While we're talking about the British Library, it's worth mentioning that they've just redone their catalogue search facility, and it is now excellent (and it works in FireFox). You can search their entire copyright library for free here:
As someone with formal training in both philosophy and computer science, I am interested in the possibility of a principled basis for artificial intelligence.
Which philosophers do you agree with most regarding the nature of human existence, or human consciousness? Particularly, do you think that either classical or recent phenomenology has any useful insights?
I've just followed these instructions. Cutting a long story short, if you enable NTSEC and priviledge separation (and if not, why not?) then you'll need to take one more step to get the daemon working.
Just do:
chown 18:18/var/empty
chmod 755/var/empty
A UK chef called Heston Blumenthal has been similarly engaged on the quest to find the science behind cooking.
Recently voted "Chef's Chef of the Year", Blumenthal is proprieter of the Fat Duck restaurant and writes a regular cooking column in the Saturday edition of the Guardian newspaper.
In these articles he takes tenets of cooking law ("The water in which green vegetables are cooked *must* be salted", "High-temperature sealing of meat keeps in the juices") and either justifies them or blows them apart. He tests, tastes, tests, tastes, and consults food scientists until he understands more of the principles behind the cooking. (Both of those tenets, in case you're interested, turn out to be completely false.)
Without wanting to sound trite, this is the norm after three years of studying something. But more than this - it's a virtual no-brainer if you loved the subject before you went to study. If you've ever read Russell's (that's Willy, not Betrand) Educating Rita, you may remember the bit where she says (something like) "The moment you study something, you kill it". Loving a subject is IMHO the worst reason to study it. I loved philosophy and it took three of the worst, most tedious years of my life to convince me that studying it was not what I should be doing. As an aside, I used to love coding when I was a kid, and now I'm gainfully employed as head coder (lots of experience but no degree-level qualification).
Furthermore, the last sixth of the course is the worst stage, when everyone - no matter what subject or ability - eventually feels this way. It was the same for everybody I knew at post-16 education (that's A-levels to us Brits), and the same for everybody at post-18.
Just buckle down, and look to the end of the course. You've come this far and it's nearly over. Don't stumble at the last hurdle - get those projects in on time and do the best you can do. Think about jobs later. There's always philosophy...
Slashdot Mirror
While we're talking about the British Library, it's worth mentioning that they've just redone their catalogue search facility, and it is now excellent (and it works in FireFox). You can search their entire copyright library for free here:
http://catalogue.bl.uk/
You can even use the site to order offprints of articles, book chapters, etc. from their Document Supply Centre. Very, very handy.
Dr. Wallace,
As someone with formal training in both philosophy and computer science, I am interested in the possibility of a principled basis for artificial intelligence.
Which philosophers do you agree with most regarding the nature of human existence, or human consciousness? Particularly, do you think that either classical or recent phenomenology has any useful insights?
I've just followed these instructions. Cutting a long story short, if you enable NTSEC and priviledge separation (and if not, why not?) then you'll need to take one more step to get the daemon working.
/var/empty /var/empty
Just do:
chown 18:18
chmod 755
Kudos to Christopher Snyder. Check out his posting to the mailing list for more info.
A UK chef called Heston Blumenthal has been similarly engaged on the quest to find the science behind cooking.
Recently voted "Chef's Chef of the Year", Blumenthal is proprieter of the Fat Duck restaurant and writes a regular cooking column in the Saturday edition of the Guardian newspaper.
In these articles he takes tenets of cooking law ("The water in which green vegetables are cooked *must* be salted", "High-temperature sealing of meat keeps in the juices") and either justifies them or blows them apart. He tests, tastes, tests, tastes, and consults food scientists until he understands more of the principles behind the cooking. (Both of those tenets, in case you're interested, turn out to be completely false.)
He has also enthused about cooking meat at very low-temperatures - I can recommend without reservation that you try it yourselves and see.
Read his Guardian articles here, and there are some others on his site.
Highest bidders for each Segway HT as of 2002_02_19__17_30 GMT:
[1] $13,000 - gghsellmore - feedback rating zero
[2] $13,100 - tpenziner - feedback rating zero
and my favourite:
[3] $11,437 - 0xdeadbeef - feedback rating (guess what) zero
Think Amazon might be in for a surprise when these things finally get sold?
Personally, I'd bid a million if only I could get part exchange for my old Sinclair C5...
Without wanting to sound trite, this is the norm after three years of studying something. But more than this - it's a virtual no-brainer if you loved the subject before you went to study. If you've ever read Russell's (that's Willy, not Betrand) Educating Rita, you may remember the bit where she says (something like) "The moment you study something, you kill it". Loving a subject is IMHO the worst reason to study it. I loved philosophy and it took three of the worst, most tedious years of my life to convince me that studying it was not what I should be doing. As an aside, I used to love coding when I was a kid, and now I'm gainfully employed as head coder (lots of experience but no degree-level qualification).
Furthermore, the last sixth of the course is the worst stage, when everyone - no matter what subject or ability - eventually feels this way. It was the same for everybody I knew at post-16 education (that's A-levels to us Brits), and the same for everybody at post-18.
Just buckle down, and look to the end of the course. You've come this far and it's nearly over. Don't stumble at the last hurdle - get those projects in on time and do the best you can do. Think about jobs later. There's always philosophy...