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sheepdoll
·talking for five minutes without a script
What I envy is the time management. I so like getting focused on the tiny tiny details, that the big picture remains elusive.
I tried fixing up stuff for freinds when I started 30 years ago. They are so demanding that it became problematic when I would get board with a watch that was not mine. I also can set a project asside for decades.
More recently I had this crazy idea for a book tentatively titled "A Child's history of AI." I had saved some of my college texts from 50 years ago. Also a partial listing of an 'Eliza' program.
Spent all week writing a script to recover it. Then this showed up on the Rocketry mailing list.
https://www.livescience.com/technol...st-resurrected-from-60-year-old-computer-code
So what ever one is working on someone else is as well.
If anyone needs code to read 50 year old HP2000F data tapes I have it. Ironically when I unpacked the 'Eliza' code it was from an Apple ][. That only took me a few hours to convert. The personal computer stuff did not encode the floating point as packed words.
Oh well my AI book can now have a section on floating point from 60 years ago.
The real challenge is how to explain Matrices to a child or 90 year old parent. The 50 year old textbook sort of makes things clear, but when I try and share it, such comes across as another boring maths lecture.
So one really has to credit those who can structure this into something that can capture clicks.
There is also the irony, that all this old code is out there in data archives, which are being mined for AI which could then regurgitate it into something that can entertain for 17 seconds before the next item happens.
Scary also that I or someone else could come up with a prompt and probably write the book for me.
