11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
This one's relevant - the two horns are obviously the Windows OS and IE.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
And that's the Windows media player.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Mod this one up... it's exactly what I think. The fact is, we _never_ had the choice, because microsoft have been doing this since 1980 and MSDOS. There WAS no alternative to MSDOS or Win3.1, if you wanted to run general commercial or game software.
The reason microsoft can do this now, is that they have done it for most of our lifetimes. It's just become better-known now. The restrictive (& illegal) abuse of monopoly power started with MSDOS.
US Family Groups have claimed that the murder was incited by violence depicted in cave paintings and oral legends, and are thus lobbying for the ban of all cave paintings depicting hunting or other violence. A suit is also being prepared against the whittlers of the bow and arrow.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
I think the Democrats are trying (a little) to get higher representation, higher voting rates and lower barriers to entry.
They would if they know what's good for them. I heard that only 10% of the african-american population voted, and 90% of them voted for the democrats. Similar numbers for hispanic-americans. If the proportions of minorities (very, very BIG minorities) such as these actually voted, the republicans would be destroyed as a political party.
Of course, there might be problems with all those new voters deciding that they want a decent social security system, or decent laws covering party campaign contributions.
We have compulsory voting in Australia (as others have pointed out), and our most rabid right-wingers don't get close to some of the policies even the democrats suggest in the US. Part of that is that our country is naturally socialist, but part of it is that everyone has to vote - no excuses.
Heck, if the government has the right to send you to war, or to take money out of your wallet, surely asking me to get to a polling booth once a year and write a few numbers on a piece of paper isn't really that onerous a duty. And it stops people bitching about how the pigs' ear the govt. is making of the country isn't their responsibility.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
I don't honestly think this will happen, but something to think about...
I agree - this is something that needs to be thought about. I'm confident in Australia's electoral methods (as a whole) because issues like this form the core of our electoral system.
In Australia, all elections are run by the Australian Electoral Commission - a completely apolitical, independent body. I believe (though IANAP, I'm not sure about this) that party representatives are at every count, and have the right to query any vote as it goes through. And I reckon that no-one with active membership of a political party would be allowed to work in the Australian Electoral Commission.
As far as I know, America has no independent apolitical body responsible for the standard running of elections - hence the ludicrous situation where affirmed members of political parties (let alone the BROTHER of one of the candidates) have a say in how and why votes count.
So while this situation is possible, I would hope that this is one area where Australia can't screw things up. (Now digital copyright law, that's a whole different kettle of prawns)
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
It is 2100AD.
> begin war
War is beginning.
> look
You are captain of great base. You hear an explosion.
> ask operator, "what happen?"
Operator say, "Someone set up us the bomb"
Operator say, "We get signal!"
> say, "What!"
The Operator looks at you.
> inventory
You have:
5 zigs (you are wearing)
main screen
> turn on main screen
Operator say, "main screen turn on."
You see Cats.
Cats says "How are you Gentlemen!"
Cats says "All your base are belong to us."
Cats says "You are on the path to destruction."
> ask Cats, "What you say?"
Cats says "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Cats says "ha ha ha ha ha"
Cats leaves.
> make time
You still have no chance to survive
> examine zig
The zigs know what they are doing.
> move every zig.
You are still wearing the zig.
> Take off every zig
The zigs take off for great justice.
> Quit.
You have got 263 points.
This is the 100000000th lamest reuse of the "All your bases" gag.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
Well, I'd happily spend time arguing all the problems with Searle's work, but as you've said in other replies, you're not saying you agree with him. Anyway, it's offtopic (just briefly, for those who are interested, _Searle_ is the one trying to prove a negative. He claims, through the chinese room argument, that he has proven that AI is impossible. His argument is circular and logically invalid.)
However, I do agree with you that the intelligence that Katz is worried about hasn't happened. I have two reasons why none of us need to worry about this:
a) To program a robot to think like a human, we need to understand how a human thinks. Even in the cases in AI where you can get a robot to do things you don't entirely understand, you at least have to understand the problem domain, and the problem constraints. And we aren't even close to that, when it comes to the human mind. Nor will we get to it any time soon. An MRI scan, to any level of detail, will not tell us that - that would be like monitoring the voltages inside a pentium, and being able to deduce that it was being used to play Quake. To quote Morpheus, "You can be better than them... because they work in a world that relies on rules."
b) Even if you could create a robot of this intelligence, you would have to be dumb enough to give it control over your life without any constraints. Not that there aren't people dumb enough to do that around.
That all being said, if there was an election between Red Robot and Dubya for ruler of humanity, I know who I'd vote for (at least, provided they don't screw up the vote cards...)
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
I figure you could get one of these, plug in some sort of storage (say, a laptop hard drive) and a wireless LAN, and bam! Very small robot brain. This might be powerful enough to do some of the stuff (like vision processing) that results in people sticking a laptop on the back of their robot. Furthermore, I figure putting everything on one chip will result in the system working better when that other robot's trying to beat the crap out of it.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
It was based on a true story, albeit a fairly mundane one - American High School raises money, competes in Australian Solar Car Race, blah blah blah.
I haven't seen the film, but the thing that gives me the shits is that instead of using the ACTUAL finish of the Australian Solar Car race - my home city of Adelaide - they used Sydney. And I'm guessing that you could see the Opera House in every single shot. They also filmed the scenes at the start of the race in Alice Springs, instead of Darwin.
But then, the X-files is supposed to be in the US, and they shoot it in Vancouver, so who am I to complain?
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom and above all things, Karma
Using other peoples computers and bandwidth (reguardless of how little they will be affected by it) for your own personal gain is just plain evil.
Personal gain? You mean distributed.net PAYS you for your computer time? Gee... all this uni bandwidth I'm not using, and I could be making money... Last time I checked, distributed.net didn't pay for processor time - so it was more of a charitable act than for personal gain.
Does anyone have any idea whether this guy is being sued or charged? Because I can't see how he can be threatened with prison, unless he's charged with a criminal act. I can't see the criminal act here - he's used a lot of their resources, but he hasn't profited from it in any way, so it's not fraud. He presumably was given internet access as part of his job, so it's not theft. He's wasted a fair bit of the school's money, but unless you're a company director, I don't think that's considered a crime.
And the 59 cents a second claim is utter, utter CRAP. I didn't think distributed.net was particularly bandwidth hungry - it just downloads keys. It's CPU hungry - which is why I took it off my computer (CPU hungry -> lousy FPS).
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
They did have awfully good foresight... just a pity that they didn't have the foresight to realize how useless a 'well-armed millitia' would be in a couple of centuries.
But apart from that, they did a pretty good job.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
I certainly hope it'd cause an international backlash (though in the whole 'drugs are bad' mentality, it might not).. that Clear and Present Danger Stuff sounds like an invasion of a foreign country to me. That's an action of war. This would be inexcusable for anyone else but the US, 'cos well the US do whatever the hell they want.
The US are probably hoping they'll be some sort of invasion or internal conflict in Colombia, so they've got the excuse to go there with the UN and get imperialist on some colombian ass. (I do support the UN's work as a global police, but I've noticed that the US seem to jump quickest when it's their interests being compromised - compare the US response to Kuwait compared to, say, East Timor).
There is one possible little problem for the Disney and WB...
As far as I know, the extension is up to 95 years. The bad news is that 95 years, under the law, is not equivalent to indefinite. The way culture is today, we'd all consider this pretty much indefinite, but it isn't in a legal sense.
The good news ? According to the law, 99 years IS an indefinite time. An 'indefinite' lease or purchase is set, as a general rule, at 99 years. If the copyright on mickey is set to 99 years or greater, I think there is a much greater chance this will be interpreted by a court as an 'indefinite' copyright, and therefore unconstitutional (IANAL). This remains to be seen, though.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
Remeber that Quantum mechanics is pretty much twice the age of computing, give or take.
I did 2 years of quantum mechanics, and I don't know much about it. But I do know a bit about computers, and since we're being pedantic here..
The first 'computer' design is subject to debate. Popular view is that it was Babbage's difference engine, designed in 1822. The first calculator (not including the abacus) was Schickard's Calculating Clock, built in 1623. (look at http://www.best.com/~wilson/faq/chrono.html)
The first example of a programmable device was the loom devised by Ada Lovelace - again late 1800s (correct me if I'm wrong).
The theory of computers was developed in 1937 by Alan Matheson Turing. This would be the best date to put the birth of the theory of computers, as opposed to quantum theory, 7 years earlier.
The first computer, Colossus, was developed at Bletchley Park in December 1943 by a team including Turing.
The first commercial computer (and widely believed to be the first computer until the British Govt. revealed the existence of Colossus) was ENIAC. This was built in Nov 1945.
So there.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom and above all things, Karma
This discussion has two major points: a) Can it be done? b) Should it be done?
The answer to a) is yes in pretty much every case like this, I thought..NET has to work through specified protocols, and Linux can pretty much ape any protocol it wants. Bits are copyable, protocols are copyable. But then, other ppl have already made this point.
I personally don't think that people should be worried about point b). As far as I know, no-one's complained about SAMBA encouraging people to use windows. I thought that the reason we were all defending open source and software libre was not dogmatic, but out of the solid belief it produces better software. By aping.NET, Linux removes the dependence on windows, and allows people to choose the better OS - which, for a large and growing number of people, is Linux. And all of Microsoft's power resides in their OS - if microsoft's OS monopoly is removed,.NET won't be half as important as it used to be.
It also has to be remembered that.NET's success as part of the windows platform is not assured. Heck, personally I can't see why anyone's pushing the Network Computing concept at all. Hard Drives are faster, cheaper, and much more secure, than bandwidth. Unless this changes (and it WON'T), Network Computing will not get many takers, let alone the amount of business that Microsoft suggests. To worry about 'legitimizing'.NET is to fall for the Microsoft rhetoric that presents the adoption of.NET by world+dog as a fait accompli.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
A while later, he got the idea that he could create HAL with the same deficient software that ran GAC, just by telling users to answer questions as they thought the computer HAL would answer. Most people saw that this made no sense whatsoever. The massive funding Chris was expecting for HAL never appeared, and he wrote a bitter news item about it.
Gee wow. He had trouble getting funding for this? "Give me your money, and I'll spend it on making an AI that kills people rather than be switched off!" He should have run that one by the marketing people first.
This is even WORSE than Eliza - Eliza could at least reply with something other than a True/False response. And the Turing test - which is generally considered insufficient for a test of machine intelligence - requires natural human responses. I can see the point of getting internet users to contribute to a knowledge base, but this psychological test thing is just a grab for publicity - which I just realize I have contributed to by posting on this topic.
The whole thing is a troll.
--
This post is about Truth, Beauty, Freedom and above all things, Karma.
Getting a robot to follow a light was done in the 60s with analog components, I thought.
So THAT's why Minsky reckons all the people working all robots are wasting their time (there was a slashback a while ago on this). He's scared of a legion of ping-pong-bat wielding robots. God that story's funny.
This is a pedantic little point, but I thought this story was set in Canada. Therefore, all the discussion of american law is not really relevant - Canadian law is the only important thing.
That being said, take this hypothetical example:
Anyone reading this post enters into a contract allowing me to come over their house, take all their stuff, and date their sister if I so wish.
Not enforceable ANYWHERE.
Just 'cos people stick stuff in a contract, and you enter into that contract, doesn't mean it's appliable. IANAL, but in Australia, no contract, even the ones with 'This party waives all right to legal action', does not stop certain forms of legal action - such as negligence. Also, in consumer law, there are certain 'implied warranties' for any consumer product - fitness for purpose, etc. There may be a similar thing in Canadian law - no matter what the contract says, if what they give you doesn't fulfil its purpose (according to reasonable expectations), you can sue them.
--
This post is about Truth, Freedom, Beauty and above all things Karma.
Plus, I bet qualified people don't just offer to do documentation and tech support, just like there's a severe shortage of voluntary documenters in Linux.
In my work experience at a local engineering firm, I found out rather quickly that the documentation was the work experience kid's job.
They did get me to do some programming though. And they gave me credit for doing what we all knew was a pretty onerous job.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, love and above all things, Karma
Slashdot Mirror
I love the warning label on the G&R 'Use Your Illusion Album:'
Warning: this album contains language that some people may find offensive. They can f**k off and go buy something in the new age section.
The truth will out, always.
11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
This one's relevant - the two horns are obviously the Windows OS and IE.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
And that's the Windows media player.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Mod this one up... it's exactly what I think. The fact is, we _never_ had the choice, because microsoft have been doing this since 1980 and MSDOS. There WAS no alternative to MSDOS or Win3.1, if you wanted to run general commercial or game software.
The reason microsoft can do this now, is that they have done it for most of our lifetimes. It's just become better-known now. The restrictive (& illegal) abuse of monopoly power started with MSDOS.
US Family Groups have claimed that the murder was incited by violence depicted in cave paintings and oral legends, and are thus lobbying for the ban of all cave paintings depicting hunting or other violence. A suit is also being prepared against the whittlers of the bow and arrow.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
I think the Democrats are trying (a little) to get higher representation, higher voting rates and lower barriers to entry.
They would if they know what's good for them. I heard that only 10% of the african-american population voted, and 90% of them voted for the democrats. Similar numbers for hispanic-americans. If the proportions of minorities (very, very BIG minorities) such as these actually voted, the republicans would be destroyed as a political party.
Of course, there might be problems with all those new voters deciding that they want a decent social security system, or decent laws covering party campaign contributions.
We have compulsory voting in Australia (as others have pointed out), and our most rabid right-wingers don't get close to some of the policies even the democrats suggest in the US. Part of that is that our country is naturally socialist, but part of it is that everyone has to vote - no excuses.
Heck, if the government has the right to send you to war, or to take money out of your wallet, surely asking me to get to a polling booth once a year and write a few numbers on a piece of paper isn't really that onerous a duty. And it stops people bitching about how the pigs' ear the govt. is making of the country isn't their responsibility.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
I don't honestly think this will happen, but something to think about...
I agree - this is something that needs to be thought about. I'm confident in Australia's electoral methods (as a whole) because issues like this form the core of our electoral system.
In Australia, all elections are run by the Australian Electoral Commission - a completely apolitical, independent body. I believe (though IANAP, I'm not sure about this) that party representatives are at every count, and have the right to query any vote as it goes through. And I reckon that no-one with active membership of a political party would be allowed to work in the Australian Electoral Commission.
As far as I know, America has no independent apolitical body responsible for the standard running of elections - hence the ludicrous situation where affirmed members of political parties (let alone the BROTHER of one of the candidates) have a say in how and why votes count.
So while this situation is possible, I would hope that this is one area where Australia can't screw things up. (Now digital copyright law, that's a whole different kettle of prawns)
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
It is 2100AD.
> begin war
War is beginning.
> look
You are captain of great base. You hear an explosion.
> ask operator, "what happen?"
Operator say, "Someone set up us the bomb"
Operator say, "We get signal!"
> say, "What!"
The Operator looks at you.
> inventory
You have:
5 zigs (you are wearing)
main screen
> turn on main screen
Operator say, "main screen turn on."
You see Cats.
Cats says "How are you Gentlemen!"
Cats says "All your base are belong to us."
Cats says "You are on the path to destruction."
> ask Cats, "What you say?"
Cats says "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Cats says "ha ha ha ha ha"
Cats leaves.
> make time
You still have no chance to survive
> examine zig
The zigs know what they are doing.
> move every zig.
You are still wearing the zig.
> Take off every zig
The zigs take off for great justice.
> Quit.
You have got 263 points.
This is the 100000000th lamest reuse of the "All your bases" gag.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
Yes, but does anyone own the Jujanta[sic] Peril-Sensitive sunglasses that came with the Hitch-Hiker's game?
My dad still has the little 'Don't Panic' button in his office - and I think I've got that microscopic space fleet around here somewhere....
"gulp"
damn.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
Playing games makes them smellier, though.
Have you BEEN to a 250-person LAN? 250 games, one can of deodorant - it's a nightmare.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
Gee wow, Slashdot Story "People are arseholes".
And here I was thinking that "RMS talks about benefits of free software" was as glib as a Slashdot story could get.
I'm waiting with baited breath for "Ask SLashdot: Where do Babies come from?"
For my opinion on the debate, read the quote below.
--"Shared joy is increased; shared pain is lessened. Thus we refute entropy." - Callahan's Place.
Well, I'd happily spend time arguing all the problems with Searle's work, but as you've said in other replies, you're not saying you agree with him. Anyway, it's offtopic (just briefly, for those who are interested, _Searle_ is the one trying to prove a negative. He claims, through the chinese room argument, that he has proven that AI is impossible. His argument is circular and logically invalid.)
However, I do agree with you that the intelligence that Katz is worried about hasn't happened. I have two reasons why none of us need to worry about this:
a) To program a robot to think like a human, we need to understand how a human thinks. Even in the cases in AI where you can get a robot to do things you don't entirely understand, you at least have to understand the problem domain, and the problem constraints. And we aren't even close to that, when it comes to the human mind. Nor will we get to it any time soon. An MRI scan, to any level of detail, will not tell us that - that would be like monitoring the voltages inside a pentium, and being able to deduce that it was being used to play Quake. To quote Morpheus, "You can be better than them... because they work in a world that relies on rules."
b) Even if you could create a robot of this intelligence, you would have to be dumb enough to give it control over your life without any constraints. Not that there aren't people dumb enough to do that around.
That all being said, if there was an election between Red Robot and Dubya for ruler of humanity, I know who I'd vote for (at least, provided they don't screw up the vote cards...)
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
I don't know exactly where I would use one.
How about a robot?
I figure you could get one of these, plug in some sort of storage (say, a laptop hard drive) and a wireless LAN, and bam! Very small robot brain. This might be powerful enough to do some of the stuff (like vision processing) that results in people sticking a laptop on the back of their robot. Furthermore, I figure putting everything on one chip will result in the system working better when that other robot's trying to beat the crap out of it.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
It was based on a true story, albeit a fairly mundane one - American High School raises money, competes in Australian Solar Car Race, blah blah blah.
I haven't seen the film, but the thing that gives me the shits is that instead of using the ACTUAL finish of the Australian Solar Car race - my home city of Adelaide - they used Sydney. And I'm guessing that you could see the Opera House in every single shot. They also filmed the scenes at the start of the race in Alice Springs, instead of Darwin.
But then, the X-files is supposed to be in the US, and they shoot it in Vancouver, so who am I to complain?
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom and above all things, Karma
Using other peoples computers and bandwidth (reguardless of how little they will be affected by it) for your own personal gain is just plain evil.
Personal gain? You mean distributed.net PAYS you for your computer time? Gee... all this uni bandwidth I'm not using, and I could be making money... Last time I checked, distributed.net didn't pay for processor time - so it was more of a charitable act than for personal gain.
Does anyone have any idea whether this guy is being sued or charged? Because I can't see how he can be threatened with prison, unless he's charged with a criminal act. I can't see the criminal act here - he's used a lot of their resources, but he hasn't profited from it in any way, so it's not fraud. He presumably was given internet access as part of his job, so it's not theft. He's wasted a fair bit of the school's money, but unless you're a company director, I don't think that's considered a crime.
And the 59 cents a second claim is utter, utter CRAP. I didn't think distributed.net was particularly bandwidth hungry - it just downloads keys. It's CPU hungry - which is why I took it off my computer (CPU hungry -> lousy FPS).
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
They did have awfully good foresight ... just a pity that they didn't have the foresight to realize how useless a 'well-armed millitia' would be in a couple of centuries.
But apart from that, they did a pretty good job.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
I certainly hope it'd cause an international backlash (though in the whole 'drugs are bad' mentality, it might not).. that Clear and Present Danger Stuff sounds like an invasion of a foreign country to me. That's an action of war. This would be inexcusable for anyone else but the US, 'cos well the US do whatever the hell they want.
The US are probably hoping they'll be some sort of invasion or internal conflict in Colombia, so they've got the excuse to go there with the UN and get imperialist on some colombian ass. (I do support the UN's work as a global police, but I've noticed that the US seem to jump quickest when it's their interests being compromised - compare the US response to Kuwait compared to, say, East Timor).
There is one possible little problem for the Disney and WB...
As far as I know, the extension is up to 95 years. The bad news is that 95 years, under the law, is not equivalent to indefinite. The way culture is today, we'd all consider this pretty much indefinite, but it isn't in a legal sense.
The good news ? According to the law, 99 years IS an indefinite time. An 'indefinite' lease or purchase is set, as a general rule, at 99 years. If the copyright on mickey is set to 99 years or greater, I think there is a much greater chance this will be interpreted by a court as an 'indefinite' copyright, and therefore unconstitutional (IANAL). This remains to be seen, though.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
Remeber that Quantum mechanics is pretty much twice the age of computing, give or take.
I did 2 years of quantum mechanics, and I don't know much about it. But I do know a bit about computers, and since we're being pedantic here..
The first 'computer' design is subject to debate. Popular view is that it was Babbage's difference engine, designed in 1822. The first calculator (not including the abacus) was Schickard's Calculating Clock, built in 1623. (look at http://www.best.com/~wilson/faq/chrono.html)
The first example of a programmable device was the loom devised by Ada Lovelace - again late 1800s (correct me if I'm wrong).
The theory of computers was developed in 1937 by Alan Matheson Turing. This would be the best date to put the birth of the theory of computers, as opposed to quantum theory, 7 years earlier.
The first computer, Colossus, was developed at Bletchley Park in December 1943 by a team including Turing.
The first commercial computer (and widely believed to be the first computer until the British Govt. revealed the existence of Colossus) was ENIAC. This was built in Nov 1945.
So there.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom and above all things, Karma
Is that a statement or a request? I think www.giganticasses.com might be interested....
--
This post is about truth, beauty, love and above all things, Karma.
This discussion has two major points: a) Can it be done? b) Should it be done?
The answer to a) is yes in pretty much every case like this, I thought. .NET has to work through specified protocols, and Linux can pretty much ape any protocol it wants. Bits are copyable, protocols are copyable. But then, other ppl have already made this point.
I personally don't think that people should be worried about point b). As far as I know, no-one's complained about SAMBA encouraging people to use windows. I thought that the reason we were all defending open source and software libre was not dogmatic, but out of the solid belief it produces better software. By aping .NET, Linux removes the dependence on windows, and allows people to choose the better OS - which, for a large and growing number of people, is Linux. And all of Microsoft's power resides in their OS - if microsoft's OS monopoly is removed, .NET won't be half as important as it used to be.
It also has to be remembered that .NET's success as part of the windows platform is not assured. Heck, personally I can't see why anyone's pushing the Network Computing concept at all. Hard Drives are faster, cheaper, and much more secure, than bandwidth. Unless this changes (and it WON'T), Network Computing will not get many takers, let alone the amount of business that Microsoft suggests. To worry about 'legitimizing' .NET is to fall for the Microsoft rhetoric that presents the adoption of .NET by world+dog as a fait accompli.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Hang on... we're talking about thinking like a human security guard here. I can just see the code now.
Patrol_Corridors();if (TimeSpentPatrolling > 30) {
get(Donuts);
get(pr0n);
sit_down(fat_ass);
eat(Donuts);
read(pr0n);
scratch(fat_ass);
sleep(60);
}
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
A while later, he got the idea that he could create HAL with the same deficient software that ran GAC, just by telling users to answer questions as they thought the computer HAL would answer. Most people saw that this made no sense whatsoever. The massive funding Chris was expecting for HAL never appeared, and he wrote a bitter news item about it.
Gee wow. He had trouble getting funding for this? "Give me your money, and I'll spend it on making an AI that kills people rather than be switched off!" He should have run that one by the marketing people first.
This is even WORSE than Eliza - Eliza could at least reply with something other than a True/False response. And the Turing test - which is generally considered insufficient for a test of machine intelligence - requires natural human responses. I can see the point of getting internet users to contribute to a knowledge base, but this psychological test thing is just a grab for publicity - which I just realize I have contributed to by posting on this topic.
The whole thing is a troll.
--This post is about Truth, Beauty, Freedom and above all things, Karma.
Getting a robot to follow a light was done in the 60s with analog components, I thought.
So THAT's why Minsky reckons all the people working all robots are wasting their time (there was a slashback a while ago on this). He's scared of a legion of ping-pong-bat wielding robots. God that story's funny.
This is a pedantic little point, but I thought this story was set in Canada. Therefore, all the discussion of american law is not really relevant - Canadian law is the only important thing.
That being said, take this hypothetical example:
Anyone reading this post enters into a contract allowing me to come over their house, take all their stuff, and date their sister if I so wish.
Not enforceable ANYWHERE.
Just 'cos people stick stuff in a contract, and you enter into that contract, doesn't mean it's appliable. IANAL, but in Australia, no contract, even the ones with 'This party waives all right to legal action', does not stop certain forms of legal action - such as negligence. Also, in consumer law, there are certain 'implied warranties' for any consumer product - fitness for purpose, etc. There may be a similar thing in Canadian law - no matter what the contract says, if what they give you doesn't fulfil its purpose (according to reasonable expectations), you can sue them.
--This post is about Truth, Freedom, Beauty and above all things Karma.
Plus, I bet qualified people don't just offer to do documentation and tech support, just like there's a severe shortage of voluntary documenters in Linux.
In my work experience at a local engineering firm, I found out rather quickly that the documentation was the work experience kid's job.
They did get me to do some programming though. And they gave me credit for doing what we all knew was a pretty onerous job.
--This post is about truth, beauty, love and above all things, Karma