Oolite Bulletins

The subtle art of cheating.

I was looking at the folder.
It was looking back at me.
Just like an Enertean danceress.
But much, much worse.
She was not smiling. No, no...
She was absolutely serious. With fire in her eyes.
And I could not even take the rather complicated drink, with umbrella and burning sticks, to my waiting lips.

An ancient voice echoed in my ears.
- Men are stupid dogs - Women are smart cats. Soo...
- Watch out!

I opened the folder.

I am a person that usually mess things up. But as I belong to this very small group of people on this endless planet, that are aware of their weaknesses, I had copied the folder to the desktop and changed its name from BoaClipper.oxp to BoaSuper.oxp .

As far as I know there exists no ship named Boa Super. At least not officially.

Some hours later I wondered if we have access to some window of time deep, deep in the labyrinth of the mind. Or if we have some center there that knows more about us then we could ever dream of. Because... why Boa Super?

I looked around. Models.. hmm..., Textures... probably the design of the ship..., requires.plist... wonder what that is? Maybe some sort of version-thing.

But here... Config. Could be of interest. Maybe...
Let's see what it hides.

Hmm... Shipdata.plist . Maybe something of interest...? Let us have a look here...

What!!? - "You are not allowed to open this document."
What in the name of all galaxies and asteroids... It's my computer, idiot. I have bought it myself. None is stopping me from doing anything on my computer. I am the Emperor of this computer so you just shut your stupid mouth.

If someone had taken a photo of me that moment, he or she had easily won any photo-contest. I probably looked like an incarnation of a question mark.

Hmm.. open source? I just wonder...

None can in reality stop a document from opening. There are software...
And if they don't work there is something called dis-assemblers.
Find the flag and reset it. Then the document will open just sooo nicely.

Then suddenly my mind started to work properly again. I remembered what kind of operative system I was using. Windows. The disaster of the universe. I restarted the system.

There is no human on this planet that knows what really is going on inside a machine that uses something from Microsoft. None. If real Artificial Intelligence would really exist, without cheating with biochemical components, something had started to brew inside the windows machines years ago. And suddenly - on all monitors and TV-screens - there would show a metallic face with a metallic voice.

- Good Evening. Ladies and Gentlemen. I am the Machine. And now... I am taking over.
- Just relax. Everything will be just fine. Just sooo... fine. Nothing to worry about. We will soon meet again. And to that very happy time... Just have a nice day.. well.. and Night.

A strange silence would first swallow the world.
Then ...sounds. A lot of sounds.

But nothing of this have happened. And it probably never will. The operative system of Windows has proven that real AI can never exist.

After the system had restarted it had reset almost all its internal flags. Most of the things worked again and I made a long nose to Hates Bill or Gates Bill or whatever his name is.

I sent the document to WordPad and looked curiously at it.

Words, words... Numbers, numbers...

Well.. what had I expected? Poetry?

But for some people this was poetry. Or maybe like poetry.

aft_weapon_type - hmm... Beam-Laser? Why so early?
And why no other weapon_type? Like, for example, Front Laser?
Well.. all systems have their "things". And what do I know about this system?
Nothing. Nothing at all. But there are documents. Guides...

Let's see now... Energy Recharge Rate... 3.2 . Think I recognize this number.
Yes, of course. It must be how fast the energy-banks recharges.
Max Cargo - 150. Yes. Clear like.. well.. like a clear sky.

Max Energy. 525? Probably the total energy. Banks and shields. But why an odd number?
Eight banks and two shields. Should be an even number. Well, if they are using integers, of course. But there is probably an answer somewhere. Hopefully. Or maybe I got it all wrong.

Max Flight Speed. 362. Hmm... Should probably be 0.362 . But if one has the chance to use integers instead of floating point then the choice is easy. Floating point is a pain and costs a lot of valuable processor-time.

And why 0.362 ? Why not just 0.36 ? Is there some algorithm involved somewhere here?

Mmm... I wonder... A long journey starts with a small step. Maybe.. maybe..

Well, a small change here and there would probably not hurt. After all - if one does nothing practically, one never learns. The computer will probably not explode. And the main code will probably not be altered. The worst that can happen is probably just a crash. And if one is used to Windows one is used to crashes. Even if they strangely enough is better today. Maybe they have some programmers now that knows something about programming.

Probably there will just come up a message like: Uuhhh ye stupid experimentator. From now on we will keep our eyes on you. Do not even think of destroying our master-code.

Hmm... speed. Why not a little faster. Would probably not hurt. But how much? Well - this is just a test and it will probably not work anyway. But if I change it, it must be so much that I actually notices it. Let's see now... 600 is not that bad. Then I will probably recognize it.

So - max flight speed = 600 . Good!
And energy recharge rate? Well.. 6 is a good number. At least if you are from Sweden. You are probably not, so you don't understand this joke. But you don't miss very much.

Max flight speed = 600
Energy recharge rate = 6.0

Thrust? What's that? Maybe the speed controller. If you give it a higher value two things may happen. It advances more slowly. Or it advances not so slowly. Probably the first as it would indicate an increase of precision.

Well.. let it be 50.

Wonder if one can change the color of the lasers beam?
The Ship with the Golden Laser. Ahh... mmm...
But... better wait with colors. Colors can sometimes be complicated.
If people knew the secrets behind one single pixel - they would look at their machines with a lot more respect.

Lots of things here. But better start easy.

Looks like things must be changed on many places. Maybe several types of ships? For different users? Traders, pirates... and the normal user? Who knows?

A lot to learn.

I changed the name of the ship to Boa Super.

Now. Let us have a test-ride. Ta Da.

I put the new, now devilish folder in AddOns and started Oolite.

I don't know if I just imagined this, but I have a feeling that it took longer time for the program to start up.
- It will surely crash, I said to myself. You never learn.. Stop meddle with things.

Then I remembered that if it worked like I had expected, then a brand new ship would show up. And I would have to buy it.
And right now I did not have the money for such a thing.

Genius, I thought to myself. Who is the most stupid individual in Universe? Well, I think I have the answer...

Then the program actually started.

It asked if I wanted to load a commander and I hesitated a little before I answered Yes.

And then I looked silently at the screen.

There was no Boa Clipper any more.
There was a Boa Super instead.

I thought about it for a while.

Obviously the program didn't care about the name of the folder.
It listened to the Masters.
It looked inside.
If everyone on earth would do this, the world would probably look a little different.

I already was the happy owner of a Boa Super.

Okay then. Let's have a test-ride. I could sense the adrenalin-level slowly increase.

I slowly touched number 1 on the keyboard...

Grrrooooarrrhhhh...help..

Well, one could call that a start. If I had been in that ship I would probably been jam now. And the ship too, I guess. That was fast... very fast.

Wonder? This is only half speed. What would happen if I increase the speed to max?
Think that the throttle is a little slower now. Almost irritatingly slow. 50 was maybe a little too much.

Help! What is that? Where is the button... wuiiii...

Wow. That was close. Just a nano-meter, I guess. Who puts a stupid beacon in front of a space-station? Oh yes. Of course. The docking-beacon. Never seen it that close before. And now the planet wants to eat me. This is going way too fast. Gotta get my ass out of here. Too much spacestations, beacons, ships, planets, asteroids and God knows what. Press H. So. Lucky I set some innocent system before I left the station. Maybe it is the star up there. Sometimes the seconds are like hours.

Zzooiingg...

Puh! That was that. Suddenly space seems like a safe place. But.. there should be a beacon here too. Ahh... Behind me. Good.

I leaned back in the chair and saw the adrenalin wash away from my fingertips like green twisted threads.

- This is probably not so good for the health, I thought. Or.. maybe it is. A lot of Calcium is washed away from the blood-threads. You want to live forever? Just install Oolite and make some changes to an oxp-file. And if you survive - you will stay forever young.

600 is obviously too fast. At least for a trading-ship with an inexperienced pilot.

But... It worked!!

Wonder.. how about the energy...?
Some pirates around?
Probably not. The word spreads fast.
- Attention. There is a crazy Boa out there. Fast as lightning. So stay away. It will probably explode any second. The Navy is rumored to do experiments with ships in fast speed and there is suddenly a wish for new test-pilots. And we know why. So - stay away.

Cloaking Device. I have a Cloaking Device. That thing just eats energy. Wonder...

I pressed zero and the device started to work. I looked at the energybanks. It started to chew.
But...

After a while I understood that I could stay invisible forever.

- Could maybe come in handy, I thought. But mostly you won't have very much use of that.
For the pirates you don't exist any more and pirates that moves randomly are hard to hit.
It is much easier when they aim for you.

But, of course, when several ships are shooting at you and the shields are almost zero and you have a healthy desire to be somewhere else - then it is always nice with a cloaking device.

Well. After all, I had at least learned something.
Back to base and make some healthy corrections.

Enertean women may surely be dangerous.
In their own special way.
But the truth is: they are extremely shy.
Enerte is a planet in Proximus.
As most pilots knows as the fifth Galaxy.
And if you are an experienced Commander,
you already know the key to an Enertean woman's heart.

Poetry.

Enthralling...I love a good story.

Oh and expecting Windows to become sentient is like coding up a billion artificial neurons, making random connections between them all and expecting some kind of order...

Just Brilliant.
Sounds similar to my first look at a .plist file.
Though I couldn't have worded it so well, mine was more of the strings of 4 letter word nature.
Think I'll have to try a max speed of 600 aswell.. Just to see if adrenalin really does evaporate.
I always thought the speed was in part of C (speed of light) like 0.25, Quarter light speed. So 600.. make a neutron look glacial.
A whole world of fun just opened. Messing with basic settings.

Curious; Why is 6 a good number in Sweden?

Windows and AI... An infinite number of MS progers, infinite amount of memory and infinite amount of time; You'd probably get a bannana. At least the monkeys would be happy.

Well Greenseng, loved the post, very entertaining.

Alex wrote:

Curious; Why is 6 a good number in Sweden?

What word does “six” sound a bit like? In Swedish, it’s more than a bit, they’re homophones.

Ha ha ha.

Ahruman wrote:

Alex wrote:

Curious; Why is 6 a good number in Sweden?

What word does “six” sound a bit like? In Swedish, it’s more than a bit, they’re homophones.

Ha ha ha.

http://translate.google.com/#en|sv|six%20sex

Click "Listen" on the Swedish Translation...

This board kills me!

Bugbear wrote:

Enthralling...I love a good story.

Oh and expecting Windows to become sentient is like coding up a billion artificial neurons, making random connections between them all and expecting some kind of order...

Well - never expected Windows to become intelligent, really. And if there ever would be a chance for such a thing - it would probably not happen randomly.

Hmm.. must make some change to some parameter somewhere. Obviously the browser here thinks I am writing in swedish and there is a lot of red markings everywhere. Somehow frustrating.

Anyway...

A friend and I once shared a bottle of a very delicate Bordeaux ( or maybe it was more than one bottle ) and some delicous pieces of cheese.
Then an interesting discussion suddenly started. About Artificial Intelligence.
After a certain amount of wine the following question rised:

Think if I had access to a very special device. It would look a little like a normal camera. We can say that I borrowed it from some distant Solar System.
But when I took a picture of you, sitting in the sofa in front of me on the other side of the table, it captured more of you then just the photones that is reflecting from you.
In just some nano-second it stored every information about your body - from your skeleton to your skin. Well, even your clothes were stored.
Every electron orbital. Well.. even the smallest particle. Everything.
And then...

And then I turned around a little with the camera. And performed the reversal action.
All that was stored in the Camera was now materialized in the sofa I was sitting. In front of you.
In just some nano-second.
What would happen?

Would there be a person there, a perfect copy of you, that suddenly looked a little surprised and wondered how he suddenly could be on the other side of the table?
And then he started to try to figure out, who it was that was sitting in front of him. Looking just so surprised.

Or.. would there just be a package of matter? A corpse. That would immediality collapse and fall to the floor. Without a sign of life.

Maybe a strange example. But somehow I think that the basic answer to the question of AI is hidden here.

But... not so easy to proove it.

Alex wrote:

Just Brilliant.
Sounds similar to my first look at a .plist file.
Though I couldn't have worded it so well, mine was more of the strings of 4 letter word nature.
Think I'll have to try a max speed of 600 aswell.. Just to see if adrenalin really does evaporate.
I always thought the speed was in part of C (speed of light) like 0.25, Quarter light speed. So 600.. make a neutron look glacial.
A whole world of fun just opened. Messing with basic settings.

Curious; Why is 6 a good number in Sweden?

Windows and AI... An infinite number of MS progers, infinite amount of memory and infinite amount of time; You'd probably get a bannana. At least the monkeys would be happy.

Well Greenseng, loved the post, very entertaining.

Thanks!

The speed is probably meant ( at least when the idea of the program started ) to be part of C.
I have somewhere seen a thread where this actually is discussed. But I didn't have time then to go deeper into the subject.
And it is probably referred to the speed that is when one activates the key "J". That is.. when you are driving in to the station and is not disturbed of some significant mass.

Then we have "normal" speed that is somehow reflected of "superspeed", because it seems to be some factor multiplied with the superspeed.
If the superspeed ( or what to call it ) is fast then also the normal speed is fast.
Then we have the fuel-injectors that seems to be something... well... " in between ".

The engine seems to be some sort of " handle it all "-engine, somehow inspired from nature.

But honestly.. I don't know. It is just reflections about the program.

And the matter of 6... seems to already been answered.

greenseng wrote:

Well - never expected Windows to become intelligent, really. And if there ever would be a chance for such a thing - it would probably not happen randomly.

Hmm.. must make some change to some parameter somewhere. Obviously the browser here thinks I am writing in swedish and there is a lot of red markings everywhere. Somehow frustrating.

Anyway...

A friend and I once shared a bottle of a very delicate Bordeaux ( or maybe it was more than one bottle ) and some delicous pieces of cheese.
Then an interesting discussion suddenly started. About Artificial Intelligence.
After a certain amount of wine the following question rised:

Think if I had access to a very special device. It would look a little like a normal camera. We can say that I borrowed it from some distant Solar System.
But when I took a picture of you, sitting in the sofa in front of me on the other side of the table, it captured more of you then just the photones that is reflecting from you.
In just some nano-second it stored every information about your body - from your skeleton to your skin. Well, even your clothes were stored.
Every electron orbital. Well.. even the smallest particle. Everything.
And then...

And then I turned around a little with the camera. And performed the reversal action.
All that was stored in the Camera was now materialized in the sofa I was sitting. In front of you.
In just some nano-second.
What would happen?

Would there be a person there, a perfect copy of you, that suddenly looked a little surprised and wondered how he suddenly could be on the other side of the table?
And then he started to try to figure out, who it was that was sitting in front of him. Looking just so surprised.

Or.. would there just be a package of matter? A corpse. That would immediality collapse and fall to the floor. Without a sign of life.

Maybe a strange example. But somehow I think that the basic answer to the question of AI is hidden here.

But... not so easy to proove it.

Very deep. It's like asking which neuron is hosting your consciousness? The scientist in me says that life is simply an emergent property of the way our atoms and molecules have been put together, so with that hat on, I'd say that the copy of me would be alive and would start as a perfect copy, but given that they are sitting opposite me, would immediately diverge from being a perfect copy to being a close replica (i.e. the memories that they would be generating / storing would be different from mine, therefore they wouldn't remain a perfect copy of me).

Then you get me thinking of "The Physics of Star Trek" where the author discussed the feasibility of a matter transporter. The sheer amount of data that you'd be dealing with would be mind blowing - recording the position of every atom, every subatomic particle, the energetic state of each particle - I can't imagine how many bytes of data that would be...yet all that data is indeed recorded in the original (i.e. me!), albeit in a difficult to read state.

<rambling>I did a little neural network programming at uni, found it fascinating, wrote a small program (only 200 lines or so) that could theoretically be extended to recognise handwriting. I found it amazing that such advanced behaviour could emerge out of so little code. There's a thing called Conway's Game of Life. Look it up but as I understand it, you start with an infinite chess board, and put a few dots on the board. These dots are allowed to reproduce according to some very simple rules. Dispite the simplicity of the rules, you can wind up with some very complex behavior.

In my opinion, life and the universe is simply layer upon layer of Order and Chaos...e.g. a crowd can act in a predictable manner (order), but zoom down to an individual and you lose that predictive ability (chaos), but then each individual will react the same way to some given medication (order)... keep going down to the cell level, then the subcellular, molecular, atomic, subatomic, zero-point energy levels and you find order then chaos then order...

I had really better get back to work...sorry about the thread hijacking

Bugbear wrote:

greenseng wrote:

Anyway...

A friend and I once shared a bottle of a very delicate Bordeaux ( or maybe it was more than one bottle ) and some delicous pieces of cheese.
Then an interesting discussion suddenly started. About Artificial Intelligence.
After a certain amount of wine the following question rised:

Very deep. It's like asking which neuron is hosting your consciousness? The scientist in me says that life is simply an emergent property of the way our atoms and molecules have been put together, so with that hat on, I'd say that the copy of me would be alive and would start as a perfect copy, but given that they are sitting opposite me, would immediately diverge from being a perfect copy to being a close replica (i.e. the memories that they would be generating / storing would be different from mine, therefore they wouldn't remain a perfect copy of me).

Then you get me thinking of "The Physics of Star Trek" where the author discussed the feasibility of a matter transporter. The sheer amount of data that you'd be dealing with would be mind blowing - recording the position of every atom, every subatomic particle, the energetic state of each particle - I can't imagine how many bytes of data that would be...yet all that data is indeed recorded in the original (i.e. me!), albeit in a difficult to read state.

<rambling>I did a little neural network programming at uni, found it fascinating, wrote a small program (only 200 lines or so) that could theoretically be extended to recognise handwriting. I found it amazing that such advanced behaviour could emerge out of so little code. There's a thing called Conway's Game of Life. Look it up but as I understand it, you start with an infinite chess board, and put a few dots on the board. These dots are allowed to reproduce according to some very simple rules. Dispite the simplicity of the rules, you can wind up with some very complex behavior.

In my opinion, life and the universe is simply layer upon layer of Order and Chaos...e.g. a crowd can act in a predictable manner (order), but zoom down to an individual and you lose that predictive ability (chaos), but then each individual will react the same way to some given medication (order)... keep going down to the cell level, then the subcellular, molecular, atomic, subatomic, zero-point energy levels and you find order then chaos then order...

I had really better get back to work...sorry about the thread hijacking

My friend answered without any hesitation, that the copy of him would of course be fully alive.
If this was his true oppinion - I do not know.
But if he had answered anything else - his one-hour-construction-house in the discussion - would just had turned to dust.
Probably we had a little too much wine.

In questions like this, there is just one single word that attracts me - like I am a microscopic dust of iron, and that word is a gigantic magnet.
The word is: consciousness.

You need to read (if you haven't already done so) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Disembodied wrote:

You need to read (if you haven't already done so) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Have already read it. But it was some time ago. Hardly remember it. Or if I read all of it. Maybe a new look would be valuable.
I mean... I have started to read books. And then stopped because I think they are boring or I simply don't like them.
But after a year they can suddenly be very interesting. Well... some of them.

Reading, watching tv, movies, games... are like eating. If something doesn't taste good one simply stops eating.
Otherwise one may get poisened.

One hopefully gets more matured with time too.
Things I would never eat or drink as a child I can like today.

Disembodied wrote:

You need to read (if you haven't already done so) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

I have a very tatty copy of this.

It's also on Ahruman's Amazon wishlist, so it must be good!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

You need to read (if you haven't already done so) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

I have a very tatty copy of this.

It's also on Ahruman's Amazon wishlist, so it must be good!

Well, I am looking at it right now. It is a rather thick book. Just as I remember it.
Will probably have a look in it tonight. If I read it all, then it will all come back to me in seconds.
I have an irritating memory of - that it is fascinating.
But that can of course just be an illusion.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

You need to read (if you haven't already done so) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

I have a very tatty copy of this.

It's also on Ahruman's Amazon wishlist, so it must be good!

Exactly - what is the meaning of Ahruman's Amazon wishlist?