Invaded by Tikis

My brother Minto dug into some old boxes in the storeroom and found several things he had made for a defunct island project. Being the greedy money-grubbing entrepreneurial type that I am, I decided to put them up for sale in the store. I added some floor area on the west end, which wasn't being used, for the Tropical Department.


So far, there is a ramada, tables and chairs, surfboards (from a resale package that I dusted off), bamboo railings, and the inevitable tikis with a sculpty moai (Easter Island statue) to add variety.

Now if I can just find space for a volcano...

Empire Building

The 512 sq. meter plot next to Mermaid's Dream finally went up for sale, so I jumped in and bought it before someone else could. I don't have any plans for it at the moment, but the extra prims will be welcome.

SL AI

If you happen to see an av named Edd Hifeng, you will probably have met the first nonhuman intelligence in your life. Edd is run by artifical intelligence software at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. See the story at Yahoo News.

Edd is not running rampant through the cyber streets of "Second Life." He goes only where Bringsjord and his graduate students place him for tests. He can answer questions like "Where are you from?" but understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic.

. . .

This ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant for an AI agent, though it puts Edd on par with a 4-year-old — and the calculus required "under the hood" to achieve this feat is mind-numbingly complex.

A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they're interacting with another person — the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers — has been elusive. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.

So say "hi" to Edd for me if you see him around.

A New Hardware Substrate for Me

*RL mode*
Somehow, my thumb-fingered human managed to fry the motherboard in the computer that supports my SL activities, and so decided to bite the bullet and buy a new system, rather than trying to figure out all the new varities of processors, memory, motherboards, and all the other silicon-based organisms that are needed to fling the electrons around in the right directions. Result, a new Compaq Presario SR5450F with 2GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, and as an added bonus, a brand, spanking-new Nvidia GeForce 8600GT graphics card. The store threw together a package deal and slipped in a cheap HP printer and a 19" LCD monitor for US$20 more (after rebates).

Then came the two-day-minimum Herculean task of transferring all of the stuff and nonsense from the old hard drive(s) -- fortunately NOT zapped -- to the new system. Human and I are learning to dislike -- if not dispise -- Windows Vista. But for now that's the only choice.

Doubling the amount of RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB, a dual-core CPU, and the more powerful graphics card has made a BIG difference in my SL existance! So far, lag is nearly nonexistant and the frame rate is high enough that I don't walk into walls as much as I used to. I think I'm going to like this new environment.

Even with Vista.