Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Full name

15 (3.2%)

First Name

27 (5.8%)

Nickname

31 (6.6%)

Age

23 (4.9%)

Weight

5 (1.1%)

Gender

30 (6.4%)

Sex

22 (4.7%)

Orientation

25 (5.4%)

Schooling

8 (1.7%)

Employment

9 (1.9%)

Friends list

5 (1.1%)

Mutual Friends

31 (6.6%)

Likes

19 (4.1%)

Dislikes

15 (3.2%)

Sign

9 (1.9%)

Birthday

17 (3.6%)

Religion

11 (2.4%)

Politics

9 (1.9%)

Blood type

21 (4.5%)

Relationship status

26 (5.6%)

Languages

19 (4.1%)

Contact info

7 (1.5%)

Home

2 (0.4%)

Hometown

10 (2.1%)

This poll is too long!

18 (3.9%)

You forgot something!

18 (3.9%)

It should show nothing.

35 (7.5%)

Total Members Voted: 93

[Method of Madness]

Just noticed her hand is through his. Aww.

[St.Clair]

FEEEEELS.
(augh.)

[pwhodges]

How many people assumed the feels would involve Marigld, I wonder?

I just reminded myself of the stargazing scenes in HPMoR.

The last such scene I watched was in Evangeliion 3.33 'Q', when

(click to show/hide)

Shinji showed Kaworu his interest in stargazing.

[Is it cold in here?]

Besides, there's nothing so far to say that AI is not cognitive, in that perhaps they all start with a base personality, and then learn and evolve as they interact with their owners and environment to develop their own distinct personalities.

Sorflakne is right. One great bit of evidence is the way Momo has developed to individuate herself and to learn how to manipulate Marigold(*) rather than being an obedient toy.

(*)Always for Marigold's own development, to be sure.

[Storel]

We know AIs are easily transferable because when Momo and Marigold went to buy Momo a new chassis, Momo tried it on right there in the store with nothing but a thin cable connecting the two bodies.

There may very well be software and/or hardware protocols to prevent AIs from being copied, however, if nothing else because of the legal complications that would arise if a sentient copy asserted its civil rights and demanded equal ownership of everything the original AI owned. Or worse, if the copy claimed that it was the original and the other one was really a copy that had somehow switched bodies/hosts/chassises (what IS the plural of chassis, anyway?) with it, so it wanted full unshared ownership of everything the other AI owned. I mean, if the copy is completely identical, then how could a judge or jury tell which was the original?

It's the same basic problem that you have when live people can be copied, whether by some kind of fast cloning or because the Starship Enterprise had a transporter malfunction. 

(Seriously, if a real-life matter transmitter had problems as frequently as the ones in Starfleet did, it would never have been approved to be used on ships -- at least not in a peacetime navy; these people didn't sign up to risk their lives just by routinely moving on and off the ship.)

Edit:

The PBS documentary "Neurotypical" included an autistic person who has a reputation as a wonderful conversationalist. He discovered that all you have to do is repeat the last few words the other person said.

"You just repeat the last few words the other person said?!"

Haha, that's brilliant! 

[Is it cold in here?]

You say that's brilliant? (sorry)

That was a great point about the property law implications of duplicating an AI. Contract law would be a mess as well.

If AIs couldn't develop with experience, then there would have been no reason to try to rehabilitate Dickmouth Stinkface, so it's got to be possible.

[Akima]

I always imagined Northhampton had more light pollution.

Well, if we're going to be picky... With the lights on in the room, all they'd be able to see is their own reflections in the glass. And how could Dale see past the light emitted from his glasses?

May plainly reads Dale Carnegie: "Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars."

[Masterpiece]

d'awww Dickmouth Stinkface is blushing...

[KOK]

Just noticed her hand is through his. Aww.

She communicates by touch a lot. Beeing bodyless must be very unpleasant for her.

[techkid]

With the lights on in the room, all they'd be able to see is their own reflections in the glass.

Well, it seems he did switch the lights off. But still, light pollution in even a small town can bugger up the view (street lights can be a pain, sometimes).

And how could Dale see past the light emitted from his glasses?

Sensible answer: maybe he had them "on" for May's sake, and just didn't have anything on screen. The glow is just there to show they're active.

Cartoon physics don't have to make sense. See The Laws of Anime for some examples.

[Rimwolf]

May plainly reads Dale Carnegie: "Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars."

Perhaps Dale Carnegie read Oscar Wilde: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

[FuryoftheStars]

I think this is a slip on Jeph's part. Everything we've seen since suggests strongly that AIs are not copyable.
Suppose they were. Once you managed to generate a capable and cooperative AI, you could mass reproduce it for all sorts of devices. ReallySmartPhones, for instance. (Wouldn't you like to have an autocorrect that didn't embarrass you?)
But we don't see anything like this in the QCverse. Each AI is a distinct and unique individual.

He wasn't copied, he was transferred to another machine so his chassis could be worked on.  No slip up happened.

Besides, there's nothing so far to say that AI is not cognitive, in that perhaps they all start with a base personality, and then learn and evolve as they interact with their owners and environment to develop their own distinct personalities.

Actually, this is still considered as "copying".  Bytes of data are not so much something physical that the PC can move around but more so a state of being.  So even when you're doing a cut & paste or specific "move" operation on a PC, you're actually telling the computer "copy file(s) from A to B, then delete from A."

Just noticed her hand is through his. Aww.

Didn't see the hands until I read your post, but yeah, my first reaction was "aww" as well.

[Pilchard123]

That copy/move thing isn't always the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mv

[FuryoftheStars]

Right, coping within the same file system and on the same piece of media, if merely changes the reference headers.  But with just about anything else, that's not the case.

Point I was trying to make is that in moving the AI from say, one AnthroPC chassis to another, is copying the AI from one to the other, then deleting the old.  Even the process of loading the AI into RAM is technically copying it.

[Pilchard123]

So you were, sorry. I missed the bit about Pintsize.

[FuryoftheStars]

No biggie.  I know I often do a poor job in wording what I want to convey so it's often misunderstood.

I'm even worse in person.  Words... are not my strong point. 

[Kugai]

To the stars Dale, to the stars

[jmucchiello]

Point I was trying to make is that in moving the AI from say, one AnthroPC chassis to another, is copying the AI from one to the other, then deleting the old.  Even the process of loading the AI into RAM is technically copying it.

You are assuming the computers in QC are von neumann machines running on bit-based RAM constructed similarly to the way they are in our universe. Our computers could not do AI like the QC universe computers can. So I think they must have a different architecture, perhaps they are quantum computers. In a quantum computer, a move operation causes actual teleportation without the copy and delete logic normally seen in a non-quantum computer. Frankly, a quantum computer achieving sentience makes infinitely more sense than a computer using today's chip technology becoming sentient.

[Is it cold in here?]

We know they have registries and DLL files.

[jmucchiello]

We know they have registries and DLL files.

The AIs?

[jwhouk]

That's all interface stuff. The actual AI moves from device to device by whatever means, then sets up an interlink with the Global AI from the new host.

Pintsize was probably not "stored" on Marten's computer as much as it was his interface with the "world" while Marten cleaned out his torso. His "self" - the programming AI bits that make him Pintsize - were probably distributed back in the cloud temporarily, and Marten used his own PC to help him make the connection. Since computers (and AI's) have gotten more complex in the QCverse, I doubt May or Momo could do that with Marigold's setup. (May might be able to do it, but it might chew up the processing power on Marbear's gaming rig - and she wouldn't like that.)

Anyways, that's my headcanon, and you should respect it.

[Is it cold in here?]

Registry files
DLL files

An AnthroPC as a thin client talking to the cloud? That makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.

[FuryoftheStars]

You are assuming the computers in QC are von neumann machines running on bit-based RAM constructed similarly to the way they are in our universe. Our computers could not do AI like the QC universe computers can. So I think they must have a different architecture, perhaps they are quantum computers. In a quantum computer, a move operation causes actual teleportation without the copy and delete logic normally seen in a non-quantum computer. Frankly, a quantum computer achieving sentience makes infinitely more sense than a computer using today's chip technology becoming sentient.

Yeah, and that's because they continue to use standard computer terms, talking about dual booting Windows and OSX, registry and dll files, etc.  But you are right, today's technology wouldn't be able to handle that.  But then again, AIs of that nature do not exist today, either.  Either way, it is a comic and I doubt Jeph took the time to research if it was possible when he first created it.

That's all interface stuff. The actual AI moves from device to device by whatever means, then sets up an interlink with the Global AI from the new host.

Pintsize was probably not "stored" on Marten's computer as much as it was his interface with the "world" while Marten cleaned out his torso. His "self" - the programming AI bits that make him Pintsize - were probably distributed back in the cloud temporarily, and Marten used his own PC to help him make the connection. Since computers (and AI's) have gotten more complex in the QCverse, I doubt May or Momo could do that with Marigold's setup. (May might be able to do it, but it might chew up the processing power on Marbear's gaming rig - and she wouldn't like that.)

Anyways, that's my headcanon, and you should respect it.

An AnthroPC as a thin client talking to the cloud? That makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.

Hmm, while this would be a possibility, I see a couple issues with it.  If they ever lost signal (no wi-fi/cell towers/etc), the chassis would, for all intents and purposes, drop "dead".  The other issue I see, is that if the chassis really were thin clients, they wouldn't need the data cables to hook between themselves and other units to transfer or even backup.

chassises (what IS the plural of chassis, anyway?)

Oh, and sorry, forgot to comment on this.  Chassis is both the singular and plural.

[jwhouk]

I'm thinking it's a compatibility issue. Momo's current chassis, compared to Pintsize when we first met him, are two drastically different APC's. I suspect that the reason why Pintsize doesn't look at getting a new chassis is twofold - one, he's got a pretty decent and reliable chassis right now, and two, he might not be able to upgrade due to interface issues.

[FuryoftheStars]

Well, actually, that's (supposed to be) the beauty behind thin clients.  The server where everything runs (in the case of this theory with the APC chassis being the thin clients and the AI runs on the cloud, the cloud would be the server) is really the only part that needs to deal with compatibility stuff.  The thin client is merely your interface to it... it does practically nothing for actual processing.  My work uses thin clients.  We've got various aged ones.  For the longest time, we were using models that only had 64 Mb of RAM (!).  We've upgraded a few since then with models that have 1 Gb... we see no discernible performance increase.  It wasn't until we upgraded the servers themselves that we saw performance changes (we went from a cluster for 4 physical down to 2... virtualized).  I'm pretty sure thin clients don't even have HDs.  They just have very simple OS's that, for all intents and purposes, is just like a BIOS.

The only part I can see the compatibility coming in is in the software that does the communication back and forth... but I believe this is generally created so that it is very backwards compatible.  I should probably leave that though for someone who is more knowledgeable on it than I.

[LTK]

I always imagined Northhampton had more light pollution.

Well, if we're going to be picky... With the lights on in the room, all they'd be able to see is their own reflections in the glass. And how could Dale see past the light emitted from his glasses?

AR overlay artificially brightens the stars, how else?

[Redball]

Oh, and sorry, forgot to comment on this.  Chassis is both the singular and plural.

You're right, but I'd have sworn the plural was chasses. No reference to it on line, though.

[Vurogj]

It brings me memories.

It brought me different memories.

[FuryoftheStars]

Oh, and sorry, forgot to comment on this.  Chassis is both the singular and plural.

You're right, but I'd have sworn the plural was chasses. No reference to it on line, though.

Yeah, I think it's often pronounced like it is spelt differently, but I looked it up myself before I wrote that cause I wasn't 100% sure, either.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

May is the sort who leaves the trammels of civilization behind to settle the frontier. Or unsettle it, as the case may be. Now she knows there is somebody who thinks that she is, deep down, a good person. It could make a difference.

(Helping May with her on-line resume)
"Independent", yes. "Outspoken", yes. "Pushes boundaries", Ok.
Fine. Now let's build on that!

[Is it cold in here?]

AR overlay artificially brightens the stars, how else?

Maybe they're re-transmitted on the inner surface of the Northampton weather dome. We don't actually know there is a weather dome, but there has to be some reason why it never rains.

[DMercenary]

2514 comic:

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! SHE'S BLUSHING!

[DSL]

AR overlay artificially brightens the stars, how else?

Maybe they're re-transmitted on the inner surface of the Northampton weather dome. We don't actually know there is a weather dome, but there has to be some reason why it never rains.

Has anyone seen any half-cows lying around?

[GarandMarine]

Spin off comic: Princess Megaboobs and the Spork of Justice

[Akima]

We don't actually know there is a weather dome, but there has to be some reason why it never rains.

"It does snow though," said Akima precipitately.

[cesium133]

They use an artificial snow machine, like ski resorts use, so that the kids can have drunken sledding parties. So the police can join in and have some fun. 

[Is it cold in here?]

Perhaps AnthroPC minds do work faster than humans in their ability to modify their personalities. I can't imagine a human responding to rehabilitation within 48 hours.

Humans speak faster than they think, to their frequent chagrin, and change their habits far more slowly than the environment calls for, also to their chagrin. Maybe AIs are the exact opposite.

[Carl-E]

Hm.  No "feels" here.  The storyline left me a bit cold.  May was (literally) just a bit of deus ex machina to get the whole Dale/Marbear thing resolved. 

Jeph's done better, both with people and AI's.  It was cute (patently so), and had a few laughs, but I'm looking forward to Monday. 



Oh wait, he's at Gencon.  Well, I'm looking forward to Monday's guest strip, I guess. 

[ankhtahr]

Probably just wishful thinking from my side, but Jeph did have a script buffer, maybe he managed to create a tiny comic buffer for the con?

[Carl-E]

It'll be a yelling bird buffer... 

[Method of Madness]

I didn't even realize until just now that May's been around a month

[jwhouk]

Does she have a Wiki entry? I haven't checked.

[Method of Madness]

I don't know, but she showed up in 2491 and yesterday was 2514. That's a month's worth.

[Is it cold in here?]

Yes, she's in the wiki.

[jwhouk]

I saw that. Not sure I like the GIF being her profile pic...

[Method of Madness]

Agreed.

[Is it cold in here?]

Fortunately it's easy to change.

[jwhouk]

Warning to Westrim: I'm doing the poll WCDT for this week.

[westrim]

Wha- aw, I already had one half written last night...

[Method of Madness]

Should've posted it last night then