When I say "Joe is intelligent" do I mean "Joe knows a lot of facts?" No. Do I mean "Joe is good at symbolic logic?" No. I mean "Joe pursues goals in a flexible, efficient and sophisticated manner. He has a toolbox of methods that is continually growing and recursive." Does this description apply to Cyc?
The only hard conclusion that I, a real intelligence (ok, it's open to some debate) can draw from that statement is "BillyGoatThree said Joe is intelligent". Assuming a particular meaning of the word "intelligent" every time it's used doesn't make for a very, ah, intelligent system. Lots of people who are perhaps less intelligent would take your first statement ("Joe knows lots of facts") as a perfectly valid definition of intelligence.
Cyc is a highly connected and chock-full database with a flexible select language. As a product that's awesome. As a claim to AI it's pretty weak.
Are we anything more than that ourselves? Or is it Penrose's magic quantum soul juju that we have and Cyc lacks? Not to be flippant, but your argument sounds like the lament of AI researchers since it began: "AI is whatever we haven't managed to do yet." --
So basically your argument boils down to "Microsoft likes Unicode, therefore it sucks"? You come up with some fuzzy vague idea of encoding "language attributes" like grammar and dictionaries into character sets... somehow, meanwhile conflating character sets with documents... I'm surprised you haven't asked for binary to be revamped. Try losing the scare quotes too, your sneering disdainful superiority for the subject and everyone associated with it was already fairly apparent.
As Rand would say, A is A. Whatever sort of semantic meaning the letter might have in the context it's used in is not Unicode's problem. I hear we have things like document formats that handle that. --
Why does person/group A always try to force their opinion on person/group B??? This has caused most wars (both virtual and real) It's also a HUGE waste of resources.
You're right! In fact, I think anybody who forces their views on others should be forced not to, because it's wrong to do so!
> This has been discussed on the LKML. Using a Union for all the various FS specific inode info is a performance hack
So, they basically wrecked the extensibility of the architecture so a completely theoretical untested performance hack for the x86 architecture *might* go faster... however much faster is unknown, since this is totally untested.
As for that truism, here's another: penny wise, pound foolish. --
> Stackable vnodes, which are supposed to address this same need, are ancient history
I think I gave up on the idea that Linux would ever know what it was doing with filesystems when I saw this abomination. That's right, Linux not only has no concept of vnodes, it actually uses a union of every single filesystem type for its inode data structure. Search lxr for "vnode" if you don't believe me. So much for generic, to say nothing of modular. --
> The export restrictions on cryptography have been lifted.
They've been "eased", "suspended", or whatever. Just another capricious fascist executive order away from going back in. Mark my words, they'll put it back someday and make an example out of whomever is politically inconvenient at the time.
Yeah, but it's different this time - STEVE thought of it, therefore it'll work even if the exact same thing didn't work before, because THAT time it WASN'T his idea.
Given the cult following he enjoys, I don't actually see a problem with this reasoning. Might not be logical, but apple has always enjoyed success with the hyper-right-brain thing going on in marketing anyway. --
The troll thanks you for feeding him. He's just another reason I read at threshold 2 only. --
Re:Java -- more real than you think
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 3
> Many people (many slashdotters included) seem to discount the possbility of using Java for real cross-platform desktop apps
Because Java is not cross platform. It is a platform, just happens to be a virtual one. And frankly, it still stinks for GUI apps: it looks different than everything else (even the windows "theme" of swing is just still slightly wrong), it doesn't even support wheel mice. Drag-and-drop interoperability with the rest of the system is nonexistent (doing it at all is highly baroque).
As for speed... compare the responsiveness of the interface of LimeWire compared to BearShare. And do try that "hardware is cheap" argument when you get put in charge of purchasing... however long you manage to keep that position.
I'd no more write a GUI app in Java than I would in Perl. --
show me a succesful application based on raskin's principles and i'll buy this fawning fanboy crap. good ideas are a dime a dozen. proven ideas aren't. on that note, given the proliferation of "GUI Bloopers" type books and sites out there like the interface hall of shame it sure would be nice if people managed to just invest a little quality in existing GUI design principles. The start menu in windows, for example, violates microsoft's own design guidelines on menus (not to cascade more than one level) --
> Anyone with a fat enough pipe could launch their own channel, and if you can build a box to let the average Joe watch it on his TV, you'll have the chance to break the video stranglehold of the media companies. You wouldn't even need slick programming. Many people would try it just for the novelty.
Yawn. If you think the current programming on tv is awful, try the utter crap produced by the average tv viewer. Ever watch public access cable?
On the plus side, this won't fly. Starving a million iraqis to save a nickel on gas is one thing, but mess with an american's god-given right to television and you're in for an uprising, baby. --
If perhaps you spent a little less time being smug, superior, and so much more enlightened than us rabble, you might have noticed that snopes put a white dot next to the report. When you use this astonishing faculty of reading and apply it to the legend for these dots, it means the story is unverified. Nowhere do they claim it's false. I sincerely doubt you read the page. Keep digging. --
> Hey can I play that game too! I don't believe that the moon landing occured therefore it's an urban legend! Wow this could be fun..
It could be if you weren't such a tedious troll. When you get a little more school, perhaps you'll learn about something called "burden of proof". In the meantime, thanks for illustrating exactly how credulous Americans are.
Strange but true. There's numerous STD docs that are based on RFC821, but RFC821 never itself became a STD. However, STD10 is ESMTP (RFC1869), which is probably close enough. --
Versions and revisions and such would defeat the purpose of a flat numeric index for the RFC's. When someone talks about RFC822, I know exactly what document they mean, typos, vaguenesses, inaccuracies, and all, it requires no further clarification. They're also issued in roughly chronological order (though they weren't strictly in order even from the start, TCP and telnet are discussed well before their RFC's), so I know that an RFC that's 1000 higher than another definitely came after.
Revision numbers on the STD track would be nice though, but so long as people still reference RFC's directly and not STD's or FYI's, there doesn't seem to be a pressing need for it. The IETF still operates in pretty much ad-hoc fashion (submit an ID, get a room for your BOF next meeting, let the BOF tear it apart, whatever survives will stick)... and it still works. --
> No-one has yet managed to come up with an MUA which highly abstracts the storage of email and supports "plugings" for mbox, IMAP, Maildir, MMDF, some database or other, etc.
How about protocol that accesses mailboxes, allows for accessing and otherwise managing them, retrieving and deleting messages, regardless of the particular format in which they are stored... A protocol that supports extensions through a simple capability negotiation framework...
Sounds like IMAP to me. No, IMAP as is isn't perfect. So let's get cracking on IMAP5, shall we? --
> In my experience, most users of NT-based systems do not use ACLs
Correct, admins use them, and when done properly, the users never know differently. Users still have uses for ACL's too, and it's really this simple, a question I got at least once a week when doing support for Sun: how to share some files of yours with a co-worker so he can read them but not change them, and with another co-worker that can read and write them (or some other combination of accesses). Answer: set up an ACL (no, we do not create groups every time there's a request for this kind of sharing). Thankfully dtfm could do one thing right, and that was manage ACL's with slightly less pain than manually using setfacl. --
Slashdot Mirror
When I say "Joe is intelligent" do I mean "Joe knows a lot of facts?" No. Do I mean "Joe is good at symbolic logic?" No. I mean "Joe pursues goals in a flexible, efficient and sophisticated manner. He has a toolbox of methods that is continually growing and recursive." Does this description apply to Cyc?
The only hard conclusion that I, a real intelligence (ok, it's open to some debate) can draw from that statement is "BillyGoatThree said Joe is intelligent". Assuming a particular meaning of the word "intelligent" every time it's used doesn't make for a very, ah, intelligent system. Lots of people who are perhaps less intelligent would take your first statement ("Joe knows lots of facts") as a perfectly valid definition of intelligence.
Cyc is a highly connected and chock-full database with a flexible select language. As a product that's awesome. As a claim to AI it's pretty weak.
Are we anything more than that ourselves? Or is it Penrose's magic quantum soul juju that we have and Cyc lacks? Not to be flippant, but your argument sounds like the lament of AI researchers since it began: "AI is whatever we haven't managed to do yet."
--
> Python, on the other hand, is not GPLed. It also doesn't look like line noise
:)
You do realize that probably well over half the people on the net haven't a clue what "line noise" looks like? Yay error detecting protocols
--
So basically your argument boils down to "Microsoft likes Unicode, therefore it sucks"? You come up with some fuzzy vague idea of encoding "language attributes" like grammar and dictionaries into character sets ... somehow, meanwhile conflating character sets with documents... I'm surprised you haven't asked for binary to be revamped. Try losing the scare quotes too, your sneering disdainful superiority for the subject and everyone associated with it was already fairly apparent.
As Rand would say, A is A. Whatever sort of semantic meaning the letter might have in the context it's used in is not Unicode's problem. I hear we have things like document formats that handle that.
--
> The obsession with phonetic spelling is an unhealthy and rediculous pathology
Despite the fact that we move inexorably toward it anyway.
--
Why does person/group A always try to force their opinion on person/group B??? This has caused most wars (both virtual and real) It's also a HUGE waste of resources.
You're right! In fact, I think anybody who forces their views on others should be forced not to, because it's wrong to do so!
--
brrrraaaaaiiiinnnnssssssssssss!!!!
(sorry, couldn't resist)
--
> This has been discussed on the LKML. Using a Union for all the various FS specific inode info is a performance hack
... however much faster is unknown, since this is totally untested.
So, they basically wrecked the extensibility of the architecture so a completely theoretical untested performance hack for the x86 architecture *might* go faster
As for that truism, here's another: penny wise, pound foolish.
--
> Stackable vnodes, which are supposed to address this same need, are ancient history
I think I gave up on the idea that Linux would ever know what it was doing with filesystems when I saw this abomination. That's right, Linux not only has no concept of vnodes, it actually uses a union of every single filesystem type for its inode data structure. Search lxr for "vnode" if you don't believe me. So much for generic, to say nothing of modular.
--
> The export restrictions on cryptography have been lifted.
They've been "eased", "suspended", or whatever. Just another capricious fascist executive order away from going back in. Mark my words, they'll put it back someday and make an example out of whomever is politically inconvenient at the time.
--
Yeah, but it's different this time - STEVE thought of it, therefore it'll work even if the exact same thing didn't work before, because THAT time it WASN'T his idea.
Given the cult following he enjoys, I don't actually see a problem with this reasoning. Might not be logical, but apple has always enjoyed success with the hyper-right-brain thing going on in marketing anyway.
--
The troll thanks you for feeding him. He's just another reason I read at threshold 2 only.
--
> Many people (many slashdotters included) seem to discount the possbility of using Java for real cross-platform desktop apps
... however long you manage to keep that position.
Because Java is not cross platform. It is a platform, just happens to be a virtual one. And frankly, it still stinks for GUI apps: it looks different than everything else (even the windows "theme" of swing is just still slightly wrong), it doesn't even support wheel mice. Drag-and-drop interoperability with the rest of the system is nonexistent (doing it at all is highly baroque).
As for speed... compare the responsiveness of the interface of LimeWire compared to BearShare. And do try that "hardware is cheap" argument when you get put in charge of purchasing
I'd no more write a GUI app in Java than I would in Perl.
--
show me a succesful application based on raskin's principles and i'll buy this fawning fanboy crap. good ideas are a dime a dozen. proven ideas aren't. on that note, given the proliferation of "GUI Bloopers" type books and sites out there like the interface hall of shame it sure would be nice if people managed to just invest a little quality in existing GUI design principles. The start menu in windows, for example, violates microsoft's own design guidelines on menus (not to cascade more than one level)
--
> Anyone with a fat enough pipe could launch their own channel, and if you can build a box to let the average Joe watch it on his TV, you'll have the chance to break the video stranglehold of the media companies. You wouldn't even need slick programming. Many people would try it just for the novelty.
Yawn. If you think the current programming on tv is awful, try the utter crap produced by the average tv viewer. Ever watch public access cable?
On the plus side, this won't fly. Starving a million iraqis to save a nickel on gas is one thing, but mess with an american's god-given right to television and you're in for an uprising, baby.
--
> but with his first officer a Vulcan
go fig. wonder what previously unknown vulcan ethnicity this one is.
--
> There are plenty of indentation mode packages arround for emacs already.
And I only need them for languages which lack any capacity to pretty-print, and thus force me to do it manually.
--
If perhaps you spent a little less time being smug, superior, and so much more enlightened than us rabble, you might have noticed that snopes put a white dot next to the report. When you use this astonishing faculty of reading and apply it to the legend for these dots, it means the story is unverified. Nowhere do they claim it's false. I sincerely doubt you read the page. Keep digging.
--
> Hey can I play that game too! I don't believe that the moon landing occured therefore it's an urban legend! Wow this could be fun..
It could be if you weren't such a tedious troll. When you get a little more school, perhaps you'll learn about something called "burden of proof". In the meantime, thanks for illustrating exactly how credulous Americans are.
--
Strange but true. There's numerous STD docs that are based on RFC821, but RFC821 never itself became a STD. However, STD10 is ESMTP (RFC1869), which is probably close enough.
--
Versions and revisions and such would defeat the purpose of a flat numeric index for the RFC's. When someone talks about RFC822, I know exactly what document they mean, typos, vaguenesses, inaccuracies, and all, it requires no further clarification. They're also issued in roughly chronological order (though they weren't strictly in order even from the start, TCP and telnet are discussed well before their RFC's), so I know that an RFC that's 1000 higher than another definitely came after.
Revision numbers on the STD track would be nice though, but so long as people still reference RFC's directly and not STD's or FYI's, there doesn't seem to be a pressing need for it. The IETF still operates in pretty much ad-hoc fashion (submit an ID, get a room for your BOF next meeting, let the BOF tear it apart, whatever survives will stick)... and it still works.
--
> No-one has yet managed to come up with an MUA which highly abstracts the storage of email and supports "plugings" for mbox, IMAP, Maildir, MMDF, some database or other, etc.
How about protocol that accesses mailboxes, allows for accessing and otherwise managing them, retrieving and deleting messages, regardless of the particular format in which they are stored... A protocol that supports extensions through a simple capability negotiation framework...
Sounds like IMAP to me. No, IMAP as is isn't perfect. So let's get cracking on IMAP5, shall we?
--
> In my experience, most users of NT-based systems do not use ACLs
Correct, admins use them, and when done properly, the users never know differently. Users still have uses for ACL's too, and it's really this simple, a question I got at least once a week when doing support for Sun: how to share some files of yours with a co-worker so he can read them but not change them, and with another co-worker that can read and write them (or some other combination of accesses). Answer: set up an ACL (no, we do not create groups every time there's a request for this kind of sharing). Thankfully dtfm could do one thing right, and that was manage ACL's with slightly less pain than manually using setfacl.
--
Maybe they wouldn't come up with the clams to buy the beer?
--
> My question is, has anyone put any efforts towards seeing if other, larger pieces of data could be represented in this way?
Sure: any. It was just the decss source padded out to a prime. You could do the same for mozilla.
--
will everyone please quit feeding the "BSD is dying troll"?
--