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Wednesday, November 30, 2005File:Turing1.jpg

More than 50 programmers, scientists, students, hobbyists and fans of the A.L.I.C.E. chat robot gathered in Guildford, U.K. on Friday to celebrate the tenth birthday of the award winning A.I. On hand was the founder the Loebner Prize, an annual Turing Test, designed to pick out the world’s most human computer according to an experiment laid out by the famous British mathematician Alan Turing more then 50 years ago. Along with A.L.I.C.E.’s chief programmer Dr. Richard S. Wallace, two other Loebner prize winners, Robby Garner and this year’s winner, Rollo Carpenter, also gave presentations, as did other finalists.

The University of Surrey venue was chosen, according to Dr. Wallace, not only because it was outside the U.S. (A.L.I.C.E.’s birthday fell on the Thanksgiving Day weekend holiday there, so he expected few people would attend a conference in America), but also because of its recently erected statue of Alan Turing, who posed the famous A. I. experiment which inspired much of the work on bots like A.L.I.C.E. University of Surrey Digital World Research Centre organizers Lynn and David Hamill were pleased to host the event because it encourages multi-disciplinary interaction, and because of the Centre’s interest in interaction between humans and computers.File:ALICE Birthday Cake.jpg

Dr. Wallace gave a keynote address outlining the history of A.L.I.C.E. and AIML. Many people commented on the fact the he seemed to have moved around a lot in the last ten years, having lived in New York, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, Maine, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, while working on the Alicebot project. The A.L.I.C.E. and AIML software is popular among chat robot enthusiats primarily because of its distribution under the GNU free software license. One of Dr. Wallace’s PowerPoint slides asked the question, “How do you make money from free software?” His answer: memberships, subscriptions, books, directories, syndicated ads, consulting, teaching, and something called the Superbot.

Rollo Carpenter gave a fascinating presentation on his learning bot Jabberwacky, reading from several sample conversations wherein the bot seemed amazingly humanlike. Unlike the free A.L.I.C.E. software, Carpenter uses a proprietary learning approach so that the bot actually mimics the personality of each individual chatter. The more people who chat with Jabberwacky, the better it becomes at this kind of mimicry.

In another interesting presentation, Dr. Hamill related present-day research on chat robots to earlier work on dialog analysis in telephone conversations. Phone calls have many similarities to the one-on-one chats that bots encounter on the web and in IM. Dr. Hamill also related our social expectations of bots to social class structure and how servants were expected to behave in Victorian England. He cited the famous Microsoft paperclip as the most egregius example of a bot that violated all the rules of a good servant’s behavior.

Bots have advanced a long way since philanthropist Hugh Loebner launched his controversial contest 15 years ago. His Turing Test contest, which offers an award of $100,000 for the first program to pass an “audio-visual” version of the game, also awards a bronze medal and $2000 every year for the “most human computer” according to a panel of judges. Huma Shah of the University of Westminster presented examples of bots used by large corporations to help sell furniture, provide the latest information about automotive products, and help customers open bank accounts. Several companies in the U.S. and Europe offer customized bot personalities for corporate web sites.

Even though Turing’s Test remains controversial, this group of enthusiastic developers seems determined to carry on the tradition and try to develop more and more human like chat bots.Hugh Loebner is dedicated to carry on his contest for the rest of his life, in spite of his critics. He hopes that a large enough constituency of winners will exist to keep the competition going well beyond his own lifetime. Dr. Wallace says, “Nobody has gotten rich from chat robots yet, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. There is such a thing as ‘bot fever’. For some people who meet a bot for the first time, it can pass the Turing Test for them, and they get very excited.”

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Current United States Speaker of the House and 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan announced Wednesday he will not seek reelection and plans to retire from the U.S. House of Representatives when his term expires in January.

“We all know that I did not seek this job, I took it reluctantly, but I have given this job everything I have and I have no regret whatsoever in accepting this responsibility,” Ryan told the press. Ryan took over the Speaker position after John Boehner retired in 2015. Ryan cited wanting to spend more time with his three children. Some reports suggested he was also disillusioned with the Trump presidency. Ryan contradicted this in public: “I’m grateful to the president for giving us this opportunity to do big things to get this country on the right track,” he said. According to Axios, Ryan considered last December’s restructuring of the U.S. tax code to be the most important accomplishment during his time as Speaker.

President Trump said via Twitter, “Speaker Paul Ryan is a truly good man, and while he will not be seeking re-election, he will leave a legacy of achievement that nobody can question. We are with you Paul!”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer praised Ryan as “a good man who is always true to his word” and said “[w]ith his newfound political freedom, I hope the Speaker uses his remaining time in Congress to break free from the hard-right factions of his caucus that have kept Congress from getting real things done.”

Not all reactions to Ryan’s departure were admiring. While various Democrats and others have opposed Ryan for his Republican views, many Republicans have criticized what they describe as a lack of support for President Trump’s projects, such as the US Mexico border wall Trump has proposed to build on the U.S. border with Mexico. Far-right media outlet Breitbart News described Ryan on Tuesday as “the leader of the globalist wing of the Republican Party,” citing his “pro-immigration, wage-crushing, big business-first record, whereby American workers have been left behind by multinational free trade and mass immigration.” Fox News commentator Sebastian Gorka tweeted “GOOD RIDDANCE.” Amongst late-night comedians, Stephen Colbert of The Late Show called him “CrossFit Dracula” in a reference to his well-documented fondness for fitness programs: “He said today he wants to spend more time with his wife and kids. Which, of course, is what he calls his biceps.” Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show added “House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he is retiring from Congress. He said he wants to spend more time with his children at home, and less time with the child in the White House.”

Paul Ryan currently represents a district in southeastern Wisconsin. As of January, he will have served twenty years in the United States Congress.

According to Business Insider, waiting until January of next year would push Ryan into a slightly higher pension bracket within the Federal Employees Retirement System because his time as Speaker will give him three years at a sustained salary of US$223,500. If he retires as planned, he would be eligible to draw noticeably more annually than if he retired sooner.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, asked by Fox News whether he would run for Ryan’s position as Speaker, responded with a reference to the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. […] We’ve got to make sure we keep the majority.”

In November, one third of the U.S. Senate and the entire House of Representatives are up for re-election. The Republicans currently have a majority in both houses of congress, but would lose control of the House if the Democrats gained 23 out of its 435 seats. Close to 30 Republicans have announced they would be retiring this year. BBC analyst Anthony Zurcher speculates Ryan may be retiring now to preserve his reputation for a presidential run sometime in the future.

In the U.S. government, the Speaker of the House automatically assumes the presidency if the president and vice president are both killed or incapacitated. The Speaker is elected by the members of the House of Representatives, and so is usually a member of whichever of the two main political parities happens to have the majority that session.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

An evacuation operation was carried out today as a cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Santorini, a Greek island, leaving up to 1,167 passengers and 391 crew to abandon the ship.

The Sea Diamond took on water and listed twelve degrees after running aground, but had been stabilized. Fifteen hours after the grounding, the ship sank.

Cruise operator Louis Cruise Lines had announced earlier that all passengers and crew were accounted for. Officials are now reporting that two passengers are missing. A 45-year-old man, Jean-Christophe Allain, and his 16-year-old daughter, Maud, were reported missing by family members also on the cruise, according to a merchant marine ministry official.

BBC journalist Malcolm Brabant reported that the missing passengers had been in a lower-deck cabin when the ship ran aground. Allain’s wife and son escaped safely to the upper decks.

Most of the passengers on board the Sea Diamond ship are either American or German. Local news reported that the ship is taking on water after striking a reef in the volcanic island’s lagoon, similar to a lake, and issued a distress signal, launching an operation that led more than a dozen ships and five Greek Navy helicopters to evacuate all the people on board, with many boarding a small ferry.

The ship was about one nautical mile – 1.8km – from the island’s coast when it ran aground. The ship’s operators, Louis Cruise Lines, earlier said that a “controlled evacuation” was underway, but that “there is no danger to passengers”. The ship had left the Athenian port of Piraeus on Monday for a five-day tour of the islands. The sea was calm when the incident occurred.

“Some passengers have already reached the island and no-one has been hurt,” an official at the Santorini coastguard has said, whilst Merchant Marine Minister Manolis Kefaloyiannis said to reporters, “Thankfully, everything has gone well so far. Emergency services responded very quickly and very well.”

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The Volkswagen emissions scandal continued yesterday with the company announcing 800,000 mainly diesel vehicles may also be affected by carbon dioxide emissions problems.

The company stated “the safety of the vehicles is in no way compromised”. They estimated potentially this could cost them €2bn on top of the €6.7bn set aside to pay for the cost of correcting 11 million cars affected when the scandal broke, in addition to fines by regulators.

This follows Monday’s revelation that the emissions scandal has affected up to 10,000 vehicles sold in the USA by brands in the Volkswagen group, although the company refutes the allegation. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the regulatory body which has been investigating Volkswagen, claims the company fitted a number of recent Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen models with technology that initiates secret components during emission tests to ensure the results are favourable.

The scandal began with damaging revelations that the car manufacturer has been using illegal software to enable diesel cars to cheat on mandatory emissions tests. This lead to a public apology on September 20 by then-chief executive Martin Winterkorn and the promise of an outside inquiry. He then resigned on September 23, and was replaced by Matthias Müller. The new allegation about Porsche is of particular concern for Müller, because he had previously been in charge of Porsche.

The company is expected to foot the bill for the recall of close to 500,000 VW and Audi cars affected at the time. There is also the possibility of Volkswagen having to pay federal fines of up to US$18 billion dollars because the US Clean Air Act sets a maximum fine of US$37,500 for each vehicle that contravenes the requirements of the Act.

An investigation into alleged breaches of environmental law was originally initiated on the advice of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a European non-governmental organisation. The EPA requested tests be carried out by West Virginia University, where the secret software was discovered.

The software, known as a “defeat device”, enabled cars to identify when they were being tested and to switch on the emission control system. The devices may have been adding urea to the car exhaust because that would reduce the amount of nitrogen dioxide. The car would release a fraction of the nitrogen oxide compared to when they were being driven normally. Emissions of nitrogen oxide contribute to smog and are thought to have caused a rise in respiratory illnesses like asthma.

Friday, March 25, 2005A lawyer who is expected to become the president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) said in a comment to Associated Press (AP) that arming teachers with firearms is a solution to be considered in preventing school shootings by students. Sarah S. Froman, an alumni of Harvard Law School and a practicing lawyer, implied that allowing teachers to carry weapons is one of the many options that should be examined.

Guns and other weapons are commonly banned on school campuses in the United States, but the high-profile incidents of students defying the bans and bringing firearms to classes could place the school at a disadvantage if the student were to fire the weapon. In the case of the recent student shooting at a Native American reservation in Minnessota the school had metal detectors and had an on-duty security guard. The guard was unarmed, however, and was gunned down by the student.

Froman told the AP that if it is the responsibility of teachers to protect students from harm, then the society must find a way to let teachers do that. She also said that gun control laws or bans cannot prevent a malicious individual from acting out, and provided an example of a 1997 shooting incident where an armed teacher was able to help police apprehend the student.

Froman is currently the NRA’s first vice president, and is expected to be elected to the post of president in the organization’s elections next month. The current president of the 4-million member organization is actor and activist Charlton Heston.

Friday, July 30, 2010

On Tuesday, Apple Inc. introduced a new peripheral, the Magic Trackpad, and refreshed its line of iMac and Mac Pro computers, as well as the Apple Cinema Display.

The Magic Trackpad, a multi-touch trackpad for Macintosh computers, allows end users to use certain gestures to control on-screen actions. It supports gestures already seen on the MacBook and MacBook Pro trackpads, as well as the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, such as swiping, tap-to-click, and pinch-to-zoom. However, the Magic Trackpad also supports physical clicking and supports one- and two-button commands. The Magic Trackpad, which is retailed for US$69, connects wirelessly to a computer using Bluetooth technology and has a claimed four months of battery life. At 5.17 inches (13.13 centimetres) long and 5.12 inches (13 centimetres) wide, the glass and aluminium device is slightly larger than Apple’s laptop trackpads.

In addition to the Magic Trackpad, Apple also began selling the US$29 Apple Battery Charger accessory, a charger pack with six rechargeable batteries usable in the Magic Trackpad, Apple Wireless Keyboard, and Apple Magic Mouse. Apple claims that the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries can last up to ten years before they lose their ability to hold a charge. The Magic Trackpad uses two AA batteries, and can be used with any Bluetooth-enabled Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.6.4.

Another major announcement that came on Tuesday was the first iMac update since last fall. The update included mostly internal upgrades, giving consumers a choice of newer Intel processors: the dual-core Core i3 and Core i5, and the quad-core Core i5 and Core i7. In addition, the SD card slot was expanded to allow support for the Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC) format. The iMac is still available at 21.5-inch (54.61-centimetre) and 27-inch (68.58-centimetre) display options, but has upgraded graphics cards as well. The screens use in-plane switching (IPS) technology, allowing for a greater viewing angle. The base model is still priced at US$1,199.

Apple’s line of Mac Pro computers were also given a refresh on Tuesday. Consumers now have the option to purchase a Mac Pro with twelve processing cores, using two six-core Intel Xeon processors. Four-, six-, and eight-core options are still available. The update also includes the choice of adding up to four, 512GB solid state drives, instead of conventional hard drives. The base model is priced at US$2,499 and will be sold starting in August.

Apple also released a new, 27-inch (68.58 centimetre) LED Cinema Display, a 60 percent increase in display area from the older 24-inch (60.96 centimetres) Cinema Display. The new monitor can reach a resolution of 2560-by-1440 pixels, or Wide Quad High Definition, and has a built-in microphone, webcam, speakers, USB hub, and ambient light sensor, which changes the display’s brightness based on external lighting levels. It is priced at US$999 but will not be available for purchase until September.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Domas Mituzas is a Lithuanian software developer recently given a temporary position on the Wikimedia Foundation‘s board. The position lasts until June this year, after which he has stated he will decide whether he will run for a full term of two years. As well as working for the Wikimedia Foundation, he is employed by MySQL AB.

In light of his recent appointment to the board, Wikinews conducted the following interview with Domas Mituzas.

((WN)) Congratulations on your new board position! Can you tell us a bit about your background – previous work with the Foundation, what you do with MySQL AB etc?

Domas Mituzas: Thanks! Though my first edits to Wikipedia were in 2003, I became actively involved in site technology back in 2004. Then I was working for a major IT company in the Baltic States, and was leading the systems group there. Back then I could apply quite a bit of practice I had from my job to maintain Wikipedia in its technology infancy. It became increasingly involving, and eventually the things we started doing became far more complex, especially when the exploding growth hit us. Managing the growth and sustaining the site up was quite stressful at that time, and we started both lots of optimization and resource expansion work. Eventually I got involved in the MySQL community, and was suggested to apply for a job in MySQL AB. There I work in services division, assisting our customers with their problems, helping to grow their operations. Now as part of company acquisition I’m joining Sun Microsystems, and I’m eager to see what possibilities can that provide.

Back in my childhood I was deep into encyclopedias, first dead tree ones, later CDs and online version of Britannica. I had a dream, that once I get my own home, I’ll get full dead-tree version of Britannica on my bookshelves. It didn’t happen, as I got into Wikipedia the same year I bought my apartment. Life is full of irony 🙂

Actually, back in 2000 I approached university professor and tried to explain him a concept of dynamically edited news repository, where every concept could be explained deeper and deeper into elemental knowledge particles, and later that can be assembled in many dynamic ways. His first question was “Is that some kind of website?”, and I was angry at him for not getting the generic concept of knowledge at all. Year or two afterwards I was discussing same concepts with a colleague, and he provided with far more practical visions of all that. Seeing Wikipedia for the very first time was a dejavu, so it was easy to get into the project. That is different from what I imagined, but far more useful.

((WN)) Why do you think you were chosen for this position, and what do you think you can contribute?

DM: One of reasons was both my long-term presence in site operations and communicating about our work, spreading our ideology, providing opinions. I try to be able to explain difficult topics in human language, and that is quite well appreciated. Additionally, I was being a bit of outsider – more of a reader than writer, so I feel that my views are slightly less community centric, more of value centric. My experience in a technology team is quite similar to what I expect to see in the board – wide array of issues to work on, and maintaining consensus is incredibly important to keep the productivity high. So even though I have deep roots in the project, I feel that I can bring in lots of fresh ways to the board. Of course, I will try to provide best possible technology advise, if the board needs it.

((WN)) Will you continue doing your previous technical work at the same time? If you do, how will you find a balance?

DM: I would really avoid to do all previous work – but it is not needed any more. Years ago we were monitoring the site 24/7, shortage of resources was causing all sorts of difficult problems. Now everything is way more steady and reliable, so I have way much more free time. I used to do lots of other activities too, so I think I can scale my time just fine. And still, of course, I’ll provide as much work to technical part as needed, it just isn’t as demanding as it used to be, and we’re really happy about that.

((WN)) What major actions do you expect to come your way during your term in office?

DM: Though my term is quite short for now (until June elections), the biggest work will be done in understanding how the foundation should function to establish a really long-term presence, to support the projects far into the future. It may need changes in how we get external experience, how we interact with other organizations, how we do interact with office staff and each other. Foundation did lots of work to get to stable and reliable state, now it is time to think more about the future sustainability and expansion.

I have operations experience, so of course I will want to maintain high efficiency of overall operation, but on the other hand I want to work on scaling other parts of the foundation – especially reach out, evangelism, and of course – fundraising.

((WN)) Do you expect any major upgrades to be needed to hardware or software anytime soon, and if so what?

DM: Projects are always growing – pages, pageviews, revisions, users, media, archives – to facilitate that there will always be major upgrades. We still have some of the solutions that allowed us to survive for years, but are not suitable for a whole millennium. There will always be new features, that will need more resources, so we definitely won’t stop improving our hardware or software platform. I have to take off the board member hat to answer these questions, as they should be really directed to technology team, instead of board. I won’t mention exact projects, but we have a trail of features that have to be implemented, and will be, soon. But indeed, that is very much operational issue, that the technology team and foundation staff is known to handle well.

((WN)) What do you expect lies ahead for the Foundation in the long run – say, the next ten years?

DM: My generation is already forming the ‘Wikimedia Alumni’ – the readers, consumers of our content love us. It is amazing to realize what powers they may have in the next ten years, and how they will be able to assist us.

The biggest work to be done – maintaining the loyalty of our community, continue being the good guys of the Internet. Next ten years will be years of continued Internet penetration, and us being the major beneficial part of that process is especially exciting.

I really want to believe, that our offline activities will be just an intermediate step, and we will have whole world using our online resources, and of course – contributing to them.

Also, I’m not sure if we will be capable to achieve in next ten years, but besides digital divide, we will have to break information isolationism that certain countries or communities maintain – and the best way to achieve it is by providing the best knowledge resource possible. Opening up communities and having them work together may really become the next great wonder of the world. Who doesn’t want to be part of that? 🙂