[silk] [FoRK] Awww crap.
- Forwarded message from Stephen D. Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: Stephen D. Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:28:34 -0800 To: Friends of Rohit Khare [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [FoRK] Awww crap. User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031) Reply-To: Friends of Rohit Khare [EMAIL PROTECTED] I liked Push's stuff. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened? By David Kushner Email 01.18.08 | 6:00 PM Illustration: Justin Wood Using the Internet to Build Their Case for Artificial Intelligence On the morning of June 12, 1990, Chris McKinstry went looking for a gun. At 11 am, he walked into Nick's Sport Shop on a busy street in downtown Toronto and approached the saleswoman behind the counter. I'll take a Winchester Defender, he said, referring to a 12-gauge shotgun in the display. She eyeballed the skinny 23-year-old and told him he'd need a certificate to buy it. Two and a half hours later, McKinstry returned, claiming to have the required document. The clerk showed him the gun, and he handled the pistol grip admiringly. Then, as she returned it to its place, he grabbed another shotgun from the case, yanked a shell out of his pocket, and jammed it into the chamber. He's got a gun! He's got a gun! a woman screamed, as she ran out the front door. The store emptied. He didn't try to stop anyone. Soon McKinstry heard sirens. A police truck screeched up, and men in black boots and body armor took up positions around the shop. The police caught glimpses of him through the store windows with the gun jammed under his chin. They tried to negotiate by phone. They brought in his girlfriend, with whom he'd just had a fight, to plead with him. They brought in a psychiatrist — McKinstry had a history of mental problems and had tried to institutionalize himself the day before. After five hours, McKinstry ripped the telephone from the wall and retreated into the basement, where he spent two hours listening to radio coverage of the standoff. Eventually, a reporter announced that the cops had decided on their next move: Send in the robot. McKinstry had stolen the gun because he wanted to end his own life, but now he was intrigued. He'd always been obsessed with robots and artificial intelligence. At 4, he had asked his mother to sew a sleeping bag for his toy robot so it wouldn't get cold. Robots have feelings, he insisted. Despite growing up poor with a single mom, he had taught himself to code. At 12, he wrote a chess-playing program on his RadioShack TRS-80 Model 1. As McKinstry cowered in the basement, he could hear the robot rumbling overhead, making what he called Terminator noises. It must be enormous, he thought, as it knocked over shelves. Then everything went eerily quiet. McKinstry saw a long white plume of smoke arc over the stairs. The robot had fired a tear gas canister, but it ricocheted off something and flew back the way it came. Another tear gas canister fired, and McKinstry watched it trace the same perfectly incorrect trajectory. He realized the machine had no idea where he was hiding. But the cops had had enough. They burst through the front door in gas masks, screaming, Put the gun down! McKinstry had been eager to die a few hours before, but now something in him obeyed. The gas burned his eyes and lungs as he climbed from the basement. At the top of the steps, he saw the robot through the haze. It looked like an armored golf cart with a tangle of cables and a lone camera eye mounted on top. It wasn't like the Terminator at all. It was a clunky remote-controlled toy. Dumb. Three hundred miles away in a suburb of Montreal, Pushpinder Singh was preparing to devote his life to the study of smart machines. The high schooler built a robot that won him the top prize in a province-wide science contest. His creation had a small black frame with wheels, a makeshift circuit board, and a pincer claw. As the prodigy worked its controller, the robot rolled across the floor of his parents' comfortable home and picked up a small cup. The project landed Singh in the Montreal Gazette. Push, as everyone called him, had also taught himself to code — first on a VIC-20, then by making computer games for an Amiga and an Apple IIe. His father, Mahender, a topographer and mapmaker who had studied advanced mathematics, encouraged the wüenderkind. Singh was brilliant, ambitious, and strong-willed. In ninth grade, he had created his own sound digitizer and taught it to play a song he was supposed to be practicing for his piano lessons. I don't want to learn piano anymore, I want to learn this, he said. Singh's lifelong friend Rajiv Rawat describes an idyllic geek childhood full of Legos, DD, and Star Trek. One of his favorite films was 2001: A Space Odyssey — Singh was fascinated by the idea of HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence that thought
Re: [silk] Introduction
On Jan 19, 2008 12:21 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Ashok Krish wrote: | But I find the 50 rupee fine on bovines interesting. Do they eat the | receipts? The more interesting question is that given that 50 INR is for stray cows - who ends up paying ? ~sankarshan I dunno who ends up paying, interesting speculation...but it's very interesting to see who's been reading about itand the fact that it is referred to as INR! Perhaps Paul Fernandes pays people to put up these notices around Bangalore so he can make his next Shineboards poster and let us goofs buy it... Deepa. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHkZ3yXQZpNTcrCzMRAlFIAJ0f0NZUgEFmFH8mX2TlSa3BeF+CegCgqSRT FWSvotsvOHecddsFsUwpAkQ= =BuK7 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] Introduction
On Jan 19, 2008 1:46 PM, Deepa Mohan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 19, 2008 12:21 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Ashok Krish wrote: Oh, Ashok Krish, should have said it earlier, but there were worthier members...welcome to the slightly mad housethis is from one who has no clue about what you said in the latter half of your introductory mail. How you expect Mambalam Mami's to understand Geekese, I don't know but Swagatham! Deepa. | But I find the 50 rupee fine on bovines interesting. Do they eat the | receipts? The more interesting question is that given that 50 INR is for stray cows - who ends up paying ? ~sankarshan I dunno who ends up paying, interesting speculation...but it's very interesting to see who's been reading about itand the fact that it is referred to as INR! Perhaps Paul Fernandes pays people to put up these notices around Bangalore so he can make his next Shineboards poster and let us goofs buy it... Deepa. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHkZ3yXQZpNTcrCzMRAlFIAJ0f0NZUgEFmFH8mX2TlSa3BeF+CegCgqSRT FWSvotsvOHecddsFsUwpAkQ= =BuK7 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [silk] Introduction
Hi Deepa, I think half of your mail would have been greek to all those who are not mallus :-) regards Anish On Jan 19, 2008 8:19 AM, Deepa Mohan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 19, 2008 1:46 PM, Deepa Mohan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 19, 2008 12:21 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Ashok Krish wrote: Oh, Ashok Krish, should have said it earlier, but there were worthier members...welcome to the slightly mad housethis is from one who has no clue about what you said in the latter half of your introductory mail. How you expect Mambalam Mami's to understand Geekese, I don't know but Swagatham! Deepa. | But I find the 50 rupee fine on bovines interesting. Do they eat the | receipts? The more interesting question is that given that 50 INR is for stray cows - who ends up paying ? ~sankarshan I dunno who ends up paying, interesting speculation...but it's very interesting to see who's been reading about itand the fact that it is referred to as INR! Perhaps Paul Fernandes pays people to put up these notices around Bangalore so he can make his next Shineboards poster and let us goofs buy it... Deepa.
Re: [silk] Introduction
Likewise.
Ran across your very entertaining blog post tearing into the Hindu's copy
and paste music reviews, compared to Subbudu's fire and brimstone.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/the-hindu-style-carnatic-concert-
review-generator/#comments
That was after running into your posts tagged sappaadu when googling for
restaurants to do a silkmeet on Jan 25 with Thaths in town.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/category/sappaadu/
So, poked around, saw that Chandrachoodan knew you. Asked him to drag you
into Silk.
Welcome.
srs
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Anish Mohammed
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 7:27 PM
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: Re: [silk] Introduction
Hi Ashok,
welcome to silk{list/madhouse}
regards
Anish
On Jan 18, 2008 3:06 PM, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an
erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
Hi Ashok,
welcome to silk{list/madhouse}
regards
Anish
On Jan 18, 2008 3:06 PM, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
Welcome! I'm also a fan of your blog (and went to school with your brother
Raghav, but you know this). Good to see you here.
On 1/18/08, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
On Jan 19, 2008 7:42 PM, Aishwarya Subramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Welcome! I'm also a fan of your blog (and went to school with your brother Raghav, but you know this). Good to see you here. I was expecting something like this. Next thing you know, one of us on this list is related to the other. And oh, might as well ask. Anybody here who went to PSBB? C -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravages http://www.linkedin.com/in/ravages http://www.selectiveamnesia.org/ +91-9884467463
[silk] ai pioneers, my ass
(((Wired has sunk so low, it can't even tell kooks from pioneers. And Minsky + Gates as inspirations, in 2008, WTF?))) http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery?currentPage=all WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 16.02 Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened? By David Kushner Email 01.18.08 | 6:00 PM Illustration: Justin Wood Using the Internet to Build Their Case for Artificial Intelligence On the morning of June 12, 1990, Chris McKinstry went looking for a gun. At 11 am, he walked into Nick's Sport Shop on a busy street in downtown Toronto and approached the saleswoman behind the counter. I'll take a Winchester Defender, he said, referring to a 12-gauge shotgun in the display. She eyeballed the skinny 23-year-old and told him he'd need a certificate to buy it. Two and a half hours later, McKinstry returned, claiming to have the required document. The clerk showed him the gun, and he handled the pistol grip admiringly. Then, as she returned it to its place, he grabbed another shotgun from the case, yanked a shell out of his pocket, and jammed it into the chamber. He's got a gun! He's got a gun! a woman screamed, as she ran out the front door. The store emptied. He didn't try to stop anyone. Soon McKinstry heard sirens. A police truck screeched up, and men in black boots and body armor took up positions around the shop. The police caught glimpses of him through the store windows with the gun jammed under his chin. They tried to negotiate by phone. They brought in his girlfriend, with whom he'd just had a fight, to plead with him. They brought in a psychiatrist — McKinstry had a history of mental problems and had tried to institutionalize himself the day before. After five hours, McKinstry ripped the telephone from the wall and retreated into the basement, where he spent two hours listening to radio coverage of the standoff. Eventually, a reporter announced that the cops had decided on their next move: Send in the robot. McKinstry had stolen the gun because he wanted to end his own life, but now he was intrigued. He'd always been obsessed with robots and artificial intelligence. At 4, he had asked his mother to sew a sleeping bag for his toy robot so it wouldn't get cold. Robots have feelings, he insisted. Despite growing up poor with a single mom, he had taught himself to code. At 12, he wrote a chess-playing program on his RadioShack TRS-80 Model 1. As McKinstry cowered in the basement, he could hear the robot rumbling overhead, making what he called Terminator noises. It must be enormous, he thought, as it knocked over shelves. Then everything went eerily quiet. McKinstry saw a long white plume of smoke arc over the stairs. The robot had fired a tear gas canister, but it ricocheted off something and flew back the way it came. Another tear gas canister fired, and McKinstry watched it trace the same perfectly incorrect trajectory. He realized the machine had no idea where he was hiding. But the cops had had enough. They burst through the front door in gas masks, screaming, Put the gun down! McKinstry had been eager to die a few hours before, but now something in him obeyed. The gas burned his eyes and lungs as he climbed from the basement. At the top of the steps, he saw the robot through the haze. It looked like an armored golf cart with a tangle of cables and a lone camera eye mounted on top. It wasn't like the Terminator at all. It was a clunky remote-controlled toy. Dumb. Three hundred miles away in a suburb of Montreal, Pushpinder Singh was preparing to devote his life to the study of smart machines. The high schooler built a robot that won him the top prize in a province-wide science contest. His creation had a small black frame with wheels, a makeshift circuit board, and a pincer claw. As the prodigy worked its controller, the robot rolled across the floor of his parents' comfortable home and picked up a small cup. The project landed Singh in the Montreal Gazette. Push, as everyone called him, had also taught himself to code — first on a VIC-20, then by making computer games for an Amiga and an Apple IIe. His father, Mahender, a topographer and mapmaker who had studied advanced mathematics, encouraged the wüenderkind. Singh was brilliant, ambitious, and strong-willed. In ninth grade, he had created his own sound digitizer and taught it to play a song he was supposed to be practicing for his piano lessons. I don't want to learn piano anymore, I want to learn this, he said. Singh's lifelong friend Rajiv Rawat describes an idyllic geek childhood full of Legos, DD, and Star Trek. One of his favorite films was 2001: A Space Odyssey — Singh was fascinated by the idea of HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence that thought and acted in ways its creators had not predicted. To create the character of HAL, the makers of 2001 had consulted with the pioneering AI researcher Marvin Minsky. (In the novel, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that Minsky's research would lead
Re: [silk] Introduction
Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan [19/01/08 19:47 +0530]: I was expecting something like this. Next thing you know, one of us on this list is related to the other. And oh, might as well ask. Anybody here who went to PSBB? Not sure, but the list is positively infested with PS Senior Secondary alumni (me, karra, thaths ..)
Re: [silk] Introduction
Ah thang you sir. And with all the PSBB talk, I must mention that I'm from
Vidya Mandir, Mylapore. I mean, it was still a mandir and all in those days.
Now I am told that it is more akin a Vidya Supermarket (Sodexho accepted).
On Jan 19, 2008 7:29 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Likewise.
Ran across your very entertaining blog post tearing into the Hindu's copy
and paste music reviews, compared to Subbudu's fire and brimstone.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/the-hindu-style-carnatic-concert-
review-generator/#comments
That was after running into your posts tagged sappaadu when googling for
restaurants to do a silkmeet on Jan 25 with Thaths in town.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/category/sappaadu/
So, poked around, saw that Chandrachoodan knew you. Asked him to drag you
into Silk.
Welcome.
srs
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Anish Mohammed
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 7:27 PM
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: Re: [silk] Introduction
Hi Ashok,
welcome to silk{list/madhouse}
regards
Anish
On Jan 18, 2008 3:06 PM, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an
erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
Ah yes. Aishwarya of the curiously entertaining Google Talk and Facebook
statuses fame.
On Jan 19, 2008 7:42 PM, Aishwarya Subramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Welcome! I'm also a fan of your blog (and went to school with your brother
Raghav, but you know this). Good to see you here.
On 1/18/08, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
Re: [silk] Introduction
Always glad to amuse.
On 1/19/08, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Ah yes. Aishwarya of the curiously entertaining Google Talk and Facebook
statuses fame.
On Jan 19, 2008 7:42 PM, Aishwarya Subramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Welcome! I'm also a fan of your blog (and went to school with your
brother
Raghav, but you know this). Good to see you here.
On 1/18/08, Ashok Krish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is not silkulist? I mean, the mailing list for fans of an
erstwhile
South Indian item girl?
Oh, damnation. I have think of a new introduction then.
What is the output of this piece of code?
Class Krishashok
{
public String intro = new String();
public void Krishashok() {
intro = Krish Ashok is a habitual blogger, perpetual
procrastinator, intermittent musician, careless reader and reckless
driver
who is using his day job as head of Web 2.0 innovation lab at Tata
Consultancy services to pay for all the above;
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Krishashok instance = new Krishashok();
System.out.println(instance.intro);
}
}
The output of this piece of code more or less describes me.
ps: The will print nothing because programmer defined constructors
should
not have a return type, muahahaha.
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
--
Krish Ashok
Blog: krishashok.wordpress.com
GTalk: krishashok
www.stage.fm/krishashok
