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Do Plants Practice Grid Computing?
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Nature, plants appear to 'think' and seem to optimize their 'breathing' by conducting simple calculations through a distributed computing scheme. "David Peak and co-workers at Utah State University in Logan say that plants may regulate their uptake and loss of gases by 'distributed computation' -- a kind of information processing that involves communication between many interacting units." Nature adds this is similar to signals exchanged by ants to find the best source of food for an ant community. In their paper, the researchers added that their results were "consistent with the proposition that a plant solves its optimal gas exchange problem through an emergent, distributed computation performed by its leaves." This overview contains more details and references. It also includes a picture of the tiny pores on the surface of a cactus leaf, called stomata, which permit the plant to breathe when they're opened."
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of trees...
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
But they probably call it something else.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
...leaf nodes?
Or are they root nodes?
No wonder the damn weeds keep coming back so fast - they must be overclocked.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I see the connection. Grid computing is vaporware and most plants need moist air to survive.
I saw the headline to this article "Do plants practice grid computing?" and I thought "AHA! I'll just jump in here, throw in a hillarious line about plants and computers and bingo, easy points."
Imagine my dismay when I saw that every single message on the thread is a hillarious comment about plants and their computing abilities! Ho ho ho
You people certainly make it difficult for a person to be an edgy counter-culture warrior, disarming the system with humour.
Just go back to bashing Microsoft and leave the comedy to me.
apt-get install deathstar && deathstar alderaan && echo "You're far too trusting"
It also includes a picture of the tiny pores on the surface of a cactus leaf, called stomata. . .
Unless the cactus looks like this, then they're called stigmata
(And no, that's no goatse link and I didn't draw it myself -- found it by googling for images of "cactus cross". Once again the unholy alliance of Google and freakish AOLers is there to support an awful pun.)
Don't tell the hippies; then what will they eat and wear? Who wants to see a bunch of filthy, scrawny, naked hippies running about telling everyone to eat dirt.
Apparently, there's Unix code in these plants information processing systems.
Mod parent up!
We already knew that. The plants are part of the system that was built by the mice for the purpose of answering the question of life, the universe, and everything.
If this story were published in ___ it would be titled ___
1790: Plants and their Hidden Telegraphs!
1870: Do Plants Talk to Each Other on Leafy Telephones?
1962: Plants and their Invisible DEW Lines
1990: Plants have their Own Secret Internet!
2004: Do Plants Practice Grid Computing?
2010: Do Plants Engage in CyberBiphrenistic Nano-Spatulation?
...from the naive/evil scientist in Christian Nyby's 1951 The Thing.
Other important points:
Don't sleep with an electric blanket near a frozen alien.
Vegetables can be preserved by freezing, but not by cooking.
When isolated in an artic research station, don't feed blood-eating vegetables your reserve plasma supply.
The Cactus Pore pic makes funky wallpaper if you set it as a tile.
ls
is give peas a chance.
(uh. that hurt.)
No longer can calling someone "a vegtable" imply total lack of brain activity.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
When I eat a nice pork chop, at least it's dead. When you bite into that apple, it's STILL ALIVE! Can you hear the tiny distributed screams?
I can't wait until I'll get my SETI@home calculation cluster. It'll consist of three petunias, eight marijuana plants and a lawn.
THIS IS THE INTERNET. PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SERIOUS BUSINESS SUIT AT THE FRONT COUNTER.