I was under the impression you couldn't patent things like this.
You can attempt to patent anything. Then a patent examiner comes and he has a few hours to decide whether or not your application is valid, despite the fact that he has no knowledge at all about the subject. Sometimes the patent is granted, under the notion that if it isn't valid, this can always be fought out in court.
You don't understand. The inventive elements within software are not. You can't protect a novel inventive way of reducing interprocess memory transfer by copyright. You can with patents.
Yes, but the point is: you don't need it to protect your software products.
Furthermore, how many inventive elements are there in software? Suppose there is one big inventive thing in it. Should that get a patent? Maybe.
But can small inventions exist in software? If they can, each piece of software is built upon thousands and thousands of small inventions. If they can all be patented, you will agree that it is impossible to write software without violating patents. So the only way that remains to write software is to ignore patents, and the only ones who can do that are the big companies who have cross-licensing pacts.
Wrong. The law is made not just by the legislature, but through the courts and the boards of appeal. There is no "single source" of the law, it's a refinement process.
Don't you know that more than 70% of the laws and legislations in European countries are determined by the EC? If that isn't a single source of law, I don't know what is.
So there are a not large numbers of SME's producing software in Europe? Your theory goes against current fact. It is true that patents are not as useful or relevant to SME's as they are to larger companies though.
Of course they exist NOW. But can they continue to exist after software patenting is legalised? Look at the US, where big companies have no qualms killing off SMEs as soon as they become successful.
Perhaps some of the dodgy patents.
Patents, nonetheless.
It's not this simple: if the product exists for some period of time, the patent owner just can't come along "as they choose" and litigate: they will be barred unless they took action earlier.
That is not true. You are confusing copyrights, trademarks and patents. You can let a patent lie for a decade before starting to litigate. That is actually the way some companies make money: they patent something and keep it quiet; then, when someone gets successful and is reaping big profits, they come out of the shadows and claim big bucks. It's sleazy, it's unethical, it's evil, but it is LEGAL.
Wrong. You don't understand how the EPO works: it (a) always requires a technical effect, and (b) a joint USPTO/EPO/JPO meeting in 2002 agreed that business methods _should not be patentable_. This is their desire.
The technical requirement was added by the Parliament. It was scrapped again by the Commission. The current proposal does not have the technical requirement. Furthermore, what the USPTO/EPO/JPO desire is not the question, the question is what becomes law. If they desire something, they should make sure the law is explicit about it. There is nothing in the proposal that prohibits patenting business methods.
Wrong. That is the fact. The FFI says "30,000" software patents, and the GNU list (did you actually check?) shows less than 30 problems. You should do your research. If there are more problems than this, they don't open source producers bring them to light: that would be a better way to justify the situation.
No, I did not check. Who the hell could check 30,000 patents? If 30 GNU projects claim they will have patenting problems, that does not mean the rest of them are problem-free. They just didn't check. I mean, if I am a software engineer, I am usually not interested in law and legislation, so why should I spend my valuable time checking up on 30,000 patents when I could spend it writing software?
We agree: I have no problems with the arguments by the open source movement: but I feel they do a bad job in presenting them in a professional and objective manner. Because of this, I think that decision makers start to dismiss their claims without giving them proper consideration.
Software designers are simply not a powerful pressure group, and they are not cool enough to be adored by the public. As such, they are easily dismissable pawns. Although I have personal experience with several MEPs, who showed me they understood the issue very well. So I still have hopes.
Firstly, the EU directive just _harmonises existing case law_ - without the directive, what's going to happen is that different EU states are going to take different approaches and thus it will be a nightmare.
Is it a nightmare now? No it isn't. Software is protected by copyrights. What more is needed?
Secondly, the EU directive _actually reduces the degree of software patentability_, because currently after IBM, claims to "programs on a carrier" are allowed, but the directive removes the ability to claim this.
No, it doesn't. Despite the fact that the EPO has granted 30,000 software patents, they are actually forbidden by EU law and thus not legal. The new proposal attempts to legalise them.
Thirdly, it's been stated over and over again that there are "multiple software business models" at work in Europe, and there's no specific reason to favour closed model approaches to open model approaches: they all work, and provide revenue and so on.
But the question is, for whom do they produce revenue? A system where software patents are allowed, in practice kills off all small and medium-sized businesses.
Fourthly, in terms of "software patents blocking open source", well there's a very small list at GNU, and in fact this is how it should work: it's to be expected that some patent owners have developed inventive appraoches that they are holding away from open source - fair enough, it's the perojative. It doesn't seem as though Linux, OpenOffice, mysql and numerous other open source products have been affected anything more than trivially.
Ah, but that's where you're mistaken. I am dead certain that all open source software violates some of the granted software patents. If software uses an interface, almost certainly it will use tabs, or scroll bars, or progress bars, or what have you: all of which have been patented. When one of the big guys desires to kill some open source software package off, they just need to litigate. There is no one who has the money for defense, so they win by default.
Fifthly, the EU always maintains more stricter examination than the US: business methods per se are _not_ patentable in the EU, and equally, flakey software patents have a harder time getting through. Stop transposing the failures of US into the EU.
Again, you are mistaken. True, at the moment business methods are not patentable. However, as soon as software patents are allowed, business methods will become patentable. Just write down the method and slap "with a computer" or "over the internet" on it, et voila, you have a viable patent.
Sixly, for the so called "30,000" illegal software patents issued over the last 30 or so years or whatever, I repeat that the GNU list suggests that less than 0.01% of these are impacting open source. That's amazing! And hardly a justification to pull the system apart.
That is what you claim. Where did you get that number from? Admit it, you just pulled it out of your %$@#*. Let me pull a number out of my %$@#* too: I think it is more like 99%.
Finally, the protests in Brussels are are a laugh: against multimillion dollar turnover businesses using patents and contributing to the wellbeing of the EU economy, you have a bunch of jokers with "terrorism is corporate suicide" and other fairly poor and non-objective slogans doing pantomines. Unless the arguments show facts and figures, and more substantive evidence, this is entirely dismissable.
You are absolutely right that the demonstrations were a laugh. That is too bad. But the way to the law-makers heart is not through demonstrations (unless you can raise half-a-million people or so), but through personal contacts (which is what the FFII attempts) or through their wallets (which is what the big coorporations do).
Demonstrations may be useful to get the attention of the man-in-the-street. But, true, the man-in-the-street won't be roused from 300 people walking with supposedly funny slogans.
Even incredibly complex data structures shouldn't be patentable. If they were, for example, Microsoft could patent Office formats and nobody else could write compatible software.
Not that I am a supporter of software patents, but the new proposal has a safeguard against this:
The provisions of this Directive are without prejudice to the application of Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty, in particular where a dominant supplier refuses to allow the use of a patented technique which is needed for the sole purpose of ensuring conversion of the conventions used in two different computer systems or networks so as to allow communication and exchange of data content between them.
If you built up some experience with Morrowind, you would find ways to cut down travel time considerably. Actually, I can reach any place in Morrowind from any other place in under two minutes (with a level 15 character). Hint: Boots of Speed + Ring of Flight + Travel spells.
You are definitely right about the combat system and the flatness of the characters. The dungeons varied: some were miniscule and other were actually huge (especially in the Tribunal add-on). The skill system was OK, in my opinion, if you remember that the game was designed to be played for a looooooong time. When I played it I didn't bother about skills at all, and they built up automatically. As far as the magic system is concerned, personally, I liked it a whole lot.
To put it in different terms: Optimisation is in finding a good algorithm, not in tweaking code details.
To give a nice example: a colleague of mine worked on a program that took two months to execute (it consisted of finding the depth of all connections between all nodes in a graph containing 50,000 nodes). Since the customer needed to run this program once a month, this took far too long. So my colleague rewrote the whole program in assembly, which took him a few months, managing to reduce the required time to, indeed, one month.
My boss then asked me to take a look at it. Together with a mathematician I analysed the central function of the program, and we noticed that it was, basically, a matrix multiplication. We rewrote the program in Delphi in an hour or so, and reduced the required running time to less than an hour.
It's probably due to the fact that I'm not a native English speaker. I tend to come over a little brazen.
Also, since I am currently deep in writing my Ph.D. thesis, I am fanatically occupied by what is the correct term for which mechanism. I tend to forget that other people are a bit more flexible in their use of these terms.
I quite agree with you. Since evolutionary algorithms are a specialty of mine, I have experience both with systems that use asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction. I didn't want to suggest qqqqarl's idea is not possible, just that he used the wrong terminology. The term he should use is "evolution strategy".
AFAIK there are already worms and virusses that use mutation to change (I don't have any definite examples, though). However, virus scanners can still pick them up, because the mutation code itself does not change.
Anyway, by DEFINITION a genetic algorithm uses a population, and also by DEFINITION it uses sexual reproduction (see Thomas Bäck's excellent book comparing several evolutionary techniques, "Evolutionary Algorithms in Theory and Practice", 1996).
If you use pure mutation on a single solution, the term to use would be "Evolution Strategy".
If you want to exclude sexual reproduction, or use any evolutionary technique without bothering about definitions, use the term "evolutionary algorithm", which is an umbrella-name covering all evolutionary techniques.
I know that people are often a bit loose about what terms to use, but since this is one of my particular subjects of research, I am a bit anal about it.
Finally, AFAIK, there are already virusses and worms that mutate themselves. I don't have any definite examples, though.
Because a genetic algorithm is something different than you think. A genetic algorithm optimises a solution by applying genetic operators to a population of potential solutions and calculating a fitness function for each solution to compare it with the others. Other than that, since the worm is so ubiquitous, having two successful worms that meet procreate and deliver new, partially mutated children could be a fun and challenging exercise. But I assume script kiddies don't read slashdot, at least not posts this far down.
I have bought CDs for all music I listen to. I bought all DVDs I watch. I bought all computer programs I use.
Lately, I found the copy protection on especially games gives troubles when playing the game on my computer. When that happens, I download a cracked version that works fine. For the next game that comes along which I want to play, especially from a company which gave me problems before, chances are I'll go for the cracked version immediately.
The region encoding for DVDs doesn't give me any problems now. I have two DVD players, both of which are region free. I have heard, though, that there is a new region encoding which will cause DVDs not to work on my players. But what the hell, I have broadband and it is easy to download them, so I'll do just that.
Music never gave me problems. But now this DRM thingy is coming along. That seems to mean I can't play CDs anymore on my computer, right? Tough. I'll have to stop buying CDs. And if the cracked version works, I know where to get it.
It seems that I am the ideal customer of the entertainment industry. I am willing to buy everything, and I buy a lot. So the question is: what are they gaining by driving me to get stuff illegally?
Why not destroy TCP/IP drivers only? The user will still be able to use his computer, but would be unable to connect to the Internet. And knowing this user (and believe me, I know him), his only solution to his connection problem will be formatting the hardrive and reinstalling everything.
Here's his biography which was written in promotion of one of his books (so it's pretty biased to make him come off well).
Sarmast works in architecture, and describes himself as a "mythologist". He is very interested in "ancient mysteries". He supports himself by doing "odd jobs" and as his hobby studies "Atlantology" and travels. His "research" is privately funded.
What is pretty funny, is that his biography states he cooperates with "specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)". They even supplied him with "a digitized file of the existing raw data... a document that was over 2,500 pages long". I can imagine the following conversation between two of those "specialists":
S1: "That crackpot is on the phone again."
S2: "Please, not now. Besides, it's your turn to talk to him."
S1: "Come on, I'm busy."
S2: "Just blow him off."
S1: "Then he'll just phone again in a few hours."
S2: "I have an idea. Let's give him some data that will really keep him busy for the next six months."
S1: "What data?"
S2: "Just give him everything."
S1: "But he won't be able to do anything with it. It's just raw data!"
S2: "That's the point. He's a crank. He has studied Atlantology, for Christ's sake. He is used to immerse himself in meaningless stuff!"
You're right! And indeed, my friend hit his joystick with the drill (it's really a true story, except that the joystick was trashed and not the keyboard -- trashing the keyboard would be very bad with a C64, because it's inseparable from the computer, as you know).
And what about that diving! I remember that the judgement went as follows: if you hit the water correctly, the more you had moved the joystick, the better your score. And if you hit the water incorrectly, you were in a world of pain, probably.
"So... let me get this straight... _your_ intuition that srong AI is achievable conflicts with _Penrose's_ intuition that it isn't."
In a sense you are right. But I have the stronger position. I think strong AI can exist, although I can't say when and if we'll achieve it (probably not in my lifetime). Penrose thinks it is impossible in principle. He is determined to convince us of his position.
It's like math. If a problem can be solved, it is enough to give an sample solution. If it can't be solved, you have to give a proof. That's usually a lot more difficult to do.
In this case, the example can not be given at this moment in history, but Penrose thinks it is possible to give a proof for the negative. However, he doesn't give a proof, he just tries to convince us intuitively. Which is OK, but he tends to refer to "things we all know, so they are true by default", which is very weak argumentation, and he is certainly in conflicts which things I presume to know.
The basic dilemma is whether you believe computers have, in principle, the same capabilities as humans, or you believe humans are in principle superior to computers. I have reasons to believe the first (it would go too deep here to give those reasons, but read some books by Hofstadter or Dennett if you are interested). However, since the human brain is not completely understood, I can't be absolutely sure.
Penrose believes the second. Just like Searle, his premise is that organic material has qualities that cannot be equalled by machines. Both Searle and Penrose are vague about what those qualities are. (Searle agrees that when computers are made of organic material, they can become conscious, which IMHO destroys his position, because I see no reason why computers should not be constructed from organic material.)
If Penrose would just say, "Hey, I think computers will always be inferior to people, because if a machine can become the equal of a human, it can surpass us, and I refuse to accept that", then I would just say, "OK, that's your opinion, I have my own."
Of course, that would not make for a bestseller, so he doesn't state his position that way. Instead he puts the same thought in a book of several hundred pages, laden with false arguments and misunderstandings. That is not concinving.
Unfortunately, prior art is not the point. The point is that Microsoft can now threaten companies who use this feature with litigation. And of course, unless you are an IBM or someone of that size, you do not stand a chance against Microsoft's lawyers: you'll probably be bankrupt loooooong before you set your first foot in court.
Yes, it sucks that to play DVDs, you have to buy a license. But...so?
It's not about having to buy a license. It's having to buy a separate license for each piece of equipment you want to view a DVD on.
I have two DVD players in the home. So I have bought a license twice over. However, I prefer to watch DVDs on my computer, because my monitor is so much better than my TV sets. So now I own legally bought DVDs, I own two licenses to play them, and I have the software to play them on my computer. But still it is illegal to play them on my computer. That's downright silly.
What is even more silly is that you can buy a DVD, but you are not allowed to view it until you buy a license to view it. When I buy a DVD, I assume I have, by default, a right to view it. In whatever way I like. As long as I am not violating the copyrights.
I remember it still. First, you had the 100 meter dash. That meant hitting the space bar very fast for about 15 seconds. Then, you had the 200 meter dash. That meant hitting the space bar very fast for 30 seconds. Then, you had the 400 meter dash and you stopped playing.
A friend of mine had an easy time winning those dash events. But he had fixed a small strip of wood to the end of a drill and used that to hit the space bar with something like a 100 RPMs. His character finished in a few seconds. Not so good for the keyboard, though.
This is completely off-topic so I'll keep it short.
I haven't read SotM, so I can't comment on that. My biggest problem with Penrose is that I personally am convinced that strong AI can be achieved, while Penrose believes that it is impossible. That does not mean that the book can't be good, but Penrose doesn't do a good job matching his arguments with those of his opponents.
He has a tendency to repeat arguments that strong AI supporters give, but in a way that they can be misunderstood, and then he misunderstands them and basically says they are stupid. Already in chapter one of ENM he starts ridiculing strong-AI supporters, without giving arguments. Later those arguments follow, but they are seriously flawed.
For example, while discussing Searle's Chinese Room experiment, he suggests that strong-AI supporters believe that "understanding Chinese" is in the book, and argues that it is stupid that a book can "understand" anything. But Turing's view (which is repeated by many others) is that the understanding is not in the book, but in the book + the human that reads the book. There is an emergent understanding of Chinese that comes from a book that describes how Chinese can be perfectly translated, and a human who strictly follows the rules that are written down in the book. This argument is mentioned by Penrose somewhere, but he just puts it aside as a very weak argument, that does not need refuting.
Writing like this annoys me immensly, and I suspect most my colleague AI researchers.
Incidentally, I think Penrose' work in mathematics is absolutely brilliant.
Penrose is a mathematician who attempts to be philospohical and fails miserably, because he can't distinguish his intuition from fact. You don't need a link. Just remember that he wrote "The Emperor's New Mind", and coil away in horror.
In the interview he says he coined 150 patents. He describes his game patent as follows:
"We won our lawsuits because our patents covered both what is termed "means plus function"...i.e. we showed in the patents and claimed the concepts of the interaction of machine controlled screen symbols (such as a ball) and player controlled symbols such as the player paddles (the functions). We also showed how this interaction could be accomplished (the means). Any game made by a manufacturer that exhibited the type of interaction defined by our patents was found to be infringing..."
Translated:
Gamer Dad: "It's a game, see, where you hit a "ball" with a "paddle". Those are the functions."
Patent examiner: "That already exists. It is called "tennis". Or "ping pong" if you like."
Gamer Dad: "But I haven't told you the means yet! You do this... with A COMPUTER!"
Patent examiner: "You hit the ball with a computer?"
Game Dad: "No! No! The paddle and ball are both on the computer screen!"
Patent examiner: "Whoah! That's novel! If that isn't worth a patent, I don't know what is!"
Gamer Dad: "Then there is my second idea. You run towards a gorilla who is throwing barrels at you."
Patent examiner: "Is that a game?"
Gamer Dad: "And you do this... on A COMPUTER!"
Patent examiner faints from so much innovative power.
Slashdot Mirror
You can attempt to patent anything. Then a patent examiner comes and he has a few hours to decide whether or not your application is valid, despite the fact that he has no knowledge at all about the subject. Sometimes the patent is granted, under the notion that if it isn't valid, this can always be fought out in court.
Yes, but the point is: you don't need it to protect your software products.
Furthermore, how many inventive elements are there in software? Suppose there is one big inventive thing in it. Should that get a patent? Maybe.
But can small inventions exist in software? If they can, each piece of software is built upon thousands and thousands of small inventions. If they can all be patented, you will agree that it is impossible to write software without violating patents. So the only way that remains to write software is to ignore patents, and the only ones who can do that are the big companies who have cross-licensing pacts.
Wrong. The law is made not just by the legislature, but through the courts and the boards of appeal. There is no "single source" of the law, it's a refinement process.
Don't you know that more than 70% of the laws and legislations in European countries are determined by the EC? If that isn't a single source of law, I don't know what is.
So there are a not large numbers of SME's producing software in Europe? Your theory goes against current fact. It is true that patents are not as useful or relevant to SME's as they are to larger companies though.
Of course they exist NOW. But can they continue to exist after software patenting is legalised? Look at the US, where big companies have no qualms killing off SMEs as soon as they become successful.
Perhaps some of the dodgy patents.
Patents, nonetheless.
It's not this simple: if the product exists for some period of time, the patent owner just can't come along "as they choose" and litigate: they will be barred unless they took action earlier.
That is not true. You are confusing copyrights, trademarks and patents. You can let a patent lie for a decade before starting to litigate. That is actually the way some companies make money: they patent something and keep it quiet; then, when someone gets successful and is reaping big profits, they come out of the shadows and claim big bucks. It's sleazy, it's unethical, it's evil, but it is LEGAL.
Wrong. You don't understand how the EPO works: it (a) always requires a technical effect, and (b) a joint USPTO/EPO/JPO meeting in 2002 agreed that business methods _should not be patentable_. This is their desire.
The technical requirement was added by the Parliament. It was scrapped again by the Commission. The current proposal does not have the technical requirement. Furthermore, what the USPTO/EPO/JPO desire is not the question, the question is what becomes law. If they desire something, they should make sure the law is explicit about it. There is nothing in the proposal that prohibits patenting business methods.
Wrong. That is the fact. The FFI says "30,000" software patents, and the GNU list (did you actually check?) shows less than 30 problems. You should do your research. If there are more problems than this, they don't open source producers bring them to light: that would be a better way to justify the situation.
No, I did not check. Who the hell could check 30,000 patents? If 30 GNU projects claim they will have patenting problems, that does not mean the rest of them are problem-free. They just didn't check. I mean, if I am a software engineer, I am usually not interested in law and legislation, so why should I spend my valuable time checking up on 30,000 patents when I could spend it writing software?
We agree: I have no problems with the arguments by the open source movement: but I feel they do a bad job in presenting them in a professional and objective manner. Because of this, I think that decision makers start to dismiss their claims without giving them proper consideration.
Software designers are simply not a powerful pressure group, and they are not cool enough to be adored by the public. As such, they are easily dismissable pawns. Although I have personal experience with several MEPs, who showed me they understood the issue very well. So I still have hopes.
Is it a nightmare now? No it isn't. Software is protected by copyrights. What more is needed?
Secondly, the EU directive _actually reduces the degree of software patentability_, because currently after IBM, claims to "programs on a carrier" are allowed, but the directive removes the ability to claim this.
No, it doesn't. Despite the fact that the EPO has granted 30,000 software patents, they are actually forbidden by EU law and thus not legal. The new proposal attempts to legalise them.
Thirdly, it's been stated over and over again that there are "multiple software business models" at work in Europe, and there's no specific reason to favour closed model approaches to open model approaches: they all work, and provide revenue and so on.
But the question is, for whom do they produce revenue? A system where software patents are allowed, in practice kills off all small and medium-sized businesses.
Fourthly, in terms of "software patents blocking open source", well there's a very small list at GNU, and in fact this is how it should work: it's to be expected that some patent owners have developed inventive appraoches that they are holding away from open source - fair enough, it's the perojative. It doesn't seem as though Linux, OpenOffice, mysql and numerous other open source products have been affected anything more than trivially.
Ah, but that's where you're mistaken. I am dead certain that all open source software violates some of the granted software patents. If software uses an interface, almost certainly it will use tabs, or scroll bars, or progress bars, or what have you: all of which have been patented. When one of the big guys desires to kill some open source software package off, they just need to litigate. There is no one who has the money for defense, so they win by default.
Fifthly, the EU always maintains more stricter examination than the US: business methods per se are _not_ patentable in the EU, and equally, flakey software patents have a harder time getting through. Stop transposing the failures of US into the EU.
Again, you are mistaken. True, at the moment business methods are not patentable. However, as soon as software patents are allowed, business methods will become patentable. Just write down the method and slap "with a computer" or "over the internet" on it, et voila, you have a viable patent.
Sixly, for the so called "30,000" illegal software patents issued over the last 30 or so years or whatever, I repeat that the GNU list suggests that less than 0.01% of these are impacting open source. That's amazing! And hardly a justification to pull the system apart.
That is what you claim. Where did you get that number from? Admit it, you just pulled it out of your %$@#*. Let me pull a number out of my %$@#* too: I think it is more like 99%.
Finally, the protests in Brussels are are a laugh: against multimillion dollar turnover businesses using patents and contributing to the wellbeing of the EU economy, you have a bunch of jokers with "terrorism is corporate suicide" and other fairly poor and non-objective slogans doing pantomines. Unless the arguments show facts and figures, and more substantive evidence, this is entirely dismissable.
You are absolutely right that the demonstrations were a laugh. That is too bad. But the way to the law-makers heart is not through demonstrations (unless you can raise half-a-million people or so), but through personal contacts (which is what the FFII attempts) or through their wallets (which is what the big coorporations do).
Demonstrations may be useful to get the attention of the man-in-the-street. But, true, the man-in-the-street won't be roused from 300 people walking with supposedly funny slogans.
Yes, only you need not worry about it. They won't sue you. THAT will only happen if you become a business and start being successful.
Not that I am a supporter of software patents, but the new proposal has a safeguard against this:
The provisions of this Directive are without prejudice to the application of Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty, in particular where a dominant supplier refuses to allow the use of a patented technique which is needed for the sole purpose of ensuring conversion of the conventions used in two different computer systems or networks so as to allow communication and exchange of data content between them.
You are definitely right about the combat system and the flatness of the characters. The dungeons varied: some were miniscule and other were actually huge (especially in the Tribunal add-on). The skill system was OK, in my opinion, if you remember that the game was designed to be played for a looooooong time. When I played it I didn't bother about skills at all, and they built up automatically. As far as the magic system is concerned, personally, I liked it a whole lot.
To give a nice example: a colleague of mine worked on a program that took two months to execute (it consisted of finding the depth of all connections between all nodes in a graph containing 50,000 nodes). Since the customer needed to run this program once a month, this took far too long. So my colleague rewrote the whole program in assembly, which took him a few months, managing to reduce the required time to, indeed, one month.
My boss then asked me to take a look at it. Together with a mathematician I analysed the central function of the program, and we noticed that it was, basically, a matrix multiplication. We rewrote the program in Delphi in an hour or so, and reduced the required running time to less than an hour.
I won't spell out the lesson.
Because there are still people believing that a company that makes such outrageous claims must have an ace up its sleeve.
It's probably due to the fact that I'm not a native English speaker. I tend to come over a little brazen.
Also, since I am currently deep in writing my Ph.D. thesis, I am fanatically occupied by what is the correct term for which mechanism. I tend to forget that other people are a bit more flexible in their use of these terms.
AFAIK there are already worms and virusses that use mutation to change (I don't have any definite examples, though). However, virus scanners can still pick them up, because the mutation code itself does not change.
Anyway, by DEFINITION a genetic algorithm uses a population, and also by DEFINITION it uses sexual reproduction (see Thomas Bäck's excellent book comparing several evolutionary techniques, "Evolutionary Algorithms in Theory and Practice", 1996).
If you use pure mutation on a single solution, the term to use would be "Evolution Strategy".
If you want to exclude sexual reproduction, or use any evolutionary technique without bothering about definitions, use the term "evolutionary algorithm", which is an umbrella-name covering all evolutionary techniques.
I know that people are often a bit loose about what terms to use, but since this is one of my particular subjects of research, I am a bit anal about it.
Finally, AFAIK, there are already virusses and worms that mutate themselves. I don't have any definite examples, though.
Because a genetic algorithm is something different than you think. A genetic algorithm optimises a solution by applying genetic operators to a population of potential solutions and calculating a fitness function for each solution to compare it with the others. Other than that, since the worm is so ubiquitous, having two successful worms that meet procreate and deliver new, partially mutated children could be a fun and challenging exercise. But I assume script kiddies don't read slashdot, at least not posts this far down.
Therefore, in movies, we wish to see something fresh, something new, and not the same shit we saw before.
Contrariwise, in games we are happy to see the same successful thing we saw before, only brought up to date with the latest technology.
Lately, I found the copy protection on especially games gives troubles when playing the game on my computer. When that happens, I download a cracked version that works fine. For the next game that comes along which I want to play, especially from a company which gave me problems before, chances are I'll go for the cracked version immediately.
The region encoding for DVDs doesn't give me any problems now. I have two DVD players, both of which are region free. I have heard, though, that there is a new region encoding which will cause DVDs not to work on my players. But what the hell, I have broadband and it is easy to download them, so I'll do just that.
Music never gave me problems. But now this DRM thingy is coming along. That seems to mean I can't play CDs anymore on my computer, right? Tough. I'll have to stop buying CDs. And if the cracked version works, I know where to get it.
It seems that I am the ideal customer of the entertainment industry. I am willing to buy everything, and I buy a lot. So the question is: what are they gaining by driving me to get stuff illegally?
Even worse, my dad bought a brand-new PC, and when I set it up for him I checked it immediately, finding malware on it.
Why not destroy TCP/IP drivers only? The user will still be able to use his computer, but would be unable to connect to the Internet. And knowing this user (and believe me, I know him), his only solution to his connection problem will be formatting the hardrive and reinstalling everything.
Sarmast works in architecture, and describes himself as a "mythologist". He is very interested in "ancient mysteries". He supports himself by doing "odd jobs" and as his hobby studies "Atlantology" and travels. His "research" is privately funded.
What is pretty funny, is that his biography states he cooperates with "specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)". They even supplied him with "a digitized file of the existing raw data ... a document that was over 2,500 pages long". I can imagine the following conversation between two of those "specialists":
S1: "That crackpot is on the phone again."
S2: "Please, not now. Besides, it's your turn to talk to him."
S1: "Come on, I'm busy."
S2: "Just blow him off."
S1: "Then he'll just phone again in a few hours."
S2: "I have an idea. Let's give him some data that will really keep him busy for the next six months."
S1: "What data?"
S2: "Just give him everything."
S1: "But he won't be able to do anything with it. It's just raw data!"
S2: "That's the point. He's a crank. He has studied Atlantology, for Christ's sake. He is used to immerse himself in meaningless stuff!"
And what about that diving! I remember that the judgement went as follows: if you hit the water correctly, the more you had moved the joystick, the better your score. And if you hit the water incorrectly, you were in a world of pain, probably.
In a sense you are right. But I have the stronger position. I think strong AI can exist, although I can't say when and if we'll achieve it (probably not in my lifetime). Penrose thinks it is impossible in principle. He is determined to convince us of his position.
It's like math. If a problem can be solved, it is enough to give an sample solution. If it can't be solved, you have to give a proof. That's usually a lot more difficult to do.
In this case, the example can not be given at this moment in history, but Penrose thinks it is possible to give a proof for the negative. However, he doesn't give a proof, he just tries to convince us intuitively. Which is OK, but he tends to refer to "things we all know, so they are true by default", which is very weak argumentation, and he is certainly in conflicts which things I presume to know.
The basic dilemma is whether you believe computers have, in principle, the same capabilities as humans, or you believe humans are in principle superior to computers. I have reasons to believe the first (it would go too deep here to give those reasons, but read some books by Hofstadter or Dennett if you are interested). However, since the human brain is not completely understood, I can't be absolutely sure.
Penrose believes the second. Just like Searle, his premise is that organic material has qualities that cannot be equalled by machines. Both Searle and Penrose are vague about what those qualities are. (Searle agrees that when computers are made of organic material, they can become conscious, which IMHO destroys his position, because I see no reason why computers should not be constructed from organic material.)
If Penrose would just say, "Hey, I think computers will always be inferior to people, because if a machine can become the equal of a human, it can surpass us, and I refuse to accept that", then I would just say, "OK, that's your opinion, I have my own."
Of course, that would not make for a bestseller, so he doesn't state his position that way. Instead he puts the same thought in a book of several hundred pages, laden with false arguments and misunderstandings. That is not concinving.
Unfortunately, prior art is not the point. The point is that Microsoft can now threaten companies who use this feature with litigation. And of course, unless you are an IBM or someone of that size, you do not stand a chance against Microsoft's lawyers: you'll probably be bankrupt loooooong before you set your first foot in court.
It's not about having to buy a license. It's having to buy a separate license for each piece of equipment you want to view a DVD on.
I have two DVD players in the home. So I have bought a license twice over. However, I prefer to watch DVDs on my computer, because my monitor is so much better than my TV sets. So now I own legally bought DVDs, I own two licenses to play them, and I have the software to play them on my computer. But still it is illegal to play them on my computer. That's downright silly.
What is even more silly is that you can buy a DVD, but you are not allowed to view it until you buy a license to view it. When I buy a DVD, I assume I have, by default, a right to view it. In whatever way I like. As long as I am not violating the copyrights.
I remember it still. First, you had the 100 meter dash. That meant hitting the space bar very fast for about 15 seconds. Then, you had the 200 meter dash. That meant hitting the space bar very fast for 30 seconds. Then, you had the 400 meter dash and you stopped playing.
A friend of mine had an easy time winning those dash events. But he had fixed a small strip of wood to the end of a drill and used that to hit the space bar with something like a 100 RPMs. His character finished in a few seconds. Not so good for the keyboard, though.
I haven't read SotM, so I can't comment on that. My biggest problem with Penrose is that I personally am convinced that strong AI can be achieved, while Penrose believes that it is impossible. That does not mean that the book can't be good, but Penrose doesn't do a good job matching his arguments with those of his opponents.
He has a tendency to repeat arguments that strong AI supporters give, but in a way that they can be misunderstood, and then he misunderstands them and basically says they are stupid. Already in chapter one of ENM he starts ridiculing strong-AI supporters, without giving arguments. Later those arguments follow, but they are seriously flawed.
For example, while discussing Searle's Chinese Room experiment, he suggests that strong-AI supporters believe that "understanding Chinese" is in the book, and argues that it is stupid that a book can "understand" anything. But Turing's view (which is repeated by many others) is that the understanding is not in the book, but in the book + the human that reads the book. There is an emergent understanding of Chinese that comes from a book that describes how Chinese can be perfectly translated, and a human who strictly follows the rules that are written down in the book. This argument is mentioned by Penrose somewhere, but he just puts it aside as a very weak argument, that does not need refuting.
Writing like this annoys me immensly, and I suspect most my colleague AI researchers.
Incidentally, I think Penrose' work in mathematics is absolutely brilliant.
Penrose is a mathematician who attempts to be philospohical and fails miserably, because he can't distinguish his intuition from fact. You don't need a link. Just remember that he wrote "The Emperor's New Mind", and coil away in horror.
"We won our lawsuits because our patents covered both what is termed "means plus function"...i.e. we showed in the patents and claimed the concepts of the interaction of machine controlled screen symbols (such as a ball) and player controlled symbols such as the player paddles (the functions). We also showed how this interaction could be accomplished (the means). Any game made by a manufacturer that exhibited the type of interaction defined by our patents was found to be infringing..."
Translated:
Gamer Dad: "It's a game, see, where you hit a "ball" with a "paddle". Those are the functions."
Patent examiner: "That already exists. It is called "tennis". Or "ping pong" if you like."
Gamer Dad: "But I haven't told you the means yet! You do this... with A COMPUTER!"
Patent examiner: "You hit the ball with a computer?"
Game Dad: "No! No! The paddle and ball are both on the computer screen!"
Patent examiner: "Whoah! That's novel! If that isn't worth a patent, I don't know what is!"
Gamer Dad: "Then there is my second idea. You run towards a gorilla who is throwing barrels at you."
Patent examiner: "Is that a game?"
Gamer Dad: "And you do this... on A COMPUTER!"
Patent examiner faints from so much innovative power.