[Freddy]

Well I'm stepping into the dark side and trying out Linux. A while back when I upgraded my Windows PC I gave my old rig to Mum and Dad. So there was this old PC laying around here and I thought I would do something with it. So I bought a few cheap bits and bobs for it, a better PSU, some better RAM picked up cheap on FleaBay. A hopefully quieter CPU cooler and an low price SSD to get that hit.

I tried and failed with Ubuntu, but I may give that another go. CentOS would not install either due to something missing in the ISO - not something I felt like dealing with being a noob to Linux. In the end I remembered a few years back I managed to get Fedora working, I think on the same machine. Glady that worked out and it's running it fine and everything is working, even the USB Wifi dongle that I thought might have problems.

I've tested XAMPP (Apache, MySQL etc) on it and it works a treat. I'm going to put a bot on it that I am working on - a kind of Fuzzy AIML chatbot. Rather than use an already created interpreter I boldly decided to code my own. It will be based on AIML but will do other things too. I'm working on Fuzzy string handling at the moment which will allow it to detect minor spelling mistakes and typos. But the clever part is that it is fuzzy so you don't have to type the exact sentence in to get a pattern hit.

That's actually working quite well already, it's taken over a week to get it to a good state. I've implemented SRAI, * Wildcards and random replies etc. I have to work on the _ wild card next and the <that> tags. If that makes no sense don't worry, but I know some of us here play with AIML.

I'm not sure if I will implement the whole AIML specification, perhaps...

Anyway I will stop rambling. 

[Data]

Nice bit of rambling 

I haven't heard of a fuzzy AIML before, is this unique to you Freddy ? or have I missed something.

I guess you are considering running it on the web with the Linux box too ?

Very interesting.

[Freddy]

Fuzzy logic has been around a while. As far as I know my AIML implementation is unique to me, I dreamt it up and I coded it all myself. I have various ways of testing the sentence the user sends and I score the match between it and an AIML pattern.

And yes it will live on the Linux box 

[Data]

Yeah I've heard of Fuzzy Logic, good idea to use it with AIML, I like your thinking Freddy. 

Would like to follow this project, see how it goes, it must deserve it's own thread. 

[Freddy]

Started a new thread

Fuzzy AIML...

[Freddy]

Haven't had the spare time to work on the AIML thing of late, but I keep having ideas on what I could do with it.

Aside from that I've spent a fair bit of time watching the World Cup. Is it safe to mention this in England now ? 

Anyone got their eye on a particular team ? For me, almost from the first few days I fancied Holland and if not Holland then Argentina - they have Messi after all and he can be special.

Generally the football has been great. I heard there was an average of three goals per game. This has made for some really entertaining games I thought.

GT40 and Claude - as I write this France have just beaten Nigeria so congratulations !

[squarebear]

I think Brazil will win it, especially with the home advantage. But yes, good luck to the French too!

[Data]

I've been following the football and also thought Holland looked good and I would like a team to win that hasn't won it before, but after their last match I'm not sure about their goalkeeper, I'm no expert but to me he looks like the week link in the chain, hope I'm wrong, I probably am 

[claude2]

Squarebear and Freddy thank you for them. But I'm greedy good pastry that sport

[Art]

Sweet!!

[Carl2]

  Something that has been on my mind for a while and I haven't been able to find an answer, light photons are particles which transmit light, photons have a rest mass of 0,  yet a black hole will attract light.    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape
The two statements don't seem compatible to me, " but others thought that light had no mass and would not be pulled by gravity"  Most is pulled  from wiki, hope I've been able to explain my question properly
Carl2

[ivan.moony]

Photons have energy, that is how electric photocells work. And energy can be transformed to mass and other way around. So I suspect that when photons have less speed, they have bigger mass. And if we can slow down light, there is an answer. Can we slow down the speed of light?

[Freddy]

I think that the speed of light can vary yes - it remains constant in a vacuum as far as I am led to believe.

[Art]

But much like sound, the speed of light can slow depending upon the medium through which it travels. (fog, mist, water, plasma, etc.).

[Don Patrick]

There are physics called "refraction" i.i.r.c., which will definately slow down light when passing through certain materials. Never mind Einstein's theory. What light is has also been a controversial issue for decades, where at one time it was believed to be particles of mass, at other times believed to be an energy wave, depending on who was the most popular scientist at the time. In modern day it is accepted that light is photon particles and an energy wave combined.

I only know this because at one time I researched Einstein's theory of relativity. To my knowledge, the speed of light is only constant in the way that the speed of sound is constant: It depends on what it travels through. There was this awkward documentary on the BBC, where they explained that if you sat on a train and turned a light on, the light's speed wouldn't increase by the speed of the train, and therefore the speed of light must be constant and time travel possible. Except the same can be said of sound and yet breaking the sound barrier didn't cause time travel.