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Been watching too many terminator movies if you ask me.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
(√-sh*t) 2
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Life is more than AI - most of us believe humanity has a cause to live! Can we give machines a cause?
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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There is no purpose or point to life other than that to which we ascribe to it ourselves. Love, happiness, family, friends.....these are the things that make life worth cherishing.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Although I think he makes a valid point, we are a long way from ever achieving the level of AI that could threaten our existence.
Before we ever get there, we will almost certainly have destroyed our species in some other way.
The zombie apocalypse is imminent 
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Maybe he saw the Matrix and now is having nightmares
Jokes apart:
I kinda agree with him. If machines get to really think and have self-conciousness... I don't know what will be after that, but I think it won't be nice.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Oh well, we've had a good run. Worse things happen at sea and all that.. 
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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We're there already. Smartphones are in control and humans are simply drones. The amazing thing is how they allow their human host to think they are the controlling intelligence.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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pwasser wrote: Smartphones are in control and humans are simply drones.
So true. Most people cannot drive a car without their smartphone.
...Let's see, just got a text. Need to check it but I will probably drive over the old woman crossing the street, if I do so. Well, no matter, must check text!!!!
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I don't think you need to think in terms of 'Rise of the Robots'. If you rise the level of AI or computation to one where a lot of things would be almost certainly predictable (weather, sports event, etc...), then it will maybe not be the end of Humanity, but life would certainly be more bitter.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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I'm curious if there are any BASIC programmers around here?
I have an old BASIC structure that I'm curious about what it is doing.
This is from a piece of code that is 30 years old, last month.
10 READ T$
20 C=ASC(SEG$(T$,1,1))-64
30 N=ASC(SEG$(T$,2,1))-C
40 Y=N-26*(N<32)
5000 DATA THINBCHA
REM #### LINE 10 read DATA into T$ (THINBCHA)
REM #### LINE 20 get the first char stored in T$ (as a byte) and subtract 64 from that value,
REM #### (cont') store value in var C
REM #### LINE 30 get 2nd char stored in T$, subtract value of C and store in N
REM #### LINE 40 Okay, what is the value of Y?
REM #### The part I'm confused about is what does (N<32) do? I thought it was a bit shift, but why would it be 32 bits when I believe a byte on these old machines (APPLE II, TI-99) would've been only 8 bits max?
REM ### HINT: This code is doing some kind of XOR data encryption / decryption on those bytes, so that the final value of THINBCHA should be some valid English word after you convert the bits.
I just can't understand what that operation 26*(N<32)
It kind of makes you think it would be 26*(BOOLEAN) such as 26*(1) or 26*(0), but if that were true then I'm not sure why the dev didn't just do *1 or *0, so I don't think that is what it was doing.
Has anyone seen BASIC code like this?
It's just an interesting puzzle to me. I was able to figure out all the other things, like
1. weird data read syntax READ T$ just reads that data in
2. odd function called SEG$()
But this one I can't look up, because N<32 means something quite different when involved with an if statement.
Is anyone interested in this old puzzle?
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UPVOTE!
Funny thing is, that if I calculate that formula just so, then the answer IS 42!!!
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newton.saber wrote: 40 Y=N-26*(N<32)
Hint: Usually, on old versions of BASIC: False = 0, True = -1
It's not a bit shift operation. It really is comparing N to the value 32.
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Oh -1, ahhhh... let me see how that works in my formula.
I've actually re-written the code as a C# algorithm to see if I can crack the code.
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Holy crap, I just altered the code to use the -1 instead of 1 for true and this has helped me decrypt more of the data.
This is amazing.
I will show more about this as I post back to this main thread.
Your single point that true = -1 on old systems really put me over the top on this code.
This is a silly 30 year old program but it is the first program I ever attempted to write -- copied from a magazine and tried to program it into my Coleco Adam[^] and it failed.
So, you're helping me solve a bug I've considered for 30 years. 
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SYNTAX ERROR
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I suspect that the N<32 is checking to see if that N is a non readable character. i.e. space = 32 and everything lower in the ASCII tables is non-readable.
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VAX VMS BASIC SEG$ is the same as mid$
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Thanks for adding to the conversation.
It's amazing that there are people out here that have seen this old stuff before.
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doesn't N get assigned a value in line 30?
so let's say N == 5. 5 - 26 if (5 < 32) ??
just guessing.
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Right you are.
And with what you've said and what another commenter said (about true = -1 -- not 1 like I thought) I believe it is possible that what the dev was trying to do is just insure that the byte value was not a negative value -- by multiplying any value which is negative by -1 to get a positive number.
Thanks for your input.
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newton.saber wrote: 1. weird data read syntax READ T$ just reads that data in
In BASIC, putting a dollar sign at the end of a variable was shorthand for ensuring the variable is a string.
newton.saber wrote: 2. odd function called SEG$()
It's just a substring type function. Also, ASC() converts a character to its numerical equivalent, such as A to 65.
newton.saber wrote: But this one I can't look up, because N<32 means something quite different when involved with an if statement.
BASIC doesn't have a bit-wise operator like that. It's doing a less than comparison operation.
Jeremy Falcon
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