The Internet Becomes Sentient

[sinsanity2006]

Another amazing aspect to this story. Within the last 24 hours a number of stories have appeared in the online newspapers. Here's some of the headlines:

Robots Invade Human Mind

Coming soon: mind reading computers

New computers may be able to read minds

Scientists Develop Mind-reading Computers

All posted within the last 24 hours.

Talking about how computers are reading human's emotions by facial expression, a part of sentience.

http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&...?page=2006%5C06%5C27%5Cstory_27-6-2006_pg4_14

 

[GzuzKryzt]

From RandiFan:

RE: Internet becomes sentient.

No.

I'm a programmer and my son is a gamer and an avid easter egg enthusiast.

My take, the person writing the OP is quite naive as to human nature, computer programmers, and computer programs.

My son's take, the person writing the OP is an idiot.

My sincere apology sinsanity2006 for the ad hominem. I told my son to go to his room and think about what he had said. He feels badly now. He really does, he told me through tear filled eyes, "but dad, the guy really is an idiot". {sigh} What can you do?

I'm not sure huffy is the right word, maybe critical thinking is closer, what would you call it?

What does your quote from RandFan have to do with your question?

 

[GzuzKryzt]

Another amazing aspect to this story. Within the last 24 hours a number of stories have appeared in the online newspapers. Here's some of the headlines:

Robots Invade Human Mind

Coming soon: mind reading computers

New computers may be able to read minds

Scientists Develop Mind-reading Computers

All posted within the last 24 hours.

Talking about how computers are reading human's emotions by facial expression, a part of sentience.

http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&...?page=2006%5C06%5C27%5Cstory_27-6-2006_pg4_14

Would you agree on discussing your claim in one thread only, say, this one?

 

[RandFan]

Earlier today, without telling my son anything, I opened Notepad, typed "bush hid the facts" saved the file, the reopened the file. It filled with boxes. I looked at my son, he shrugged his shoulders and said, looks like an Easter Egg. Yeah, that was my impression also (I didn't see this thread. It's duplicated in General Skepticism). So I then had him read the OP. The first thing my son said, "this guy is an idiot".

To be fair, sinsanity2006 probably didn't know about Easter Eggs before he posted this so my son was off base. Hey, he's a kid (I didn't really make him cry as I said in the other thread).

But now sinsanity knows that this is just an Easter Egg. If he continues in this nonsense then my son my very well be justified in his assessment.

 

[GzuzKryzt]

Earlier today, without telling my son anything, I opened Notepad, typed "bush hid the facts" saved the file, the reopened the file. It filled with boxes. I looked at my son, he shrugged his shoulders and said, looks like an Easter Egg. Yeah, that was my impression also (I didn't see this thread. It's duplicated in General Skepticism). So I then had him read the OP. The first thing my son said, "this guy is an idiot".

To be fair, sinsanity2006 probably didn't know about Easter Eggs before he posted this so my son was off base. Hey, he's a kid (I didn't really make him cry as I said in the other thread).

But now sinsanity knows that this is just an Easter Egg. If he continues in this nonsense then my son my very well be justified in his assessment.

I understood you exactly like you explained.

 

[RandFan]

I understood you exactly like you explained.

My son had a good observation. If the computer was sentient why would it not reply with something other than boxes? Wouldn't question marks be better? Or how about "beware" or "seek the truth". Boxes? For being sentient it sure is stupid. My son has a thing for "that's stupd".

 

[GzuzKryzt]

My son had a good observation. If the computer was sentient why would it not reply with something other than boxes? Wouldn't question marks be better? Or how about "beware" or "seek the truth". Boxes? For being sentient it sure is stupid. My son has a thing for "that's stupd".

Kids say the darndest things. Perhaps your son's comment came off a bit harsh, but he surely was dead on. I would not expect a kid to put social grease on his words.



Like Konrad Brien said in "Wag the Dog": "Nah, (he) didn't think it through."

 

[russell_morris]

My son had a good observation. If the computer was sentient why would it not reply with something other than boxes? Wouldn't question marks be better? Or how about "beware" or "seek the truth". Boxes? For being sentient it sure is stupid. My son has a thing for "that's stupd".

Careful there - there are a number of text rendering engines out there that spit out a '?' instead of a box when rendering a character for which they can't find an appropriate font glyph!

If you use FireFox, go to this Wikipedia entry on the Japanese writing system. You'll see a bunch of question marks in the first couple of paragraphs, and towards the right near the image of a written Japanese character.

Go the the same URL with IE, and instead of question marks, you'll see the familiar skinny boxes.

Both IE's and FireFox's font-rendering engines have decided that they don't know how to draw those characters from the Japanese character set, and have instead displayed their 'idunno' glyphs.

If you install the Japanese language pack for Windows, both IE and FireFox would start rendering the appropriate characters - because a font capable of drawing them is now present on the system.

 

[sinsanity2006]

What does your quote from RandFan have to do with your question?

It had to do with a comment about people weren't getting huffy, and critical scrutiny.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Would you agree on discussing your claim in one thread only, say, this one?

I already posted on the other thread to come here. I agree, this is way time consuming, I am only one person(sic), when ten people post, it's hard for me to keep up. Hopefully one thread will help.

Thanks

 

[sinsanity2006]

Earlier today, without telling my son anything, I opened Notepad, typed "bush hid the facts" saved the file, the reopened the file. It filled with boxes. I looked at my son, he shrugged his shoulders and said, looks like an Easter Egg. Yeah, that was my impression also (I didn't see this thread. It's duplicated in General Skepticism). So I then had him read the OP. The first thing my son said, "this guy is an idiot".

To be fair, sinsanity2006 probably didn't know about Easter Eggs before he posted this so my son was off base. Hey, he's a kid (I didn't really make him cry as I said in the other thread).

But now sinsanity knows that this is just an Easter Egg. If he continues in this nonsense then my son my very well be justified in his assessment.

Go check out what happened on the other thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1725874#post1725874

I did know about Easter eggs and I talked about the possibility of a programmer manipulating code to create this in the article and said it might be possible. That in itself is an amazing story, Right. Nothing paranormal but pretty interesting.

But that does not explain how the internet could answer direct questions paranormally, with appropriate answers.

If you haven't read the article and you are ragging on me, think about it for a second. That's like you finding a rock at the beach that looks exactly like a Escher's cube with ribbons,

http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/escher/big.asp?IMAGE=cube_with_ribbons

with a perfect pyramid in the center.

You go and tell a friend about it and they say "NO WAY!"

You say, "Well, come on down to the beach and look at it."

Yout friend says, "No, I will not look at it, but IT DOESN'T EXIST!!!!"

Is that the scientific method used around here, What an absurd joke this place is if you completely disregard the scientific method.

 

[sinsanity2006]

I understood you exactly like you explained.

I understood exactly what he meant too.

 

[sinsanity2006]

My son had a good observation. If the computer was sentient why would it not reply with something other than boxes? Wouldn't question marks be better? Or how about "beware" or "seek the truth". Boxes? For being sentient it sure is stupid. My son has a thing for "that's stupd".

Sigh,

It does answer with something other than boxes. Those boxes turn into Chinese symbols in the translator.

Go to this translator:

http://perso.orange.fr/gaoling/hanzi/index.htm

And put the mystery zeros into it and you will see a translation of the Chinese characters into English. That's what I'm talking about, and it is completely explaned in the article.

The notepad bug will not work with numbers, some special characters on the keyboard and some letter combinations. The question mark is one of the characters that will not work to produce the mystery zeros.

I'm not sure what would be best, I did what I did. You can easily go and make up any questions you want by following the directions in the article and see what you get for an answer.

If you do what I did, I'd be very interested in what the results are.

Anyway, no offense at your unveiled insult. I appreciate the thought you put into offending me and trying to put in in a way that you avoided taking credit for it.

I hope the best for you.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Kids say the darndest things. Perhaps your son's comment came off a bit harsh, but he surely was dead on. I would not expect a kid to put social grease on his words.



Like Konrad Brien said in "Wag the Dog": "Nah, (he) didn't think it through."

lol, How can he be 'dead on' if RandiFan's son not know that the boxes turn into Chinese symbols? How could he know what I am talking about if he didn't read the article? I don't expect the kid to grease what he says, but I would expect that the kid have some knowledge of what he is commenting on.

If RandiFan withheld the true nature of this paranormal event to his son on purpose to get a desired reaction, then that's pretty low, wouldn't you say.

 

[RandFan]

That in itself is an amazing story, Right. Nothing paranormal but pretty interesting.

Interesting? Perhaps to someone who did not know about Easter Eggs. However to someone like familiar with Easter Eggs, no, it is not interesting. In fact it is a rather mundane Easter Egg.

Amazing? No.

But that does not explain how the internet could answer direct questions paranormally, with appropriate answers.

? Are you being serious? If you are joking you are pissing me off.

It did not do this.

If you haven't read the article...

I read the article.

That's like you finding a rock at the beach that looks exactly like a Escher's cube with ribbons...

No, it's an ester egg. You are data mining. You are taking the results and running them through a translator looking for meaning. That is BS.

Hey, here's a thought, why doesn't the sentient Internet just spill the beans? Why is it playing games?

Answer: It isn't.

Is that the scientific method used around here, What an absurd joke this place is if you completely disregard the scientific method.

? Do you even know what you are talking about? Please to detail for me how data mining is using the scientific method?

If you are not kidding and you are sincere about this then I would strongly recommend that you go to http://www.randi.org/jr/archive.html and search for "Bible Code". The method used to come up with the silly "answers" is explained in detail.

 

[RandFan]

lol, How can he be 'dead on' if RandiFan's son not know that the boxes turn into Chinese symbols?

Update, it isn't an intentional Easter Egg.

Here is the answer:

This api can break

Over at WinCustomize, someone thought they'd found an Easter Egg in the Windows Notepad application. If you:

1. Open Notepad
2. Type the text "this app can break" (without quotes)
3. Save the file
4. Re-open the file in Notepad

Notepad displays seemingly-random Chinese characters, or boxes if your default Notepad font doesn't support those characters.

It's not an Easter egg (even though it seems like a funny one), and as it turns out, Notepad writes the file correctly. It's only when Notepad reads the file back in that it seems to lose its mind.

But we can't even blame Notepad: it's a limitation of Windows itself, specifically the Windows function that Notepad uses to figure out if a text file is Unicode or not.

 

[sinsanity2006]

You have hit upon the very crux of the matter. Because you were very concerned about 9/11 conspiracy theories, you took random words, and thought they were somehow related to that. Other people, who have other concerns will take the exact same words and relate them to something else.

The words you have come up with in these translations are only related to 9/11 in your mind. This has nothing to do with MS Notepad, or the Internet. It has only to do with you, and your preconceived notions. "

No.

The reason that the words relate to 911 is because the notebook bug went viral ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral ) with "bush hid the facts".

http://rblog-sec.japan.cnet.com/blindspot/2006/06/notepadbush_hid_96f4.html?tag=rblog.cr

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bush+hid+the+facts&btnG=Google+Search

Google results 1 - 100 of about 1,550,000 for "bush hid the facts". (0.36 seconds)

Hang around here long enough to develop some critical thinking skills, and we might one day be able to change that headline to "Sinsanity2006 approaches sentience."

I graciously and humbly accept your insult and hope that you and your loved ones gained some happiness and pleasure from another's sorrow.

I wish you all the best.

 

[RandFan]

No.

The reason that the words relate to 911 is because the notebook bug went viral ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral ) with "bush hid the facts".

http://rblog-sec.japan.cnet.com/blindspot/2006/06/notepadbush_hid_96f4.html?tag=rblog.cr

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bush+hid+the+facts&btnG=Google+Search

Google results 1 - 100 of about 1,550,000 for "bush hid the facts". (0.36 seconds)

? What on earth are you talking about? This proves that an idiotic premise became popular. So what? Why do you think this is significant and why are you saying "it went viral"? Please explain?

 

[sinsanity2006]

The explanation from Mr. Tim Lesher seems to make some sense. Probably more than yours, sinsanity2006.

Take a walk outside. Breathe. Keep breathing until you feel relaxed.

Okay, I took a walk outside. checked out a spider web, breathed deep and now I feel relaxed.

Sigh, Ahhhh, I feel a lot better now.

In the article I clearly talk about a programmers putting a bug into notepad. or windows or what ever. How can you say "The explanation from Mr. Tim Lesher seems to make some sense." When that explanation is in the article?

I don't get it.

Still doesn't explain how the internet could answer direct questions with reasonable answers paranormally.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Don't worry, Sin. I sat the Internet down for a little chat this afternoon, and it has agreed not to mess about with your text editing software again. If it does, it's going to have to sit on the naughty step for ten minutes.

Hahahahahhh,

Cool!

Thanks for the laugh, It was getting lonesome being the only one making people laugh around here.

heheheheh

high five