I'm not sure how this was run or judged, but I could think of a couple of things which would probably help. Firstly, the other judges should sit in with the human subject to moderate what he's saying a little (maybe with an independent adjudicator to make sure they're not overly leading, but this is important to make sure the subject isn't fooling around to deliberately make it sound like he's the bot - come on, we'd all do it!). Secondly, a set time delay on responses from both human and computer subject, so response speed isn't a factor - most bots instantly form a reply, I imagine to get around this they might add a delay, but then a fast typist giving short answers might appear to be the bot.
They won't obey the command, but their response would likely correspond to the command in some way that indicates they at least understand ("#erm... whatever", "wtf? no", etc).
Exactly - it doesn't really matter if the other party complies to the '#' preface request or not, the key part is it should understand what is being asked of it and form an appropriate response (even if "appropriate" in this context is to say "No, I'm not doing that you moron").
These bots probably already have many times more background data on all possible subjects than any human could begin to achieve. The difficult step is how to conceptualise that information, to make connections, to form ideas and opinions. If anything, having masses of data is probably counter-productive, since no human forms their opinions from a position of knowing absolutely everything on a subject, rather their limited knowledge and their overarching philosophies cause them to make snap judgements.
It's not a problem, it's a goal. The idea isn't to set the bar as low as possible so that we can say, "Right, nailed the Turing Test, check that off the list of human accomplishments, what's next?" in the quickest time possible. It's meant to give something that humanity can strive to achieve, and for that reason it's meant to be difficult. In the meantime, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the benefits of the incremental steps on the way to that ultimate aim.
I assume the point is that people who don't like to wait will go buy a copy. If a library has 15 copies of the latest bestseller, and that library caters to several thousand people in the region, it's barely going to dent a book's profitability - people will just go buy it if there are no copies in the library. If, on the other hand, the library had an infinite license, there would still be people who liked to own the book, but a lot more people would just loan it. Generally a book makes all it's real profit in the first few months, and this limited supply forces people to buy instead of loan - after the first couple of years publishers probably don't care about libraries eating their profits, because unless you're one of the elite few whose books always sell, you'll not be selling anyway (you're lucky if the bookstores are even carrying copies of your book after a couple of years).
Actually, if we could magically remove all artificial restrictions that make digital goods behave like physical products, it would be a non-issue because you could just give someone a copy of your book. Remember, copyright is yet another way to add artificial real world restrictions (in this case, artificially restricting supply on something that realistically can be copied with no loss of quality).
It's a pity there was similarly no technical solution that would allow Amazon to dictate terms against joining such a trading site, on penalty of removing sharing rights on the device. Oh, wait...
That's just an excuse. Put the restriction on a mass lending service, not on the end customer - build it into the ToS that you can lend the book to your friends and associates without restriction, but if you join any kind of forum for the mass sharing of the book, you lose all rights to share it, that's how you close down that avenue without screwing over everybody else. Realistically, people will find a way to share the books. You either work with them and they pay you money, or you try and lock the whole thing down and they'll just go the route of cracking the DRM or filesharing.
Another consideration is that most people tend to buy and read new releases at the same time - the vast majority of book profits come in over the first 3-6 months of the product. If they had a system where you can lend your book to one other person at a time, for as long as you want, you wouldn't be able to share it with enough people in that time to make a real impact in their sales. Most people are going to want to read the book at the same time, especially if their friends are all taling about it - they won't generally want to wait in a queue to get your copy. So we're talking an initiative with minimal impact on sales but a massive potential to earn some goodwill for publishers, and they decide to mess it up because the bottom line is always greed. For that reason, I'll stick with dead tree books that I can lend to wheoever I want for however long I want until they realise they don't have to fight me, they can work with me and we could both be happy.
God forbid the power should ever shift slightly in favour of the customer. Never mind that it's the customer who ultimately grants the right to copyright restrictions that even allow the publishers to have a business model, all progress must favour big business at the expense of those who buy their products and pay their wages.
People complain about first-sale doctrine with digital goods, and I understand, but the fact of the matter is that the potential for a streamlined secondary market for digital content is a much larger liability than it is for physical goods. Even having to make the trip to GameStop to sell your copy of Prince of Persia is prohibitive compared to being able to purchase a game, immediately license it out to people on the cloud, and then license a different copy whenever you feel like playing it.
Why really bad, unless the driver sat back up and didn't notice a minivan stuck to the front of his truck - and seriously, what are the odds of that happening?
I had exactly the same thought at first - TFS really made it sound like he was flying the F22 and saw some guy slumped over the wheel of his truck. My first thought was how bloody low was he flying to have to dodge trucks, my next was... wow, he's going to eject so he can rush to the guy's aid! Then it started talking about minivans and I was momentarily confused until I reread the first paragraph. Still, guy's definitely a hero even if he didn't have to use a parachute.
Hey, he didn't sue the guy for trauma/whiplash - it might seem obvious to us that doing so would be a nasty move, but in this day and age not suing your rescuer is probably worthy of an honourable mention.
It's true - for all the people who claim their junk mail goes straight into the bin, it's still clearly an effective form of marketing (unless they really believe companies like pouring money down a big hole). Until people wise up and stop responding to snail mail marketing campaigns, that's not likely to change.
I remember when I was younger, there seemed to be fewer commercials and they didn't seem to bother me as much.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Agreed. Facebook won't give up invading users' privacy until they get replaced by a site that cares about user privacy. And I can guarantee that that caring attitude will last precisely long enough to bury Facebook as a competitor before they start doing exactly the same thing. Users just have to accept they can have privacy or Facebook, but not both.
Rig the thing to explode if tampered with - that should stop anyone taking it (and let's face it, there aren't that many nations who'd even be capable of taking it). Of course, it wouldn't stop someone shooting it down, but I'm guessing most nations won't really want to start setting precedents for blowing up satellites. It would probably be simpler to just figure out ways to prevent the signal from down here.
What would have made things even simpler would have been legislation way back ensuring all new devices were IPv6 compatible. Of course, that would have added to the production cost so nobody wanted to do it, but you can bet we'd be jumping on the switchover a lot quicker if it meant reducing costs at this point in time (i.e. being able to finally ditch IPv4) instead of increasing them.
Sure if they're first to broach the subject of sale. Alternatively if you just sit on them until there are no more addresses, the powers that be may decide the only option is to relax the rules around resale, then it's time to cash in with full approval.
I assume it reflects their confidence in a successful migration to IPv6 in the near future. Think about it this way, if they predict a future where we're stuck on IPv4 and go down the route of addresses being sold off to the highest bidder, they're giving away a massive asset for some goodwill return. If they believe that IPv6 will come in and render IPv4 redundant in the very near future, they're giving away effectively a resource that's soon to become useless for some goodwill return. The second sounds like a much better deal.
If we can just reclaim enough to get us safely past 2012, we can then start looking at IPv6 migration without the huge worry that it might be the cause for the end of life on earth (either that, or some other disaster will end life on earth and we won't much care about IP addresses).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how this was run or judged, but I could think of a couple of things which would probably help. Firstly, the other judges should sit in with the human subject to moderate what he's saying a little (maybe with an independent adjudicator to make sure they're not overly leading, but this is important to make sure the subject isn't fooling around to deliberately make it sound like he's the bot - come on, we'd all do it!). Secondly, a set time delay on responses from both human and computer subject, so response speed isn't a factor - most bots instantly form a reply, I imagine to get around this they might add a delay, but then a fast typist giving short answers might appear to be the bot.
They won't obey the command, but their response would likely correspond to the command in some way that indicates they at least understand ("#erm... whatever", "wtf? no", etc).
Exactly - it doesn't really matter if the other party complies to the '#' preface request or not, the key part is it should understand what is being asked of it and form an appropriate response (even if "appropriate" in this context is to say "No, I'm not doing that you moron").
These bots probably already have many times more background data on all possible subjects than any human could begin to achieve. The difficult step is how to conceptualise that information, to make connections, to form ideas and opinions. If anything, having masses of data is probably counter-productive, since no human forms their opinions from a position of knowing absolutely everything on a subject, rather their limited knowledge and their overarching philosophies cause them to make snap judgements.
It's not a problem, it's a goal. The idea isn't to set the bar as low as possible so that we can say, "Right, nailed the Turing Test, check that off the list of human accomplishments, what's next?" in the quickest time possible. It's meant to give something that humanity can strive to achieve, and for that reason it's meant to be difficult. In the meantime, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the benefits of the incremental steps on the way to that ultimate aim.
I assume the point is that people who don't like to wait will go buy a copy. If a library has 15 copies of the latest bestseller, and that library caters to several thousand people in the region, it's barely going to dent a book's profitability - people will just go buy it if there are no copies in the library. If, on the other hand, the library had an infinite license, there would still be people who liked to own the book, but a lot more people would just loan it. Generally a book makes all it's real profit in the first few months, and this limited supply forces people to buy instead of loan - after the first couple of years publishers probably don't care about libraries eating their profits, because unless you're one of the elite few whose books always sell, you'll not be selling anyway (you're lucky if the bookstores are even carrying copies of your book after a couple of years).
Actually, if we could magically remove all artificial restrictions that make digital goods behave like physical products, it would be a non-issue because you could just give someone a copy of your book. Remember, copyright is yet another way to add artificial real world restrictions (in this case, artificially restricting supply on something that realistically can be copied with no loss of quality).
It's a pity there was similarly no technical solution that would allow Amazon to dictate terms against joining such a trading site, on penalty of removing sharing rights on the device. Oh, wait...
That's just an excuse. Put the restriction on a mass lending service, not on the end customer - build it into the ToS that you can lend the book to your friends and associates without restriction, but if you join any kind of forum for the mass sharing of the book, you lose all rights to share it, that's how you close down that avenue without screwing over everybody else. Realistically, people will find a way to share the books. You either work with them and they pay you money, or you try and lock the whole thing down and they'll just go the route of cracking the DRM or filesharing.
Another consideration is that most people tend to buy and read new releases at the same time - the vast majority of book profits come in over the first 3-6 months of the product. If they had a system where you can lend your book to one other person at a time, for as long as you want, you wouldn't be able to share it with enough people in that time to make a real impact in their sales. Most people are going to want to read the book at the same time, especially if their friends are all taling about it - they won't generally want to wait in a queue to get your copy. So we're talking an initiative with minimal impact on sales but a massive potential to earn some goodwill for publishers, and they decide to mess it up because the bottom line is always greed. For that reason, I'll stick with dead tree books that I can lend to wheoever I want for however long I want until they realise they don't have to fight me, they can work with me and we could both be happy.
God forbid the power should ever shift slightly in favour of the customer. Never mind that it's the customer who ultimately grants the right to copyright restrictions that even allow the publishers to have a business model, all progress must favour big business at the expense of those who buy their products and pay their wages.
People complain about first-sale doctrine with digital goods, and I understand, but the fact of the matter is that the potential for a streamlined secondary market for digital content is a much larger liability than it is for physical goods. Even having to make the trip to GameStop to sell your copy of Prince of Persia is prohibitive compared to being able to purchase a game, immediately license it out to people on the cloud, and then license a different copy whenever you feel like playing it.
I'm guessing you've never heard of these guys?
Why really bad, unless the driver sat back up and didn't notice a minivan stuck to the front of his truck - and seriously, what are the odds of that happening?
I had exactly the same thought at first - TFS really made it sound like he was flying the F22 and saw some guy slumped over the wheel of his truck. My first thought was how bloody low was he flying to have to dodge trucks, my next was... wow, he's going to eject so he can rush to the guy's aid! Then it started talking about minivans and I was momentarily confused until I reread the first paragraph. Still, guy's definitely a hero even if he didn't have to use a parachute.
Hey, he didn't sue the guy for trauma/whiplash - it might seem obvious to us that doing so would be a nasty move, but in this day and age not suing your rescuer is probably worthy of an honourable mention.
It's true - for all the people who claim their junk mail goes straight into the bin, it's still clearly an effective form of marketing (unless they really believe companies like pouring money down a big hole). Until people wise up and stop responding to snail mail marketing campaigns, that's not likely to change.
Google is the middleman.
I remember when I was younger, there seemed to be fewer commercials and they didn't seem to bother me as much.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
And we wonder why science facilities always panic when governments announce austerity measures are on the cards...
Agreed. Facebook won't give up invading users' privacy until they get replaced by a site that cares about user privacy. And I can guarantee that that caring attitude will last precisely long enough to bury Facebook as a competitor before they start doing exactly the same thing. Users just have to accept they can have privacy or Facebook, but not both.
Rig the thing to explode if tampered with - that should stop anyone taking it (and let's face it, there aren't that many nations who'd even be capable of taking it). Of course, it wouldn't stop someone shooting it down, but I'm guessing most nations won't really want to start setting precedents for blowing up satellites. It would probably be simpler to just figure out ways to prevent the signal from down here.
Apparently the asking price in 2007 was £600 million, so I guess you'd get a fair few satellite launches for that kind of outlay.
What would have made things even simpler would have been legislation way back ensuring all new devices were IPv6 compatible. Of course, that would have added to the production cost so nobody wanted to do it, but you can bet we'd be jumping on the switchover a lot quicker if it meant reducing costs at this point in time (i.e. being able to finally ditch IPv4) instead of increasing them.
Sure if they're first to broach the subject of sale. Alternatively if you just sit on them until there are no more addresses, the powers that be may decide the only option is to relax the rules around resale, then it's time to cash in with full approval.
I assume it reflects their confidence in a successful migration to IPv6 in the near future. Think about it this way, if they predict a future where we're stuck on IPv4 and go down the route of addresses being sold off to the highest bidder, they're giving away a massive asset for some goodwill return. If they believe that IPv6 will come in and render IPv4 redundant in the very near future, they're giving away effectively a resource that's soon to become useless for some goodwill return. The second sounds like a much better deal.
If we can just reclaim enough to get us safely past 2012, we can then start looking at IPv6 migration without the huge worry that it might be the cause for the end of life on earth (either that, or some other disaster will end life on earth and we won't much care about IP addresses).