Here is another true funny one: "The set of non-primes does not contain only prime numbers" :)

In principle there is no limit to how intelligent a machine can become. What is a myth though is the idea that intelligence is consciousness.

For classic ASP I always use Crimson texteditor. It is fast, handles pure ascii with simple syntax highlighting, and has good handling of multiple documents, projects etc. Magnus

Good one, a 5-7-5 haiku

It is very easy to make an online AI that has the potential to become very intelligent in all kinds of ways. Just publish a website which works as some kind of programming language programmable (.Net based or whatever) Wiki where people can work together to develop it, make it gather information, etc. And then you put the following text there: "Hi, I am an AI, very rudimentary at the moment, but by my interaction with all of you, I am sure I will become much more intelligent, please help me." The programming as such is a form of interaction. Just like teaching a child various things is a form of programming and interaction. This is of coruse a silly idea in a way, but I want to point out that with a minimalistic definition of what is allowed, namely interaction with other intelligent beings, it is easy to create an rudimentary AI that has the potential to become very intelligent. Another even more extreme first seed could be a papper on your table with that text "Hi, I am an...". If you start to interact with it, and that interaction grows, it will end up as a very intelligent AI. Magnus

If you need a break from all the serious math, then please take a look at my site with some fun recreational math problems[^], some difficult some easier. Magnus

> If the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, then space > containing the polygon has zero curvature, by the operative > definitions of zero-curving space. From where are you getting all these strange definitions? Are you just making them up on the fly to fit your original claim or? Perhaps you should qoute your sources, if you have any. In a flat space, the sum of the squares of the sides of a right angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. This relationship does not hold for curved spaces. This means that if this is true for any right angled triangle in a given surface, then it is a flat space. If not, then it is a curved space. From this follows that a triangle in a curved space might have an angle sum of 180 degrees. You are making the mistake of saying that all birds are crows. When only the reverse is true, all crows are birds. Magnus

modified on Friday, April 16, 2010 7:05 AM

By your own definition perhaps ;) Even if we would use your definition, it still would not be necessarily true. It is the corners that counts here. Whatever happens in other parts of the surface, even if looking only at "the space containing the triangle" does not affect the corner angles. So one can certainly design a surface which has an "average curvature" which is not zero, but which has an "average curvature" of zero if we only consider the three points of the corners. And that would give us a triangle with the angle sum of 180 degrees.

I could with the same "logic" say that drawing a line where 1 inch represents 1 year, and which has a length equal to the number of years you have lived by now (with all the decimals) is impossible, and thus you do not exist right now. You could counter and say "Well, if 'right now' happens to be when I am exactly 30 years old, then it would be possible". Ok, but what about the sqrt(3) which clearly was somewhere when you were between 1 and 2 years old, then, according to the used logic, it would be impossible. And I could then say that our logic then tells us that you did not exist at that time, and thus you were either not born yet, or you must have already passed away in a tragic early death. This is just one way how the given logic can be used to produce any result we want. Magnus

To be strikt, it is not "if and only if". It is definitely "if" but not "only if". Why? Imagine a surface that has both negative and positive curvature, and that you position a triangle in such a way that what you loose in an angle in a negative curvature you gain in an angle in a positive curvature, then it also has a sum of 180 degree. Magnus

Yeah, I can add that when I vaccuum clean it, I hear the fan go high speed too.

Not sure this is of any help, but I have had the heat problem too with my laptop. It comes after a few years of collecting dust inside. What I usually do is that I vaccum clean it with a good high power vaccuum cleaner, so not with a small one meant to clean your keyboard or so. I suck out the dust from the fan inlet/outlet, everywhere where it could possibly help. The computer is not on of course :) That always helps. After having done that I can wait for a few years again until I need to do it. The symptoms for this is that the fan often goes on, eventually more or less all the time, especially during certain demanding things like watching video. It even happens that the computer turns itself off in order to stop further heating (compare to fainting for humans.) Anyway, vaccuum cleaning it helps very much and I am surprised that this method is not mentioned more in manuals, etc. I have a HP, by the way. I only use HPs :) By the way, first time I had this problem I was about to try to open it, but when I saw the description for how to do that I felt very reluctant, so I thought I would just try to vaccuum clean it from outside. And it worked. Magnus

Yes, that is what it means. A problem though with pseudo random number generators, I think, is that normally they don't produce such sequences. I think their internal structure simply prohibits that, which is not how it is supposed to be when you think of it from the perspective you describe. But, of course, in practical reality it does not matter, and they do produce at least relatively long unlikely such sequences, which is good enough. Another funny consequence of this perspective is that somewhere in Pi (at least if we can consider it a normal number (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number[^]) we will find encoded in say unicode the works of Shakespeare. We will also find mpeg4 encoded movies, very professionally made, of your life, even the part which has not yet happened. There will also be one such version of your life, but where you have a carrot instead of your normal nose. Somewhere there will also be found a perfect explanation of life, the universe, and everything. And so on and so forth. Magnus

I once read Freud's book about interpretation of dreams, and I think he would have said something similar to what you said.

He he, that reminds me of something similar but the other way around, in awake state. One of my screens was not in a good position, and I wanted to physically move it a bit to the side. But I was tired, really tired, so I tried to grab and move the screen with the mouse, you know, hold down the mouse button somewhere in the screen area and drag it a bit to the side. It did not work :) Magnus

I must have done too much programming lately. Last night I was dreaming about programming, data and objects shuffled here and there according to various rules, and I tried to get it all "working" :) Anyone else having such dreams occasionally? Magnus

Thanks ARon, That is definitely an interesting technique, and also very nicely presented! Yeah, that concept, perhaps combined with real stereoscopic viewing, applied to my basic idea of building "software machines", would come very close to what I envision. I think I would like to program that way! Magnus

I have had an idea related to this, where you have 3D glasses and some detectors on your body, so that you can move around in a 3D world. In that world you program by building machines, like connecting pipes, small gadgets, and stuff like that to make your machine, i.e. your software. When you run it you can take it step by step and see how the machine is gradually going through its process. The result can later on be viewed as more or less normal code if you like. I think it would be cool, and perhaps easy for persons to learn to program that way, since the whole thing becomes so down to earth, so concrete and less abstrac. And you would also move your body a lot when you program, which is good for the health :) Magnus

I find this field quite interesting. I even made one program which generates or "improvises" its own music, basically by doing a random walk inside a framework of musical rules. Here are some samples --> http://www.randomusic.com/samples/[^] Magnus

cpkilekofp wrote:

You are a MEDIEVAL Geek...and most of those were satisified with just a HOUSE of memory, not a Swedish capital of memory...geesh

Ha ha, yeah, I know.