Happy Birthday HAL
Very high geekdom.
From
the Wikipedia entry:
HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) is a fictional character in the Space Odyssey series, the first being the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, written by Arthur C. Clarke in 1968. HAL is an artificial intelligence, the sentient on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery. HAL is usually represented only as his television camera "eyes" that can be seen throughout the Discovery spaceship. The voice of HAL 9000 was performed by Canadian actor Douglas Rain. HAL became operational on January 12, 1997 (1992 in the movie) at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois, and was created by Dr. Chandra. In the 2001 film, HAL is depicted as being capable not only of speech recognition, facial recognition, and natural language processing, but also lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotions, expressing emotions and reasoning.
Looking forward to meeting you someday...
Posted by DaveH at January 12, 2007 11:52 PM