A call for 1 million programmers

[mpfounder]

A call for 1 million programmers.

How many of you want to do something big? See something big happen.
Do you yearn for a massive scale project that changes the World? Do
you want to do something in your life that really matters...that
changes the course of things for the better...something that has not
been done before...a Grand Challenge on a Grand Scale!

See Google Group "Million Programmers" for information

 

[Andrew Thompson]

A call for 1 million programmers.

Are you aure you don't mean "a million monkeys"?
I hear they bang out a creditable Shakespeare copy,
given a millennium or so.

...

See Google Group "Million Programmers" for information

P*ss off and stop spamming this usenet newsgroup.

--
Andrew Thompson
http://www.physci.org/

Message posted via JavaKB.com
http://www.javakb.com/Uwe/Forums.aspx/java-general/200712/1

 

[Lew]

Are you aure you don't mean "a million monkeys"?
I hear they bang out a creditable Shakespeare copy,
given a millennium or so.

...

P*ss off and stop spamming this usenet newsgroup.

Are there even a million programmers?

..
..
..

No, I mean *programmers*.

 

[mpfounder]

Are you aure you don't mean "a million monkeys"?
I hear they bang out a creditable Shakespeare copy,
given a millennium or so.

..


P*ss off and stop spamming this usenet newsgroup.

That is a great example Andrew, the * in P*ss is a prfect exaple to
shw others in cncpt hw the human neo cortex works...prediction

 

[mpfounder]

Are there even a million programmers?

.
.
.

No, I mean *programmers*.

Your point is well made, but if they are motivated and enthusiastic,
and willing to take some direction from the more experienced, that
counts for a lot.

 

[rossum]

That is a great example Andrew, the * in P*ss is a prfect exaple to
shw others in cncpt hw the human neo cortex works...prediction

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe.

rossum

 

[Daniel Pitts]

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe.

rossum

Taht is smoetnihg I raed a wihle ago msyelf. I thoghut taht was itsnetreing.

 

[Manish Pandit]

A call for 1millionprogrammers.

How many of you want to do something big? See something big happen.
Do you yearn for a massive scale project that changes the World? Do
you want to do something in your life that really matters...that
changes the course of things for the better...something that has not
been done before...a Grand Challenge on a Grand Scale!

See Google Group "MillionProgrammers" for information

Interesting idea, but what exactly are you trying to achieve with 1M
programmers? I am curious, as I read the post on the group you pointed
to, but did not get any idea of the eventual goal. Not to discourage
you or anything, but it'd really help if you get the basics set up and
documented in a bulleted form, easy to understand, and then advertise
the initiative. This will help you get motivated team members, rather
than a confused bunch of folks too early in the game.

-cheers,
Manish

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Are there even a million programmers?

.
.
.

No, I mean *programmers*.

I believe there are 5-10 million living from programming.

How many good programmers depend more on the eyes that see
than of the programmers.

Arne

 

[Gordon Beaton]

Interesting idea, but what exactly are you trying to achieve with 1M
programmers? I am curious, as I read the post on the group you
pointed to, but did not get any idea of the eventual goal.

Most of the text is fluff, but the real key is this sentence, about 20
lines down:

"Every programmer involved will be asked to pay a small subscription
payment every month (perhaps $10) to the project's then to be
formed, parent company."

Can you spell "pyramid scam"?

/gordon

--

 

[Tim Smith]

Most of the text is fluff, but the real key is this sentence, about 20
lines down:

"Every programmer involved will be asked to pay a small subscription
payment every month (perhaps $10) to the project's then to be
formed, parent company."

Can you spell "pyramid scam"?

Yes, I can, but that's not a pyramid scam. A pyramid scam is where you
pay to join, but then get a cut of the membership fees from those who
you recruit. You have to recruit more than one person to break even,
and each person you recruit has to recruit more than one, and so on.
Hence, the pyramid: each generation of recruits has to recruit a larger
generation.

This sounds like a more basic scam: send the top guys $10/month for
nothing!

 

[bugbear]

Yes, I can, but that's not a pyramid scam. A pyramid scam is where you
pay to join, but then get a cut of the membership fees from those who
you recruit. You have to recruit more than one person to break even,
and each person you recruit has to recruit more than one, and so on.
Hence, the pyramid: each generation of recruits has to recruit a larger
generation.

This sounds like a more basic scam: send the top guys $10/month for
nothing!

Further, if the "top guys" have a method for organising and exploiting
1M programmers in an effective way, they'd already rule the world!

BugBear

 

[Gordon Beaton]

Further, if the "top guys" have a method for organising and exploiting
1M programmers in an effective way, they'd already rule the world!

"Once the million programmer threshold is reached, things will be
more formally organized"

Apparently they don't really feel it's necessary to organize *fewer*
than 1M...

/gordon


--

 

[rossum]

Further, if the "top guys" have a method for organising and exploiting
1M programmers in an effective way, they'd already rule the world!

BugBear

Easier to try herding cats. They would all have to agree on coding
standards and what editor software to use!

rossum

 

[Bent C Dalager]

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe.

I expect this to be more true for a language like English than it is
for e.g. German or Norwegian, where you can build very long words from
a series of shorter ones. The words "a yolelw bgugy wihp" (a yellow
buggy whip) are probably easier to comprehend than "a ylbeolwwghuigyp"
(a yellowbuggywhip) for instance (even if that wouldn't be an entirely
correct contraction in Norwegian at least, the point remains).

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[Curt Welch]

"Once the million programmer threshold is reached, things will be
more formally organized"

Apparently they don't really feel it's necessary to organize *fewer*
than 1M...

/gordon

His approach is crazy from all directions.

However, he's not just asking for everyone to pay him the $10 million a
month. He wants to set up a corporation where he holds 4% (400,000 per
month), and shares the rest with others (unspecified how). He probably is
looking for this type of donation because he probably believes he's going
to need the funds to build a very large array of computers to run the
software. He doesn't need the million programmers as much as he needs
their money to build the giant array.

I don't think he's trying to scam anyone. I think he's fallen into the
trap of believing he knows the answer to how to create general strong AI
but needs the help of a lot of programmers to make it work and this is just
what he's dreamed up as of way of making that happen. He thinks his input
to the project will be the most valuable because he thinks he is the only
one in the world that really knows the answer to how to solve AI so he
expects to get rich and famous from the project.

There aren't a million programmers interested in AI. He would be lucky to
find 50 willing to work on an open source AI project period and even less
if they had to pay $10 per month to be part of the team.

Worse than that, I've been working and debating AI approaches for a very
long time and I've not yet seen even 2 people who can agree on a direction
for a joint project to "solve AI". So of the 50 he might find who are
interested in working on AI, none are likely to agree with his direction.
I'd love to work on a open source AI project with the goal of creating
general strong AI - but I have my own theories about what that requires
which doesn't mesh (completely) with anyone I've yet met. No matter how
close two people's ideas are, they are never close enough in my experience
to allow them to work together (for long) unless someone is paying them to
do the work. All the large AI projects I know of happened because someone
got a large chunk of money together and hired people to work on it.

I also think he's dead wrong in believing the solution to strong general AI
is going to require a lot of programmers and a lot of code and big machine
arrays. I think it's going to be "solved" by individuals or small groups
(2 or 3 people) pushing the edge of machine learning algorithms forward one
step at a time. There's nothing to be gained by trying to organize even a
hundred programmers let alone a million.

True AI is a search for new conceptualizations on how to approach the
problem, not a coding job. If someone had discovered the correct
algorithms, then even small examples of it would be impressive. If they
needed a billion dollars to build a super computer array to expand it to
human levels of performance, then they would have little trouble getting
the money if they could demonstrate solid evidence their algorithm would
scale. Plenty of people would donate money to such a project if there was
solid evidence it would work before the large system was built.

Before he's going to get anyone to help him, he needs to demonstrate he has
something more than a dream. He needs to translate his ideas into working
code (on his own) which will impress people by doing things no other AI
software has been able to do. If he can't do that, he's not going to get
anyone to help him.

 

[Daniel Pitts]

I expect this to be more true for a language like English than it is
for e.g. German or Norwegian, where you can build very long words from
a series of shorter ones. The words "a yolelw bgugy wihp" (a yellow
buggy whip) are probably easier to comprehend than "a ylbeolwwghuigyp"
(a yellowbuggywhip) for instance (even if that wouldn't be an entirely
correct contraction in Norwegian at least, the point remains).

Cheers,
Bent D

That could be true, but I suspect that the contractions follow a certain
form that *could* be successfully scrambled.

The component words usually appear in full, right? So each component is
atomic, so it can be rearranged in such a way.
In otherwords, "a yolelw bgugy wihp" *could* become a yolelwbgugywihp

I think where this theory may break down is in languages like Chinese or
Japanese, where symbols are used that represent whole words. Although,
I think a Japanese reader would be able to tell the meaning of a
"skewed/reordered" kanji glyph, if certain aspects where still in place,
and all or most aspects where present.

Hey Cambridge University: Figure out if this works with Kanji too

 

[Bent C Dalager]

That could be true, but I suspect that the contractions follow a certain
form that *could* be successfully scrambled.

The component words usually appear in full, right? So each component is
atomic, so it can be rearranged in such a way.
In otherwords, "a yolelw bgugy wihp" *could* become a yolelwbgugywihp

Yes, it could, but I feel that composite words in Norwegian are
largely considered atomic words in their own right rather than just a
sum of their parts. Over time, such words may even start morphing a
bit from their original spelling so that their original composite
nature becomes less obvious (and the boundaries between contained
"words" may become a source of lively debate .

Considering a more correct example than what I gave above, the
Norwegian word for "supreme court justice" is "høyesterettsdommer"
which consists of "høyeste" (highest), "retts" (court's) and "dommer"
(judge). This word has existed for so long that no one thinks of it as
three words made into one when using it - it is a proper and
independent word all of its own. If a random sampling of Norwegians
were asked to apply the scrambling algorithm previously described to
this word, I expect most of them would keep the leading "h", the final
"r", and mix up the remaining letters.

If it occurred to them to scramble the individual words instead, the
possessive "s" might give them some difficulty - is it part of "retts"
(the basic word is "rett", with an added possessive) or is it a
word-like thing of its own?


Another interesting word might be "forbrukerombudsmann", which is
built from "forbruker" (consumer) and ombudsmann (ombudsman).

However, "ombudsmann" is itself built from two words: "ombud" (a
somewhat archaic word meaning "representative") and "mann" (man), with
an "s" to connect the two (probably a possessive).

Then again, "ombud" appears to be an older contraction of "om"
("around" perhaps - in a geographical sense) and "bud" (messenger most
likely) and might stem from a title used for people travelling around
the land recording grievances or somesuch (guesswork on my part).

"Forbruker" is probably also an older contraction of "for" and
"bruker" (user) - the exact meaning of "for" in this construct escapes
me but it is probably used to indicate that there is something that
the user is expending in using it (a "bruker", or user, might use
something that is itself reusable while a "forbruker", or consumer,
spends it as he uses it).

It is therefore not obvious how, exactly, such a composite word would
be split into separate words for scrambling and so the most natural
way for a Norwegian to do it would be to just consider the whole word
"forbrukerombudsmann" to be one single word since that is basically
what it is.

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

I expect this to be more true for a language like English than it is
for e.g. German or Norwegian, where you can build very long words from
a series of shorter ones.

It *does* work in German, and not every gemran sentecne is bound to
contian contratced words
If trehe actually are scuh in a sentcene, then proabbly not eevn a
"only within the separate words"-scramiblng wolud hlep, thugoh.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

It *does* work in German, and not every gemran sentecne is bound to
contian contratced words

True, but you might get into trouble when one such does crop up.

If trehe actually are scuh in a sentcene, then proabbly not eevn a
"only within the separate words"-scramiblng wolud hlep, thugoh.

How easy is to dissect these words in German? My "forbrukerombudsmann"
example for Norwegian indicated that it's not necessarily easy to know
when to stop splitting them up - but German may have held onto its
"old" words better than what we have (a lot has happened to the
Norwegian vocabulary and language over the last 100-200 years and many
old words and meanings have been forgotten).

Cheers,
Bent D