I would like to take this opportunity to point out another type of test that has been largely ignored in favor of the direct arena competition between humans and machines which is the common meaning of the words "Turing Test".
Another way to compare machine and human intelligence is in the design of complex, patentable systems.
In his 1950 paper ''Computing Machinery and Intelligence,'' Turing 84 described how evolution and natural selection might be used to automatically create an intelligent computer program.
We cannot expect to find a good child-machine at the first attempt. One must experiment with teaching one such machine and see how well it learns. One can then try another and see if it is better or worse.
...
What do we mean when we say that an automatically created solution to a problem is competitive with a human-produced result? We think it is fair to say that an automatically created result is competitive with one produced by human engineers, designers, mathematicians, or programmers if it satisfies any one or more of the following eight (first two only shown here) or any other similarly stringent criteria:
A. The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention.
B. The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a new scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
This brings up two interesting points to think about: patents aren't always evil and there are other, more practical tests for machine intelligence that Turing proposed which are not widely known.
The article mentions that Star Bridge has a custom programming language and OS, which is sure to slow adoption to a crawl. Assuming, of course, this thing isn't vaporware to begin with.
Another point the article makes is that it has been traditionally very difficult to build general purpose FPGA based machines. This got me thinking, anyone else remember a slashdot article from a couple of years ago where a fellow used genetic programming to produce an FPGA instruction set that could differentiate between two sounds? A simple example, perhaps, but maybe genetic programming could be used to build an instruction set that emulates (and greatly enhances the performance of) the x86, or the PPC, (etc...) instruction sets.
Anyone else remember a/. story from a couple of years ago where a teacher found a bunch of old 386 machines and installed a copy of Win3.1 on them for use by underprivledged children? IIRC, the machines themselves originally had a Windows license. MS tried to rape this guy and demand license fees for all the copies of the ~10 year old software.
It sounds to me like they are just codifying their past behavior into lawyereese in their EULA.
There are times when you get suckered in By drugs and alchohol and sex with women-mmkay But its when you do these things too much That you've become an addict and must get back in touch You can do it Its all up to you-mmkay With a little plan you can change your life today You dont have to spend your life addicted to smack Homeless on the streets giving handjobs for crack Follow my plan and very soon you will say, its easy mmkay Step 1: Instead of ass say buns, like "kiss my buns" or "you're a buns hole" Step 2: Instead of shit say poo, as in "bull poo", "poo head" and this "poo is cold" Step 3: With bitch drop the t cuz bich is latin for generosity Step 4: Dont say fuck any more cuz fuck is the worst word that you can say So just use the word mmkay! Children: We can do it its all up to us-mmkay (mmkay) With a little plan we can change our lives today Mr, Mackey: you can change it today Everyone: We don't have to spend our lives shootin up in the trash Homeless on the streets giving handjobs for cash Follow this plan and very soon you will say Its easy mmkay! Mr. Mackey: Step 1 Children: Instead of ass say buns, like kiss my buns or you're a buns hole Mr. Mackey: Step 2 Children: Instead of shit say poo, as in bull poo, poo head and this poo is cold Mr. Mackey: Step 3 Children: With bitch drop the t cuz bich is latin for generosity Mr. Mackey: Step 4 Children: Dont say fuck any more Everyone: Cuz fuck is the worst word that you can say Children: Fuck is the worst word that you can say We shouldn't say fuck, no we shouldn't say fuck, fuck nooooo!!! Mr. Mackey: Your cured, you can go! Everyone: We don't have to spend our lives shootin up in the trash Homeless on the streets giving handjobs for cash Follow this plan and very soon you will saaay Its easy mmkay! Children: It's easy mmkay! Mr. Mackey: It's easy mmkay! Children: It's easy mmkay! Mr. Mackey: It's easy mmkaaaaaaaayy Children: It's easy mm It's easy mm It's easy mm It's easy mmkaaaay
Your c++ page certainly shows a certain maturity about you. Bjarne was right on with his response to your email.
I have to agree with this. It seriously must be a troll, but whatever I can't let that stand.
It is unbelievable how rude some people are. I read this guy MillionthMonkey (240664)'s fscking page thinking I might get a well-reasoned report on why, exactly, C++ sucks, possibly similar to the XML sucks article/. posted a few days ago by Tim Bray. Instead what I get is the rantings of a kid barely (if at all) out of college who is complaining more about problems with his school than with the actual limitations of the C++ language. I would have even been willing to put up with "feature X in Java is a great replacement for feature Y in C++ because [insert plausable reasoning here].
It is simply un-fricking-believable that this goddamned script-kiddie can have such disregard for nearly 20 years of computer science, and a language that is virtually ubiquitous. Hey Monkey, if you can't learn C++ (I learned it on my own no teacher required, it's not all THAT hard) I suggest you give up the profession for something a little less stressful. Shoveling shit is nice and doesn't make you do that really hard thing... you know, using that brain.
XML needed to have the ability to embed things like Visual Basic and JavaScript in it to be really useful. I think that this is a horrible idea.
I agree that it doesn't *always* need an embedded programming language to be useful, but I for one have used the approach in two separate projects. The first one uses XML as a wrapper for modules in my architecture. This is in lieu of a particular language interface because my project supports code in any language. In this case, embedded code is ideal because classes, methods and fields are substituted for XML, providing a common ground. The document is transformed into pure language code and compiled if necessary to produce a runtime module.
The other project combines 3d geometry and the code to manipulate it inside an XML document. It is analogous to Javascript affecting an HTML doc.
Like others have mentioned in this thread, don't look at everything in black & white. This approach is appropriate in my situation, but not necessarily on your average website.
Although, for those interested, Cocoon is a great framework for building websites out of XML+Java code.
Right, and you keep the Schema private so no one else can translate your product's documents into another product. I get the point.
I'm not quite sure if this is a troll, but I'll bite.
No, that is not the point. My example was dicatated from the point of view of the document author, and so I insinuated that the entity that created the XML format is also always creating stylesheets. This does NOT need to be true, and violates the spirit of document exchange.
My vision is that websites publish XML in their own format and give you access to the schema while they give you the rights to use their content. Then, if you want to subsidize someone elses content, you simply use their schema and transform to your own format using XSLT.
I'll tell you exactly why from practical experience. Two years ago, I helped Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) create their very large and frequently updated website. The team consisted of the bottom-rung consultants at AC (they weren't doing client work, so they must've been really new or just sucked), a team hired from Microsoft themselves, and my company (at the time) Seven Interactive.
They decided that they MUST use a standardized generic format that had already been developed. You would not believe the incredibly horrible hacks that we had to perform in order to build this site. Here's some example code:
<p type="1">This stuff ends up in a specific container on the website.</p>
<p type="2">This stuff ends up in some other specific container on the website.</p>
<p type="3">This creates an HTML table element that can be used anywhere.</p>
Instead of creating new element types that matched up with their needs, they simply extended the "p" element by placing the burden of formatting in an attribute value!
As you can imagine, writing pages for this beast was painful because you were always looking up the meanings of these "types" in an external document.
If instead they had simply decided to create new elements, a much more elegant (and eaiser to code) document is produced:
<header-block>This stuff ends up in a specific container on the website.</header-block>
<body-block>This stuff ends up in some other specific container on the website.</body-block>
<table><tr><td>This creates an HTML table element that can be used anywhere.</td></tr></table>
I don't see how average office worker could ever do anything with XSL(T)
An average office worker should NEVER have to deal with XSLT, and probably shouldn't even be messing with XML outside a visual editor that conforms to your DTD, ala programs like XML spy.
The point is, if you have to translate to another format, you hire a developer to do it once, and the XSLT stylesheet that he/she develops can be reused again and again to transform documents. Maybe make a drag & drop script to do the transformation, or possibly a web based back end solution. You don't have to write a separate XSLT stylesheet for every single document, just once to support a required combination of input and output formats.
hopefully the rest of the world will produce an XML standard document format
This is just so wrong. It smacks of a writer who doesn't really understand the utility of XML. There doesn't need to be "The One True Document Format"... that's not what XML is all about.
Instead, create an XML format that is specific to your needs and write a DTD or XML-Schema that describes it. If you need to translate it to someone elses' XML document format, a quick XSLT stylesheet will transform the document with a minimum of effort.
Yes, Singleton is overused. My example of a logging system is one of the few times I have found it to be appropriate: you need logging from everywhere and it sucks even worse to instantiate an object when you need to write to a log.
I use it as an example frequently, because it is the most simple pattern and the one everyone seems to understand the best.
Personally, my favorites are the visitor and interpreter patterns.
There is only one book that preaches a methodology that I have found useful (and I have read several), and it is more of a programmers cookbook than a strict methodology. Design Patterns from Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. It gives you exactly what you need as a programmer: the ability to communicate volumes of information about your system to me with a few key words. For example, if you tell me that your logging system is a Singleton object, I immediately understand its' place in your system and how to use it.
Yes, the black-box method does work. Sometimes. There are two major factors involved:
* The size of the sample set, and the completeness of its' representation of the problem
and
* It generally will not work where the numbers are uniformly distributed, such as in a random drawing lottery.
However, if the above two conditions are fulfilled, there are several approaches one can use in an attempt to discover the "contents" of the black-box. My personal favorite is genetic programming where a program is evolved which can potentially solve a black-box problem.
Salesman: Quiet please. It's not adjusted yet. (he makes more adjustments)
Second Zambesi: Oh, I am enjoying this rickshaw ride. I've been a Tory all my life, my life, my life. Good morning Mr Presley. How well you look, you look very well... our cruising speed is 610 miles per hour... well well well porridge... well well well, well, hello hello dear... hello dear!
Salesman: Right, one, two, three... (the salesman adjusts a switch)
Second Zambesi:... eight, seven, (he adjusts another switch) four.
First Zambesi: Oh, she never knew that before.
Salesman: Quiet please. Mrs Zambesi, who wrote the theory of relativity?
First Zambesi: I know! I know.
Salesman: Quiet, please! (he adjusts a tuning control)
Second Zambesi: Einstane... Einstone... Einsteen... Einston... Einstin... Einsten... Einstein.
I think part of the reason Python is so popular is that it is extremely easy to embed it in a C language application. It really changes your view of coding an application: organize everything into low-level highly optimized C code and high-level Python code. Your C language application becomes a toolbox of functionality available from Python. This approach makes your application totally scriptable by default. I usually take this architecture one step further and create an even higher level, eaiser to use interface purely in Python.
Let's see here - you aren't enough man for your wife and your brother married another guy.
I wouldn't spread that around too far if I was you.
What utter BS. You show even less tolerance than that guy thomas.galvin. The fact that we watch porn together has nothing to do with how much of a man I am. Let's just say I am above average in that department and leave it at that. What it is about, however, is exploring sexuality and discovering what excites each other. It is a two way street you know, you would not believe the pleasure we have *both* received, and I sincerely hope you never will.
Also, leave my baby brother out of it or I'll have to come over there and kick your ass Jay and Silent Bob style.
Obviously you aren't me and you don't even have the guts to post under your real name. You define the term "Anonymous Coward".
I object to being objected to about my poor grammer while objecting:P
Technically, you are right, it should have read "brothers'" showing possession, but I read somewhere recently that it is just as acceptable to use no apostrophy at all, as long as you are consistent.
I wasn't just name-calling, I got the strong sense that thomas.galvin is scared to death of his own sexuality. Supression of ones' own sexuality (for whatever reason) leads to other outlets such as anger and sometimes the type of self-righteousness thomas is displaying. I suppose you are at least partially right, though. I need to learn to be tolerant of by his views, however uptight-god-fearing-christian they may be:P
This is incredibly rude. How *dare* you? Who the fuck are you to decide the parameters of this "contract"? Your "emotional contract of marriage" is whatever the two people involved decide it is. Where is the moral imperative? You're the type of biggot that would object to my brothers wedding to another man.
Slashdot Mirror
Another way to compare machine and human intelligence is in the design of complex, patentable systems.
from: http://www.genetic-programming.com/gpemcontrol.pd
This brings up two interesting points to think about: patents aren't always evil and there are other, more practical tests for machine intelligence that Turing proposed which are not widely known.
The article mentions that Star Bridge has a custom programming language and OS, which is sure to slow adoption to a crawl. Assuming, of course, this thing isn't vaporware to begin with.
Another point the article makes is that it has been traditionally very difficult to build general purpose FPGA based machines. This got me thinking, anyone else remember a slashdot article from a couple of years ago where a fellow used genetic programming to produce an FPGA instruction set that could differentiate between two sounds? A simple example, perhaps, but maybe genetic programming could be used to build an instruction set that emulates (and greatly enhances the performance of) the x86, or the PPC, (etc...) instruction sets.
Anyone else remember a /. story from a couple of years ago where a teacher found a bunch of old 386 machines and installed a copy of Win3.1 on them for use by underprivledged children? IIRC, the machines themselves originally had a Windows license. MS tried to rape this guy and demand license fees for all the copies of the ~10 year old software.
It sounds to me like they are just codifying their past behavior into lawyereese in their EULA.
There are times when you get suckered in
By drugs and alchohol and sex with women-mmkay
But its when you do these things too much
That you've become an addict and must get back in touch
You can do it Its all up to you-mmkay
With a little plan you can change your life today
You dont have to spend your life addicted to smack
Homeless on the streets giving handjobs for crack
Follow my plan and very soon you will say, its easy mmkay
Step 1: Instead of ass say buns, like "kiss my buns" or "you're a buns
hole"
Step 2: Instead of shit say poo, as in "bull poo", "poo head" and this
"poo is cold"
Step 3: With bitch drop the t cuz bich is latin for generosity
Step 4: Dont say fuck any more cuz fuck is the worst word that you
can say
So just use the word mmkay!
Children: We can do it its all up to us-mmkay (mmkay)
With a little plan we can change our lives today
Mr, Mackey: you can change it today
Everyone: We don't have to spend our lives shootin up in the trash
Homeless on the streets giving handjobs for cash
Follow this plan and very soon you will say
Its easy mmkay!
Mr. Mackey: Step 1
Children: Instead of ass say buns, like kiss my buns or you're a buns hole
Mr. Mackey: Step 2
Children: Instead of shit say poo, as in bull poo, poo head and this poo is
cold
Mr. Mackey: Step 3
Children: With bitch drop the t cuz bich is latin for generosity
Mr. Mackey: Step 4
Children: Dont say fuck any more
Everyone: Cuz fuck is the worst word that you can say
Children: Fuck is the worst word that you can say
We shouldn't say fuck, no we shouldn't say fuck, fuck nooooo!!!
Mr. Mackey: Your cured, you can go!
Everyone: We don't have to spend our lives shootin up in the trash
Homeless on the streets giving handjobs for cash
Follow this plan and very soon you will saaay
Its easy mmkay!
Children: It's easy mmkay!
Mr. Mackey: It's easy mmkay!
Children: It's easy mmkay!
Mr. Mackey: It's easy mmkaaaaaaaayy
Children: It's easy mm
It's easy mm
It's easy mm
It's easy mmkaaaay
Is Cowboy Neil named after Cowboy Bebop? I always suspected he might be.
:)
Now, if we can just figure out what kind of crack Malda was smoking when he came up with "CmdrTaco"
Well then, my apologies to you.
:)
sed 's/MillionthMonkey/andraskonya@hotmail.com/g' $last_slashpost > $next_slashdotpost
It is unbelievable how rude some people are. I read this guy MillionthMonkey (240664)'s fscking page thinking I might get a well-reasoned report on why, exactly, C++ sucks, possibly similar to the XML sucks article
It is simply un-fricking-believable that this goddamned script-kiddie can have such disregard for nearly 20 years of computer science, and a language that is virtually ubiquitous. Hey Monkey, if you can't learn C++ (I learned it on my own no teacher required, it's not all THAT hard) I suggest you give up the profession for something a little less stressful. Shoveling shit is nice and doesn't make you do that really hard thing... you know, using that brain.
I cry for the future of my profession
The other project combines 3d geometry and the code to manipulate it inside an XML document. It is analogous to Javascript affecting an HTML doc.
Like others have mentioned in this thread, don't look at everything in black & white. This approach is appropriate in my situation, but not necessarily on your average website.
Although, for those interested, Cocoon is a great framework for building websites out of XML+Java code.
Yeah those dates are confusing:
:p
* Windows '95
* Windows '98
* Windows 2000
I always forget when these operating systems were released
No, that is not the point. My example was dicatated from the point of view of the document author, and so I insinuated that the entity that created the XML format is also always creating stylesheets. This does NOT need to be true, and violates the spirit of document exchange.
My vision is that websites publish XML in their own format and give you access to the schema while they give you the rights to use their content. Then, if you want to subsidize someone elses content, you simply use their schema and transform to your own format using XSLT.
They decided that they MUST use a standardized generic format that had already been developed. You would not believe the incredibly horrible hacks that we had to perform in order to build this site. Here's some example code:
<p type="1">This stuff ends up in a specific container on the website.</p>
<p type="2">This stuff ends up in some other specific container on the website.</p>
<p type="3">This creates an HTML table element that can be used anywhere.</p>
Instead of creating new element types that matched up with their needs, they simply extended the "p" element by placing the burden of formatting in an attribute value!
As you can imagine, writing pages for this beast was painful because you were always looking up the meanings of these "types" in an external document.
If instead they had simply decided to create new elements, a much more elegant (and eaiser to code) document is produced:
<header-block>This stuff ends up in a specific container on the website.</header-block>
<body-block>This stuff ends up in some other specific container on the website.</body-block>
<table><tr><td>This creates an HTML table element that can be used anywhere.</td></tr></table>
Grok?
The point is, if you have to translate to another format, you hire a developer to do it once, and the XSLT stylesheet that he/she develops can be reused again and again to transform documents. Maybe make a drag & drop script to do the transformation, or possibly a web based back end solution. You don't have to write a separate XSLT stylesheet for every single document, just once to support a required combination of input and output formats.
Instead, create an XML format that is specific to your needs and write a DTD or XML-Schema that describes it. If you need to translate it to someone elses' XML document format, a quick XSLT stylesheet will transform the document with a minimum of effort.
Just my 2 cents.
Yes, Singleton is overused. My example of a logging system is one of the few times I have found it to be appropriate: you need logging from everywhere and it sucks even worse to instantiate an object when you need to write to a log.
I use it as an example frequently, because it is the most simple pattern and the one everyone seems to understand the best.
Personally, my favorites are the visitor and interpreter patterns.
There is only one book that preaches a methodology that I have found useful (and I have read several), and it is more of a programmers cookbook than a strict methodology. Design Patterns from Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. It gives you exactly what you need as a programmer: the ability to communicate volumes of information about your system to me with a few key words. For example, if you tell me that your logging system is a Singleton object, I immediately understand its' place in your system and how to use it.
American Science and Surplus on Milwaukee Avenue. Be prepared to waste large amounts of time there.
Still looking for the equivalent here in San Francisco...
* The size of the sample set, and the completeness of its' representation of the problem
and
* It generally will not work where the numbers are uniformly distributed, such as in a random drawing lottery.
However, if the above two conditions are fulfilled, there are several approaches one can use in an attempt to discover the "contents" of the black-box. My personal favorite is genetic programming where a program is evolved which can potentially solve a black-box problem.
Second Zambesi: Mince pie for me, please.
... our cruising speed is 610 miles per hour ... well well well porridge ... well well well, well, hello hello dear ... hello dear!
... (the salesman adjusts a switch)
... eight, seven, (he adjusts another switch) four.
... Einstone ... Einsteen ... Einston ... Einstin ... Einsten ... Einstein.
First Zambesi: What did she say that for?
Salesman: Quiet please. It's not adjusted yet. (he makes more adjustments)
Second Zambesi: Oh, I am enjoying this rickshaw ride. I've been a Tory all my life, my life, my life. Good morning Mr Presley. How well you look, you look very well
Salesman: Right, one, two, three
Second Zambesi:
First Zambesi: Oh, she never knew that before.
Salesman: Quiet please. Mrs Zambesi, who wrote the theory of relativity?
First Zambesi: I know! I know.
Salesman: Quiet, please! (he adjusts a tuning control)
Second Zambesi: Einstane
Salesman: Good.
Second Zambesi: Noël Einstein.
Salesman: Right. That'll be 13/6d please.
I think part of the reason Python is so popular is that it is extremely easy to embed it in a C language application. It really changes your view of coding an application: organize everything into low-level highly optimized C code and high-level Python code. Your C language application becomes a toolbox of functionality available from Python. This approach makes your application totally scriptable by default. I usually take this architecture one step further and create an even higher level, eaiser to use interface purely in Python.
What utter BS. You show even less tolerance than that guy thomas.galvin. The fact that we watch porn together has nothing to do with how much of a man I am. Let's just say I am above average in that department and leave it at that. What it is about, however, is exploring sexuality and discovering what excites each other. It is a two way street you know, you would not believe the pleasure we have *both* received, and I sincerely hope you never will.
Also, leave my baby brother out of it or I'll have to come over there and kick your ass Jay and Silent Bob style.
Obviously you aren't me and you don't even have the guts to post under your real name. You define the term "Anonymous Coward".
I object to being objected to about my poor grammer while objecting :P
Technically, you are right, it should have read "brothers'" showing possession, but I read somewhere recently that it is just as acceptable to use no apostrophy at all, as long as you are consistent.
That last part was actually a joke about my own intolerance, which I should have made clearer. I totally understood your point.
;)
Whacked-out heathen, huh? That's a good one. Sounds like a good title for my memoirs
I wasn't just name-calling, I got the strong sense that thomas.galvin is scared to death of his own sexuality. Supression of ones' own sexuality (for whatever reason) leads to other outlets such as anger and sometimes the type of self-righteousness thomas is displaying. I suppose you are at least partially right, though. I need to learn to be tolerant of by his views, however uptight-god-fearing-christian they may be :P
This is incredibly rude. How *dare* you? Who the fuck are you to decide the parameters of this "contract"? Your "emotional contract of marriage" is whatever the two people involved decide it is. Where is the moral imperative? You're the type of biggot that would object to my brothers wedding to another man.
Damn, sorry that was a weird typo and should have read "exploitative".
Sorry 'bout that.