Meet Cyc. This endeavor to produce AI has been going on since 1984. In ’86 it asked if it were human; it later asked “if any other computers were engaged in such a project”. It’s strength lies in a database of assumptions and generalities, in the hopes that it will eventually “generalize as much as possible until further generalization would be false”. Is this going to be the breakthrough, or does it just seem really cool? (yes, via Slashdot)
posted by sherman on Jun 8, 2002 - 9 comments

Should creation of intellectual property be taxable? The City of Seattle wants to tax the development of software, not the sale, the development. Across the country state and local governments are starting to consider taxing this. The question is, is software development taxable? If so, is writing a book taxable, painting a picture? People pay sales tax on the software, and businesses pay income, use, and B&O taxes already. Why is this different? via /.
posted by patrickje on Mar 12, 2002 - 28 comments

Slashdot.info is the address that I randomly typed in, (just for fun) and reached the page. Quite informative. Better than a spoof page, atleast. Also, the .biz is not registered yet...
posted by arnab on Oct 27, 2001 - 3 comments

Oh my god, the internet has porn on it! (Again.) The U.S. Congress makes their annual re-discovery that not everything on the internet is child-friendly. This time they noticed the Gnutella network. (Yes, I got the link from Slashdot - but I like discussing things here rather than there.)
posted by RylandDotNet on Jul 27, 2001 - 31 comments

"Three of the top Net-nerd forum/discussion sites, Metafilter, Plastic.com and Slashdot, have threads discussing ways to block these ads." Ouch. I don't know which I resent more: "Net-nerd" or being grouped with "Plastic.com".
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jun 7, 2001 - 23 comments

"I knew lots of rednecks that had taken potshots at the [Goodyear] blimp."
posted by holloway on Apr 29, 2001 - 9 comments

No Logo slash site. Naomi Klein's book has it's own site based on slashcode. New media for the anti-corporate masses :)
posted by kliuless on Mar 24, 2001 - 29 comments

Slashdot , meet Greendot.
posted by veruca on Oct 26, 2000 - 5 comments

Content Protection at the Hardware Level. Sounds silly, doesn't it? The further you read, though, the scarier it is. What if your speakers refused to play non-watermarked audio? Followup to the Sony VP's speech.
posted by lbergstr on Aug 23, 2000 - 2 comments

The original programmer of the Broderbund/Mattel "spyware" explains that it's actually NOT spyware. This topic was originally discussed on MeFi in this thread.
posted by grumblebee on Jun 17, 2000 - 1 comment

/. has a link to a contest to find the slowest booting NT server. That's one of the things that really bugs me about NT. My workstation takes about 15 minutes and this very server (MetaFilter) takes at least 10 minutes to reboot.
posted by mathowie on Oct 29, 1999 - 0 comments