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Read a bit of Gregory Chaitin's book, The Unknowable (the linked site seems to contain the full text), and you will find some mathematical/philosophical assertions, backed up by LISP code, that aren't so far from the kinds of things you suggest. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and Turing's proof of the unsolvability of the Halting Problem, are allegedly proved using LISP programs. And of course, programs like this tend to require that the language be able to evaluate/compile expressions at runtime, so perhaps the original claim isn't so off-base! ;)

we can't distinguish more than 16.77 millions colors, etc

Actually, Good film effects are done at 64bit color. Yes, that's about 1.8*10^19 colors, or rather 16m colors per channel (taking alpha to be a `color'). If you have a small gradation on a screen big like the ones in the theaters, you can quite easily see the difference between consecutive colors. Take a look at this image (note that netscape doesn't seem to display it right) and tell me if you can spot where 152 grey turns into 153 grey. I can tell. There is actually a seperate codebase of the gimp written for 64bit images (the `hollywood' edition). Now I want to know when I can get a video card that supports 64bit color :) (actually, my SGI supports 48bit which is good enough).

Furthermore, if we can't see faster than 60 fps, why are the gamers always talking about how their new video card can do 120 fps and such? I almost never watch TV, but whenever I see those screens, I am completely dumbstruck by how terrible the quality is. The resolution is awfully small, and colors are so bad I would prefer a b/w TV (I once heard that TV's output less than 50 colors at a time, although I'm not sure if it's true). As a person who is used to a crisp 1600x1200 (though I can still see the pixels) high-color display in front of me, I don't think I would be able to stomach watching the pixelated, grainy, star wars movie when it comes out.

I suppose having good vision has its disadvantages at times...

Actually, pi=2.0

Draw a line segment of length 2.0

Connect the ends with a semicircular arc

The length of the arc is 2pi/2=pi

Now instead make two semicircular arcs of half the radius, and align them so they span the line segment. Picture of all this here.

The length of the arcs sums to pi again

Repeat with four semicircles of 0.25 radius, and so on

The semicircles converge to the line segment, so the arc length=pi converges to the line segment length=2.0

Thus, pi=2.0

pi is still fun to use for a source of random digits (I have used it as such on several occations when I didn't like my rand() function). I downloaded 200 million digits from some japaneese site, and have found them quite fun to play with.

As far as I know no complete (or close to complete) grammar exist for any natural language.

Yeah, well, it's not too difficult to write a grammar for english that encompasses most of the things that we say in daily conversation, if you're not dead set on making an unambiguous context-free grammar. We can parse general context free language in O(n^3). Most programming languages parsers use LL(1) or LR(1) grammars (subsets of context-free languages, but more expressive than regular languages), which can be parsed in basically O(N). Parsing general context-sensitive languages, well, knowing how long it will take solves the halting problem.

However, I think that a simple generative grammar, even a context-sensitive turing complete one is basically doomed to failure, since "valid english sentences" is a fuzzy set. This doesn't really matter from the point of view of making a parser, though (So what if it understands things that I might not, so long as it also understands the things that I do grok)

You have made a wonderful script Manuka, thanks for your hard work! I have made a quick security guide for my local users group, and this script is a big part of it.

http://usmcug.usm.main e.edu/papers/linux_security_guide.html

LISP Interpreter

I love functional languages. If you think about the problem you are trying to solve in the right way, often times you can find a simple three line functional program that does the job. That's the kicker though: you have think in a functional way. Simple recursion is about the deepest functional abstraction most programmers can wrap their minds around.

nojw

Are these my only two choices? If so, you win for now.

Looking into the future, wouldn't you agree that it will be possible to customize an educational program to an individual? Find out how a student learns best (using the Multiple Intelligences or whatever revisions/replacements come about). Tailor the facts they need to know and methods they need to learn into their profile. Extensively use the internet and a fairly large team of effective teachers to determine what has been done what needs to be done.

Don't think it's possible? Wait about 10 years (on the outside, 5 on the inside), and I'll see if you've changed your mind.

How do you install your debs on a regular basis?? I'd like to do a simliar kind of thing but I'm a little fearful of using apt-get's -y (say yes to everything) option which is what I assume your script does.

If you script does something more miraculous than this, could you post it? or send it my way? thanks

Here at the University of Maine, our Operating Systems course (COS431) everything is Minix based. It gives you a good handle on how system calls are implemented, mutex, and more.

Our project involves building a complete operating system titled Brain2k. Part I of Brain2k is building a VM which handles specific operations, and file I/O. Part II is a process scheduler allowing 10 seperate Brain programs to run simultaneously. We haven't gotten to Parts III or IV yet.

As for our book, we are using Operating Systems by Tannebaum. It's a pretty good book, uses lots of examples like the Dining Philosopher's Problem, and more.

If you have more questions, please email me!

I just made one actually, try this: http://usmcug.usm.main e.edu/papers/linux_security_guide.html

Should be what you are looking fer.

Ooh... ooh... I know! They can't solve the halting problem! Do I get participation marks?

I've actually been working on writing a Web-Based BBS system.. I will throw a sample BBS online soon.. I've also been working on porting some popular door games for the new system. If anyone would like a copy of the system or has any questions, e-mail me at david.irving@maine.edu

They really need to come out with a Personal Proxy like what Distributed.Net has. That way you can get cool stats like this!

If they make one, third party stats scripts will come. I promise it.