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From what I understand, the author is calling for a complete reinvention of the computer and computer programming. It's not something you can do in your spare time on a shoestring. Apparently, there are a handful of people interested in starting an open source project to implement it. Maybe you can contribute.

There is a way to do it and it has with timing and expectations. Read How to Construct 100% Bug-Free Software if you're interested in solving the reliability crisis once and for all. Of course, one must use a synchronous and reactive software model like COSA.

The solution to the software reliability crisis is to abandon the Turing Computing Model and adopt a deterministic, non-algorithmic, implicitly parallel, synchronous and reactive software model. This model is based on the notion that almost all unforeseen (and unpreventable by syntactic debuggers) bugs are due to erroneous temporal expectations within computer programs. Timing is the critical element of computing that is missing from the Turing Computing Model. And it's not a matter of providing clock objects for use in certain time-dependent applications. Timing is critical at the instruction level because it allows us to determine the invariant temporal signature of a program and sound an alarm whenever a deviation is detected. Software should be such that it should be possible to determine whether any two events (operations) within a program are either concurrent or sequential under various conditions. This sort of temporal determinism will enhance security and reliability by many orders of magnitude if not cure the problem once and for all. If you're serious about finding a solution to the parallel programming crisis that is also a solution to the reliability problem, check out the links below. It's free info. Take it or leave it.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis
Parallel Computing: The End of the Turing Madness
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It

The jest of it is that we must reinvent the computer. We are using essentially the same model that Babbage invented more than 150 years ago, the thread concept. It's time to change.

Software is bad because, unlike hardware, deterministic timing is not an inherent part of it. Computer programs are based on the Turing Computing Model. The TCM has nothing to say about timing other than the inherent sequentiality of operations. Read Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix it and How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis if you're interested in solving this crisis once and for all.

Our basic algorithmic computing model has not changed since Charles Babbage. It's time for the industry and academia to wake up. What is needed is a non-algorithmic, synchronous and reactive model. I hope the auto industry (and everybody else who writes software and build computers) takes this to heart because these problems are going to happen again and again. And the cost is going to skyrocket.

At least half the comments on this story will boil down to one or more of the following:

• String theory is bunk. I know this because I heard someone call it "string theology" once and I thought that was clever.
• This idea is bunk because I think it contradicts something I vaguely remember from the Physics 101 course I took as a requirement for my CS degree ten years ago.
• Modern physics is bunk because nothing can move in spacetime. Visit my blog to learn the truth!
• Everyone knows the unifying force that holds the universe together is not gravity, but electricity. We have books, too!
• Ivory-tower egghead academics want to keep all their science locked away behind paywalls! How are we supposed to evaluate this if we can't read the paper?!?
• Modern science is bunk. These stupid liberal academics should just read the Bible.
• YOU ARE EDUCATED STUPID!

There. That should save everyone some time.

The whole space-based power thing is just a science geek's wet dream. It will never happen. You might as well forget about a world powered by wind, sunlight, tides, ocean waves, algae, corn, sugar cane, etc. All that stuff is excruciatingly primitive and will not succeed in the long run.

The amazing truth is that, like fish in the ocean, we are swimming in wall-to-wall energy but we can't see it. Why? Because we are blinded by our current assumptions about how bodies really move. Soon though, all that will change because not everybody is making the same assumptions about motion. A few mavericks are thinking deep thoughts. Get ready for the age of infinite free energy and true zero emissions.

Nasty Little Truth About Motion

Steven Hawking might as well be Paris Hilton. He believes that time travel is possible because (he claims) it is not contradicted by Einstein's General Relativity and yet, it is well known that nothing can move in spacetime because time is not a variable.

There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as "moving through" space-time, or as "following along" their world-lines. Rather, particles are just "in" space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle.

From "Relativity from A to B" by Dr. Robert Geroch, U. of Chicago

Note also that Sir Karl Popper compared spacetime to Parmenides' myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning). Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations

In other words, contrary to what Steven Hawking claims, there is no time travel and general relativity does not allow it. Steven is a true blue crackpot, a little con artist in a wheelchair whose ex-wife felt that her duty as Hawking's wife was to remind him every day that he was not God. I'll say. It's hard to be God when you're making shit up that don't exist while you're all crumpled up in a wheelchair. If you even believe in the possibility of time travel, you are a crackpot. Steven is a full-blown time travel crackpot among other things. ahahaha....

Nothing Can Move in Spacetime

most of the american stock exchanges have been going down all year.

It may be funny but when billions of dollars and even lives are at stake, software unreliability is not that funny. Software should work like hardware and should never fail unless there is a physical breakdown. Hardware is reactive, parallel and synchronous. Likewise, software should be reactive, parallel and synchronous. Until computer scientists realize this simple truth, we will continue to have catastrophic software failures and pay the consequences. It's time to say goodbye to the antiquated computing models of the last century. It's time to put the obsolete ideas of Turing and Babbage to rest in the age of multicore processors and massive parallelism. And please, kill the damn threads already; there is a way to implement rock-solid parallelism in a computer that does not involve threads at all. More at the links below.

Why Software Is Bad and What We can do to Fix It

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis

I notice there are a lot of links to a parked domain from your blog. http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/COSA.htm goes nowhere interesting.

Also, how would self modifying code work?

I have been working on a general AI project called Animal for some time. Animal is biologically inspired. It attempts to uses a multi-layer spiking neural network to learn how to play chess from scratch using sensors, effectors and a motivation mechanism based on reward and punishment. It is based on the premise that intelligence is essentially a temporal signal-processing phenomenon. I just need some funding. The caveat is that my ideas are out there big time and there is a bunch of people in cyberspace who think I am kook. LOL. But hey, send me some money anyway. You never know. I promise I won't mention the Bible stuff. :-D

I have been working on a general AI project called Animal for some time. Animal is biologically inspired. It attempts to uses a multi-layer spiking neural network to learn how to play chess from scratch using sensors, effectors and a motivation mechanism based on reward and punishment. It is based on the premise that intelligence is essentially a temporal signal-processing phenomenon. I just need some funding. The caveat is that my ideas are out there big time and there is a bunch of people in cyberspace who think I am kook. LOL. But hey, send me some money anyway. You never know. I promise I won't mention the Bible stuff. :-D

Why is it that the first application that I can think of for such project developed by DARPA is that to use it against the citizens?

Like it or lump it, you are in this boat with everyone else. If AI is solved, it will be used for good and evil. If your country does not use it for evil (extremely doubtful), somebody else's country will. Better yours than theirs. What I mean is that true AI will be an extremely powerful thing; if any country other than yours gets an early monopoly on AI, you can bet they are going to use it to kick your country's ass. I don't think you'd like that very much.

Having said that (and to get back on topic), I have been working on ageneral AI project called Animal for some time. Animal is biologically inspired. It attempts to uses a multi-layer spiking neural network to learn how to play chess from scratch using sensors, effectors and a motivation mechanism based on reward and punishment. It is based on the premise that intelligence is essentially a temporal signal-processing phenomenon. I just need some funding. The caveat is that my ideas are out there big time and there is a bunch of people in cyberspace who think I am kook. LOL. But hey, send me some money anyway. You never know. :-D

Why is it that the first application that I can think of for such project developed by DARPA is that to use it against the citizens?

Like it or lump it, you are in this boat with everyone else. If AI is solved, it will be used for good and evil. If your country does not use it for evil (extremely doubtful), somebody else's country will. Better yours than theirs. What I mean is that true AI will be an extremely powerful thing; if any country other than yours gets an early monopoly on AI, you can bet they are going to use it to kick your country's ass. I don't think you'd like that very much.

Having said that (and to get back on topic), I have been working on ageneral AI project called Animal for some time. Animal is biologically inspired. It attempts to uses a multi-layer spiking neural network to learn how to play chess from scratch using sensors, effectors and a motivation mechanism based on reward and punishment. It is based on the premise that intelligence is essentially a temporal signal-processing phenomenon. I just need some funding. The caveat is that my ideas are out there big time and there is a bunch of people in cyberspace who think I am kook. LOL. But hey, send me some money anyway. You never know. :-D

Componentization is a time-honored tradition in the hardware industry where it has been a huge success for decades. Componentization is the key to reusability. It is based on plug compatibility and makes drag-and-drop software construction possible, thereby openning programming to the masses. The reason that the same has not happened in the software world is that software is inherently sequential whereas hardware is parallel and signal-based. We need to go beyond the Turing ideal of sequential computing and adopt a computing model that is inherently parallel and signal-based. For more info on this topic see Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It. See also Parallel Computing: The End of the Turing Madness, although I would not recommend the latter to Turing worshippers as they might take offence.

There is only one little problem with the doughnut scenario. It assumes that the universe is continuous. Any scientist worth his or her Phd should know by now that continuity (infinite divisibility) leads to an infinite regress and is thus unacceptable. Worse, space itself (i.e., distance) is an illusion since its existence, too, leads to an infinite regress. I'm afraid that physicists need to reconsider some of their more cherished assumptions about reality because these kinds of conjectures about the shape of the universe are reminiscent of Star-Trek physics. This is the sort of things that undermine the thinking layman's respect for scientists in general.

Nasty Little Truth About Space

Continuity (infinite divisibility) is the basis of black holes and wormholes. It is nonsense for the simple reason that it leads to an infinite regress. Heck, space itself (i.e. distance) does not exist for the same simple reason. Distance is an illusion of perception. Spacetime is worse because nothing can move in it by definition. In Conjectures and Refutations, Sir Karl Popper compared spacetime to "Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens". All those physicists out there who are still making a living off of continuum physics are a bunch of crackpots. And that includes time travel believer Stephen Hawking. There is a lot of bullshit in the physics community that passes for science. Don't let mainstream physicists do your thinking for you. Click on the following links and get enlightened.

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics
Nasty Little Truth About Space

Don't believe me either. Figure it out on your own.

Continuity (infinite divisibility) is the basis of black holes and wormholes. It is nonsense for the simple reason that it leads to an infinite regress. Heck, space itself (i.e. distance) does not exist for the same simple reason. Distance is an illusion of perception. Spacetime is worse because nothing can move in it by definition. In Conjectures and Refutations, Sir Karl Popper compared spacetime to "Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens". All those physicists out there who are still making a living off of continuum physics are a bunch of crackpots. And that includes time travel believer Stephen Hawking. There is a lot of bullshit in the physics community that passes for science. Don't let mainstream physicists do your thinking for you. Click on the following links and get enlightened.

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics
Nasty Little Truth About Space

Don't believe me either. Figure it out on your own.

The assumption is that, since no Newtonian force is required to keep a body in inertial motion, nothing is required. It is a rather foolish assumption because it overlooks the fact that Newtonian force is, by definition, only associated with macroscopic acceleration as seen in the equation below:

Fn = ma
(where Fn = Newtonian force, m = the mass of a moving particle and a = acceleration.)

In other words, Newton posited a cause (force) for the observed accelerated movement of a massive body but failed to do the same for inertial movement.

OK. Name one thing that Stephen Hawking has invented that created any wealth other than the sales of his books and related articles.

Isn't Stephen Hawking the guy who, like Carl Sagan, David Deutsch, Kip Thorne and many others, believes that Einstein's GR does not forbid time travel? Yep. It remains that nothing can move in spacetime by definition. Surprise! This is the reason that Sir Karl Popper (or falsification fame) compared spacetime to "Einstein's block universe in which nothing ever happens". It is also the reason that Robert Geroch wrote the following in his book "Relativity from A to B":

There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as "moving through" space-time, or as "following along" their world-lines. Rather, particles are just "in" space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle.

Isn't it Hawking's job to understand and know these things? Read Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics to learn the truth about spacetime physics and time travel crackpots. It is time we stopped putting fallible humans on a pedestal and turn them into the superior gods that they are not.

My point is that a thread is a thread. If using multiple concurrent threads is harmful, so is using a single thread. Single threading is less harmful than multithreading but harmful nonetheless. The thread is the reason for every ill that ails computing, from the reliability crisis to the parallel programming crisis. There is a way to design and program computers that does not involve threads at all. It's called the non-algorithmic software model. This is the way we should have been doing it in the first place. To find out why algorithmic software (threading) is the work of the devil, read the articles at the links below:

Parallel Programming, Math and the Curse of the Algorithm
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It
Nightmare on Core Street

150 years after Babbage and Lady Ada introduced the algorithmic computing model, it is time to change. The longer we wait to realize the folly of our ways, the worst our problems are going to get.

I agree. Qsort is a perfect candidate for parallelism. Check out the COSA parallel quicksort page.

I have recently been reading a series of articles here and here regarding the multi-core parallel programming problem. The guy seems like he could be a little out there on the edge, but his concept for the COSA project, and fine grain parallelism seem really attractive to me. I have been thinking about trying to implement a COSA virtual machine to try it out.

I have also been thinking about trying to implement the COSA hardware in an FPGA, but that seems like a much harder project

I gotta say that link (and thus your post) is a whole lot hyperbole and a whole lot of text to get one link to the project Cosa: http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/COSA.htm

The project itself I suppose is pretty interesting...

But I'll not beleive the everyone in computer science since Charles Babbage was wrong BS until the entire industry is using the model proposed.

People have been dreaming of an abstract, reduced and simplified theory of the human brain since the study of the nervous system started. Nobody has quite managed yet... why don't you try? :)

I am and I have. I have been working on just such a project for years on my own time and my own dime. Trying to use computers to simulate neurons in all their biological glory is a pipe dream. We know how several types of neurons work on a higher and simpler level: they send and receive spikes via synapses. That's the only level that needs to be simulated to achieve intelligence. The brain is a discrete temporal mechanism that uses multiple integrated networks to learn and adapt. I'm sure Markram et al are aware of this but being biologists, they can't seem to move beyond the low-level complexities.

What we need first is an overall theory to play with, not supercomputers. Once we have a theory in place, we'll have a model to experiment with (even on a small scale), something that can evolve over time. It does not have to do much (learning to walk and navigate from scratch would do fine), as long as it it can learn and adapt and it is provably scalable. If you can show that, governments and corporations will step all over themselves to give you a parallel computer as big as the island of Manhattan, if necessary.

I've been saying this for years. Changing time is an oxymoron. Time dilation is an oxymoron. It's not time that slows down, it's the clock. In fact, nothing can move in spacetime at all, by definition. This is the reason that Sir Karl Popper (of falsification fame) called spacetime "Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens". In other words, all that nonsense about bodies following their geodesics through spacetime and about time travel through wormholes is all crap. Sorry. ahahaha...

my current major language (Igor pro) will use all the cores automatically, and how many languages do multithread this way? Matlab(?), Octave(?)

LabVIEW, by its very nature [which is graphical - based on "G" - the "Graphical" programming language] is kinda/sorta topologically self-threading: If a piece of LabVIEW code sits off in its own connected component, then [more or less] it gets its own thread.

Of course, all your ".h" & ".c" [or ".cc"] files [& their innards] might very well break down into little distinct connected components which are ripe for running their own threads, it's just that you can't - unless you're some sort of a super genius - you can't readily visualize all those connected components as they exist in your code.

Now you and your colleagues could try to anticipate the connected components a priori, during the "planning" phase: You could draw huge pictures on the dry-erase board, and everyone could yell and scream at each other about the topological structure which the code should ultimately embody, and then everyone would have to promise - Scout's Honor! - that they would stick to the blueprint [which they might very well resent as having been shoved down their throats by some pointed-headed suit who didn't have any clue what he was talking about] - but the beauty of LabVIEW is that THE CODE IS THE BLUEPRINT [which I think is a point that Jack Reeves used to make].

There's actually a Slashdotter, MOBE2001, who maintains a blog called Rebel Science News, who's got some pretty interesting ideas here - he seems to be leaning towards a graphical approach to this [realizing that the fundamental nature of the problem tends to be topological, rather than anything which we (YET!) would recognize as semantic], but his program is very, very ambitious [if I had a couple of spare lifetimes, I must just throw one in that general direction].

Another line of thought which everyone should keep an eye on is the discipline of Petri nets - it's kinduva big graphical/topological approach to state machines, which [if someone were to put the necessary elbow grease into it] might prove to be very useful in squeezing the most bang for the buck out of these massively-multicore CPU's.

You're a crank:
Artificial Intelligence From the Bible!
Particle Physics From the Bible!

You're a crank:
Artificial Intelligence From the Bible!
Particle Physics From the Bible!

an insane amount of genius

Funny but does it require genius to understand that nothing can move in spacetime, by definition? It's just simple logic, IMO. This is the reason that Sir Karl Popper called spacetime, Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens. Don't take my word for it, look it up! Apparently, our brilliant Spanish astrophysicists don't understand simple logic. Otherwise, they would have figured out that a time dimension is nonsense to start with. The universe is 4-dimensional and it is already spatial. A time dimension is crackpottery.

Read Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics and get the facts.

That is the same guy who says you can get artificial intelligence from the bible. He's a loon with a large vocabulary.

I don't think it is now considered a real paradox since information still cannot be transmitted faster than light.

Quantum tunneling does not prove that light speed is broken. It only proves that space (distance) is an illusion. In the future, we will have thechnologies that will allow us to jump form anywhere to anywhere instantly. See Nasty Little Truth About Space for more info on why space does not exist.

I really hope they don't go the "OS for battleships" direction and just take a regular OS and tailor it for cars. An OS that is going to help operate a car should be built using signal logic and work like a low level state machine. Like this: http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/COSA.htm or at least build it around a functional lambda calculus based language like haskell or erlang (see wikipedia). The last thing we need is random segfaults while we're driving.

as an aside-- please don't critize my suggestion without at least first reading up on functional lambda calculus based programming languages and COSA.

Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two.

Well there really is no need to despair of ever visiting the star systems of the Milky Way and even the galaxies beyond in your lifetimes, just because they are too far away. If those lazy-minded physicists would only get their heads out of their asses, they would have figured out by now that space (distance) is an illusion of perception. In the not too distant future, we will have long distance jump technologies that will allow us to move from anywhere to anywhere almost instantly. Too far-fetched, you say? Well, evidence for the feasibility of long distance jumps has already been observed. It's called quantum tunneling. Why is distance an illusion, you ask? It's all explained at the link below:

Nasty Little Truth About Space

Enjoy.

I was very interested in what you had to say until I found the Particle Physics From the Bible! section. You totally lost me there...

ahahaha... John Cramer is obviously a crackpot. But he is not alone. There are a bunch of crackpots like him in the physics community. David Deutsch (of quantum computing fame) and the little con artist in the wheelchair immediately come to mind. The fact remains that nothing can move in spacetime, by definition. It is all explained at the link below:

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics

Man, if I were going to sit down and create a Web site to meet every single point on the Crank Physics Detection Guide, that's the site I'd build.

Can I get the investors info?

ahahaha... John Cramer is obviously a crackpot. But he is not alone. There are a bunch of crackpots like him in the physics community. David Deutsch (of quantum computing fame) and the little con artist in the wheelchair immediately come to mind. The fact remains that nothing can move in spacetime, by definition. It is all explained at the link below:

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics

Paul Feyerabend, the foremost science critic of the last century, once wrote in his book 'Against Method' that "the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down in size, and to give them a more modest position in society." Feyerabend was speaking of scientists in general but he may as well have been talking about spacetime physics. Star Trek voodoo physics is morelike it. ahahaha...

Is Linux's less than impressive market share an indication that the movement is out of touch with the average computer user?

No. Linux is a living dinosaur. But don't feel bad. So are a bunch of other OSes such as Windows, MAC OS, Unix, etc... Linux does not have an impressive market because who needs yet another me-too operating system? And it does not really matter that it is free either. What the market needs is a revolutionary new OS based on a software model that solves a really nasty problem in the computer industry. The biggest problem in the industry is unreliability. Software unreliability imposes an upper limit on the complexity of our computer systems. For example, we could conceivably be riding in self-driving vehicles right now but concerns over reliability and safety will not allow it. In addition, the cost of software development rises exponentially with complexity. As a result, over 40,000 people die in traffic accidents every year in the US alone. The free software community should put Linux on the back burner and work on a software model that will solve the reliability problem. That will be the true Windows killer and that's what Project COSA is about.

It seems that AMD's research department is only concerned with beating Intel at its own game. This is foolish, IMO. AMD is doomed to always be a follower unless its engineers can come up with a revolutionary new CPU architecture based on a revolutionary software model. The new architecture must address the two biggest problems in the computer industry today: reliability and productivity. Unreliability puts an upper limit to how complex our software systems can be. As an example, we could conceivably be riding in self-driving vehicles right now but safety and reliability concerns will not allow it. Why? Because there is something fundamental wrong with software. Fortunately, a software model that solves these problems already exists. It is called the "non-algorithmic, synchronous, reactive software model. That's what Project COSA is about.

Nobody is really sure what quantum physics says about reality or locality.

All nonlocality means is that space (distance) is an illusion. But we don't need all this mumbo-jumbo about hidden variables and Bell's inequality to tell us that there is no space. It can be easily figured out with simple logic. By the way, there is no spooky superluminal signal propagation between entangled particles because, you guessed it, there is no distance between them. In the future we will use this knowledge to develop technologies that will allow us to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere!

Well, my goal is to build machines that pass the Turing Test, so I have to think about more than cortex. But more generally, one might wonder how much of intelligence it is possible to capture with a system that "doesn't have desires, motives, or intentions of any kind".

Not to mention, motor coordination, attention, short and long-term memory, cerebellar processes, etc... It's a little more complicated than Hawkins would have us believe, especially if you don't already know the answers. Fortunately, the secret of AI has already been found and written down for us many centuries ago. Check it out: Artificial intelligence from the Bible!. ahahaha... AHAHAHA...

And it may be the first half of the 21st century, or maybe go all the way to the 22nd century. Because, unfortunately, I happen to think we won't be able to rely on experiment to resolve this problem.

I don't think so. Actually, if one applies the law of causality to its fullest, one is forced to conclude that we are moving in an immense multi-dimensional lattice of energetic particles. Why? Because, contrary to current belief, movement is causal. That is to say, nothing can move unless it is caused to move. This means that a particle's movement can only be sustained by a series of interactions, one for each discrete jump. See Nasty Little Truth About Motion for more on the causality of motion. My point is that one does not need esoteric physics experiments to see that we are moving in a sea of energy. Every observed movement is the existence proof we need! One day soon, we will understand the composition and properties of the lattice and we will use our newfound knowledge for such purposes as energy generation and vehicle propulsion. Won't be long now. ahahaha...

The Real Enemies of Software Reliability

Guess what? Oracle is on the list. ahahaha...

Oracle's Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson should be next on the list, IMO, for once more comparing software engineering to bridge and building engineering.

And I cant believe that I spend 30 minutes on an offtopic post, just to debunk your "silver bullet".

It took me some time to decide whether or not to reply to your message. You are a typical, know-it-all and pompous Slashdot nerd and the moderators who gave you mod points should hang their heads in shame. Your arguments are based on ignorance and I refute them on my site. Believe me when I say that I've seen them all.

Devil's Advocate.

Next time, think before you put your foot in your mouth. Also, it would not hurt to become familiar with the point of view you are criticizing.

Before you mod this guy up, read his contribution history and the links in his sig and under his name. This guy (Louis Savain) is a crank. As well as being a physics crank who seems to think that Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Kurt Gödel, and Albert Einstein are "crackpots", he's apparently also a computer science crank.

FTA: It's the very antithesis of the push for greater levels of parallelism

There is only one way to achieve optimum performance using multiple cores (or multiple processors) and that is to adopt a non-algorithmic, signal-based, synchronous software model. In this reactive model , there are no threads at all, or rather, every instruction is its own thread or processor object. It waits for a signal to do something, performs its operation and then sends a signal to one or more objects. There can be as many operations executing in parallel. At every tick of a virtual clock, there is a list of operations to be executed. These can be chanelled to the available cores for processing, assuring a full load for the cores at all times.

The only caveat is the von Neuman memory access bottleneck which gets you every time. In the end, I suspect that only optical computing or something based on quantum tunelling will get around this very serious problem.

Classical physics, which includes both Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics, is mostly descriptive math engineering. Math does not explain physics; on the contrary, it's the physics that explains the math. For examples, they do not explain why things fall or why bodies in motion remain in motion. The beef of a physical theory is the mechanism that is responsible for the observation. Where is the beef of relativity? Until someone comes up with the beef, neither theory can claim to be physical theories, in my opinion. They're just math tricks with no real physics. The best way to improve Einstein's and Newton's theories is to unravel or model the actual physics behind the math. Until then, it's not much better than ptolemaic epicycles.

PS. I already heard the usual ripost by relativists to the effect that science is not about the why of phenomena but the how. IMO, that's just a lame copout to excuse their ignorance and mental laziness. I already know that bodies fall and move; I want to know why they do it, if you don't mind. And please Brian Greene, stop preaching the nonsense about gravity being caused by the curvature of spacetime. Nothing moves in spacetime. ahahaha...

First it came from climate science, but now we have have wholesale abuse of the scientific method in other disciplines where we don't bother submitting research papers for even the limited review of scientific peers, let alone skeptical review, replication or empirical testing (which used to be the cornerstones of science).

Now we have the internet, we don't have to sweat the small stuff. We announce our results, get slashdotted, and behold! A new scientific paradigm is born!

Only a few days ago, a schizophrenic got his anti-science drivel slashdotted, for which this loon was immensely grateful.

The TFA mentions that this is a "noted physicist". Noted by whom? Was he noted for actually producing useful theory, a better mousetrap? Or was he simply noted by the article author?

This isn't science. This is a celebrity system based on spin, hype and wish fulfillment.

If I had a genuine solution to the "Pioneer Anomaly" for example, I would not dare announce the result like this, for fear that my scientific career would be permanently tarnished.

But then, I'm not a "noted physicist", am I?

http://rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.htm

Normally a particle moves by making a quantum jump, i.e., its intrinsic positional property changes from one discrete value to another. The fundamental discrete distance is on the order of the Planck Length (about 10^-35 meters), a very minute distance. However, there is no reason to suppose that the positional property of a particle cannot change by amounts larger than the fundamental value.

Is the stuff about tunnelling true?

We are already seeing evidence of nonspatiality and instant long distance travel in the phenomenon known as quantum tunneling. In certain circumstances, particles are observed going through barriers in a way that defy classical physics. Interestingly, they seem to do so at speeds greater than the speed of light.

40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.