Information Research Weblog

Orwell's '1984' seems to have hit the USA, a few years behind schedule. The so-called 'Patriot Act' is causing problems for librarians, booksellers and ISPs - and they aren't happy.

Read all about it in the New Jersey Star Ledger, Yahoo! News and elsewhere

More in the Tri-Valley Herald

The Daily Review

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

...and more from an Alta Vista news search about the impact on booksellers.

Yes, I know I haven't had a weekly competition before, and I may never have another, but...

No prizes offered for identifying the time, place and person involved in this timeless statement:

The great leader of the ... party, whatever else you may or may not think about him, has at any rate left me in no doubt as to what use he will make of his victory if he should win it. We know perfectly well what to expect - a party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of the party machine, sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint...cheap labour for the millionaire.

Answers to ir-discuss@jiscmail.ac.uk

The history of 'artificial intelligence' is a curious one - bold claims thirty years ago that the problems would be solved in a decade seem to have come to nought and there have been at least two waves of funding that produced very little except a number of commercially sensitive expert systems in the financial services industry.

I was intrigued, therefore, to come across an article in Salon, by John Sundman, about the founder of the Loebner Prize, one Hugh Loebner - manufacturer of restraining ropes for banks and restaurants and roll-up illuminated disco floors, and advocate of the rights of sex workers. Loebner founded the Prize to reward the first programme that could pass the Turing Test ("...Turing put forward the idea of an 'imitation game', in which a human being and a computer would be interrogated under conditions where the interrogator would not know which was which, the communication being entirely by textual messages. Turing argued that if the interrogator could not distinguish them by questioning, then it would be unreasonable not to call the computer intelligent.") The article - a LONG one in two parts, chronicles the problems that have beset the Prize, largely it seems at Loebner's own instigation!

However, the AI protagonists don't come out of the account very well either. It seems that 'artificial intelligence' is no longer the approved term. As one of John Sundman's interviewees says:

"In the professional and academic circles the term Artificial Intelligence is passé. It is considered to be technically incorrect relative to the present day technology and the term has also picked up a strong Sci-Fi connotation. The new and improved term is Intelligent Systems. Under this general term there are two distinct categories: Decision Sciences (DS) and the human mimicry side called Mimetics Sciences (MS)."

Mmmm.

Thanks to Lockergnome for the link.

No doubt everyone on the list reads The Onion from time to time, but, just in case you missed it, it is worth taking a look at the current issue for the story on the 'accidental' funding of the arts in the latest US budget.

Read all about it at http://www.theonion.com/onion3909/congress_approves.html

...in postings to the log by me as I am off to a meeting in Poland (average temperature over the next few days of -6 degrees C - brrrr). I'll probably have some e-mail and Web access, but not much time to input. Back in business on Thursday next.

Tom

I don't know whether this one will make you feel any better, but... http://bushclock.lose.com/