Fast information, but how fast?

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Here are two popular ways of checking how fast your internet connection is:

easier and fancier: http://www.ookla.com/speedtest/

more technical and accurate: http://testmy.net/

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On the value of taking care of the roses (series: notes to myself)

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This year, for the first time in its history, the Loebner Prize competition was held in England, at the University of Reading to be precise. It was organised by Kevin Warwick and Huma Shah. Independently of whether Turing might have been pleased (he was not well treated in this country, recall?), there was a satisfying sense of “coming home” of the Turing Test (henceforth TT ). Expectations were high, and they very highly advertised too. The meeting was perfectly organised. Having been invited to play the role of a judge, together with several other colleagues, including two members of the IEG , Mariarosaria Taddeo and Matteo Turilli ( here are their pictures and Rosaria's interview ) , I enjoyed the opportunity to see from close-up the machinery and the TT . It was intriguing and great fun. Because there were interviews with the BBC and other things going on, and because we were also supposed to take part in the parallel AISB Symposium on the TT , I had time to test only...
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The art of biting one's own tongue consists in the ability not to engage when someone says something unpleasant, untrue, malicious, or abusive about you. Instead of answering a biased question, arguing against a ludicrous opinion, complaining about an abusive message, correcting a meaningless error, countering a fallacy, explaining a patent mistake, objecting to a groundless criticism, rectifying a willful misrepresentation, rejecting an insinuation, responding to a provocation, retorting to a nasty remark, replying to an offensive allegation, … in short, instead of engaging with your mindless interlocutors you simply ignore them and do absolutely nothing, not even acknowledging that you might have received their communication, not even sharing a “no comment”, just silence. As far as they know, you might have never got the email, read the tweet or the Facebook comment, seen the Instagram picture. If you bite your own tongue appropriately, for them their communication might have nev...
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Latin American Conference on Computing and Philosophy

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LA-CAP09 - Call for Papers COMPUTING AND PHILOSOPHY: LA-CAP 2009 Mexico City, Mexico, June 22-23, 2009 LA-CAP09 is the first Latin American Conference on Computing and Philosophy will be held on the Campus of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, Mexico. One of the aims of this conference is to build the Latin American section of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP): see IACAP for further informations. Conference Chair: Francisco Hernández Quiroz (UNAM – México) Juan Manuel Durán (UNC - Argentina) IMPORTANT DATES • March 1, 2009. End of submission of extended abstract. • March 29, 2009. Notification of acceptance. • May 17, 2009. Early registration deadline. • June 22-23, 2009. Conference. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS • Prof. Wilfried Sieg. Carnegie Mellon. USA. • Prof. Víctor Rodríguez. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Argentina We are expecting the confirmation of two more keynote speakers....
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