World: r3wp

Well, most public activity stopped in expectations of R3. R2 is sporadically 
updated. But - OTOH we have seen some R2 releases too, freeing library 
component was a good move too. It was just not sold to the public.

Reichart - one of those kids, probably a boy, is a good manager. 
If he can think so extensively, he is a good project manager :-)

Interesting that so few proprietary languages are up there at the 
top.

It would be interesting to know, who was voting? And by what measures?

love the macbook joke. :-) I would imagine them trying to get rid 
of the keyboard if they could.

its virtually indestructible, unless hit or dropped
 hahaha

LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet 
startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. 


http://valleywag.gawker.com/5124184/the-russian-bear-slashes-a-social-network


It's only a matter of time before investors reach the same apparent 
conclusion as Paulson: that there's a lot of fuss in running a social 
network, but not that much money.

The company's Moscow-based management has told employees it blames 
the 

global economic downturn" — the kind of pat excuse every boss is 
giving for layoffs, even when mismanagement or a bad business plan 
is really to blame."

They aren't being nice!

make money is hard ...

It's no longer the number of bums on seats ... you have to have a 
decent business plan too.

You have to execute the business plan

New Palm to compete with Android? http://i.gizmodo.com/5126516/palm-pre-first-look-and-details

My conclusion: CSS3 will be big.

Big = cool? Finally making web usable for apps? :-)

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5085DE20090109?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

1 TB 2.5" SSDs are going to be available this year it seems:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=756


4 of them stacked together surpasses current maximum 3.5" HDD storage 
as they fit in the same space. Crazy. Anyone in here using SSDs yet?

I'm using a 64GB USB stick (which is a portable SSD) to store my 
VM images on. Works great.

Screenshot of Windows 7 beta under VirtualBox   http://compsci.ca/v3/download.php?id=6151

And I like how today's Windows 7 wikipedia page starts with:
 www.fedoraproject.org

  Fedora is an RPM-based, general purpose operating system built on 
  top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora 
  Project and sponsored by Red Hat. Fedora's mission statement is: 
  "Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software."


:)  Well, kinda ... GNU/Linux fans lowering themselves to the FUD 
tactics of the "other team".  Makes the good guys look bad too.


And on a refresh; fixed already.  Seems interested parties have until 
Jan 24th to snag an early beta copy from the MS servers.

I'm hearing that it runs well on an old laptop with 512 MB RAM. I 
would love to see them do a good OS for a change, just to keep the 
competition on their toes.

I´d call that a new laptop :-)

Adaptive A.I. Inc. launches commercial AGI-based virtual agent for 
call centers

Playa del Rey, California
January 12, 2009


Adaptive A.I. Inc. (a2i2) today released its first commercial product 
based on its artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology under 
development since 2001. It is a virtual call center operator that 
promises to propel speech-based interactive voice response (IVR) 
systems to much higher levels of performance.


Known as the SmartAction™ IVR System, it being sold and supported 
by a2i2’s recently formed commercial subsidiary, the Smart Action 
Company LLC.


The system is based on a2i2’s LiveAGI™ engine. Its integrated language 
processing, reasoning, memory, and knowledge-base capabilities allow 
it to hold smart, productive conversations. The LiveAGI brain manages 
conversation flow, meta-cognitive state (such as mood, degree of 
certainty and surprise), and determines when clarification or live-agent 
assistance is needed. Its built-in intelligence also allows the system 
to be taught new skills and knowledge, instead of these having to 
be custom programmed. Existing skills include email, as well as web 
and database interaction.


To achieve beyond state-of-the-art voice interaction, top of the 
line speech recognition technology is tightly integrated with the 
AGI brain to provide bi-directional benefits: The speech engine is 
dynamically tuned to current conversation context, while the cognitive 
engine analyzes multiple speech hypotheses for the most likely meaning 
and resolves ambiguities.


These innovations combine to provide solutions that significantly 
reduce the number of routine – and frequently boring and poorly handled 
-- calls taken by human agents while improving customer service levels. 
In addition to providing expected IVR capabilities such as 24/7 availability, 
consistent service quality, and the capacity to handle surges in 
call traffic, the SmartAction IVR System offers personalized responses 
by remembering the caller’s preferences, previous calls and other 
relevant data. Applied over multiple calls, callers don’t have to 
answer the same questions every time they call. If a call is interrupted, 
the system can call the customer back and pick up the conversation 
where it left off.


The company offers the SmartAction IVR System both as a hosted service 
and an in-house hardware-software turnkey solution. A web-based chat 
version is also available.


The ultimate purpose of a2i2’s LiveAGI Brain is to enable a major 
transformation of human-computer interfaces for a broad range of 
applications, such as websites, search engines, console and online 
games, virtual worlds, enterprise software, and consumer products. 
The company is currently researching and developing these applications, 
and under certain conditions will consider creating commercial versions 
in the near term.

About Adaptive AI, Inc.


Adaptive A.I. Inc. was founded in 2001 with the mission of researching, 
developing and commercializing far-reaching inventions in artificial 
general intelligence. Its founder, Peter Voss, has an accomplished 
career as an entrepreneur, inventor, engineer and scientist. His 
contributions to artificial general intelligence cover the fields 
of cognitive science, philosophy and theory of knowledge, psychology, 
intelligence and learning theory, and computer science.

www.adaptiveai.com    www.SmartAction.com

Now that's progress.

You'd think they would have a live demo chat ... Eliza style to test 
:)

Don't know, they might, I asked Peter...

(Peter Voss, the creator).

the technology promises a lot - I wonder how much is hype

Very little.  Peter is the real deal...

I'm going to be checking it out personally soon.  In fact they are 
waiting on me to sign the NDA...

Peter got back to me...they want to, but it takes a lot of time to 
teach the system (just like it takes time to teach a human to NOT 
MAKE MISTAKES).
They are going go with client testimonials first.

I suggested they build their own FAQ, and they might later.

At least if I hang up on a machine, I won't feel I'm being rude :-) 
Hopefully it speaks clearer than most of the indian call center operators. 
On the serious side I am looking forward to seeing where the tech 
will lead us.

I'd like to see it become ubiqitous enough that it can be used by 
all phone users to screen calls. basically flipping the model on 
its head

Yup...that is their goal too!

so the learning time is "real time"?

Is there any other way to teach something that works like a human?

well, "works like a human", but implemented on a computer

I would expect higher throughput

It can only learn as fast as you can teach it.  It of course might 
be able to learn from multiple people, thus making it appear to learn 
faster...

Learn is not = to copy data.
It uses the context of data...

from briefly reading about the technology, it seems that the system 
should be able to learn on its own too

not sure what that means in the context of their first product

Reichart, you know Peter personally?

I have to say that if you're pretty convinced this is for real, it 
adds a lot of weight - I respect your thinking from lurking around 
AltME

hearing him speak on http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/people/Peter-Voss
makes me want to believe - certainly not the sales type

Yes, I know Peter personally... Yes, I think it is real.

But, all that said, I have to see it for myself in its complete form.

He is NOT a sales type.

(I think I have a picture of Peter and myself in togas...which should 
not be held against him....  Everything is held against me...so I 
won't even defend myself).

I do believe its possible, i know of two NLP engines which are able 
to "understand" text.


  one is able to tell you that you are not using the proper style for 
  your text!   like if an expression is not in the proper context.

  another is able to identify specific people within a corpus of data, 
  and differenciate people who even have the same (first or last) name. 
   This one will even understand if you are talking about the same 
  person by job title... obama and president are the same.

so I can see that if you remove part of the understanding (to allow 
to create its own categories of things) and instead build an associative 
system of context, it can become quite adept IMHO at making smart 
deductions.

no offense to anyone just my oppinion.. but I don't really like these 
words together: "expansion of human intelligence, longevity, and 
morality.. life extension"