From: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Andr=E9_Thieme?=
Subject: Peter Norvig at Singularity Summit 2007
Date: 
Message-ID: <fbd6r6$51k$1@registered.motzarella.org>
Peter Norvig will be one of the speakers at this years Singularity Summit:
http://www.singinst.org/
http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/
http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/speakers/norvig/

Sept. 8-9.


--
Andr�

From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Peter Norvig at Singularity Summit 2007
Date: 
Message-ID: <uabs0el70.fsf@nhplace.com>
Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> writes:

> Peter Norvig will be one of the speakers at this years Singularity Summit:
> http://www.singinst.org/
> http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/
> http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/speakers/norvig/
> 
> Sept. 8-9.

Cool.  There are other interesting people talking, too.

I should note that at $50/seat for two days of talks by a good
collection of speakers, it looks very reasonably priced.  Also, it's
on a weekend so doesn't require taking days off of work.  And on
weekends off of the summer and holiday season, the hotels for
out-of-town folks are cheaper.  That's quite a package compared to the
typical conference these days.

Thanks for posting this.
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: Peter Norvig at Singularity Summit 2007
Date: 
Message-ID: <oOKDi.525$vN5.315@newsfe12.lga>
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> writes:
> 
> 
>>Peter Norvig will be one of the speakers at this years Singularity Summit:

That's the Python guy, right?

kt

-- 
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"We are what we pretend to be." -Kurt Vonnegut
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Peter Norvig at Singularity Summit 2007
Date: 
Message-ID: <ud4wpn483.fsf@nhplace.com>
Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> writes:

> Kent M Pitman wrote:
> > Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> writes:
> >
> >>Peter Norvig will be one of the speakers at this years Singularity Summit:
> 
> That's the Python guy, right?

I'm sure you know that's not why Andr� mentioned him, but in your
ever-pythy style, you just decided to omit his relation to Lisp.
(This document seems to be one possible rosetta stone...
 http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html )

Btw, I flew out to the left coast to watch this "summit" this weekend.
It was pretty fun if a bit disorganized.  As I'd mentioned beforehand,
the price was right and a fair number of the speakers had something
interesting to say... even if many didn't agree with my sense (nor
indeed with one another's) about where things are going, how they will
get there, ... and the all important "when".

The event wasn't really about and didn't much go into the
implementation details of most of the systems discussed, but two or
three speakers did manage to slip in a favorable/unapologetic mention
of Lisp here and there.  Rod Brooks came right out and proudly boasted
that his company, iRobot, programs robots (e.g. Roomba) in Lisp.

Also, the talks repeatedly featured the relatively recently-coined
(last couple of years) acronym "AGI" (Artificial General
Intelligence), which seems to be an attempt to rebrand what was once
AI by leaving the term AI referring to "specialized" AI facilities
that had chilled out the funding for general-purpose AI during the
last couple of decades of AI Winter.  (If that marketing trick turns
out to work, perhaps it argues for those who worry Lisp outreach has
stagnated doing less worrying about changing Lisp's semantics and more
about just changing its name...)

And, oddly, the real star of the show turned out to be Moore's Law,
which seemed to get mentioned surprisingly and almost unreasonably
often in the various talks.
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: Peter Norvig at Singularity Summit 2007
Date: 
Message-ID: <RQwFi.19$Z%7.6@newsfe12.lga>
Kent M Pitman wrote:
> Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>Kent M Pitman wrote:
>>
>>>Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Peter Norvig will be one of the speakers at this years Singularity Summit:
>>
>>That's the Python guy, right?
> 
> 
> I'm sure you know that's not why Andr� mentioned him, but in your
> ever-pythy style,...

Whew! I came /this/ close to correcting your spelling.

>... you just decided to omit his relation to Lisp.

Would that be the same relation Alec Baldwin has to Kim Bassinger?

> (This document seems to be one possible rosetta stone...
>  http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html )

I think translating an entire text on AI from Lisp to Python could be 
another, or announcing that Python is Lisp as /the ILC keynote speaker/ 
(only to be saber-sliced by "Can Python treat code as data?" from some 
guy McCarthy who later borrowed my laptop to go online and check his mail).


> 
> Btw, I flew out to the left coast to watch this "summit" this weekend.
> It was pretty fun if a bit disorganized.  As I'd mentioned beforehand,
> the price was right and a fair number of the speakers had something
> interesting to say... even if many didn't agree with my sense (nor
> indeed with one another's) about where things are going, how they will
> get there, ... and the all important "when".
> 
> The event wasn't really about and didn't much go into the
> implementation details of most of the systems discussed, but two or
> three speakers did manage to slip in a favorable/unapologetic mention
> of Lisp here and there.  Rod Brooks came right out and proudly boasted
> that his company, iRobot, programs robots (e.g. Roomba) in Lisp.
> 
> Also, the talks repeatedly featured the relatively recently-coined
> (last couple of years) acronym "AGI" (Artificial General
> Intelligence), which seems to be an attempt to rebrand what was once
> AI by leaving the term AI referring to "specialized" AI facilities
> that had chilled out the funding for general-purpose AI during the
> last couple of decades of AI Winter.  (If that marketing trick turns
> out to work, perhaps it argues for those who worry Lisp outreach has
> stagnated doing less worrying about changing Lisp's semantics and more
> about just changing its name...)

Aw, jeez, please don't encourage Ron. Besides, everyone knows it's the 
damn parentheses and the fact that it is slow and interpreted.

kt

-- 
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"We are what we pretend to be." -Kurt Vonnegut
From: Rob St. Amant
Subject: Re: Peter Norvig at Singularity Summit 2007
Date: 
Message-ID: <fbp5kq$sjn$1@blackhelicopter.databasix.com>
Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> writes:

> Peter Norvig will be one of the speakers at this years Singularity Summit:

Teaching a class last semester using Norvig's PAIP improved my Lisp,
even though I've been programming in it, off and on, for twenty years.
(And I'd even taken a class as a grad student that used PAIP; guess I
didn't read as carefully as I might have.)  One embarrassingly simple
trick that was new to me: using

(defstruct (<name> (:type list)) . . .)

with data that's available in list form.