So, like, from now on if someone asks us what mozilla can do that IE can't, instead of shouting, "TABS TABS TABS!!!!", we can say, "THE KITCHEN SINK!!!"
would be if the user typed in "about:everything", and the computer replied, "42". (Optional alternative behavior is for mozilla to wait several million years before returning this answer.)
What if the meteor strike is just the opening act?
on
Assessing Asteroid Threat
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
We already know that there are a lot of objects in space which are powerful enough to cause a 10 megaton explosion but which we will not be able to see until they enter the atmosphere. Now, back in 1908 when one hit us, it hit us in a remote area so not many people in the world knew about (except, of course, those unfortunate people who where within a couple tens of miles of it when it struck.) But nowadays, EVERYONE would IMMEDIATELY know that an explosion as powerful as a nuclear weapon had just gone off in their back yard, and there's a good chance that they would immediately retaliate against whoever they thought launched it.
Wouldn't it be ironic if we helped an incoming asteroid finish us off, rather than hindering it?
Many cars can go up to 120mph, but you don't see them being banned from residential streets. Why? Because even though they can go up to 120mph, doesn't mean that people drive them that fast very often.
Likewise, even though Segways can travel at up to 12mph, this doesn't mean that people often will. If there are other pedestrians on the sidewalk, the person riding the segway will presumably go at a safer speed, just like you don't generally see people running along sidewalks very fast when people are on them. Also, once you've had a little practice riding on a Segway it's hard to run into people because your body wants to reflexively move out of the way.
Yeah, I bet that what happened was that someone over there, just for the heck of it, tried entering in something like "123456789101112..." as a joke and was surprised to find that it worked. (Hey, it did for installing Windows 95!):-)
Houston: "Heh heh... well, actually there's a simple explanation for you running out of air. In fact, when you hear it, you're just going to laugh, 'cause the funniest thing just happened to the Microsoft License Servers that give your system permission to stay operational..."
> amongst which are mapping the Hydrogen distrobution in the milky way and searching for SETI
I know that engineers love challenges and playing with cool toys like radiotelescopes, but in this case it might be easier just to go to their web site.
Hmmm... maybe we have all been going about this spam thing the wrong way.
Here's what I'm thinking: instead of avoiding the links in our spam, let's start visiting them.
All of us.
At the same time.
Let's create a slashbox in the front page called "SPAM LINK OF THE DAY", and have it be a duty of slashdot readers to visit this link as often as possible. With a vast army of disgruntled slashdot readers bent on their destruction, no spam web site will have a chance!
*WHEW* It's just the /. effect...
on
KDE Gets The Hat
·
· Score: 1
I just came back home from watching Signs, so when I clicked on the link and my browser told me I couldn't connect I was like, "OH MY GOD, IT's HAPPENING!!!"
Then I remembered, "Oh, wait, that's right...";)
Yeah, but I don't think it was Microsoft...
on
MS Palladium Patent
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of server processes suddenly cried out in terror, and suddenly silenced.
I feel something terrible has happened.
*** SOME TIME LATER ***
KONQUEROR: Our position's correct except... no cryptome.org.
ME: What do you mean? Where is it?
KONQUEROR: That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid, it ain't there. It's been totally blown away.
ME: How?
It's been destroyed... by the Slashdot.
KONQUEROR: The Slashdot crowd couldn't take down the whole site! It would take ten thousand people with more free time than I've...
You are missing the point of my post. I am not claiming that Cyc "knows" anything; I am only suggesting that if one is expecting it to act "intelligently", then one will be disappointed because the Cyc project is not about intelligence but about common sense--two entirely different (though related) things.
A hand-written test seems to assume that coding is a linear process--that in coding one starts at the beginning of a task and proceeds in an orderly progression to the end. But I personally rarely do this. Instead, I break a problem down into parts, solve each of the parts separately (which may be further broken into sub-parts, etc), and then assemble them into the finished product. Computers make this process a pleasure since they make in really easy to insert and rearrange huge chunks of text. The same process, though, is nearly impossible on paper, where the only operations you really have are "put text in empty space on paper" and "delete text from paper".
I think that many people here are missing the point of what Cyc is supposed to do; Cyc is not boing built to be an intelligent machine, but a *knowledgable* machine.
Human intelligence comes both from our ability to process information *and* the large store of information we've acquired throughout our life.
I think that a good example of this was mentioned in the article. The statement "Mary and Jean are sisters." implies that each is a sister of the other, while the statement "Mary and Jean are mothers." does *not* imply anything of the sort. When you think about in, there really is no reason that "Mary and Jean are sisters." has to also imply that they are sisters *of each other*, it's just that this is usually what meant.
Think of Cyc as being a space alien: Because it has no exprience with the human way of life, things that are painfully obvious to us need to be taught to it.
A lot of people seem to be arguing that Cyc is a pointless project because it is not very intelligent, but I think they are missing the point. No matter the form our future intelligent machine may take, it will have to have simple, basic things explained to it.
Now, having said that, I'll admit that there is a possible exception to this: if we could also endow such a machine with human-style perception, and possible an ability to interact with the world, then we could treat it like a child and let it stumble upon the truths of the world on its own.
But regardless, my point still stands that common sense is *not* an intrinsic property of intelligence, but something additional that must be provided in order to make intelligence useful.
The Cyc project is not trying to make an intelligent machine, but it is trying to build up a database of common sense--which we may be grateful for later when we've built a machine that is intelligent enough to make serious use of it.
I think that many people here are missing the point of what Cyc is supposed to do; Cyc is not boing built to be an intelligent machine, but a *knowledgable* machine.
Human intelligence comes both from our ability to process information *and* the large store of information we've acquired throughout our life.
I think that a good example of this was mentioned in the article. The statement "Mary and Jean are sisters." implies that each is a sister of the other, while the statement "Mary and Jean are mothers." does *not* imply anything of the sort. When you think about in, there really is no reason that "Mary and Jean are sisters." has to also imply that they are sisters *of each other*, it's just that this is usually what meant.
Think of Cyc as being a space alien: Because it has no exprience with the human way of life, things that are painfully obvious to us need to be taught to it.
A lot of people seem to be arguing that Cyc is a pointless project because it is not very intelligent, but I think they are missing the point. No matter the form our future intelligent machine may take, it will have to have simple, basic things explained to it.
Now, having said that, I'll admit that there is a possible exception to this: if we could also endow such a machine with human-style perception, and possible an ability to interact with the world, then we could treat it like a child and let it stumble upon the truths of the world on its own.
But regardless, my point still stands that common sense is *not* an intrinsic property of intelligence, but something additional that must be provided in order to make intelligence useful.
The Cyc project is not trying to make an intelligent machine, but it is trying to build up a database of common sense--which we may be grateful for later when we've built a machine that is intelligent enough to make serious use of it.
...Gates' Law predicts that in 600 years Microsoft will have assimilated the entire Universe in what mosts physicists refer to as the "Big Crash".
Whether this will actually occur, of course depends on the exact values of many still undetermined constants, such as the total mass of CowboyNeal and the exact value of the Cosmological Fudge Factor.
> We are pointless little specs of rust, sitting on a pointless spec of dust floating in the vastness of an infinte universe.
Hmm... actually, you won me over right there. If you don't mind, I think that I shall roll over and die now. After all, what's the point of going on.
> Get a grip. It's quite a leap from getting a tin can from here to the Moon to demonstrating potential to "command the Universe".
As opposed to the leap between, say, rubbing two sticks together to make fire and building nuclear weapons? We are good at taking leaps!
> It is also possible we aren't. I'm personally of the camp that hopes the Universe is full of life. I can't imagine the arrogance of being the only things around to bring beauty to it by observing.
I am not claiming that we are special because of our own merits. I hope that you're right, in fact.:) On the other hand, when you look at exactly what had to happen for life to arise on Earth... well, lets just say that the odds are fairly staggering. That's all I wanted to get at.
> Been there, done that, we found no riches, few solutions. Sorry about that, you got Tang and Calculators. To get to Mars, we'll need, you guessed it, Tang and Calculators. Getting to the Moon was a new and enriching experience, getting to Mars is a re-run.
Uhh... believe it or not, a trip to Mars will take just a little more than "Tang and Calculators".:-) And don't forget that there is an entire generation that wasn't there for the trips to the moon; for us this is hardly a "re-run"--of course, I have trouble seeing how anyone could consider Mars a "re-run". Can we compromise on calling it a really good sequel that was better that the original?
> Indeed, now we know the Moon is pretty much made out of dirt, Mars is pretty much made out of dirt, and we've got plenty of dirt right here.
*shrug* Truthfully, I had been thinking more of metal from asteroids and extra power from the sun than moon/martian dirt. The point was that in space there certainly is a lot more of stuff than on Earth, simply because there is just that much space. We don't have infinite amounts of everything here, you know, so we *might* need to get "stuff"--whatever it may be--from elsewhere one of these days.
> Want a dream to work towards? Try some of these...
Technology for (1) and (4) might be significantly advanced in the course of an ambitious space program. Solutions to (2) tend to be inefficient simply because it is human nature to respond to incentives, which perfect equity would seem to destroy. And I don't see what the world would lose if the French were to vanish off the planet... of course, they undoubtedly feel the same way about us.;)
Besides, why can't these problems COMPLEMENT a mission to Mars rather than having to stand in its way? I'm not saying that world peace, yadda yadda, wouldn't also be very grand in their own right, I guess I'm just saying that the eventual diaspora of humanity into space (okay, maybe "eventual" is a little optimistic) will be an achievement at least on that order--something worth working towards, even if it does cost us a little. Besides, lets face it: going to Mars is far easier than all of the problem you mentioned.
Sheesh, you try to get enthusiastic about a cool idea and all you get it to be called a "pointless little [spec] of rust" with a "cold and impersonal dream". Harsh.;-)
The day when the only thing that man cares about is seeing just how comfortably he can live is the day that the human sprit dies.
It is entirely possible that we may be the only living thing in the Universe that has left and returned to its planet through its own abilities. Think about that for a minute. Doesn't that give you a sense of awe?
We have the potential to explore and command the Universe in ways that we do not have reason to believe that anything else ever has, or that anything else ever will.
The reason we do these things is not just because they benefit us, but because they are the fulfillment of a yearning desire to grow and to stretch our limits as far as they can go, because it is the destiny of all living things to either grow and expand or eventually to die.
And if that is not enough to satisfy your materialism, then consider this: there are untold riches out in space that are just waiting to be tapped to meet our needs. But before we can get them out of space, we are going to have to invest a lot into space--not because space is strange and wierd, but because this has been the case for every technology that has come before it.
So, please, even if you fail to be attracted by the dream of space travel, don't just dismiss it as a useless toy. See it for what it is: an untapped technology that is just waiting to solve our problems. And solve them it can, if we only take the time to figure out how.
Slashdot Mirror
"I wonder if that new FreeBSD project is going to go anywhere..."
"Nah, it's already DEAD!"
So, like, from now on if someone asks us what mozilla can do that IE can't, instead of shouting, "TABS TABS TABS!!!!", we can say, "THE KITCHEN SINK!!!"
would be if the user typed in "about:everything", and the computer replied, "42". (Optional alternative behavior is for mozilla to wait several million years before returning this answer.)
We already know that there are a lot of objects in space which are powerful enough to cause a 10 megaton explosion but which we will not be able to see until they enter the atmosphere. Now, back in 1908 when one hit us, it hit us in a remote area so not many people in the world knew about (except, of course, those unfortunate people who where within a couple tens of miles of it when it struck.) But nowadays, EVERYONE would IMMEDIATELY know that an explosion as powerful as a nuclear weapon had just gone off in their back yard, and there's a good chance that they would immediately retaliate against whoever they thought launched it.
Wouldn't it be ironic if we helped an incoming asteroid finish us off, rather than hindering it?
(*)Rather than freaking out and writing posts about 'M$' and so on, why not go outside and get some fresh air?
Because it's raining where I live, you insensitive clod!
Yeah, right! Like Duke Nukem Forever will be out by then.
Many cars can go up to 120mph, but you don't see them being banned from residential streets. Why? Because even though they can go up to 120mph, doesn't mean that people drive them that fast very often.
Likewise, even though Segways can travel at up to 12mph, this doesn't mean that people often will. If there are other pedestrians on the sidewalk, the person riding the segway will presumably go at a safer speed, just like you don't generally see people running along sidewalks very fast when people are on them. Also, once you've had a little practice riding on a Segway it's hard to run into people because your body wants to reflexively move out of the way.
Yeah, I bet that what happened was that someone over there, just for the heck of it, tried entering in something like "123456789101112..." as a joke and was surprised to find that it worked. (Hey, it did for installing Windows 95!) :-)
> In short, RAM is just like a ramdrive except more flexible.
;-)
Uhh... isn't that a lot like saying that memory is just like a swap partition only not as slow?
Houston: "Heh heh... well, actually there's a simple explanation for you running out of air. In fact, when you hear it, you're just going to laugh, 'cause the funniest thing just happened to the Microsoft License Servers that give your system permission to stay operational..."
An error occured while loading http://www.rm-r.net/~bri/casemod/:
:-)
Timeout on server
Timed out while waiting to connect to www.rm-r.net
The moral of this story is: it's not what's on the outside, but what's inside that matters.
> amongst which are mapping the Hydrogen distrobution in the milky way and searching for SETI
I know that engineers love challenges and playing with cool toys like radiotelescopes, but in this case it might be easier just to go to their web site.
(If only we could find the aliens on google too!)
when you see "Console Only" and think "COOL! Finally, ASCII art is making a come back!"
Hmmm... maybe we have all been going about this spam thing the wrong way.
Here's what I'm thinking: instead of avoiding the links in our spam, let's start visiting them.
All of us.
At the same time.
Let's create a slashbox in the front page called "SPAM LINK OF THE DAY", and have it be a duty of slashdot readers to visit this link as often as possible. With a vast army of disgruntled slashdot readers bent on their destruction, no spam web site will have a chance!
I just came back home from watching Signs, so when I clicked on the link and my browser told me I couldn't connect I was like, "OH MY GOD, IT's HAPPENING!!!"
;)
Then I remembered, "Oh, wait, that's right..."
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of server processes suddenly cried out in terror, and suddenly silenced.
...*** TO BE CONTINUED ***
I feel something terrible has happened.
*** SOME TIME LATER ***
KONQUEROR: Our position's correct except... no cryptome.org.
ME: What do you mean? Where is it?
KONQUEROR: That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid, it ain't there. It's been totally blown away.
ME: How?
It's been destroyed... by the Slashdot.
KONQUEROR: The Slashdot crowd couldn't take down the whole site! It would take ten thousand people with more free time than I've...
*Alarm bell goes off*
You are missing the point of my post. I am not claiming that Cyc "knows" anything; I am only suggesting that if one is expecting it to act "intelligently", then one will be disappointed because the Cyc project is not about intelligence but about common sense--two entirely different (though related) things.
A hand-written test seems to assume that coding is a linear process--that in coding one starts at the beginning of a task and proceeds in an orderly progression to the end. But I personally rarely do this. Instead, I break a problem down into parts, solve each of the parts separately (which may be further broken into sub-parts, etc), and then assemble them into the finished product. Computers make this process a pleasure since they make in really easy to insert and rearrange huge chunks of text. The same process, though, is nearly impossible on paper, where the only operations you really have are "put text in empty space on paper" and "delete text from paper".
I think that many people here are missing the point of what Cyc is supposed to do; Cyc is not boing built to be an intelligent machine, but a *knowledgable* machine.
Human intelligence comes both from our ability to process information *and* the large store of information we've acquired throughout our life.
I think that a good example of this was mentioned in the article. The statement "Mary and Jean are sisters." implies that each is a sister of the other, while the statement "Mary and Jean are mothers." does *not* imply anything of the sort. When you think about in, there really is no reason that "Mary and Jean are sisters." has to also imply that they are sisters *of each other*, it's just that this is usually what meant.
Think of Cyc as being a space alien: Because it has no exprience with the human way of life, things that are painfully obvious to us need to be taught to it.
A lot of people seem to be arguing that Cyc is a pointless project because it is not very intelligent, but I think they are missing the point. No matter the form our future intelligent machine may take, it will have to have simple, basic things explained to it.
Now, having said that, I'll admit that there is a possible exception to this: if we could also endow such a machine with human-style perception, and possible an ability to interact with the world, then we could treat it like a child and let it stumble upon the truths of the world on its own.
But regardless, my point still stands that common sense is *not* an intrinsic property of intelligence, but something additional that must be provided in order to make intelligence useful.
The Cyc project is not trying to make an intelligent machine, but it is trying to build up a database of common sense--which we may be grateful for later when we've built a machine that is intelligent enough to make serious use of it.
I think that many people here are missing the point of what Cyc is supposed to do; Cyc is not boing built to be an intelligent machine, but a *knowledgable* machine.
Human intelligence comes both from our ability to process information *and* the large store of information we've acquired throughout our life.
I think that a good example of this was mentioned in the article. The statement "Mary and Jean are sisters." implies that each is a sister of the other, while the statement "Mary and Jean are mothers." does *not* imply anything of the sort. When you think about in, there really is no reason that "Mary and Jean are sisters." has to also imply that they are sisters *of each other*, it's just that this is usually what meant.
Think of Cyc as being a space alien: Because it has no exprience with the human way of life, things that are painfully obvious to us need to be taught to it.
A lot of people seem to be arguing that Cyc is a pointless project because it is not very intelligent, but I think they are missing the point. No matter the form our future intelligent machine may take, it will have to have simple, basic things explained to it.
Now, having said that, I'll admit that there is a possible exception to this: if we could also endow such a machine with human-style perception, and possible an ability to interact with the world, then we could treat it like a child and let it stumble upon the truths of the world on its own.
But regardless, my point still stands that common sense is *not* an intrinsic property of intelligence, but something additional that must be provided in order to make intelligence useful.
The Cyc project is not trying to make an intelligent machine, but it is trying to build up a database of common sense--which we may be grateful for later when we've built a machine that is intelligent enough to make serious use of it.
You're missing the point. What they are actually saying is: No harm, no foul.
...Gates' Law predicts that in 600 years Microsoft will have assimilated the entire Universe in what mosts physicists refer to as the "Big Crash".
Whether this will actually occur, of course depends on the exact values of many still undetermined constants, such as the total mass of CowboyNeal and the exact value of the Cosmological Fudge Factor.
> We are pointless little specs of rust, sitting on a pointless spec of dust floating in the vastness of an infinte universe.
:) On the other hand, when you look at exactly what had to happen for life to arise on Earth... well, lets just say that the odds are fairly staggering. That's all I wanted to get at.
:-) And don't forget that there is an entire generation that wasn't there for the trips to the moon; for us this is hardly a "re-run"--of course, I have trouble seeing how anyone could consider Mars a "re-run". Can we compromise on calling it a really good sequel that was better that the original?
;)
;-)
Hmm... actually, you won me over right there. If you don't mind, I think that I shall roll over and die now. After all, what's the point of going on.
> Get a grip. It's quite a leap from getting a tin can from here to the Moon to demonstrating potential to "command the Universe".
As opposed to the leap between, say, rubbing two sticks together to make fire and building nuclear weapons? We are good at taking leaps!
> It is also possible we aren't. I'm personally of the camp that hopes the Universe is full of life. I can't imagine the arrogance of being the only things around to bring beauty to it by observing.
I am not claiming that we are special because of our own merits. I hope that you're right, in fact.
> Been there, done that, we found no riches, few solutions. Sorry about that, you got Tang and Calculators. To get to Mars, we'll need, you guessed it, Tang and Calculators. Getting to the Moon was a new and enriching experience, getting to Mars is a re-run.
Uhh... believe it or not, a trip to Mars will take just a little more than "Tang and Calculators".
> Indeed, now we know the Moon is pretty much made out of dirt, Mars is pretty much made out of dirt, and we've got plenty of dirt right here.
*shrug* Truthfully, I had been thinking more of metal from asteroids and extra power from the sun than moon/martian dirt. The point was that in space there certainly is a lot more of stuff than on Earth, simply because there is just that much space. We don't have infinite amounts of everything here, you know, so we *might* need to get "stuff"--whatever it may be--from elsewhere one of these days.
> Want a dream to work towards? Try some of these...
Technology for (1) and (4) might be significantly advanced in the course of an ambitious space program. Solutions to (2) tend to be inefficient simply because it is human nature to respond to incentives, which perfect equity would seem to destroy. And I don't see what the world would lose if the French were to vanish off the planet... of course, they undoubtedly feel the same way about us.
Besides, why can't these problems COMPLEMENT a mission to Mars rather than having to stand in its way? I'm not saying that world peace, yadda yadda, wouldn't also be very grand in their own right, I guess I'm just saying that the eventual diaspora of humanity into space (okay, maybe "eventual" is a little optimistic) will be an achievement at least on that order--something worth working towards, even if it does cost us a little. Besides, lets face it: going to Mars is far easier than all of the problem you mentioned.
Sheesh, you try to get enthusiastic about a cool idea and all you get it to be called a "pointless little [spec] of rust" with a "cold and impersonal dream". Harsh.
The day when the only thing that man cares about is seeing just how comfortably he can live is the day that the human sprit dies.
It is entirely possible that we may be the only living thing in the Universe that has left and returned to its planet through its own abilities. Think about that for a minute. Doesn't that give you a sense of awe?
We have the potential to explore and command the Universe in ways that we do not have reason to believe that anything else ever has, or that anything else ever will.
The reason we do these things is not just because they benefit us, but because they are the fulfillment of a yearning desire to grow and to stretch our limits as far as they can go, because it is the destiny of all living things to either grow and expand or eventually to die.
And if that is not enough to satisfy your materialism, then consider this: there are untold riches out in space that are just waiting to be tapped to meet our needs. But before we can get them out of space, we are going to have to invest a lot into space--not because space is strange and wierd, but because this has been the case for every technology that has come before it.
So, please, even if you fail to be attracted by the dream of space travel, don't just dismiss it as a useless toy. See it for what it is: an untapped technology that is just waiting to solve our problems. And solve them it can, if we only take the time to figure out how.
There can only be one truly universal symbol.
Construct the number 42. Make it big. Make it awesome.
And then put a giant X through it.