I did read the patent, or at least several large portions of it, prior to responding.
The patent was filed in 2000, even if you assume that a few years went by between the creation of their bot and the filing of the patent, the first bots *I* stumbled across were on AOL and IRC, and were able to interact with the person messaging them to an extent. This was circa 1995-1996, and seeing as I was never on the cutting edge of technology, I'd assume there was some lag before I found out about them. Now, I realize that IRC isn't quite the same as instant messaging, but THAT is really splitting hairs.
Incompetence is the PROBLEM and should not be used as the excuse. Yes, it's very hard to have a good knowledge of each field that things are patented in, however those granting the patents should *do the research* that they are supposed to do. It would take what? about 20 minutes of research to determine that prior art exists?
It's the same in EVERY field. It's stupid/negligent to hand out a patent without doing at least minimal research beforehand.
Er. My business email address recieves far more email than does my personal address.
You're misguided if you think that ONLY consumers are recieving spam.
Hmm.. Just made me think of an interesting angle--spam costs businesses FAR more than junk-faxes. The IT department must impliment spam filters, and spend extraordinary amounts of time tweaking and modifying them to ensure that the signal:noise ratio is acceptable and that few if any legitimate emails are turned away.
Sure, IT people aren't getting paid quite the insane salaries that they used to, but there are MUCH better uses for their time.
We need to approach this as "Here is quantifiable damage: The IT department spent x number of hours/days/weeks this year fighting spam. As a result, Projects X, Y, and Z were delayed. Projects X, Y, and Z, after they were launched gave us such and such amount of income per month, and if they had been launched earlier, then we would have been making that profit earlier."
Somehow I think all the lost man-hours and postponed projects hurt a bit more than several hundred junk-faxes a year.
No. They currently support the "Redhat" and "Mandrake" Linux distro's, that's QUITE different than saying Linux is only Redhat and Everything-drake.
Files and security are handled differently on different Linux distro's, so this is likely one of those things that's harder to make work with every distro known to mankind. Redhat and Mandrake are a start... Redhat and Debian or Slackware or SuSE would be a better start... But at least there's a start.
I doubt Sun would go for that, as I think they would like to keep their brand from further being diluted. (StarOffice is essentially OpenOffice, would they REALLY want to further break that down so that there were StarOffice, OpenOffice, and AppleWorks X?)
It just doesn't make sense from Sun's perspective.
It would be smart, though, for Apple to attempt to buy StarOffice and play their game of cutting off development for other platforms, and putting a sleek consumer-ey interface on it and call it next-generation.
Of course, that would have the result of MS getting royally pissed off and severing all ties to OS X, Apple, and the likes. seeing as Office for OS X is *not* selling as many copies as anticipated, and MS has a bee up their butt about that already.
I think that the biggest drawback to AI is that it is non-intelligent and cannot handle threaded conversation or remember what was said five or six sentences ago and incorporate it into the conversation. In other words- it is incapable of learning and applying that learning in an intelligent and spontaneous way.
In comparision to that, what does voice influx matter? Most human beings I know have difficulty with that, as can be seen in a conversation between a man and his wife--he talks louder because he's making a point, and she gets pissed off because he's yelling at her.
The developers should take care of the things that humans seem to do naturally ie: recall, reflect, and carry information over to new situations. If I tell a bot that my friend Jamie is a girl, it should remember that Jamie is a she, and not keep telling me Jamie is a he, or asking "Who is Jamie?" It should recall. That would be more human-like than interpreting 'voice influx'. Besides last time I talked all caps at a bot it accused me of shouting and said I hurt its ears... That's easy enough, eh? Oh well.. I guess it's more intelligent than some people in AOL chat rooms... But then again, AS (artificial stupidity) would be as well.
Oh God. Micropolis. I've got a dead one in a filing cabinet somewhere. Plug it in, and it sounds like a prop plane with a screeching cat stuck in it. Leave it plugged, and after a few moments it's searing hot and starts smelling funny.
Plenty of open source projects start off that way, I don't see why you should get accused, so long as the project is going to become open source after the initial release, and so long as you don't change your mind after using the beta-testers time.
Too many cooks can spoil the broth, but as the 'broth' becomes more mature it can handle more cooks.
I would think that a good way to avoid the contamination of 'unwanted ideas' would be to clearly lay out the first few releases. "Release one will have... blah blah, Release two will have blah blah. After which Release three is open for suggestions."
On top of that, use your 'planning documentation' to direct the project. Lay out how you wish contributions to be coded, etc. Demand good documentation of contributed code, as it's easier to implement things when you have that 'map' of what's being done with the code. (verify that the code does do what the comments say it does!)
Just because it's open source doesn't mean that it can't be structured. In fact, open source is more likely to be structured because of the many contributors and wide ranging talents. A well-structured project is more likely to survive than a poorly structured one because it will be more appealing to more developers.
Guys who are proficient in anything are sexy. I mean- look at the guys rollerblading, they're sexy. Look at guys who can cook. Sexy. Look at guys poised over their CPU overclocking it. Sexy.
Geeks... Let's put it this way. If they shower often enough to keep BO at bay, don't try to steal MY computer, are capable of doing more than 10 situps in a row, and believe in occasionally venturing outside... Sexy. If they can cook, all the better. Personally, I have about a 60% chance of success in the kitchen, and the phone numbers of all the takeout places in the area memorised... And I don't even use the phone.
If we're comparing Apples to Microsofts, then the correct analogy would be that I'm sticking with Windows3.11 AFTER purchasing Windows95 and finding it un-useable because it a.) crashed b.) wouldn't run any of my programs without me spending multiple-hundreds of dollars to re-buy, crossgrade, or upgrade. and c.) had a non-functional GUI that irritated me to death.
Windows3.11-Windows95 was worth it, Windows95-2k was worth it, and Windows2k-XP was worth it. OS 9-OS X WILL be worth it once it's a functional OS and makes up for its shortcomings.
OS10.1-OS10.2 IS NOT worth the $130 they are asking for it. It is NOT a new version of an OS, even if it might be the first complete version of the 'beta' releases they've been trying to sell off as 'real'.
I think the numbers speak for themselves--only 20 percent of Mac users have upgraded.. No.. wait. That's their PROJECTED CONVERSION RATE for 24 months of release. Something like 77% of users who bought a computer *with the OS installed* left it installed.
Most of the things I saw on the list of "features" fell into a few categories:
1- Things I was able to do in OS 9 (which is still on my Mac) 2- Things that I DO NOT WANT (iCal for one. I have Office and am HAPPY with it.) 3- Bug fixes that I *DO* want, but that I'm not about to pay $130 for. Bug fixes should be free, and should be available for all users. OR they should upgrade users for free, but withold the "killer apps" for those who wish to pay for them. If they did this, I'd have a LOT more goodwill for Apple and would even consider buying the "killer apps" for $130, since I'd know they would fix the bugs for me for free or for a tiny price in the future.
In other words- bye-bye OS X on my Mac. I'm sticking with 9. Maybe it's buggy, maybe it doesn't have the million and one "features" that OS X has, but at least it has the ones I use without making me pay $130... *growl*
Same reason I stuck with Win95 until Win2k came out--UNLESS it fixes bugs AND adds substantial benefit over the old OS, no way am I pulling out the credit card.
Heh. Yeah, maybe the skydiving industry that deals with millioaires who have a lot of time to spare. Didn't you read about the cost involved, and the amount of training?
Ouch.
Jumping from a putter-putt plane is expensive enough.
Wouldn't the parachute only open once he slows down due to terminal velocity--something I'm sure parachutes are subject to?
I don't think he'd try to use the parachute when he's going faster than the speed of sound, since I think that would hurt more than the parachute (him)
Funny, I was thinking it was an improvement on the Mac. My major complaints about the Mac case are: 1- the four handles make it NOT fit on my desk, I have to bunjee cord it in place. 2- You need to be REALLY careful closing a Mac because if the latch doesn't click just-right, the case will fall open. Somehow I don't think that it's a good thing for the motherboard to go crashing down. The latches also like to break. Gimme a single-thumbscrew closure any day. 3- I like my drives stacked, it makes for easier cabling and adjustments.
Is this including all the viruses, script kiddies, etc. etc. that tend to fill up logs?
If it's only sentient attacks, then it makes sense. Windows isn't a challenge, Linux is.
Otherwise, I beg to difer. There are countless sites out there dedicated to shameless display of nimda/code red, and script-kiddie attacks in their logs.
1- "trading commands" like "game cheats" and "easter eggs" is a far cry from "intelligence". Intelligence is going out, buying a book, and becoming engrossed in the how's and why'fors of the OS. Granted, the "trading of" things is how people START, but it's also a path that many abandon LONG before they learn a single thing. (BTW- it's dangerous to trade scripts and commands without the recieving party knowing what they're doing. rm -rf / is not ALL that far away.)
2- Linux comes with developers tools. Not all Linux users use developers tools. Not all Mac users are going to use developers tools, in fact I'd say that a significant minority will. In fact, I've had a number of OS X users say "You type stuff into the command line? That's *so* DOS." Pheh. Besides which, there have always been ways to jump into programing on the Mac. Codewarrior is inexpensive, and scripting is free. How many applescripters were there? Not many, I tell you. Most PEOPLE say they can't wrap their head around something like that.We'll get a few more script-kiddies, granted. (That's what the "trading of commands like easter eggs" is called.)
3- We've got Mac users switching over to Windows and to Linux, Windows users switching over to the Mac and Linux, and Linux users fleeing for the land of the Apples and Oranges. Switching, unlike Apple seems to like to believe, is not all that uncommon. It is also not moving in a linear fashion towards OS X. It's more akin to the panic of rats fleeing a sinking ship.
I could say more, but I already have a feeling I'm going to be modded down as flamebait. Although I don't know why. I'm NOT saying Mac users are stupid. I'm saying your "proof of the intelligence of the average Mac user" is unfounded and your reasons are silly.
Early blood transfusions would kill people, as well. Seems like most medical technologies kill people in the early stages. The researchers just need to get it right. (Early blood transfusions killed people due to cross-species transfusions, and lack of knowledge of blood types.)
Of course, this will open up a whole can of worms, too, I'm sure. Renegade viruses that we can't stop, etc.
Sometimes I just have to wonder which innovation of humanity will kill us all off. =]
Unfortunately, most people at this point have an unlimited dialup connection, and the general consensus is that "Well, just how much time can deleting a few pieces of spam take?"
This is compounded by the fact that our Lawmakers are generally rich and can afford a.) a fast dialup connection, b.) money to pay other people to read their mail for them or c.) a lawyer to sue those who send too much email to them.
I'm of the opinion that we (the people of the internet) should begin bringing class action lawsuits against everyone who spams us. There should be a central source (although this could get expensive!) where we could forward the spam we recieve, and the recieving server would parse it and generate a signature unique to the email, then compare it to the signatures already in the database. Once a particular email had a large number of occurences (say 20,000?) then it would become flagged for a class action lawsuit and those who had forwarded that particular email would be notified and they could band together to form the lawsuit.
(or something)
Of course, a service like that would need a HEFTY backbone, seeing all the spam I get.
Every time I download an ad-supported piece of software I say "Okay, at least I don't have to pay $x for software of this functionality..." and then 10 days later, sick and tired of dealing with the ads I either pay the developers for the "Ad free" version (if one exists) or hunt down a similar piece of software that doesn't have the ads. It's not that commercialism bothers me. It's that those damned things take up screen real estate, and with my 17in. monitor jacked up to a ridiculously high resolution of 1600x1200 just to get more space, I don't think I want to deal with anything that will munch up that space. I'd rather pay the OSS developers, and frequently do.
Slashdot Mirror
I did read the patent, or at least several large portions of it, prior to responding.
The patent was filed in 2000, even if you assume that a few years went by between the creation of their bot and the filing of the patent, the first bots *I* stumbled across were on AOL and IRC, and were able to interact with the person messaging them to an extent. This was circa 1995-1996, and seeing as I was never on the cutting edge of technology, I'd assume there was some lag before I found out about them. Now, I realize that IRC isn't quite the same as instant messaging, but THAT is really splitting hairs.
-Sara
Incompetence is the PROBLEM and should not be used as the excuse. Yes, it's very hard to have a good knowledge of each field that things are patented in, however those granting the patents should *do the research* that they are supposed to do. It would take what? about 20 minutes of research to determine that prior art exists?
It's the same in EVERY field. It's stupid/negligent to hand out a patent without doing at least minimal research beforehand.
-Sara
You're talking about college students. That might encourage some of them to come out of the closet... and into the fridge.
-Sara
Er. My business email address recieves far more email than does my personal address.
You're misguided if you think that ONLY consumers are recieving spam.
Hmm.. Just made me think of an interesting angle--spam costs businesses FAR more than junk-faxes. The IT department must impliment spam filters, and spend extraordinary amounts of time tweaking and modifying them to ensure that the signal:noise ratio is acceptable and that few if any legitimate emails are turned away.
Sure, IT people aren't getting paid quite the insane salaries that they used to, but there are MUCH better uses for their time.
We need to approach this as "Here is quantifiable damage: The IT department spent x number of hours/days/weeks this year fighting spam. As a result, Projects X, Y, and Z were delayed. Projects X, Y, and Z, after they were launched gave us such and such amount of income per month, and if they had been launched earlier, then we would have been making that profit earlier."
Somehow I think all the lost man-hours and postponed projects hurt a bit more than several hundred junk-faxes a year.
-Sara
Er. And just what does up2date install?
-Sara
No. They currently support the "Redhat" and "Mandrake" Linux distro's, that's QUITE different than saying Linux is only Redhat and Everything-drake.
Files and security are handled differently on different Linux distro's, so this is likely one of those things that's harder to make work with every distro known to mankind. Redhat and Mandrake are a start... Redhat and Debian or Slackware or SuSE would be a better start... But at least there's a start.
-Sara
I doubt Sun would go for that, as I think they would like to keep their brand from further being diluted. (StarOffice is essentially OpenOffice, would they REALLY want to further break that down so that there were StarOffice, OpenOffice, and AppleWorks X?)
It just doesn't make sense from Sun's perspective.
It would be smart, though, for Apple to attempt to buy StarOffice and play their game of cutting off development for other platforms, and putting a sleek consumer-ey interface on it and call it next-generation.
Of course, that would have the result of MS getting royally pissed off and severing all ties to OS X, Apple, and the likes. seeing as Office for OS X is *not* selling as many copies as anticipated, and MS has a bee up their butt about that already.
-Sara
I think that the biggest drawback to AI is that it is non-intelligent and cannot handle threaded conversation or remember what was said five or six sentences ago and incorporate it into the conversation. In other words- it is incapable of learning and applying that learning in an intelligent and spontaneous way.
In comparision to that, what does voice influx matter? Most human beings I know have difficulty with that, as can be seen in a conversation between a man and his wife--he talks louder because he's making a point, and she gets pissed off because he's yelling at her.
The developers should take care of the things that humans seem to do naturally ie: recall, reflect, and carry information over to new situations. If I tell a bot that my friend Jamie is a girl, it should remember that Jamie is a she, and not keep telling me Jamie is a he, or asking "Who is Jamie?" It should recall. That would be more human-like than interpreting 'voice influx'. Besides last time I talked all caps at a bot it accused me of shouting and said I hurt its ears... That's easy enough, eh? Oh well.. I guess it's more intelligent than some people in AOL chat rooms... But then again, AS (artificial stupidity) would be as well.
-Sara
don't mind hot and funny smelling... But in hard drives it's a definite turn-off. :p
-Sara
Oh God. Micropolis. I've got a dead one in a filing cabinet somewhere. Plug it in, and it sounds like a prop plane with a screeching cat stuck in it. Leave it plugged, and after a few moments it's searing hot and starts smelling funny.
@#$(& Micropolis.
-Sara
Plenty of open source projects start off that way, I don't see why you should get accused, so long as the project is going to become open source after the initial release, and so long as you don't change your mind after using the beta-testers time.
Too many cooks can spoil the broth, but as the 'broth' becomes more mature it can handle more cooks.
I would think that a good way to avoid the contamination of 'unwanted ideas' would be to clearly lay out the first few releases. "Release one will have... blah blah, Release two will have blah blah. After which Release three is open for suggestions."
On top of that, use your 'planning documentation' to direct the project. Lay out how you wish contributions to be coded, etc. Demand good documentation of contributed code, as it's easier to implement things when you have that 'map' of what's being done with the code. (verify that the code does do what the comments say it does!)
Just because it's open source doesn't mean that it can't be structured. In fact, open source is more likely to be structured because of the many contributors and wide ranging talents. A well-structured project is more likely to survive than a poorly structured one because it will be more appealing to more developers.
-Sara
It's more fun to cut them up with industrial-strength scissors. Excercises the hands and gets little glittery bits of data everywhere.
Either that, or sand-papering the paint off and using them as a coaster.
Either way, the entertainment value lasts longer and there's less liklihood of zapping your microwave by mistake.
-Sara
Guys who are proficient in anything are sexy. I mean- look at the guys rollerblading, they're sexy. Look at guys who can cook. Sexy. Look at guys poised over their CPU overclocking it. Sexy.
Geeks... Let's put it this way. If they shower often enough to keep BO at bay, don't try to steal MY computer, are capable of doing more than 10 situps in a row, and believe in occasionally venturing outside... Sexy. If they can cook, all the better. Personally, I have about a 60% chance of success in the kitchen, and the phone numbers of all the takeout places in the area memorised... And I don't even use the phone.
-Sara
Er. no.
If we're comparing Apples to Microsofts, then the correct analogy would be that I'm sticking with Windows3.11 AFTER purchasing Windows95 and finding it un-useable because it a.) crashed b.) wouldn't run any of my programs without me spending multiple-hundreds of dollars to re-buy, crossgrade, or upgrade. and c.) had a non-functional GUI that irritated me to death.
Windows3.11-Windows95 was worth it, Windows95-2k was worth it, and Windows2k-XP was worth it. OS 9-OS X WILL be worth it once it's a functional OS and makes up for its shortcomings.
OS10.1-OS10.2 IS NOT worth the $130 they are asking for it. It is NOT a new version of an OS, even if it might be the first complete version of the 'beta' releases they've been trying to sell off as 'real'.
I think the numbers speak for themselves--only 20 percent of Mac users have upgraded.. No.. wait. That's their PROJECTED CONVERSION RATE for 24 months of release. Something like 77% of users who bought a computer *with the OS installed* left it installed.
-Sara
Killer apps?
Most of the things I saw on the list of "features" fell into a few categories:
1- Things I was able to do in OS 9 (which is still on my Mac)
2- Things that I DO NOT WANT (iCal for one. I have Office and am HAPPY with it.)
3- Bug fixes that I *DO* want, but that I'm not about to pay $130 for. Bug fixes should be free, and should be available for all users. OR they should upgrade users for free, but withold the "killer apps" for those who wish to pay for them. If they did this, I'd have a LOT more goodwill for Apple and would even consider buying the "killer apps" for $130, since I'd know they would fix the bugs for me for free or for a tiny price in the future.
In other words- bye-bye OS X on my Mac. I'm sticking with 9. Maybe it's buggy, maybe it doesn't have the million and one "features" that OS X has, but at least it has the ones I use without making me pay $130... *growl*
Same reason I stuck with Win95 until Win2k came out--UNLESS it fixes bugs AND adds substantial benefit over the old OS, no way am I pulling out the credit card.
-Sara
Heh. Yeah, maybe the skydiving industry that deals with millioaires who have a lot of time to spare. Didn't you read about the cost involved, and the amount of training?
Ouch.
Jumping from a putter-putt plane is expensive enough.
-Sara
Wouldn't the parachute only open once he slows down due to terminal velocity--something I'm sure parachutes are subject to?
I don't think he'd try to use the parachute when he's going faster than the speed of sound, since I think that would hurt more than the parachute (him)
-Sara
Funny, I was thinking it was an improvement on the Mac. My major complaints about the Mac case are: 1- the four handles make it NOT fit on my desk, I have to bunjee cord it in place. 2- You need to be REALLY careful closing a Mac because if the latch doesn't click just-right, the case will fall open. Somehow I don't think that it's a good thing for the motherboard to go crashing down. The latches also like to break. Gimme a single-thumbscrew closure any day. 3- I like my drives stacked, it makes for easier cabling and adjustments.
-Sara
Is this including all the viruses, script kiddies, etc. etc. that tend to fill up logs?
If it's only sentient attacks, then it makes sense. Windows isn't a challenge, Linux is.
Otherwise, I beg to difer. There are countless sites out there dedicated to shameless display of nimda/code red, and script-kiddie attacks in their logs.
-Sara
1- "trading commands" like "game cheats" and "easter eggs" is a far cry from "intelligence". Intelligence is going out, buying a book, and becoming engrossed in the how's and why'fors of the OS. Granted, the "trading of" things is how people START, but it's also a path that many abandon LONG before they learn a single thing. (BTW- it's dangerous to trade scripts and commands without the recieving party knowing what they're doing. rm -rf / is not ALL that far away.)
2- Linux comes with developers tools. Not all Linux users use developers tools. Not all Mac users are going to use developers tools, in fact I'd say that a significant minority will. In fact, I've had a number of OS X users say "You type stuff into the command line? That's *so* DOS." Pheh. Besides which, there have always been ways to jump into programing on the Mac. Codewarrior is inexpensive, and scripting is free. How many applescripters were there? Not many, I tell you. Most PEOPLE say they can't wrap their head around something like that.We'll get a few more script-kiddies, granted. (That's what the "trading of commands like easter eggs" is called.)
3- We've got Mac users switching over to Windows and to Linux, Windows users switching over to the Mac and Linux, and Linux users fleeing for the land of the Apples and Oranges. Switching, unlike Apple seems to like to believe, is not all that uncommon. It is also not moving in a linear fashion towards OS X. It's more akin to the panic of rats fleeing a sinking ship.
I could say more, but I already have a feeling I'm going to be modded down as flamebait. Although I don't know why. I'm NOT saying Mac users are stupid. I'm saying your "proof of the intelligence of the average Mac user" is unfounded and your reasons are silly.
-Sara
Early blood transfusions would kill people, as well. Seems like most medical technologies kill people in the early stages. The researchers just need to get it right. (Early blood transfusions killed people due to cross-species transfusions, and lack of knowledge of blood types.)
Of course, this will open up a whole can of worms, too, I'm sure. Renegade viruses that we can't stop, etc.
Sometimes I just have to wonder which innovation of humanity will kill us all off. =]
-Sara
How typical of a guy to be unable to find it. ;)
-Sara
Unfortunately, most people at this point have an unlimited dialup connection, and the general consensus is that "Well, just how much time can deleting a few pieces of spam take?"
This is compounded by the fact that our Lawmakers are generally rich and can afford a.) a fast dialup connection, b.) money to pay other people to read their mail for them or c.) a lawyer to sue those who send too much email to them.
I'm of the opinion that we (the people of the internet) should begin bringing class action lawsuits against everyone who spams us. There should be a central source (although this could get expensive!) where we could forward the spam we recieve, and the recieving server would parse it and generate a signature unique to the email, then compare it to the signatures already in the database. Once a particular email had a large number of occurences (say 20,000?) then it would become flagged for a class action lawsuit and those who had forwarded that particular email would be notified and they could band together to form the lawsuit.
(or something)
Of course, a service like that would need a HEFTY backbone, seeing all the spam I get.
-Sara
And... You subscribed to slashdot to make the ads go away? ;)
-Sara
Every time I download an ad-supported piece of software I say "Okay, at least I don't have to pay $x for software of this functionality..." and then 10 days later, sick and tired of dealing with the ads I either pay the developers for the "Ad free" version (if one exists) or hunt down a similar piece of software that doesn't have the ads. It's not that commercialism bothers me. It's that those damned things take up screen real estate, and with my 17in. monitor jacked up to a ridiculously high resolution of 1600x1200 just to get more space, I don't think I want to deal with anything that will munch up that space. I'd rather pay the OSS developers, and frequently do.
Ads are for shareware.
-Sara