Here is an example of what this can mean. It seems that until recently Slashdot used Focalink to serve some of their ads. Focalink is also used by Dejanews. Slashdot requries your email address to register, and they use that to send your password, probably to ensure that you give them correct info. Your email account can be easily matched to your name, and probably also to your real address. (Check the email white pages such as the Lycos people search to see if you're listed.)
What this means is that if Slashdot were to cooporate with Focalink, your name can now be matched to all your Dejanews searches. Focallink is also used by at least a few search engines. etc. etc.
Think about it, all the times you searched for porn, info on specific medical conditions, or anything else...no matter where you searched, it could have all, at least in theory, been recorded, and could be matched to your name and address.
ps. Slashdot would have to confirm if they used focallink, but once when I erased all my cookies and accessed slashdot, a focalink cookie appeared in my Cookies directory, so I'm assuming that they did.
The last time I checked NPL gave way too much control over to Netscape/AOL to be a seriously considered as a non-profit, volunteer based effort (and I sure wouldn't contribute to any other kind,) now I see that they have an MPL in response to the criticism they received.
Could anyone more proficient in legalese comment on MPL, and the differences between it and L/GPL?
And whatever the answer, could someone just please start a GPL browser project? Or is that being worked on already?
From what I read, most people working in AI don't treat them as something worth while. It's fairly obvious that programs won't be able to pass the turing test for some time (decades, maybe centuries), and the results of such tests only make it less likely that people working on valid AI projects will be taken seriously.
The Loebner Prize has it's own homepage. Chech out the transcripts of the conversations. The most 'clever' programs simply look for keywords, some insist on asking all the questions, some are 'whimsical' and use metaphores while constatnly switching topics, none show any comprehension whatsoever.
My own experience seems to confirm the point the LA article is making, used to visit as many as a 100 sites a day in 94, only 10 at most these days. Still, the web will never constrict to such an extent that it will resemble the entertainment industry. Look at the cable companies, you have a choice of about 50 channels, and basically have to whatch whatever the lowest common denominator in your community can digest without overheating the synapses. On the web on the other hand, you only have to find a few thousand people out of hundreds of millions, with asimilar tastes to keep a site interesting, and full of new content. Personally I can't wait until broadband is here, and the same happens to the tv channels. (We'll prolly have the same thing that happened on the web, people will leave the major networks to stare for hours at a fish moving around on the screen, once the novelty wears off, we'll have better and better content, and more consolidation. As someone said, the content on most of the better sites (and the tv channels) is always being updated, so people won't search for new stuff just to get new material as they would in say... a bookstore, but we'll still have plenty of choice.
Slashdot Mirror
What this means is that if Slashdot were to cooporate with Focalink, your name can now be matched to all your Dejanews searches. Focallink is also used by at least a few search engines. etc. etc.
Think about it, all the times you searched for porn, info on specific medical conditions, or anything else...no matter where you searched, it could have all, at least in theory, been recorded, and could be matched to your name and address.
ps. Slashdot would have to confirm if they used focallink, but once when I erased all my cookies and accessed slashdot, a focalink cookie appeared in my Cookies directory, so I'm assuming that they did.
Check this out. It's a programming contest archive. If anyone has similar pages, post the url.
Slashdot should steal it back, it's a nice design.
I like their copyright notice too:
El resto: © 1999 Open Resources
Wish them more luck with that trademark then OSI had with 'Open Source'. :)
World War II :)
Why did they relocate to the Silicon Valley???
Clearly hemos doesn't read slashdot. :)
Could anyone more proficient in legalese comment on MPL, and the differences between it and L/GPL?
And whatever the answer, could someone just please start a GPL browser project? Or is that being worked on already?
From what I read, most people working in AI don't treat them as something worth while. It's fairly obvious that programs won't be able to pass the turing test for some time (decades, maybe centuries), and the results of such tests only make it less likely that people working on valid AI projects will be taken seriously.
The Loebner Prize has it's own homepage. Chech out the transcripts of the conversations. The most 'clever' programs simply look for keywords, some insist on asking all the questions, some are 'whimsical' and use metaphores while constatnly switching topics, none show any comprehension whatsoever.
Down with cable companies!!!
Check MediaMetrix