I'll probably be spending a lot more money on Linux/PC games. Can't wait for some of the new stuff like Black & White to get ported over. :)
I have a handy library that can convert XML documents to HTML, text, Postscript, and PDF including inline PHP and data processing. Currently is implemented in PHP and I'm trying to port it to Python too. Is currently functional and I'm working on a newer version that is easier to extend. :)
Did you see that Junkyard Wars (TLC show where people build groovy gadgets from spare parts and compete the gadgets against each other) where they built the gas-effecient vehicles? Now that was impressive.
:)
:)
I've been looking at the Honda Insights because they get around 70mpg which I think is impressive but yeh 3000mpg just blows that away! To bad I'm to big to sit on a model plane.
At a recent LUG meeting we had a guy from our Universities solar car team give a talk and he mentioned that some people have built motorcycles that are entirely solar powered. To me that would be the best. I'm seriously considering trying to build one for myself. Has anyone experience in such things? My biggest question is the legality of driving such a thing on the highway. It'd be awesome to take roadtrips and never have to buy gas though.
Oh please! The dot com crunch was because stupid suits started companies with no business model and lots of funding and lots of idiots rushing in to buy the companies over inflated stock. It had almost nothing to do with the geek employees.
I work extremely hard. Much harder than most employees. Monitoring systems, hacking together code, etc. Usually on a wage much less than I deserve. A lil time to relax here and there is required to keep me from stressing out and burning out.
This is the same reason I tend to not give a damn if I come in a lil late or take long lunches. When I am at work I am being battered from all sides to keep things running smoothly and don't need the extra stress of following a strict schedule. My brain is usually working through problems no matter where I am so I am working even when I'm not actually at work. Doing something else helps relax me and makes it easier to grasp complex problems.
So how does someone being in a foreign country give our spooks the right to invade their privacy? So suppose some Russian spooks think I'm doing something that breaks their laws.. maybe not even our laws.. just theirs.. and so decide to hack into my machines and spy on me or destroy my files.. is that supposed to be okay?
I for one think our country should keep it's police in our country and think that other countries should do the same. If that other country doesn't give our country permission that is even more of a reason not to do it. It sounds like these FBI agents are nothing more than criminals.
Isn't the CIA supposed to handle international stuff? Or in this case possibly the NSA?
If you have growing traffic and you don't actually offer merchandise or any other business plan of your own then you should try looking for sponsors. This offers a way for companies that can actually profit in good old-fashioned ways to have a pleasing advertising channel. I beleive this is probably why VA Linux bought Slashdot and similar geek sites at least in part.
...' buttons here and there in obvious but non-obtrusive spots on your site linking back to your sponsors site.
You don't need to actually be bought or display ad banners to make this work. Simply find a company profiting off a similar theme as your site that won't actually conflict with what you offer and ask them to sponsor you and offer to put 'Sponsored by
If you can't find a sponsor consider making one for yourself. For instance I am a web developer so to help sponsor my non-commercial sites I have links from those sites to my business homepage. Some of these sites were created just for that purpose.
I have thousands of MD5 sums stored from web pages and various files linked to web pages along w/ many of the original files. I've been sucking such info off the net and using MD5 sums to verify unique these files for a couple years at least. Never even considered the lame ass idea of patenting such a thing. Damn maybe I should patent all my shell scripts. :)