A few years ago, I read an article in Discovery magazine, about how there are actually 2 different genes controling the sensitivity of the eye to the color red. If you got one set of genes, your red receptors in your eye are most sensitive to wavelength X, but if you got the other set of genes, your red receptors are most sensitive to a wavelength of light a little bit shorter than X. So what one person sees as blood red, another sees as a sort of orange-red.
Pre-cisely! I have written a simple BASIC chatterbot which assimilates sentences into a "linked list database" (it takes each word in a sentence and adds a 'next word' and 'previous word' link to the database). It generates output by choosing a random word from the last sentence to be assimilated, then assembling a sentence by randomly choosing allowed links as it traverses the list. It generates on-topic and intelligible answers >50% of the time, this is approximately 49% more often than the average human. I am working on reducing this percentage to make it sound more like a person. This program has the capability to learn and make eerily intelligent sentences, yet it is not intelligent. Kinda makes you wonder, huh? Can we be sure most humans are really thinking, and not just faking it?? Maybe that's why measurements of brain usage are only showing up 10%. A real person needs 100% of their brain, but the people measured were only emulating sentience, and thus only required 256Kb. For those of you who have seen Star Wars Episode I, I think Obi Wan put it best when he replied to Jar Jar Binks, "The ability to speak does not imply intelligence." BTW, I am pretty sure I can easily turn the program into a haiku generator, the main problem is the inconsistency between the written word and the actual number of spoken syllables.
I code in assembly, and comment nearly every line. It really helps me root out bugs, but I should think that a documentation program (I had never heard of them until now) would cause more trouble than it is worth, for these reasons: 1) If you view the comments without the code, what assurance have you got that the code actually does what the comment says it does? Even if the programmer keeps the documentation up to date, there is always the chance of typos in the code. 2) If the comments can appear in a different order than the actual operation of the program, might that not cause confusion as to the actual control flow of the code?
Of course we will find life forms that live independent of planets, and perhaps in that cloud. I cite as my proof the following facts: Jules Verne wrote a science fiction story about going to the moon. We went there. Some one (dunno who) wrote a science fiction story about black holes. We found them. Some of the classic Star Trek episodes featured life forms that live independent of a planet, and we will find those, too, because history shows that anything written about in science fiction will be invented/done/discovered.
Slashdot Mirror
A few years ago, I read an article in Discovery magazine, about how there are actually 2 different genes controling the sensitivity of the eye to the color red. If you got one set of genes, your red receptors in your eye are most sensitive to wavelength X, but if you got the other set of genes, your red receptors are most sensitive to a wavelength of light a little bit shorter than X. So what one person sees as blood red, another sees as a sort of orange-red.
It is done by choosing "Exit" from the file menu.
Pre-cisely! I have written a simple BASIC chatterbot which assimilates sentences into a "linked list database" (it takes each word in a sentence and adds a 'next word' and 'previous word' link to the database). It generates output by choosing a random word from the last sentence to be assimilated, then assembling a sentence by randomly choosing allowed links as it traverses the list. It generates on-topic and intelligible answers >50% of the time, this is approximately 49% more often than the average human. I am working on reducing this percentage to make it sound more like a person. This program has the capability to learn and make eerily intelligent sentences, yet it is not intelligent. Kinda makes you wonder, huh? Can we be sure most humans are really thinking, and not just faking it?? Maybe that's why measurements of brain usage are only showing up 10%. A real person needs 100% of their brain, but the people measured were only emulating sentience, and thus only required 256Kb. For those of you who have seen Star Wars Episode I, I think Obi Wan put it best when he replied to Jar Jar Binks, "The ability to speak does not imply intelligence." BTW, I am pretty sure I can easily turn the program into a haiku generator, the main problem is the inconsistency between the written word and the actual number of spoken syllables.
I code in assembly, and comment nearly every line. It really helps me root out bugs, but I should think that a documentation program (I had never heard of them until now) would cause more trouble than it is worth, for these reasons: 1) If you view the comments without the code, what assurance have you got that the code actually does what the comment says it does? Even if the programmer keeps the documentation up to date, there is always the chance of typos in the code. 2) If the comments can appear in a different order than the actual operation of the program, might that not cause confusion as to the actual control flow of the code?
Of course we will find life forms that live independent of planets, and perhaps in that cloud. I cite as my proof the following facts: Jules Verne wrote a science fiction story about going to the moon. We went there. Some one (dunno who) wrote a science fiction story about black holes. We found them. Some of the classic Star Trek episodes featured life forms that live independent of a planet, and we will find those, too, because history shows that anything written about in science fiction will be invented/done/discovered.