Indeed. Personally I think IBM's "Watson" is the most impressive technological feat I have witnessed since I watched the moon landings 40-odd years ago, I fully realise few people share my amazement. The visual aspect means NEIL is tackling a far more difficult problem than deducing "common sense" from text alone. I wasn't impressed by the web site when I found it last week, but as a "proof of concept" it does the job admirably.

I may be wrong but I believe all three (Watson, NEIL, and the cat thingy) are based on the same general "learning algorithm" (neural networks, specifically RBM's). What they do is find patterns in data, both the entities (atomic and compound) and the relationships. The "training" comes in two types, feeding it specific facts to correct a "misconception" it has formed, labelling the entities and relationship it found so a human can make sense of it.

What the cat project did was train a neural net to recognise a generic cat by showing it pictures of cats and pictures of non cats. It could then categorise random pictures as either cat or not-cat, until fairly recently the problem has always been - How do I train the same AI to recognise (say) dogs without destroying it's existing ability to recognise cats.

Disclaimer: I knew the math of neural nets well enough 20yrs ago to have passed a CS exam. I never really understood it in the way a I understand (say) geometry but I know enough about AI and it's ever shifting goal posts to be very impressed by Watson's Jeopardy stunt. To convincingly beat humans at a game of general knowledge really is a stunning technological milestone that will be remembered long after 911 goes back to being just a phone number.

Coincidentally I came across the NEIL site last week, I think it has a long way to go before it can beat IBM's Watson on general knowledge (AKA "common sense"). Watson also gets it's raw information from the net, it categorises entities and discovers relationships between them. The difference is that Watson is not so much trained as it is corrected. Not unlike a human it can get a fundamental relationship or category wrong and that leads to all sorts of side-effects. In the Jeopardy stunt they realised that humans had a slight advantage because they were informed when the other players made a right/wrong answer. When they gave Watson the same capability it was able to correctly identify the Jeopardy categories and then went on to convincingly beat the humans at their own game.

Computers are already better at "general knowledge" than humans despite the fact the "computer" needs 20 tons of air-conditioning to keep it running. The first time I saw the Jeopardy stunt it blew me away, my wife shrugged and said "So it's looking the answers up on the net. What's the big deal?". I can understand that from her since she has a Phd in marketing, what I don't understand is why most slashdotter's are similarly unimpressed? - I watched Armstrong land on the moon as a 10 year old boy but I think the history books will eventually give similar historical weight to Watson.

Because they understand a "market" is not a place, it's a set of rules for governing trade. We are all "free" to participate in the market and in a democracy we are also "free" to change the rules. There is no perfect set of rules, and for at least the last 20yrs the US congress has been more than happy to play favourites when tweaking them.

The "American dream" is to become super rich at the expense of others. Philosophically it takes a dump on the commons and says; Fuck the 'rising tide' I want to be richer than everyone else because I'm special.

His behaviour reminds me of Clive Palmer.

Oh come on, it doesn't matter what Slashdot think, Musk is still just a side-show scammer who got lucky.

We don't have any such organisms, Venus suffered a major runaway greenhouse, it has virtually no hydrogen, it's oceans boiled and radiation blew the hydrogen into space over time. It's now deader than Mars, and we don't have the technology to resurrect it.

That is every vandals excuse and it's a lie. What all vandals take from their victim is hard work and pride. But this is not random teenage vandalism, this is vandalism as a business plan, propaganda companies must not be allowed to profit at the expense of every other internet user. Conservapedia is more than happy to serve up propaganda, why did the company not post it's crap there?

I'm not an American, but the popular US attitude that it's ok for companies to be dishonest and immoral in business dealings has completely fucked that country in the last 20yrs. It's the root cause of the GFC and the reason why the whole planet is pissed at the US right now, economic spying on friendly nations is cheating, and the US was caught systematically cheating. But hey, the fastest gun in the west can do whatever he likes, right?

Wall Street tip: Gordon Gecko was the villain of the story, not the hero.

Indeed, the words "fascism" and "communism" both seem to be code words for "oppressive regime" these days.

Japan was also an "old school" monarchy, the emperor claimed to be God on Earth, not a representative of God but an actual god, and what's worse is most Japanese believed him. Similar deal with Stalin, he neutered and split the powerful Russian orthodox church, he dragged recalcitrant priest through the streets with horses, those who were lucky fled to the Ukraine. He then used the obedient rump of the church as a propaganda machine to put his picture above Russian fireplaces instead of the traditional Jesus/Mary portrait (Roman Emperor's did similar things with icons and symbols).

He carefully distanced himself from any overtly violent acts and soon became a demigod in the eyes of ordinary Russians The vast majority of prisoners in the Gulags firmly believed Stalin would rescue them and shut the place down "if only he knew". In reality Stalin meticulously combed the daily execution list every night adding and deleting names. When he died there was a genuine outpouring of grief from ordinary Russians. Stalin, more than any other 20th century leader, was both Evil and a Genius.

I grew up in 1960's Australia, if you were at a Saturday matinee and didn't stand up for "God Save the Queen" at the start of the show then the nearest random adult would lift you to your feet by your ear and sing directly at you until you joined in. Then the Queen went out of fashion in the 80's so we changed the anthem with a referendum. For some reason we picked a tune nobody knew, and nobody will now admit to voting for. Schools still play the official anthem but most adults simply lost interest in national anthems after that, we just sort of pick our own nowadays, Great Southern Land is my personal favourite, and of course anyone not living under a rock will recognise You fella come waltjim Bat Matilda as uniquely Australian.

*The emperor rises to his full height slapping his testicles together in applause*

Bravo Court Jester, another wonderfully funny and politically astute show. Your best show yet - if I may be so bold as to critique your art.

*For the first time during the evening, the audience is silent, you can hear the tension in the air but nobody dares so much as a whisper*

Let it be known to my court, there are some in the empire who take their sci-fi too literally and talk of the solar system as a real place where Europeans - or whatever they're called - exist.
We must all take care not to confuse reality and fantasy in our daily conversations because such talk without the sharp comedic wit of a professional artist is a threat to our very survival. As we know it promotes the heinous crime of irrational thinking when it's is plain for all to see that there is nothing beyond the celestial ice dome but more celestial ice dome. What is it about "ice all the way up" that is so hard for some in my court to comprehend? Well I believe Octopus' razor tells the court that nobody is that reallystupid, the best mathematicians of the court are all convinced the stories are a sophisticated code for subversive activities of the court's enemies. They must be stopped or they will rip the court asunder!

*Set to sinister music* - The emperor slowly withdraws back into his emerald green exoskeleton until only his four eyestalks are visible to the audience, all the while taking mental notes on those who are not enthusiastically applauding his own politically pointed performance.

Earth is still throwing rocks into space in modern times, a significant portion of what was once the island of Krakatoa is now in space. The force of the explosion is said to have shot rocks the size of houses into space.

As for seeding the solar system I personally think it's possible but improbable due to the fact that when a space rock hits a planet or moon at that speed, it is instantly vaporised and then rains down on the surface as microscopic glass beads, if it survives that then it's certainly comes under the heading of "Life - but not as we know it".

Life is a natural phenomena, it's chemistry that talks, like volcanos or any other natural phenomena life will emerge when and where the conditions are right for it to do so, for example the conditions on Mars may once have been right for life to emerge, but a thunderstorm will never emerge under the current conditions. Science is now pretty confident that one place where conditions are right for life to emerge are deep sea vents. So sure, the Earth might sneeze it's germs on other planetary bodies, but if those germs are to survive they will need to find the conditions where life can emerge and survive anyway.

The whole binary debate around panspermia is missing the point entirely, any sizeable and 'watery' rock floating in space, be it a planet, moon, comet will probably have some indications of microbial life either past or present. In fact the people who came up with the panspermia concept think that the idea of a unique point in space and time for life to emerge is just silly, panspermia is more analogous to pollen floating through a field of wheat, the point being that the wheat itself is created from countless seeds.

There' a really good foreign film about his life. He defeats his childhood enemy during a thunderstorm because he is the first Mongol not afraid of lightning and his bravery inspired his soldiers and freaked out the enemy. Later his enemy asks why he (as a Mongol) is not afraid of lightning and he replies "You forced me to live outside as a child". They still have his "royal staff" in a museum somewhere, it's a long pole with rings mounted on it. One tail hair from each horse in his army is tied to the rings, he had enough hair to make the pole look like some sort of shop display for wigs.. It was a far more impressive symbol of power than a jewel encrusted gold stick.

Yep, they also found King Richard under a car park. Really, if you want a tomb to last you have to go with a pyramid.

Pull your fat head in mate, because you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about. Here in Australia the bush can burn to the ground one year and do the same fucking thing the next, there's this season in between called spring where if it's a wet year it all grows back in THREE MONTHS. Large parts of the black Saturday fires had burned the previous season and had been deliberate burnt again in early spring, yet we still had a firestorm strong enough to melt windscreens and engine blocks. And no we're not talking about people sitting on top of a tree covered mountain, the most damaging and deadly fires occur in the outer suburbs of major cities such as Melbourne, Athens, and Los Angeles.

NOBODY, especially environmentalists, have "banned controlled burns" anywhere on the planet, that's just some lunatic tea party bullshit that makes your puny brain feel good about itself. In fact over here "environmentalists" have been instrumental in getting the experience of 40kyrs of native fire control practice recognised and at least three states now employ natives to teach and practice it.

Seems to me your the only one who wants to "kick heads". And really, what the fuck has bushfire control got to do with someone burning a pile of leaves in their yard?

The black Saturday fires in Victoria had a 15km high plume that created it's own weather and wind, it was igniting spot fires 20km ahead of the front. There is no simple fix, it's about risk management.