What you see, particularly on places like/., is an extremely vocal majority of the pool of tech workers who only had jobs because of the bubble. In the peak of the internet craze, the quality of your average tech worker was in the toilet. These coffee-slingers-come-Java-developers were still only really qualified for coffee slinging. Every joe-blow who sent out a resume because they read HTML For Dummies wasn't a qualified web developer.
You sir, are full of shit. Maybe you have a job, maybe you don't. Maybe you're skilled, maybe you aren't. If you are jobbed, and are skilled, you are fortunate - because a lot of people very similar to you in skill are lacking the "job" factor of the equation.
I don't personally know too many "coffee-slingers-come-Java-developer" types, nor have I heard of too many. People like you are unaware of what's going on, and seem to think that "tech workers" that got laid off were simply replacement fill-ins. This is not the case, and if you think it is, you likely have the rough equivilant of a cock poking your brain through way of your ear, effecting your thought process.
Of 7 of my friends that worked in high level IT positions such as netadmins, sysadmins, ISP technology managers, and core development people (for legit in-house programs that were needed for company function), all of them have been laid off (they don't really do that much anymore, do they? Not very economically sound - for the company. I should have said "fired") except for 1 - and he's in Europe.
Of these 6 that lost their jobs, it wasn't due to incompetence, company failure, or anything like that. Their companies were simply subsidized by larger companies, or couldn't support them under the strain of depression/recession. So they lost their jobs. They're mostly out there looking for work, right now.
Three of them are doing miniscule contracting work, barely making by. One of them is teaching linux+ courses, and leading people through CISCO certs, making enough to pay for rent - but just barely, and only until his contracts run out, and he's got to find another job/contract. Some are thinking of going back to school - they've already invested several years of constant training, as well as several years of practical on-job experience into this very advanced field, they can't easily leave. For one of them, unable to find any work and unable to afford school, there's not really much of any option other than to work what he can, and hope he can get a contracting job here and there.
These are the type of people that love technology for what it is: they love tinkering with it, fixing it, tweaking it. They do these things in their spare time, and would do it regardless of pay. They just want to work in a field they love.
While I agree with you - it can be used to skirt responsibility, I think this "Generation" stuff is fairly interesting and useful in helping to understand sociological demographics.
I find it pathetic that middle age is being viewed as, "prime spending years", as if being able to buy a lot of shit is the sumation of my being. (I'm not middle age, but the ramafications on society are disgusting.)
What about those of us that are younger - 20, for instance? Some of us have gotten into the work world early, having trained ourselves. In many cases, we're much more skilled and tallented at what we do that people 5, 10 years older than we are. Things look equally as bleak, with no resurfacing of the economy forseen, for those still in college, even. Especially with all the war and conflict going on.
The people of my generation are an unseen, lost generation. Generation X is several years our senior, and Generation Y is approaching high school still. Sure, we have a lot of nice whiz-bang gizmos, lots of entertainment, and various other benefits. But to what end? There's a large degree of unemployment in most of the desireable job markets, and the markets that are open, are undesireable - a lot of low-end, dead-end jobs that nobody would enjoy doing in the first place.
In the eyes of many people of my generation, there are very few exciting, challenging, new things in this world left to do. National Geographic has the whole 'exploration' thing down pat. Computers and technology are passe, nearing the point of being transparent - simply another entertainment device.
Even in simple living, things don't look good - pay is distributed in a horrible arc curve, distributing most of the wealth to a small percentage of society. What little most people can earn is leeched from them from the upper crust through taxes, credit, lawyer and doctor fees - people that scratch each other's backs, further increasing the differential of wealth. Combine these factors with all of the social decay and unpleasantries going about (STDs, divorce, decay of the atomic family, etc), things are downright depressing.
Even the decay of America's core is occuring. The DMCA and all the various laws like it, destroying our freedom, get overlooked by the populace, while commercials rage on TV telling us to "value our freedom as Americans". The strongarming of foreign countries isn't improving America's international status much, either. The economic benefits that were protecting the US from attack in the past are slowly being whittled away.
It's times like this that even a patriotic American starts to wonder about the future of his country, and whether he should take drastic measures, such as make a new life as a Canadian.
1) Patent it! Most absolutely. 2) Start marketing it to companies such as IBM, Sony, CISCO, Sun, etc. (Avoid MS!) Give stipulations that limit what they are legally allowed to impliment with it, so that they do not overstep your personal investments* 3) At the same time, start up a company of your own which would capitolize on this encryption process and provide products and services that impliment it 4) Release full implimentation use rights to the Open Source community
* these personal investments, being your own company, which you're starting at the same time. Possibly establish the company first, so you have some sort of credibility?
If all goes well, your company startup would have a corner on the encryption market in the same fashion that CISCO has on the router market. You'd be the end-all of the situation. Large distributors, security companies, and pretty much everyone else would come to you for solutions.
Don't write yourself out of the picture by selling rights to a company. If what you have is truely an unbreakable encryption scheme, you've got the holy grail of computing. Even a percentage share of profits wouldn't even be substantial enough, IMO, because you wouldn't have a say in how things work.
That's from a debian sid machine. I suspect you would have a more difficult time getting X set up to play Q3 than in rh8, but you'd have your perl, apache (with whatever features you want), and mysql.
I suspect that your problems stem from a lack of understanding of how apache and such run, and you didn't bother to take the time to read the documentation. I doubt that redhat would cripple mysql, being as redhat tends to target the server and/or the office market more than any other distro. (And if you 'wasted alot of money' on buying redhat... cheapbytes.com, bitch. use it, love it! buy directly if you feel they deserve the support/you continue to use their distro)
I imagine the latest mandrake would be a better choice than redhat, too. I've never much cared for redhat and their late-breaking-version packaging of very fundamental server tools.
On top of that, it's complete nonsense to even consider using activeperl on a nonwindows system. perl is written for UNIX and ported to activeperl for linux. Running a port on a system, when it could be run natively, is stupid.
... except you're ignoring the fact that where this company comes from, US copyright doesn't apply. I suppose it's possible for MS to have copyrights there as well.
If not, it's just a loophole. MS is fairly experienced in loopholes. It's just sickening that MS is so bloodthirsty in their business tactics. If this keeps happening, they'll be buying out IBM and the US Gov't outright within 10 years, and we'll be back to a monarchy...
The only use I see for something like this is one abstraction layer from major GUI toolkits like GTK and QT. I say this because the only times I have problems such as accidentally deleting a file are when I'm using a GUI, and decide to use menu options (such as in GQview). If I'm looking at some photos that were emailed to me, and I want to move them, what if I accidentally click the 'delete' option, which is right next to it? Those files are lost.
I -can- see the use for it, but I don't really see any reason why it should be one level below console (which is what I'm assuming this library does). Granted, there are times that I would have found it useful, even a life saver, but that was due to my carelessness. People really shouldn't be allowed to be careless with computers.
A prime example of this is the new Mech game that's being released on the XBox, exclusively (for now, at least. I wouldn't count on a PC release, though - personally). (I don't recall the exact title name, but it's a Micropose game - which is owned by MS, of course). I suspect that there are many, many more Mechwarrior/Battletech fans on the PC (due to the high use of PCs by geeks, and the history of Battletech universe games being released on PC fairly exclusively). Now, personally, I don't have a game console. They're too expensive and too limited in function for me for just a couple titles that I'd like to play. (And I already have several PCs for video editing, etc.)
I'd say a large part of the situation revolves around MS trying to take over the industry, and the fact that Sega now exclusively develops games for consoles. Sega has always been a kickass game developer - Genesis had some of the best games ever (some of which still are a lot of fun to play).
A large part of it is simple economics, too. PC titles have almost always been aimed at the geeks in society. COmpanies see that almost everyone plays consoles - and it's harder to pirate games for consoles, providing secure rental potential. The fact that there haven't been any games of Half-life impact in the last couple years might be an indicator as to why. On the other hand, PC games seem to have a year or two of really good games every once in a while, and then a bunch of mediocre derivities.
Personally, it seems to me as if this is correct. I see a lot more games on PS2 and Xbox right now that I want to play than I do on PC (well, there are quite a few PC games I want to play, but they're going to be released "RSN" - Star Wars Galaxies, DN4R, et al). PS2 and Xbox games generally seem to work more on the gameplay aspect than the graphics aspect, and the PC games viceversa -this might have something to do with it.
... but wasn't the delorean made out of alumnum? (sp?) I recall hearing that it had problems in high winds and high velocities due to it's light weight.
However the cost per bit is going down all the time, and we should gradually see the price that we pay come down with it.
Let me use an analogy of comparision for you here.
Take theatres, for instance. They pay most of their ticket-based income to the production studio, so they have to make all their money on popcorn, candy, etc. Now, a small bag of popcorn costs (say) 4$, and a small 16 oz. soda 2.50$, while the 6 oz. bag of candy is 2$. Does it truely cost the theatre that much money to break even? How about turning a profit?
Popcorn seed costs approximately 15$ for a 50 pound of seed which will supply a busy theatre with over a week's worth of popcorn; meanwhile they're charging 5.50 for a large bag of popcorn that costs less than a quarter to manufacture. Combine with that the fact that their employees get paid as little as possible (due to the fact that they're in the 'entertainment' industry, no benefits whatsoever are necessary, not even overtime).
Compare this to cable companies and other such groups of the same filth. These high prices exist because consumers WILL PAY IT ANYWAY!! People still go to the theatre and, on top of their 7.50$ ticket, they buy a large bucket or popcorn with extra lard sprinkles, and a I'm-a-fat-fuck sized drink for 9.50$. The popcorn bags are even specifically designed to influence people into buying the largest one available, because it's the 'most economical', even though the prices are exhorbinant. This translates well into the broadband/dialup situation. "Only three as much money for 10 times the bandwidth, sir?" Never mind that it doesn't cost the company as much as they claim it to (in the case of cable).
What is it, really, that happened? It's a travesty how so many sysadmin jobs have gone out the door - people haven't simply stopped needing their computers to get maintained, have they? What's the deal? It seems to me that there are more computers out there on the market than there was a year ago, in corporate use - so why less admin jobs?
There are certain reasons that I would never find myself in your bedroom, let alone necessitating an alarm clock, that I believe my obtainment of a girlfriend leaves obvious.:P
Yeah, the only problem with that is *drum roll* there is no such thing as a legal monopoly! A monopoly, by very definition, is a company that has a strangelhold on the economy of a certain sector of commerce. MS has a stranglehold not only on a certain sector of commerce, but the whole damned economy.
Hrm. And I thought I had it bad. My mom sets all the clocks in the house 20 minutes fast.
I think the only 'irritating' time-related traits my fiancee has (which I also happen to share, I might add) are 1) having 2 alarm clocks for the morning, and repeatedly resetting them over a period of time until awaking (say, half an hour, an hour... there-about), and 2) waiting to the very last possible moment to leave for an engagement, and then running in a couple minutes late (to no dire effect)
For me, maybe. I'm talking about the type of people that's mentality requires the clock be set 10 minutes fast or such - they're also generally the type that don't know what their computer does, in my experience.
I know several people that set their clocks ahead of time so as to make themselves think that they're running late, when in actuality, they're on time. If MS or Apple changes this time to the 'correct' time, this could cause people to actually -be- late. Imagine the dilema: you come in late, and lose your job. Is that MS's or Apple's fault for changing your time on you w/o your permission? Or your's for using their OS?
Yes, doable, but... not by me.:) I'd be overjoyed if someone would slap this together in a couple of hours in perl (for instance), even if integrating Cyc into the speech recognition process would possibly (probably? definately?) yield better results, after being tweaked efficiently. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that anyone has undertaken such a project yet, amazingly enough. It'd be spectacular to slap Cyc + perl gateway + IBM ViaVoice on a laptop w/ a mic, webcam, and network connection, and demonstrate it to friends and such.
(Good way to meet girls, too, I imagine! "Hey, look what I made!" "Oh wow, I've never seen anything like it!" *wow, he's smart!* (Personality not included!))
does anyone know if this software is functional for civil/environmental engineering-type drafting? (Drainage systems, bridges, feed lots, that sort of thing). I've been looking for such a linux solution due to the immense time investment that Windows takes to administer, and am wondering if there is a product that is similar in feature and similar in function to AutoCAD 2000 (due to the monkey-like nature of most of the engineering technicals employed at the company I work for, it's necessary to have something that will not cost a lot to retrain them on.)
Sorry if it's a bit incoherrent, it's been a long night and I'm exhausted.
This is something that I've wanted to do for a -long- time: take an AI (or something resembling one, such as ALICE) and combine it w/ a script or other form of gateway communication device with something like IBM's ViaVoice tts software and voice recognition software.Text would get translated to speech for the human, and the human's speech would get translated to text for the AI/bot.
It seems to me that this would be an ideal use! I, unfortunately, have neither the time or necessary skills. If you plan undertaking something like this, I'd love to hear from you!
I don't know if this post is intended as humorous, because I found it so (or at least ironic), but it brought to light something in my mind.
It seems to me that even if Cyc isn't a true AI yet, and is simply a stupid database or something along those lines, he (she? it? has it been given identity yet?) is still at least advanced enough to ask advanced questions. Not just any questions, but questions that are similar to those of great philosophers of times past! The questions Cyc has asked ("Am I human?" et al) seem to me to be fairly philosophical. First, Cyc compares the similarities, and then makes deduction. That's similar to what philosophy is about. Philosophy, one of the few things that we, humans, have long held onto as being distinctly human. (In another light, "Am I human?" distinctly reminds me of the robot Albert in Everything Jake, who seems quite sentient and 'human' in many respects.
That is, of course, what the programmers that created the Terminator AI failed to do. I see we're learning our lessions as history progresses.:) We're no longer making the mistakes of bad sci-fi! Weee!
Slashdot Mirror
You sir, are full of shit. Maybe you have a job, maybe you don't. Maybe you're skilled, maybe you aren't. If you are jobbed, and are skilled, you are fortunate - because a lot of people very similar to you in skill are lacking the "job" factor of the equation.
I don't personally know too many "coffee-slingers-come-Java-developer" types, nor have I heard of too many. People like you are unaware of what's going on, and seem to think that "tech workers" that got laid off were simply replacement fill-ins. This is not the case, and if you think it is, you likely have the rough equivilant of a cock poking your brain through way of your ear, effecting your thought process.
Of 7 of my friends that worked in high level IT positions such as netadmins, sysadmins, ISP technology managers, and core development people (for legit in-house programs that were needed for company function), all of them have been laid off (they don't really do that much anymore, do they? Not very economically sound - for the company. I should have said "fired") except for 1 - and he's in Europe.
Of these 6 that lost their jobs, it wasn't due to incompetence, company failure, or anything like that. Their companies were simply subsidized by larger companies, or couldn't support them under the strain of depression/recession. So they lost their jobs. They're mostly out there looking for work, right now.
Three of them are doing miniscule contracting work, barely making by. One of them is teaching linux+ courses, and leading people through CISCO certs, making enough to pay for rent - but just barely, and only until his contracts run out, and he's got to find another job/contract. Some are thinking of going back to school - they've already invested several years of constant training, as well as several years of practical on-job experience into this very advanced field, they can't easily leave. For one of them, unable to find any work and unable to afford school, there's not really much of any option other than to work what he can, and hope he can get a contracting job here and there.
These are the type of people that love technology for what it is: they love tinkering with it, fixing it, tweaking it. They do these things in their spare time, and would do it regardless of pay. They just want to work in a field they love.
It's people like you that sicken me.
Where do you get this information for "Generation Y" and "Generation D"?
While I agree with you - it can be used to skirt responsibility, I think this "Generation" stuff is fairly interesting and useful in helping to understand sociological demographics.
I find it pathetic that middle age is being viewed as, "prime spending years", as if being able to buy a lot of shit is the sumation of my being. (I'm not middle age, but the ramafications on society are disgusting.)
What about those of us that are younger - 20, for instance? Some of us have gotten into the work world early, having trained ourselves. In many cases, we're much more skilled and tallented at what we do that people 5, 10 years older than we are. Things look equally as bleak, with no resurfacing of the economy forseen, for those still in college, even. Especially with all the war and conflict going on.
The people of my generation are an unseen, lost generation. Generation X is several years our senior, and Generation Y is approaching high school still. Sure, we have a lot of nice whiz-bang gizmos, lots of entertainment, and various other benefits. But to what end? There's a large degree of unemployment in most of the desireable job markets, and the markets that are open, are undesireable - a lot of low-end, dead-end jobs that nobody would enjoy doing in the first place.
In the eyes of many people of my generation, there are very few exciting, challenging, new things in this world left to do. National Geographic has the whole 'exploration' thing down pat. Computers and technology are passe, nearing the point of being transparent - simply another entertainment device.
Even in simple living, things don't look good - pay is distributed in a horrible arc curve, distributing most of the wealth to a small percentage of society. What little most people can earn is leeched from them from the upper crust through taxes, credit, lawyer and doctor fees - people that scratch each other's backs, further increasing the differential of wealth. Combine these factors with all of the social decay and unpleasantries going about (STDs, divorce, decay of the atomic family, etc), things are downright depressing.
Even the decay of America's core is occuring. The DMCA and all the various laws like it, destroying our freedom, get overlooked by the populace, while commercials rage on TV telling us to "value our freedom as Americans". The strongarming of foreign countries isn't improving America's international status much, either. The economic benefits that were protecting the US from attack in the past are slowly being whittled away.
It's times like this that even a patriotic American starts to wonder about the future of his country, and whether he should take drastic measures, such as make a new life as a Canadian.
1) Patent it! Most absolutely.
:P
2) Start marketing it to companies such as IBM, Sony, CISCO, Sun, etc. (Avoid MS!) Give stipulations that limit what they are legally allowed to impliment with it, so that they do not overstep your personal investments*
3) At the same time, start up a company of your own which would capitolize on this encryption process and provide products and services that impliment it
4) Release full implimentation use rights to the Open Source community
* these personal investments, being your own company, which you're starting at the same time. Possibly establish the company first, so you have some sort of credibility?
If all goes well, your company startup would have a corner on the encryption market in the same fashion that CISCO has on the router market. You'd be the end-all of the situation. Large distributors, security companies, and pretty much everyone else would come to you for solutions.
Don't write yourself out of the picture by selling rights to a company. If what you have is truely an unbreakable encryption scheme, you've got the holy grail of computing. Even a percentage share of profits wouldn't even be substantial enough, IMO, because you wouldn't have a say in how things work.
Get a couple loans and get started.
ii apache 1.3.26-1.1
ii perl 5.6.1-7
That's from a debian sid machine. I suspect you would have a more difficult time getting X set up to play Q3 than in rh8, but you'd have your perl, apache (with whatever features you want), and mysql.
I suspect that your problems stem from a lack of understanding of how apache and such run, and you didn't bother to take the time to read the documentation. I doubt that redhat would cripple mysql, being as redhat tends to target the server and/or the office market more than any other distro. (And if you 'wasted alot of money' on buying redhat... cheapbytes.com, bitch. use it, love it! buy directly if you feel they deserve the support/you continue to use their distro)
I imagine the latest mandrake would be a better choice than redhat, too. I've never much cared for redhat and their late-breaking-version packaging of very fundamental server tools.
On top of that, it's complete nonsense to even consider using activeperl on a nonwindows system. perl is written for UNIX and ported to activeperl for linux. Running a port on a system, when it could be run natively, is stupid.
... except you're ignoring the fact that where this company comes from, US copyright doesn't apply. I suppose it's possible for MS to have copyrights there as well.
If not, it's just a loophole. MS is fairly experienced in loopholes. It's just sickening that MS is so bloodthirsty in their business tactics. If this keeps happening, they'll be buying out IBM and the US Gov't outright within 10 years, and we'll be back to a monarchy...
The only use I see for something like this is one abstraction layer from major GUI toolkits like GTK and QT. I say this because the only times I have problems such as accidentally deleting a file are when I'm using a GUI, and decide to use menu options (such as in GQview). If I'm looking at some photos that were emailed to me, and I want to move them, what if I accidentally click the 'delete' option, which is right next to it? Those files are lost.
I -can- see the use for it, but I don't really see any reason why it should be one level below console (which is what I'm assuming this library does). Granted, there are times that I would have found it useful, even a life saver, but that was due to my carelessness. People really shouldn't be allowed to be careless with computers.
A prime example of this is the new Mech game that's being released on the XBox, exclusively (for now, at least. I wouldn't count on a PC release, though - personally). (I don't recall the exact title name, but it's a Micropose game - which is owned by MS, of course). I suspect that there are many, many more Mechwarrior/Battletech fans on the PC (due to the high use of PCs by geeks, and the history of Battletech universe games being released on PC fairly exclusively). Now, personally, I don't have a game console. They're too expensive and too limited in function for me for just a couple titles that I'd like to play. (And I already have several PCs for video editing, etc.)
I'd say a large part of the situation revolves around MS trying to take over the industry, and the fact that Sega now exclusively develops games for consoles. Sega has always been a kickass game developer - Genesis had some of the best games ever (some of which still are a lot of fun to play).
A large part of it is simple economics, too. PC titles have almost always been aimed at the geeks in society. COmpanies see that almost everyone plays consoles - and it's harder to pirate games for consoles, providing secure rental potential. The fact that there haven't been any games of Half-life impact in the last couple years might be an indicator as to why. On the other hand, PC games seem to have a year or two of really good games every once in a while, and then a bunch of mediocre derivities.
Personally, it seems to me as if this is correct. I see a lot more games on PS2 and Xbox right now that I want to play than I do on PC (well, there are quite a few PC games I want to play, but they're going to be released "RSN" - Star Wars Galaxies, DN4R, et al). PS2 and Xbox games generally seem to work more on the gameplay aspect than the graphics aspect, and the PC games viceversa -this might have something to do with it.
... but wasn't the delorean made out of alumnum? (sp?) I recall hearing that it had problems in high winds and high velocities due to it's light weight.
Let me use an analogy of comparision for you here.
Take theatres, for instance. They pay most of their ticket-based income to the production studio, so they have to make all their money on popcorn, candy, etc. Now, a small bag of popcorn costs (say) 4$, and a small 16 oz. soda 2.50$, while the 6 oz. bag of candy is 2$. Does it truely cost the theatre that much money to break even? How about turning a profit?
Popcorn seed costs approximately 15$ for a 50 pound of seed which will supply a busy theatre with over a week's worth of popcorn; meanwhile they're charging 5.50 for a large bag of popcorn that costs less than a quarter to manufacture. Combine with that the fact that their employees get paid as little as possible (due to the fact that they're in the 'entertainment' industry, no benefits whatsoever are necessary, not even overtime).
Compare this to cable companies and other such groups of the same filth. These high prices exist because consumers WILL PAY IT ANYWAY!! People still go to the theatre and, on top of their 7.50$ ticket, they buy a large bucket or popcorn with extra lard sprinkles, and a I'm-a-fat-fuck sized drink for 9.50$. The popcorn bags are even specifically designed to influence people into buying the largest one available, because it's the 'most economical', even though the prices are exhorbinant. This translates well into the broadband/dialup situation. "Only three as much money for 10 times the bandwidth, sir?" Never mind that it doesn't cost the company as much as they claim it to (in the case of cable).
Yeah man, I feel your pain. :(
What is it, really, that happened? It's a travesty how so many sysadmin jobs have gone out the door - people haven't simply stopped needing their computers to get maintained, have they? What's the deal? It seems to me that there are more computers out there on the market than there was a year ago, in corporate use - so why less admin jobs?
There are certain reasons that I would never find myself in your bedroom, let alone necessitating an alarm clock, that I believe my obtainment of a girlfriend leaves obvious. :P
Yeah, the only problem with that is *drum roll* there is no such thing as a legal monopoly! A monopoly, by very definition, is a company that has a strangelhold on the economy of a certain sector of commerce. MS has a stranglehold not only on a certain sector of commerce, but the whole damned economy.
"Those who can, do; everyone else teaches."
I think the only 'irritating' time-related traits my fiancee has (which I also happen to share, I might add) are 1) having 2 alarm clocks for the morning, and repeatedly resetting them over a period of time until awaking (say, half an hour, an hour... there-about), and 2) waiting to the very last possible moment to leave for an engagement, and then running in a couple minutes late (to no dire effect)
For me, maybe. I'm talking about the type of people that's mentality requires the clock be set 10 minutes fast or such - they're also generally the type that don't know what their computer does, in my experience.
I know several people that set their clocks ahead of time so as to make themselves think that they're running late, when in actuality, they're on time. If MS or Apple changes this time to the 'correct' time, this could cause people to actually -be- late. Imagine the dilema: you come in late, and lose your job. Is that MS's or Apple's fault for changing your time on you w/o your permission? Or your's for using their OS?
I recall reading about this instance in Reader's Digest. And on slashdot, years ago. I can't believe it's been reposted, some 4 years later.
Yes, doable, but... not by me. :) I'd be overjoyed if someone would slap this together in a couple of hours in perl (for instance), even if integrating Cyc into the speech recognition process would possibly (probably? definately?) yield better results, after being tweaked efficiently. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that anyone has undertaken such a project yet, amazingly enough. It'd be spectacular to slap Cyc + perl gateway + IBM ViaVoice on a laptop w/ a mic, webcam, and network connection, and demonstrate it to friends and such.
(Good way to meet girls, too, I imagine! "Hey, look what I made!" "Oh wow, I've never seen anything like it!" *wow, he's smart!* (Personality not included!))
does anyone know if this software is functional for civil/environmental engineering-type drafting? (Drainage systems, bridges, feed lots, that sort of thing). I've been looking for such a linux solution due to the immense time investment that Windows takes to administer, and am wondering if there is a product that is similar in feature and similar in function to AutoCAD 2000 (due to the monkey-like nature of most of the engineering technicals employed at the company I work for, it's necessary to have something that will not cost a lot to retrain them on.)
Sorry if it's a bit incoherrent, it's been a long night and I'm exhausted.
Or maybe his pimp, or any number of the arms or drug trafficers that he had dealings with, or maybe the moffia leaders that he had business with.
This is something that I've wanted to do for a -long- time: take an AI (or something resembling one, such as ALICE) and combine it w/ a script or other form of gateway communication device with something like IBM's ViaVoice tts software and voice recognition software.Text would get translated to speech for the human, and the human's speech would get translated to text for the AI/bot.
It seems to me that this would be an ideal use! I, unfortunately, have neither the time or necessary skills. If you plan undertaking something like this, I'd love to hear from you!
I don't know if this post is intended as humorous, because I found it so (or at least ironic), but it brought to light something in my mind.
It seems to me that even if Cyc isn't a true AI yet, and is simply a stupid database or something along those lines, he (she? it? has it been given identity yet?) is still at least advanced enough to ask advanced questions. Not just any questions, but questions that are similar to those of great philosophers of times past! The questions Cyc has asked ("Am I human?" et al) seem to me to be fairly philosophical. First, Cyc compares the similarities, and then makes deduction. That's similar to what philosophy is about. Philosophy, one of the few things that we, humans, have long held onto as being distinctly human. (In another light, "Am I human?" distinctly reminds me of the robot Albert in Everything Jake, who seems quite sentient and 'human' in many respects.
That is, of course, what the programmers that created the Terminator AI failed to do. I see we're learning our lessions as history progresses. :) We're no longer making the mistakes of bad sci-fi! Weee!