The most scary part of this bill is it allows a person, or company to entirely avoid legal ramifications by simply stating "I was only following orders." If that argument is a credible one in America, then the country is more morally bankrupt then I ever imagined.
To be fair, I'm not sure the GIMP (or any graphics program) is a good example of how his ideas fall down. With graphical packages you're using the mouse (or stylus) as your primary mode of contact rather then the keyboard, so having an interface that is more dependant on the primary contact isn't a terribly bad thing-- of course keyboard shortcuts for the most popular elements are still a great timesaver.
The huge benefit comes with programs where the keyboard is the primary contact between user and machine. You mention that many users will be lost, but I think three basic keys would really simplify it for new users. Instead of having to learn about all the menus, submenus, toolbars, keyboard shortcuts and context menus, they learn three control keys and that's all they need.
I'd love to see it as an optional mode, working fullscreen with no distractions is a surprising boon- I use a program called DarkRoom, which is a fullscreen notepad, no options at all to speak of-- very pleasant to use.
former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation' and claims to be outside UK jurisdiction.
The United States, and Germany have found it has no legal status, and that it is part of the United Kingdom, a country who has never given up ownership of the platform.
Surprisingly I'm not a multi-millionare, so I've not looked into it, but I'm betting you could by a tiny island somewhere in the world for a lot less money, and ideally be able to then begin legally moving it to it's own sovereignty. With the added benefit that a single bomb/torpedo wouldn't entirely destroy your country.
I actually find the interface a little non-intuitive for the beginning user, which I find at odds with it's goals. The documentation itself states
Before you launch the emulated image, we strongly recommend reading through the Sugar Instructions on how to use the environment -- this does not look like the Windows or Mac operating systems!
Essentially you start with a blank screen, to launch a program you move the mouse to edge of the screen which brings up the program bar. It seems to me it would have made a little more sense for the program bar to be active by default (at least when no programs are currently active). Or at least a little "Start here arrow" for the first few boots."
While I'm being critical, I'd also change the Abiword icon to look more relevant to a pen and paper activity (It's currently the AbiWord logo), and rejig the web icon to be a bit of a more obvious globe.
Point 5 in the experts paper, is that he establishes that the computer wasn't connected to the Internet via a wireless connection:
"Based on how IP addresses are assigned, it is not difficult to determine whether a computer was connected to the Internet via a wireless router."... "I base this on the data mentioned above, as well as on the registry entries recovered from the computer and the fact that there was no internal IP address here."
I assume this is to counter the argument that anyone could have been using the connection. It seems that from looking at a hard-drive it would be problematic to find how a computer was connected to the Internet at a specific point in the past. DHCP means nothing need be set, so I find it strange that the lack on an internal IP address would be proof against it. Ask the expert if there would be a record of an IP change on a specific date, and where that record is located.
In point 6, he mentions
"...that this hard drive was not the same hard drive that was used to share copyrighted sound recordings as shown by the MediaSentry materials"
How can you be sure it's not physically the same hard-drive? Did MediaSentrys information include serial codes for the hardware? Had the hard-drive been formatted to repair a spyware-ridden Windows installation (addressed in an earlier post in this discussion). How invasive can spyware and trojans be?--Could someone externally have been using the defendants computer as a proxy if this was the case?
Perhaps the most compelling quote from the expert is
The hard drive that was provided and that I inspected, showed little usage at all, as evidenced by the lack of user created files and e-mails, and did not reveal the evidence noted above, which I believe the correct hard drive would certainly have shown.
How much is enough user content? I know people who use their machine for Internet, including webmail. They don't have any office products installed, nor do they go to uni, or use the machine for work, their entire content floats around their temporary internet files directory, which can be wiped with a few clicks. It may seem unlikely to an expert who is so engrossed in technology that he simply doesn't consider that someone might use a machine for simple leisure. Also, what timestamps are shown for the system files, that should more accurately date the installation time, but even so, dates can be very easily changed. Keep hammering home how very malleable data is, it will help to give the defendant wiggle-room, but also make MediaSentrys information all the less solid.
Above all the specifics, ask how can MediaSentry be sure that the client was aware they were sharing files (I know people who have had horrific experiences using and getting rid of P2P programs) and that any infringement took place. How can they be positive that the files they recorded as being shared by the user had indeed been shared (transference of data), and were infact the songs they were named after (A rose by any other name...). If MediaSentry downloaded the file to check, how can they be sure others did? Especially in a world of P2P, where one downloader might get one file from a hundred sources, perhaps that if files were downloaded from the user, the user actually contributed 0 bytes.
There is such an incredible amount of doubt in anything like this. Use it to your advantage.
Is anyone going to force adherence to the standards? If company X registers a domain and serves content that cannot be displayed, will the domain be withdrawn? No. So what's the point of a dedicated domain?
Lets just be sensible and stick to subdomains as mentioned by an earlier poster, mobi.bbc.co.uk makes far more sense then bbc.mobi, but then of course, no-one makes tens of millions in the land-grab.
You overlook the fact that people are not watching a 30 second commercial to watch a 30 minute program, they are infact watching about 10 minutes of commercials. Download an hour long program with the adverts stripped and you're left with 43(ish) minutes of content, that's 30% adverts people are willing to sit through, in addition to paying a monthly subscription!
Scaling that down to a 2 minute clip leaves us with a advert of a whopping 40 seconds.
"The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh."
I've got a number of complaints with regards to iTunes but importing has never been an issue. When I insert a CD in iTunes, it accesses Gracenote CDDB and retrieves the filenames for the CD's automatically. I'm not sure why yours doesn't, perhaps you've not allowed iTunes to go through your firewall. In general, if any application isn't doing what you expect it should, have a flick through the help file and you might get lucky. (I did a search for CDDB and chose the "Editing CD information" topic) and got the following, which may prove useful to yourself:
When you're connected to the Internet, you can retrieve information about your CDs from Gracenote CDDB (CD database) on the Internet. You can also enter the CD information yourself, or change the information that was retrieved.
Select the CD in the Source list.
Choose File > Get Info, and make your changes.
If no information appears in the CD's Info window, choose Advanced > Get CD Track Names to retrieve basic song information from the Internet. Then make your changes.
By default, changing information in iTunes also changes the name of the file on your hard disk. To make changes in iTunes without changing the files on your hard disk, choose Edit > Preferences, and click the Advanced tab and click General. Then click to remove the checkmark next to Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized.
To avoid unexpected results, do not edit song or CD information using Windows Explorer.
Once again, don't post anonymously, if you're Mentifex, just say, if you're not, why not stand up for him?
Yes it's easy for me to say "submit a peer reviewed paper" because it *is* that simple. It may take many years for it to be leave the iterations or revisions and reviews but the sooner he starts on the path, the sooner the finish line arrives. If his work has scientific usefulness it needs to be proven so the wider community can learn and extend. Merely trolling the Internet pushing his personal belief achieves nothing.
If the work builds on other solid ideas, the paper can refer to these and help to extend into other areas. If the work is entirely new, the paper can start by pointing out the errors in the work of others *with testable examples* and why his system best maps reality. The AI machine which has been promised "real soon" for almost the last decade really doesn't count!
The problem is this will never happen, because Mentifex will fall at the first hurdle and his theories be disproven. So rather he wanders around the Internet aimlessly promoting himself, a vicious circle that will lead to no education or enlightenment to himself or others. The only welcome side-effect is it is quite amusing for new people to stumble across, at least for a while.
The comment subject line made me smile, so thank you for that at least.
Another document Murray often uses to bolster the credibility of his project is a review of Mind.Forth which appeared in the Association for Computing Machinerys SIGPLAN Notices [3]. Murray is either unaware or unwilling to admit that the SIGPLAN Notices is an informal, unrefereed, and largely unedited publication of the ACMs special interest group on programming languages (of which Murrays project is not one). The newsletter is written neither by nor for AI specialists, and in any case the reviews appearing therein do not represent the official opinions of ACM or SIGPLAN. The author of the article in question, Paul Frenger, is not a computer scientist, but rather a practising medical doctor who writes a monthly column for enthusiasts of the Forth programming language.
As for the Powerpoint presentation and the book, they're both written by Mentifex himself, so it does little to provide support to his arguments.
Murray often includes in his signature a link to an archived e-mail from scholar Ben Goertzel [4]. This letter, posted to the SL4 mailing list, contains an informal review of the documents posted on Murrays website. The tone is generally neutral, except for the last paragraph, where Goertzel remarks that Murrays ideas are significantly better than most of what passes for cognitive science and AI.
What Murray neglects to mention is a subsequent retraction of sorts by Goertzel. After another list participant pointed out that Murrays theory and writing was at best highly derivative and at worst fundamentally flawed, Goertzel conceded these points [6]. In another post, Goertzel says he does not dispute that Mentifex is a crackpot project, and remarks that the claims that its creator makes for it are far out of proportion to its actual achievements. [5]
On 31 March 2004, Goertzel wrote the author of this FAQ to clarify his current stance on Murrays work. His full opinion is as follows:
At the present time, I have not studied Mentifexs theories on AI carefully enough to have a definite opinion on them. I have spent only a few hours reading through his writings, which is not enough to absorb such a mass of ideas, particularly since Mentifexs communication style is confusing at times (though very clear and crisp at times as well). I like some of his ideas and dont like others. I dont like his way of advertising himself and his ideas, which admittedly becomes annoying, and seems absurd at times. I like quite a few of his philosophical ideas. And I really dont like the assumption that just because someone lacks official credentials, and presents or promotes their ideas in socially unusual ways, their ideas are not worth investigating or evaluating. My prior statement that Mentifexs work is more interesting than most work in the AI field was not intended as an instance of extreme praise: rather, my opinion is that most work in the AI field is embarrassingly unambitious and boring. Even if a lot of Mentifexs ideas are wrong (which may or may not be the case), at least Mentifex appears to be making a genuine effort to understand the mind as a whole, rather than (like many AI researchers) shying away from the big questions and retreating into the pursuit of minor technical questions of no possible practical or theoretical utility. I admit that Mentifex has many aspects in common with well-known crackpots, but I also think that the line between crackpots and maverick scientists is not as clearly drawn as
Ignore the links to "True Artificial Intelligence" and "Stumbling upon" which link to Mentifex's web site. He is a troll of the AI community. Before you assign him informative mod points for links to his own useless work, please read the following page http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html
It was mentioned, but not directly- it was in a slide:
"They estimate that to upgrade to Office 12, which MSFT is offering as the 'open format' would cost $50M (including software licenses, upgrading operating systems as needed, newer hardware in some cases, and training). Estimate of cost to install Open Office is $5M (comparable components). He noted that these are VERY CRUDE estimates"
- Notes on remarks by Eric Kriss, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, September 2005
So the Open Office roll out would cost an estimated $100 per machine.
My K750i phone has a standby time of 400 hours, and a talk time of 9 hours *and* it runs off a 900mAh battery. Even assuming the documented maximum are from standing directly next to a mobile phone mast, I'm sure motorola's are skewed in the same way.
It lives on the taskbar, just click it, type in an alias of the program you wish to run and voila. Shortcut for activating the screen is winkey+s.
It's not initially set up to shortcut to programs, but if you install it, then go to options (>>) configure > local alias's you can add aliases to local programs in the format:
aliasname|run location
e.g.
writer|run "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 1.9.65\program\swriter.exe"
You'll have to reload the program (>> configure > reload) before the changes to the aliases file take effect initially. Also there is quite a good group of people developing extra additions to it, for advanced web searching easily. *Really* useful, 'tis a rare day I have to touch that start button.
The fact is, that the two companies merged. With any successful merger the outcome is that overall costs are cut, otherwise what is the point?
When two similar companies merge you obviously get overlap, and this is where the initial savings can be made, there is zero point to keeping two teams of support staff (be it in IT, HR, Marketing etc) when there is only enough work to justify the single team.
How really else can you expect it to work? Would you honestly invest in a company as a shareholder if that company had 5000+ people employeed who essentially had no job to do, just twiddling their thumbs?
Any merger that *doesn't* cut jobs, surely at least, partially a failure. You may not embrace capitalism wholeheartedly, but look around you, it's not too bad.
On a global scale this system tends to fall apart, there is a constant issue of trust when dealing with what looks to me, to be the holy grail of the semantic web.
What if 2 sites said the Prime Minister of Canada was Santa? explicity said it, would that overwrite the linked information? How would the system know what is right? You can't always just pick the majority answer, so you need to set up little areas of trust "I trust www.thisplace.com and everything it says" and that site in turn will say "I trust www.overhere.com" but who allocates the trust, couldn't those people be biased?
The semantic web will have a fantastic impact on the world, but the trust issue is something that needs to be addressed, and I don't see how it can ever, globally be done.
More likely we would have systems like this for individual sites, or intranets, trusted circles that would be unlikely to contradict themselves.
hopefully one day, if we truely get a global semantic web, we can see if the answer really is 42:]
Re:Enough with the silly.
on
Ho, Ho, Ho
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· Score: 1
You sir, are what is scientifically termed "A boring fart" and I fear it's hereditary, but I hear there's a new cure, it's called 'fun', try it, your kids and yourself might enjoy the wonderful festive holiday time a little more!
We all secretly wish to have that innocence and imagination to look up into the sky at night and seeing the blinken lights of Santa's sleigh soaring over us. Imagination, excitement... What a boring world it would be without them.
Might seem a bit obivious to me, but why don't you just put the database updater software on the actualy ipod itself, it plugs in as a external drive so it should be quite capable of running a file from it.
Ahh the macho my collection is bigger then yours music comparison. Kudos to you sir! but I have 1201!
1200 Songs, ~10 Songs an album, ~3 Minutes a song is 600hours of music, you know what would actually useful, putting the 400 tracks you actually listen to onto a music player and turning on shuffle. It would certainly save you hitting "next track" so much.
People buy it generally becuase it looks good, and it's understood to be a good quality product that is easy to use, and people are generally willing to pay more for a device they can 'trust'.
The disadvantage (for me) is the lack of a very long battery life, which is a common feature amongst most HDD based players, in my opinion, if you only listen to a few CD's each day, and you like the radio, go for a smaller 512mb or 1gb flash based device with a built in radio. iRiver ones seem to fit the bill nicely with battery-lives that dwarf the iPod, but again, they essentially are aimed at different areas of the same market, ask yourself "do I need it?" and base your decision off that.
And hell, pay off you're debts first, you work hard, probably doing a job you would rather not be doing and then you throw away your hard earned cash on interest payments for a credit card with which you bought shit you probably don't really need? Solve that first mate and you'll have more money overall to buy gadgets and gizmos.
There is still a certain control you lack when dealing with art tablets that you have with paper. I have a A3 Intuos 2, I've stuck paper over the top to gain some grip when using it; but you still have that detachment of hand and eye, whereas with pencil and paper you can look down, I'm sure some people can get over that, but most artists have grown up learning the feel of different pencils and paper, I would imagine it's incredibly hard (and often not that much of a timesaver to make a significant difference) to unlearn that sensitivity.
I often recommened getting tablets to heavy users of PC's (not just photoshop/painter users). I originally purchased mine due to my wrist playing up when using the mouse for extended periods, it takes a while to get the hang of, but when you do, the tablet can be incredibly efficient replacement for general and specialised desktop tasks (I found it fantastic for 3D Modelling)
I found I was not alone and that lots of other people had reached the level cap only to find they'd wasted their time
Every second you spend in a game, you are wasting your time, that is indeed the point of games, a usually fun way to waste time when you have nothing better (or more fun) to do. To think that the game will be forever forfilling, that when you reach the top level you'll suddenly get access to a trust fund or a blast of enlightenment might be a bit of a wishful dream:] Luckily you realised it before you actually had to experience it.
All MMOG's suffer from this same problem with levelling, the game makers need some way of keeping people engaged in the game (time == money in pocket) and the obvious answer is levelling, they are purely timesinks, you can base the levels on a logarithmic scale, so it's nigh-on impossible to reach the upper echelons, but there has to be an end somewhere, otherwise the devs would spend forever coding additional quests, spells, badges, whatever (which costs them moola, so bad!). The developers hope that by the time you've spend so long in game you would have created friends/aquaintences that would take over from the timesink aspect and you'll essentially become addicted (through habit) to playing the game.
When players themselves can create quests like the good old text based MUD's you'll see something that doesn't need this boring levelling basis to power it. People generally (I hope) play these mmog's to play with like minded people who they can have fun with, but I feel that developers don't tend to build off this aspect of MMOG's and focus on 'if we dangle this carrot of fire shielding VII at level 50, then they'll force themselves to play through the crap times.' I'll stop before I start comparing it to religion..:}
I think the adventure games (ala DOTT, Sam and Max, Monkey Island) lose the special something that comes with the timelessness of 2D graphics. 2D just has a more... magic realism aspect about it, weird things can easily happen, sam can be stretched this way and that, people can be flushed down time portal toilets and it works! In 3D it wouldn't come close, Sam and Max wouldn't be 10% as good if it was done in 3D.
3D is awesome for somethings, but a comedy adventure isn't one, the characters are all so different that it just lends itself to 2D, people don't *want* it to be realistic, they want an escape! 2D gives you the ability to have cartoonish moves, to really give the character movement that builds that character persona rather then the standard 3D walk cycle, and in 5 years when current 3D looks, frankly, like shit, the 2D version thereof will look as fresh as it was when it was made, that's what makes Disney films so damn enduring.
2D is easy enough to do, the engine is simple and you just need to trap a good team of artists, and a few ace scriptwriters in a room and you have a timeless classic.
Slashdot Mirror
The most scary part of this bill is it allows a person, or company to entirely avoid legal ramifications by simply stating "I was only following orders."
If that argument is a credible one in America, then the country is more morally bankrupt then I ever imagined.
To be fair, I'm not sure the GIMP (or any graphics program) is a good example of how his ideas fall down. With graphical packages you're using the mouse (or stylus) as your primary mode of contact rather then the keyboard, so having an interface that is more dependant on the primary contact isn't a terribly bad thing-- of course keyboard shortcuts for the most popular elements are still a great timesaver. The huge benefit comes with programs where the keyboard is the primary contact between user and machine. You mention that many users will be lost, but I think three basic keys would really simplify it for new users. Instead of having to learn about all the menus, submenus, toolbars, keyboard shortcuts and context menus, they learn three control keys and that's all they need. I'd love to see it as an optional mode, working fullscreen with no distractions is a surprising boon- I use a program called DarkRoom, which is a fullscreen notepad, no options at all to speak of-- very pleasant to use.
The United States, and Germany have found it has no legal status, and that it is part of the United Kingdom, a country who has never given up ownership of the platform.
Surprisingly I'm not a multi-millionare, so I've not looked into it, but I'm betting you could by a tiny island somewhere in the world for a lot less money, and ideally be able to then begin legally moving it to it's own sovereignty. With the added benefit that a single bomb/torpedo wouldn't entirely destroy your country.
Abiword is already running on it, albeit with a simplified interface. You can download the image for the OLPC OS and give it a go, it's very easy to do. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Instructions#Insta lling
I actually find the interface a little non-intuitive for the beginning user, which I find at odds with it's goals. The documentation itself states
Before you launch the emulated image, we strongly recommend reading through the Sugar Instructions on how to use the environment -- this does not look like the Windows or Mac operating systems!Essentially you start with a blank screen, to launch a program you move the mouse to edge of the screen which brings up the program bar. It seems to me it would have made a little more sense for the program bar to be active by default (at least when no programs are currently active). Or at least a little "Start here arrow" for the first few boots."
While I'm being critical, I'd also change the Abiword icon to look more relevant to a pen and paper activity (It's currently the AbiWord logo), and rejig the web icon to be a bit of a more obvious globe.
Point 5 in the experts paper, is that he establishes that the computer wasn't connected to the Internet via a wireless connection:
"Based on how IP addresses are assigned, it is not difficult to determine whether a computer was connected to the Internet via a wireless router."I assume this is to counter the argument that anyone could have been using the connection. It seems that from looking at a hard-drive it would be problematic to find how a computer was connected to the Internet at a specific point in the past. DHCP means nothing need be set, so I find it strange that the lack on an internal IP address would be proof against it. Ask the expert if there would be a record of an IP change on a specific date, and where that record is located.
In point 6, he mentions
"...that this hard drive was not the same hard drive that was used to share copyrighted sound recordings as shown by the MediaSentry materials"How can you be sure it's not physically the same hard-drive? Did MediaSentrys information include serial codes for the hardware? Had the hard-drive been formatted to repair a spyware-ridden Windows installation (addressed in an earlier post in this discussion). How invasive can spyware and trojans be?--Could someone externally have been using the defendants computer as a proxy if this was the case?
Perhaps the most compelling quote from the expert is
The hard drive that was provided and that I inspected, showed little usage at all, as evidenced by the lack of user created files and e-mails, and did not reveal the evidence noted above, which I believe the correct hard drive would certainly have shown.How much is enough user content? I know people who use their machine for Internet, including webmail. They don't have any office products installed, nor do they go to uni, or use the machine for work, their entire content floats around their temporary internet files directory, which can be wiped with a few clicks.
It may seem unlikely to an expert who is so engrossed in technology that he simply doesn't consider that someone might use a machine for simple leisure.
Also, what timestamps are shown for the system files, that should more accurately date the installation time, but even so, dates can be very easily changed. Keep hammering home how very malleable data is, it will help to give the defendant wiggle-room, but also make MediaSentrys information all the less solid.
Above all the specifics, ask how can MediaSentry be sure that the client was aware they were sharing files (I know people who have had horrific experiences using and getting rid of P2P programs) and that any infringement took place. How can they be positive that the files they recorded as being shared by the user had indeed been shared (transference of data), and were infact the songs they were named after (A rose by any other name...). If MediaSentry downloaded the file to check, how can they be sure others did? Especially in a world of P2P, where one downloader might get one file from a hundred sources, perhaps that if files were downloaded from the user, the user actually contributed 0 bytes.
There is such an incredible amount of doubt in anything like this. Use it to your advantage.
I think http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13 eloquently puts the point across.
Is anyone going to force adherence to the standards? If company X registers a domain and serves content that cannot be displayed, will the domain be withdrawn? No. So what's the point of a dedicated domain?
Lets just be sensible and stick to subdomains as mentioned by an earlier poster, mobi.bbc.co.uk makes far more sense then bbc.mobi, but then of course, no-one makes tens of millions in the land-grab.
You overlook the fact that people are not watching a 30 second commercial to watch a 30 minute program, they are infact watching about 10 minutes of commercials. Download an hour long program with the adverts stripped and you're left with 43(ish) minutes of content, that's 30% adverts people are willing to sit through, in addition to paying a monthly subscription!
Scaling that down to a 2 minute clip leaves us with a advert of a whopping 40 seconds.
Scary huh?
I've got a number of complaints with regards to iTunes but importing has never been an issue. When I insert a CD in iTunes, it accesses Gracenote CDDB and retrieves the filenames for the CD's automatically. I'm not sure why yours doesn't, perhaps you've not allowed iTunes to go through your firewall. In general, if any application isn't doing what you expect it should, have a flick through the help file and you might get lucky. (I did a search for CDDB and chose the "Editing CD information" topic) and got the following, which may prove useful to yourself:
When you're connected to the Internet, you can retrieve information about your CDs from Gracenote CDDB (CD database) on the Internet. You can also enter the CD information yourself, or change the information that was retrieved.
Select the CD in the Source list. Choose File > Get Info, and make your changes.
If no information appears in the CD's Info window, choose Advanced > Get CD Track Names to retrieve basic song information from the Internet. Then make your changes.
By default, changing information in iTunes also changes the name of the file on your hard disk. To make changes in iTunes without changing the files on your hard disk, choose Edit > Preferences, and click the Advanced tab and click General. Then click to remove the checkmark next to Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized.
To avoid unexpected results, do not edit song or CD information using Windows Explorer.
Once again, don't post anonymously, if you're Mentifex, just say, if you're not, why not stand up for him?
Yes it's easy for me to say "submit a peer reviewed paper" because it *is* that simple. It may take many years for it to be leave the iterations or revisions and reviews but the sooner he starts on the path, the sooner the finish line arrives. If his work has scientific usefulness it needs to be proven so the wider community can learn and extend. Merely trolling the Internet pushing his personal belief achieves nothing.
If the work builds on other solid ideas, the paper can refer to these and help to extend into other areas. If the work is entirely new, the paper can start by pointing out the errors in the work of others *with testable examples* and why his system best maps reality. The AI machine which has been promised "real soon" for almost the last decade really doesn't count!
The problem is this will never happen, because Mentifex will fall at the first hurdle and his theories be disproven. So rather he wanders around the Internet aimlessly promoting himself, a vicious circle that will lead to no education or enlightenment to himself or others. The only welcome side-effect is it is quite amusing for new people to stumble across, at least for a while.
The comment subject line made me smile, so thank you for that at least.
Please note this anonymous poster is likely Mentifex himself.
Regarding the ACM Sigplan Notices, please read this note: (taken from http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html
2.3.2 What about the SIGPLAN review?
Another document Murray often uses to bolster the credibility of his project is a review of Mind.Forth which appeared in the Association for Computing Machinerys SIGPLAN Notices [3]. Murray is either unaware or unwilling to admit that the SIGPLAN Notices is an informal, unrefereed, and largely unedited publication of the ACMs special interest group on programming languages (of which Murrays project is not one). The newsletter is written neither by nor for AI specialists, and in any case the reviews appearing therein do not represent the official opinions of ACM or SIGPLAN. The author of the article in question, Paul Frenger, is not a computer scientist, but rather a practising medical doctor who writes a monthly column for enthusiasts of the Forth programming language.
As for the Powerpoint presentation and the book, they're both written by Mentifex himself, so it does little to provide support to his arguments.
Which leaves just the SL4 posting, but alas, the poster himself has clarified his position (again taken from http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html
2.3.1 What about the Ben Goertzel endorsement?
Murray often includes in his signature a link to an archived e-mail from scholar Ben Goertzel [4]. This letter, posted to the SL4 mailing list, contains an informal review of the documents posted on Murrays website. The tone is generally neutral, except for the last paragraph, where Goertzel remarks that Murrays ideas are significantly better than most of what passes for cognitive science and AI.
What Murray neglects to mention is a subsequent retraction of sorts by Goertzel. After another list participant pointed out that Murrays theory and writing was at best highly derivative and at worst fundamentally flawed, Goertzel conceded these points [6]. In another post, Goertzel says he does not dispute that Mentifex is a crackpot project, and remarks that the claims that its creator makes for it are far out of proportion to its actual achievements. [5]
On 31 March 2004, Goertzel wrote the author of this FAQ to clarify his current stance on Murrays work. His full opinion is as follows:
At the present time, I have not studied Mentifexs theories on AI carefully enough to have a definite opinion on them. I have spent only a few hours reading through his writings, which is not enough to absorb such a mass of ideas, particularly since Mentifexs communication style is confusing at times (though very clear and crisp at times as well). I like some of his ideas and dont like others. I dont like his way of advertising himself and his ideas, which admittedly becomes annoying, and seems absurd at times. I like quite a few of his philosophical ideas. And I really dont like the assumption that just because someone lacks official credentials, and presents or promotes their ideas in socially unusual ways, their ideas are not worth investigating or evaluating. My prior statement that Mentifexs work is more interesting than most work in the AI field was not intended as an instance of extreme praise: rather, my opinion is that most work in the AI field is embarrassingly unambitious and boring. Even if a lot of Mentifexs ideas are wrong (which may or may not be the case), at least Mentifex appears to be making a genuine effort to understand the mind as a whole, rather than (like many AI researchers) shying away from the big questions and retreating into the pursuit of minor technical questions of no possible practical or theoretical utility. I admit that Mentifex has many aspects in common with well-known crackpots, but I also think that the line between crackpots and maverick scientists is not as clearly drawn as
Ignore the links to "True Artificial Intelligence" and "Stumbling upon" which link to Mentifex's web site.
He is a troll of the AI community. Before you assign him informative mod points for links to his own useless work, please read the following page http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html
It was mentioned, but not directly- it was in a slide:
"They estimate that to upgrade to Office 12, which MSFT is offering as the 'open format' would cost $50M (including software licenses, upgrading operating systems as needed, newer hardware in some cases, and training). Estimate of cost to install Open Office is $5M (comparable components). He noted that these are VERY CRUDE estimates"
- Notes on remarks by Eric Kriss, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, September 2005
So the Open Office roll out would cost an estimated $100 per machine.
Hope that helps!
Even assuming the documented maximum are from standing directly next to a mobile phone mast, I'm sure motorola's are skewed in the same way.
So.. big deal, welcome to the modern world! :)
I use "Daves Quick Search Deskbar" http://www.dqsd.net/.
It lives on the taskbar, just click it, type in an alias of the program you wish to run and voila. Shortcut for activating the screen is winkey+s. It's not initially set up to shortcut to programs, but if you install it, then go to options (>>) configure > local alias's you can add aliases to local programs in the format:
aliasname|run location
e.g. writer|run "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 1.9.65\program\swriter.exe"
You'll have to reload the program (>> configure > reload) before the changes to the aliases file take effect initially. Also there is quite a good group of people developing extra additions to it, for advanced web searching easily. *Really* useful, 'tis a rare day I have to touch that start button.
Hope it helps!
The fact is, that the two companies merged. With any successful merger the outcome is that overall costs are cut, otherwise what is the point?
When two similar companies merge you obviously get overlap, and this is where the initial savings can be made, there is zero point to keeping two teams of support staff (be it in IT, HR, Marketing etc) when there is only enough work to justify the single team.
How really else can you expect it to work? Would you honestly invest in a company as a shareholder if that company had 5000+ people employeed who essentially had no job to do, just twiddling their thumbs?
Any merger that *doesn't* cut jobs, surely at least, partially a failure. You may not embrace capitalism wholeheartedly, but look around you, it's not too bad.
Even in your super pedantic mode, answer the following:
Which country is more covered in ice and snow, greenland http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/Countries/Greenland/1 74_2.html or iceland http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/Countries/Iceland/185 .html.
Exactly, Greenland.
Sheesh.
What if 2 sites said the Prime Minister of Canada was Santa? explicity said it, would that overwrite the linked information? How would the system know what is right? You can't always just pick the majority answer, so you need to set up little areas of trust "I trust www.thisplace.com and everything it says" and that site in turn will say "I trust www.overhere.com" but who allocates the trust, couldn't those people be biased?
The semantic web will have a fantastic impact on the world, but the trust issue is something that needs to be addressed, and I don't see how it can ever, globally be done.
More likely we would have systems like this for individual sites, or intranets, trusted circles that would be unlikely to contradict themselves.
hopefully one day, if we truely get a global semantic web, we can see if the answer really is 42 :]
We all secretly wish to have that innocence and imagination to look up into the sky at night and seeing the blinken lights of Santa's sleigh soaring over us. Imagination, excitement... What a boring world it would be without them.
Might seem a bit obivious to me, but why don't you just put the database updater software on the actualy ipod itself, it plugs in as a external drive so it should be quite capable of running a file from it.
1200 Songs, ~10 Songs an album, ~3 Minutes a song is 600hours of music, you know what would actually useful, putting the 400 tracks you actually listen to onto a music player and turning on shuffle. It would certainly save you hitting "next track" so much.
The disadvantage (for me) is the lack of a very long battery life, which is a common feature amongst most HDD based players, in my opinion, if you only listen to a few CD's each day, and you like the radio, go for a smaller 512mb or 1gb flash based device with a built in radio. iRiver ones seem to fit the bill nicely with battery-lives that dwarf the iPod, but again, they essentially are aimed at different areas of the same market, ask yourself "do I need it?" and base your decision off that.
And hell, pay off you're debts first, you work hard, probably doing a job you would rather not be doing and then you throw away your hard earned cash on interest payments for a credit card with which you bought shit you probably don't really need? Solve that first mate and you'll have more money overall to buy gadgets and gizmos.
I often recommened getting tablets to heavy users of PC's (not just photoshop/painter users). I originally purchased mine due to my wrist playing up when using the mouse for extended periods, it takes a while to get the hang of, but when you do, the tablet can be incredibly efficient replacement for general and specialised desktop tasks (I found it fantastic for 3D Modelling)
Every second you spend in a game, you are wasting your time, that is indeed the point of games, a usually fun way to waste time when you have nothing better (or more fun) to do. To think that the game will be forever forfilling, that when you reach the top level you'll suddenly get access to a trust fund or a blast of enlightenment might be a bit of a wishful dream :] Luckily you realised it before you actually had to experience it.
All MMOG's suffer from this same problem with levelling, the game makers need some way of keeping people engaged in the game (time == money in pocket) and the obvious answer is levelling, they are purely timesinks, you can base the levels on a logarithmic scale, so it's nigh-on impossible to reach the upper echelons, but there has to be an end somewhere, otherwise the devs would spend forever coding additional quests, spells, badges, whatever (which costs them moola, so bad!). The developers hope that by the time you've spend so long in game you would have created friends/aquaintences that would take over from the timesink aspect and you'll essentially become addicted (through habit) to playing the game.
When players themselves can create quests like the good old text based MUD's you'll see something that doesn't need this boring levelling basis to power it. People generally (I hope) play these mmog's to play with like minded people who they can have fun with, but I feel that developers don't tend to build off this aspect of MMOG's and focus on 'if we dangle this carrot of fire shielding VII at level 50, then they'll force themselves to play through the crap times.' I'll stop before I start comparing it to religion.. :}
FF.
3D is awesome for somethings, but a comedy adventure isn't one, the characters are all so different that it just lends itself to 2D, people don't *want* it to be realistic, they want an escape! 2D gives you the ability to have cartoonish moves, to really give the character movement that builds that character persona rather then the standard 3D walk cycle, and in 5 years when current 3D looks, frankly, like shit, the 2D version thereof will look as fresh as it was when it was made, that's what makes Disney films so damn enduring.
2D is easy enough to do, the engine is simple and you just need to trap a good team of artists, and a few ace scriptwriters in a room and you have a timeless classic.
FF