The Internet Becomes Sentient

[sinsanity2006]

Please stop being so dumb, !

Not to worry, I can take insults, they don't bother me.

I just hope you and your loved ones get some happiness from another's sorrow.

or do it quietly and somewhere else where it doesn't make my head hurt!

I am so sorry that this makes your head hurt. All I can suggest is maybe take an aspirin. Only other thing I can suggest is stop reading this thread. I hope you don't stop, I'd like you to understand what's going on here.

"the internet" does not answer any questions, let alone with anything resebling "reasonable answers", much less in any way that could be described as "paranormal".

I would have said the same thing a few weeks ago. Things have changes for me since then.

If you could please take one of the questions from the article in brown and post it here and ask me how it relates to 911, I will gladly do that for you.

"And it has been explained to you what goes on and why none of it is even the least bit suprising.

It has been explained how this happens much more clearly in articles not referenced here. I have read why the zeros appear. That is been explained completely to my satisfaction and I accept that.

Here's an article that explains it much better than anything posted here yet:

From wikipedia:

The Windows NT version of Notepad has the ability to detect Unicode files that are missing the standard FF FE header. It does this by using a Windows API function called IsTextUnicode(). [1] This function is imperfect, with the side effect that some small, all-lowercase ASCII text is incorrectly identified as UTF-16. [2] . . . . . given a file containing only the 18 characters "this app can break", Notepad will interpret the file as two-byte Unicode and attempt to display it as such. If the correct Chinese font is installed, Chinese characters will be displayed.

and:

http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/06/14/631016.aspx

To make it even more scrambled and complex, the chinese symbols are also related to what fonts you have installed and which font Windows associates with the notepad bug. I have over 1800 fonts installed on my computer, and the bug seems to place the Chinese symbols using different fonts.

None of this has explained how it could answer direct questions with appropriate answers, and no one here has explained how that could happen yet.

.

I expect no sympathy here, but just for a moment think about how I feel. I'm not real comfortable with what happened to me.

 

[sinsanity2006]

You know what really is unexplained? Why YOU won't answer direct questions with reasonable answers?

1.) What questions?
2.) What answers?

Read the article, then get back to me on which questions or answers you don't understand.

 

[sinsanity2006]

You have

a) Not read the articles
b) Not understood the articles

The links if followed in the other thread speak of individual computer-programs that can interpret human facial expressions and evaluate the emotional state of the human that is being observed..

Sigh, as i have stated above, These stories were about computers interpeting facial expressions. Are you arguing just for the sake of arguing? How on Earth can you use something I posted here against me when I posted it before you? That's what I said about the articles. You confuse me and this is not advancing the issue. You could have just cut and pasted what I said. So you see, I did read the articles and I did understand them. The problem here is that:

a) You are not reading what I post
b) Not understanding what "the articles are about facial expressions" means.

When the cave men were wandering the earth, long before they were talking about intergrated circuits or lasers, they were able to recognize what facial expressions meant. This was prolly one of the first steps to sentience.

This has nothing to do with what you call "the internet" and it has nothing to do with computers being sentient...

That's your opinion and I respect it. And once again you have attacked me for me saying that it is a coincidence. Are you next going to this can't be real because I said that I respect your opinion?

Oh, and "the internet" is very unlikely to ever develop conciousness. Computers on the internet know preciously little about one another and barely interact. (compared to what braincells do, anyways). There is no room for evolution and the development of conciousness..

I think you are wrong. Here's about 200,000 articles pro and con about computer sentience:

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=computer+sentience

Or Steven Hawking's quote:

"I think that computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." Please look up who Steven Hawkins is before you call him an idiot.

There sure is a lot of talk about "artificial intellegence" for it to not be possible. There's only one hundred and fourteen MILLION google references about it:

Results 1 - 100 of about 114,000,000 for artificial intelligence [definition]. (0.40 seconds)

Long before any of the servers I use would ever get anywhere near becoming part of a concious network, I'd pull the plug - the costs of traffic would just kill me. In fact, if my providers are worth what I am paying them, they would block the increased traffic without me ever noticing a thing.

Cool, you finally relaxed and lightened up.

lol

Yes, I'm sure you would do everything you could to stop computer sentience and I feel that is sad.

 

[sinsanity2006]

A list of words, from which you have to pick and chose the ones that make up the actual answer, and which you then have to mix and mangle about until they are in non-random order and which then requires you to interpret the meaning is anything *but* "reasonable answers"..

If you look at the words I used for the answers, they are the words that the translator gave me. They were not mixed or mangled, nor did I pick and choose more than Necessary. And anyone can see that if they do it themselves. (there is a variable here that may be dependent on the fonts one has installed on their computer, this happened with the fonts I have installed on my computer)

There is nothing going there, other than another silly microsoft application features a little bug. For some reason, a string of ASCII characters is reinterpreted as Unicode..

And that gives the answers to who is responsible for 911. This can be verified by looking at the research people are doing concerning the events of 911.

From there, you have a reliable 1:1 transition from the original text to Chinese kanjis. Unicode has been around since the early 90s, so really, there is no way anyone or anything could make up any of this at a later stage.

Do you understand this?.

I understand what you are saying, and I find this whole thing more remarkable because of what you are saying.

It is not possible that the process you observed is the result of any concious reasoning, much less aiming to answer specific questions!.

It answered the questions very completely and confirmed what a lot of researchers think happened.

There are no variables in the entire thing, and the outcome has been fixed for well over a decade. (says me, without looking into when the according kanjis have been included into unicode.)

Rasmus.

lol

What you are saying just makes it more remarkable to me.

.

Please try to understand that I have no idea why this happened. I've thought it might be a programmer, you say it can't be that. I've thought it might be a coincedence, you say it can't be that. I have thought it might be a miracle, I don't think you think it was that. I have thought it might be someone playing a joke on me, I rejected that. I have thought it might be aliens, I think you will reject that. I have thought it might be the internet becoming sentience, you have rejected that. What the hell happened, then. And if you say nothing, please list the questions and answers that do not answer questions about who was responsible for 911 and how they are not reasonable answers. Go for it, just post one question from the article (the questions in brown) that does not have a reasonable answer associated with it.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Well?

Go to the article, Pick a question and answer from the part in brown. Post it here. Then we will discuss if the answer answers the question. That's pretty easy, unless you want to avoid the issue.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Then what is your point for any of this?

I should clarify,

What I said doesn't make sense to you. I'll accept that.

I agree maybe that If this thing hadn't gone viral, the letters would still be the same, and the online translation tools would have yielded the same english words.

I don't know how to prove when all that happened. Another one of your circular arguments. I say that it appears that this there before 911 and then you say "It was there before 911!" Any chance you can see the pattern here. Your style of me making a statement then you taking that statement and repeating it as an accusation. I must say this tactic is very disingenuous ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Disingenuous ).

In fact, the words would have been the same if 911 had never happened.

I don't know how to prove this or not. If that is ture, then it is even more amazing.

What "it"?

The fact that "it" answered direct questions with reasonable answers.

The bug? Probably not. The bug isn't intelligent, or sentient or anything, though. It just makes notepad read and display ASCII as UNICODE. I know what that means and entails. Do you?

Yes, we have been over this over and over again. We both know why the bug happens. We both know it is a real thing. Let us move past that and accept the bug for what it is, a bug. Then we can move to the fact that it answered direct questions paranormally.

And: Even if - so what?

So it answered questions paranormally with reasonable answers.

Yes, and that means that there *cannot* be any answering of questions going on. The "questions" define what the "answers" will be, regardless of any interpretation, or facts.

No, it means that when I asked it direct questions, it gave me answers that were reasonable answers.

I understood this the first time around.

I also understand what exactly it is the bug does. Do you?

Yes, I refer you to all the posts I have made explaining what is happening with the bug. We both agree about what is causing it. Here's that circular argument you use that doesn't help anything. Any chance you can see that?

Yes. Because Windows uses a faulty algorithm to decide if the file it is reading is in ASCII or UNICODE. Whatever the precise nature of the bug, only certain letters in certain position are going to trigger it. I am sure there's people that could tell you exactly when that would be the case.

Yes, there are people that have explained that, as I have posted already.

On May 18, 2006 it was reported [3] that, given a file containing only the 18 characters ... (of the form xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx) , Notepad will interpret the file as two-byte Unicode and attempt to display it as such. If the correct Chinese font is installed, Chinese characters will be displayed. Some reports demonstrate the same bug using the text "bush hid the facts" as a political statement, erroneously referring to the bug as an Easter Egg.

Notice that this bug was reported a little over a month ago. I don't have a source that tells when this bug was first noticed.

Once again your circular argument. Any chance you can see what a poor tactic this is in finding the truth?

Let us move past the "bug" aspect of this discussion. We both know what it's about and we both know it exists.

And they have. and it has been explained to you. Did you understand any of it?

Yes, as my previous post have shown. This is again your circular argument that is futile in arriving at the truth. Let us move past the "bug" aspect of this discussion. We both know what it is and we both know it exists.

I'll ask you myself then:

What questions?
What answers?

They are the questions in brown in the article. All you have to do is go get one of the questions and post it here and we will discuss how it is related to 911.

Please, just quote the questions and the according answers right here. Before you do that, there really isn't any point in arguing this any further.

That's funny, you are arguing, I am not. I am just stating what happened. Your circular arguments are worhtless in fact finding.

You can find the questions and answers in the brown text in the article. It would take you less that sixty seconds to go to http://www.dreamslaughter.com/parasentient/paradoc.htm and pick a question and answer. Any chance you see the absurdity of you refusion to go get a question and answer so we could discuss it?

I have no inclination - and I haven't got the time or energy, either - to dig myself through the character encoding and decoding that has to go on here, I will not write a single sentence about translating between languages and I will most certainly not research Chinese grammar.

All you have to do is take sixty seconds to go get a question and answer from the brown text located here: http://www.dreamslaughter.com/parasentient/paradoc.htm

You don't have to "dig myself through the character encoding and decoding that has to go on here, I will not write a single sentence about translating between languages and I will most certainly not research Chinese grammar."

We both know what the bug is and that it exists.

All you have to do is select a question and answer and we will discuss it.

Any chance you see the absurdity of the hours of time you have spent on this thread, but you are unwilling to spend sixty seconds to go to http://www.dreamslaughter.com/parasentient/paradoc.htm and get a question and answer to discuss here? Your circular arguments are of no value in finding the truth.

Anybody who claims that the internet is giving reasonable answers to straight forward questions anywhere else but here had better do all of the above and explain it here briefly.

I have to the best of my ability. I am not perfect, but I am trying.

Anybody who claims that there is anything paranormal going on - in the face of numerous explanations as to why this is not and cannot be the case - had better understood all these issues in sufficient depths to be able to answer any amount of questions that might come up after his initial explanation.

That means, you have a lot of work to do!

I do not claim that the bug is paranormal. I have said that over and over again. We both know that it is Windows misinterpeting the form "xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx" related to the opening unicode markers. Let us move past that and deal with the real issue.

You aren't making any sense.

Not to you, yet.

 

[timster]

I feel like y'all have got the cart before the horse, so to speak.

Neglecting the issue of defining sentience -- a difficult question which philosophers have struggled with for ages -- it certainly can't be considered a paranormal ability. Nor can the act of reaching sentience be considered paranormal as it happens every single day and doesn't appear to violate any laws of science as we understand them.

Granted, we don't have a comprehensive theory of sentience and how it really works, but even if the Internet were to become sentient it wouldn't exactly be paranormal. Obviously massive networks of neurons are capable of it, so it's not too far-fetched that a massive network of transistors could reach some similar state. That doesn't violate science.

If you could prove that a rock were sentient then we might have something. Evidence that the Internet or some portion thereof reacts in some way to some input doesn't mean much to me. The system was built to react to inputs, and it's so large and complex that it's not surprising if some of those reactions are, well, surprising.

 

[sinsanity2006]

Sinsanity,

If you want to apply the scientific method to this issue, try the following: go through the same process with a variety of other phrases, and see if you can convince yourself that your translation websites are still giving "reasonable answers to direct questions". Try 'gore hid the facts', for example, or 'bush ate the cakes' - see if you still get 'reasonable answers'. This will take interpretation, and you will have to be careful to be honest with yourself. Let us know your findings.

The direct questions with reasonable answers were done paranormally. If you read the article, you would know that.They were not done by the method you are suggesting. If you read the article you would know that. The bug is buggy, so not all strings will produce the Chinese symbols. If you read the article, you would know that. At this point anything I would say would be shot down. I would suggest someone else, a third party, try duplicating it or asking it questions.

In the meantime, you would have more credibility if you stopped misusing various terms:

The 'mystery zeroes' are neither a mystery, nor zeroes - they are square boxes, which Windows uses to display characters which don't exist in the current font. My computer has a font called 'Arial Unicode MS' - change to that font in Notepad, and you'll see the Chinese characters directly.

I agree, they are mystery zeros to anyone that doesn't know what is happening. I will stop using that term and say "symbols resulting from the notepad bug". I explain this almost exactly as you said it and if you read the article you would have know that.

The 'internet' is not answering your questions. That's like phoning some 0800 number for a weather forecast and then claiming that the phone system predicted the weather.

No, you have the analogy wrong. It would be like asking what the weather was going to be like and then dialing a random number and the voice that answers tells you what the weather was going to be like and be correct in its answer..

Stating your claim in that way, without further elaboration, makes you seem ignorant, which is why people here are asking you to elaborate.

Any chance you have read any of this thread? Any chance you might be able see that I try to address every point asked of me. This post befuddles me. I am completely ignorant as to how you could ask it, unless you are using it to try to slide an insult into the conversation. I will not accept that you would do that, so I am confused.

That's how you feel from your point of view.

From my point of view, you seem ignorant when:

In the first paragraph, you talk about putting in random statements to get a reasonable answer. That is explained in the article and you would know that if you read the article. That makes you seem ignorant.

In the third paragraph, when you talk about the symbols resulting from the notepad bug appearing as Chinese characters if you have the correct font installed is discussed in tha article, If you had read the article you would have know that. This seems to make you appear ignorant about what is in the article.

In the forth paragraph, when you try to make an analogy about the weather phone call, You didn't do a very good job of it. This makes you seem to be ignorant about analogy.

In the fifth paragraph, where you relate "bush hid the facts" to the "direct question", this is not what happened and if you read the article you would know that. This makes you seem to be ignorant about what is in the article.

I have been trying to clarify almost every point addressed to me. This makes you seem ignorant about what is going on in this thread.

In the fifth paragraph, saying I'm not clarifying the points makes you seem ignorant. I have just spent over eight hours trying to clarify the points.

.

All in all, though, I do appreciate your post, although you seem ignorant about every point you made. You were civil and you at least seemed to want to get to the bottom of this. thank you for that.

I wish you much laughter.

More laughter than I have given you already.

Note that 'bush hid the facts' is not a question - so, what 'direct question' is it that you believe is being answered? Again, not clarifying this points hurts your credibility.

 

[sinsanity2006]

You know, I read the article.
I see your questions, but I don't see anything that could be construed as direct answers, or remotely informative.

Please go to http://www.dreamslaughter.com/parasentient/paradoc.htm and select a question and answer that is colored brown. Post it here and we will discuss it. It won't take more that fifty or sixty seconds.

I see someone grasping at straws having based a whole new philosophy on one flimsy premise.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

In fact, the most informative piece of information I found in that article was this:

I went back inside

And reached for the roach

I thought about this long and hard before I included it in the article. I had a choice of relating what really happened or modifying it to make it more acceptable. I chose to tell the truth, because it needs to be replicated and this may have been an important part of it.

Does it make more sense to you for me to have lied about this?

Ask yourself why I wouldn't lie about this if it were to help me.

I knew this would come up. Here it is. And I stand by me telling the truth about it.

 

[Gr8wight]

One starts with the premise that “bush hid the facts”.

Then you use the notepad thing to look for the facts.

The Translations give you answers to the questions.

You look at them and say, “Wow, that’s interesting, the answers seem to relate to 911”

You might look at them and say that. I certainly don't. Nothing about the mumble jumble of words this translation program has kicked out to you are obviously related to 9/11 anywhere but in your own head. You could take those words and make them applicable to any event or situation you wanted. I recommend you read the recent threads and commentaries surrounding a recent application Mr Randi received about astrology. The very phenomenon you are describing here is also discussed there.

 

[Gr8wight]

w - Eye; look, see; wide open eyes; to gaze in astonishment, blind; unperceptive, shortsighted, straight, erect, vertical, close eyes, sleep; hibernate, hypnotism; mesmerism, people, subjects, citizens.

I think it's trying to tell you something.

 

[Crispy Duck]

No, you have the analogy wrong. It would be like asking what the weather was going to be like and then dialing a random number and the voice that answers tells you what the weather was going to be like and be correct in its answer..

No, that's not what I meant. Speaking of 'the internet' in the way you are doing is too vague. You claim that 'the internet' is sentient, because when you thought of questions and then typed random stuff into a Chinese-to-English translator website, you got what you considered to be relevant answers. You need to be more specific. Websites and computers generally are (usually) deterministic. If I think of a different question, and then type the same random stuff into the same website, I'll get the same answers. If you claim that I would get different answers, then you must hypothesise that some part of the system is responding to your thoughts - simply saying it's 'the internet' isn't sufficiently specific. Do you mean your computer, Notepad, Windows, the remote website, one of the dozens of routers that the TCP/IP packets travelled through? Technically, 'the internet' is simply a communications mechanism between two computers, analagous to the phone system. Websites send information to your computer via the internet, but neither they nor your computer are themselves 'the internet'. It's an important distinction.

Any chance you have read any of this thread? Any chance you might be able see that I try to address every point asked of me. This post befuddles me. I am completely ignorant as to how you could ask it, unless you are using it to try to slide an insult into the conversation. I will not accept that you would do that, so I am confused.

I wasn't using 'ignorance' as an insult. It simply means a lack of knowledge. I'm ignorant on the subject of 15th century Flemish basket-weaving. I do know a bit about computers and the internet, though.

Another tip for you would be to reduce the size of the font on your website. It's very hard to read as it is, and apart from that, using huge fonts is a hallmark of children and fanatics.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you really need to take a step back. You've fallen headlong into the trap of seeing what you want to see. If you were honest about wanting to make sure what you're seeing is real, you'll try what I originally said - you started down this road because you saw a spooky connection between the Notepad-mangled phrase 'bush hid the facts' and the resulting English translation. Now you've convinced yourself that simply thinking of a question and then typing a load of As into Notepad gives you a relevant answer. You should test this by thinking about a different question, and then typing *the same characters* into Notepad the second time. If you get the same answers, you'll know that 'the internet' is not reading your thoughts.

More importantly, besides doing this test, it is very important that you should *want* to do this test. You should *want* to only believe in this if it's really true. If you find yourself wanting to believe it even if it doesn't seem to be true, then you're in big trouble.

 

[chillzero]

Please go to http://www.dreamslaughter.com/parasentient/paradoc.htm and select a question and answer that is colored brown. Post it here and we will discuss it. It won't take more that fifty or sixty seconds.

OK. I'm a little stuck for choice.
How about

‘Who did the wtc?’
A - rice; to husk rice; (ancient form of 禪) to sacrifice to heaven, the imperial power, as only the emperor was allowed to offer these sacrifices

or maybe

‘Who did it?’
| - rice; mountain, hill, peak; basket used in state worship

So, the WTC was destroyed by a grain of rice? That's the sort of thing I find hard to understand why anyone would read anything into it - until I understand that the person concerned dabbles with recreational drugs. Then it makes more sense to me.

I thought about this long and hard before I included it in the article. I had a choice of relating what really happened or modifying it to make it more acceptable. I chose to tell the truth, because it needs to be replicated and this may have been an important part of it.

Does it make more sense to you for me to have lied about this?

Ask yourself why I wouldn't lie about this if it were to help me.

I knew this would come up. Here it is. And I stand by me telling the truth about it.

Oh no - I'm all for the truth. I think it's a great thing, and I thank you for your honesty. I also agree that this one thing may be a very important part of what 'happened'.

 

[sinsanity2006]

I feel like y'all have got the cart before the horse, so to speak.

Neglecting the issue of defining sentience -- a difficult question which philosophers have struggled with for ages -- it certainly can't be considered a paranormal ability. Nor can the act of reaching sentience be considered paranormal as it happens every single day and doesn't appear to violate any laws of science as we understand them.

Wow, at last, someone that raises a sentient point. I tend to agree, that is why I haven't applied for the million dollars. If you brought walkie talkies back five hundred years, their ability would have appeared paranormal. Likewise, if the internet can answer my questions it may appear paranormal now, but in the future it could be accepted as science. The rub in this is that the internet and I communicated paranormally by the current standard of paranormal. Remember what Robert Heinlein said: "One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word". Any movie studio can recreate any of the miracles in the bible, maybe not under budget and on time, but they could. Many people here could bring someone back to life using CPR. Does that make you a god?

Granted, we don't have a comprehensive theory of sentience and how it really works, but even if the Internet were to become sentient it wouldn't exactly be paranormal.

I agree, it is only paranormal until we can figure out exactly why it happened.

Obviously massive networks of neurons are capable of it, so it's not too far-fetched that a massive network of transistors could reach some similar state. That doesn't violate science.

I agree. And the computing power of the internet is much more massive than a single brain, it just hasn't until recently put it all together or we haven't put it together. If any one is familiar with SETI at home, they will know that they use a computer grid of 5.2 million computers to Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seti_at_home

If you could prove that a rock were sentient then we might have something. Evidence that the Internet or some portion thereof reacts in some way to some input doesn't mean much to me. The system was built to react to inputs, and it's so large and complex that it's not surprising if some of those reactions are, well, surprising.

I agree.

I think I know how Galileo and Copernicus felt when they tried to explain that the world was round to the church. The church wouldn't have anything to do with it. Wouldn't look at evidence, Killed Copernicus and excommnicated Galileo. Galileo is still excommunicated, even though recently they admitted he was right. It is absurd to look at that and think the same type of situation could never happen again. It can and it has.

Everybody stop and think for a moment if you are thinking like Galileo or like the church?

Remember what Ferdinand Magellan said: "The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church."

Then everyone take a second and think if you are thinking like Ferdinand Magellan or like the church.

 

[hodgy]

Sinsanity,

What do you think would happen if you unplugged the translation server from the internet and then entered your chinese characters into it directly (locally, not over the internet)?

Do you think you would get the same result?

If so, wouldn't your conclusion be that the translation server is sentient, not the internet?

Or do you think that the internet is intercepting and changing the content that the translation server is sending to you?

 

[sinsanity2006]

You might look at them and say that. I certainly don't. Nothing about the mumble jumble of words this translation program has kicked out to you are obviously related to 9/11 anywhere but in your own head. You could take those words and make them applicable to any event or situation you wanted. I recommend you read the recent threads and commentaries surrounding a recent application Mr Randi received about astrology. The very phenomenon you are describing here is also discussed there.

Sigh.

 

[sinsanity2006]

I think it's trying to tell you something.

Sigh.










Sigh.










No tear came to my eye. But you know the feeling you get when you think you are gonna tear up, but your eyes don't fill with tears, ya know, that little blur, a little squint, a sensation of the eyelids. That's what I just felt.





Sigh.







I gotta get out of here. Sorry, Crispy Duck and ChillZero, hodgy I just pulled an all nighter, Hopefully I will be back.


Thanks everybody for your time and if you aren't having a good time. It might not be a good thing to be hanging around here.



I don't want to bring grief to anyone.



peace out

 

[RandFan]

Read the article, then get back to me on which questions or answers you don't understand.

I have read the article. I seriously doubt that you understand what the hell you are talking about. This is a silly game of data mining. Why won't you post the questions and answers? They are as silly as they are stupid.

asked it a question, “wtc who did it airz”

And put in the form: “wtcw hod idi tairz”.

"Airz" WTF is "airz"

Why do the words need to fit the letter pattern of 4-3-3-5?
Comeon, we know why this program is doing this. I gave you 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.

 

[RandFan]

You have

a) Not read the articles
b) Not understood the articles

The links if followed in the other thread speak of individual computer-programs that can interpret human facial expressions and evaluate the emotional state of the human that is being observed.

Irrelevant to this discusion and the whole premise.

This has nothing to do with what you call "the internet" and it has nothing to do with computers being sentient.

Duh, it has nothing to do with anything.

Oh, and "the internet" is very unlikely to ever develop conciousness. Computers on the internet know preciously little about one another and barely interact. (compared to what braincells do, anyways). There is no room for evolution and the development of conciousness.

Long before any of the servers I use would ever get anywhere near becoming part of a concious network, I'd pull the plug - the costs of traffic would just kill me. In fact, if my providers are worth what I am paying them, they would block the increased traffic without me ever noticing a thing.

?

So this was all about nothing and you admit it?

 

[RandFan]

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

Actually, if you install the proper charachter set you don't even need the translator to see the charachters.

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.

A silly excercise of data mining.

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

Why? IT'S A COMPUTER BUG.

I've read the ostensible questions and answers and it is silly to say the least.