``Every logician who I have ever seen discuss the topic says that Penrose completely misunderstands the contents of Goedel's theorem... Here is a short explanation [hypertext link] of Goedel''
The linked-to item says this about Penrose: ``Does a marvelous job of explaining what goes into the proof --- his presentation could be understood by a bright high school student, or even an MBA''
Seems to be a contradiction here. The only ways to resolve the contradiction that I can see are (a) the author of the linked-to item is not a logician, or (b) tilly has not seen the linked-to item.
Well, young imp, perhaps you are too young to have enough perspective. So here for your benefit is a very compressed history of the Amiga since the fall of Commodore.
1. Commodore management went mad and corrupt, and coasted along on the momentum of earlier success. Each successive machine they released was slightly less powerful than the one before it. Obviously this was very depressing; many (and eventually most) Amigans jumped ship to the PC which, due to rapid increases in hardware technology, became more attractive, even though it was pushing a substandard OS.
2. The Amiga name and intellectual property was bought by Escom, a retailer of PCs. Perhaps they wanted to branch out into more creative realms, so they announced development on a new machine, but true to Commodore tradition, it was technologically equivalant to the previous generation of Amigas. The most notable feature of this machine was that it came in a funky case that made it look annoyingly like a vacuum cleaner.
3. The Amiga IP was bought by Gateway, another retailer of PCs, for its patent portfolio. Some of the Gateway people were getting bored stiff with endless Windows PCs, so they decided to make a new Amiga platform. They made some announcements about new a new AmigaOS that seemed encouraging, but there was not a great deal of technological vision. After some time they realised that they couldn't pull it off; management decided it wasn't in their business interests. Near the end they panicked and decided to stick their stuff on top of the Linux kernel. Many people wondered what the point of that could possibly be, and helpfully pointed out that there was a Linux platform in existance already. Eventually the project was cancelled or turned into a Set Top Box, much to the delight of some howling Slashdotters like yourself.
4. A few groups of independent Amigans (note, proper Amigans this time) thoroughly disillusioned by, and generally fucked over by the events of prevoius history, formed an alliance to create a new Amiga platform. One of these groups, the ones that are the subject of this Slashdot topic, managed to raise the capital to buy the Amiga name and continue development on a bigger scale.
This latest attempt at resurection, unlike the previous attempts, does seem to have much technological merit. Many of the ideas for the new Operating Environment seem to be truly revolutionary, as does the core OS itself. Now that there is soon to be a development machine released, hopefully there will be some technical information released, so that casual observers* like myself can make an informed decision about whether or not to get involved.
Long live the Amiga!
---------------------- * I've only kept one eye on the story of the Amiga, so I can't vouch that the history above is completely accurate.
Just to clarify things a bit, britannica.com says that Telsa was born in Smiljan, Croatia; and that he ``was from a family of Serbian origin''. Britannica calls him a ``Serbian-American''.
I did a BS in math a few years ago; there were just as many females as males, if not more, at the end.
I personally had self doubts about whether I could "do math"; I imagine this is not uncommon. As the electronic talking Barbie says, ``Math is hard!'', and I quite agree with her. Luckily for me, as a male, I didn't have the extra pressure of imagining that I was disqualified from the start by belonging to a certain gender.
Yes, in fact he dedicates the book to his friends who died from drug abuse:
This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed - run over, maimed, destroyed - but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was such a terribly brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life style. In this particular life style the motto is Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence.
Please forgive in advance this (functional) atheist for butting in here. I looked up your first quote from various random bibles to see what I could make of it (the quotes are appended below for reference).
I think your interpretation is the direct opposite of the real intention of what is written. It says: ``no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation'', but what you are doing is making an interpretation -- a literal interpretation -- a fairly arbitrary interpretation ``made by an act of human will''.
Rather, it says that the truth of Scripture came from ``men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God''. That is, it is saying that the truth comes from mystical inspiration from God, via the Holy Spirit.
The original poster, Waldo, made the point well I think: a literal interpretation of the Bible ends up cutting down the grandeur of the physical world. I would add to this that a literal interpretation cuts down the grandeur of everything the Bible addresses; to do so would be to completely miss the metaphorical and mystical aspects of the Bible. It is in these aspects where I find the most value.
Finally, what I have said here may or may not be true, depending on the degree to which I was inspired by the Holy Spirit:) (I'm serious, I'm not trying to be flippant).
Peace be with you.
--------------------- New American Standard
2 Peter 1:18 and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
2 Peter 1:19 So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
2 Peter 1:20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation,
2 Peter 1:21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
Young's Literal
2 Peter 1:18 and this voice we -- we did hear, out of heaven borne, being with him in the holy mount.
2 Peter 1:19 And we have more firm the prophetic word, to which we do well giving heed, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, till day may dawn, and a morning star may arise -- in your hearts;
2 Peter 1:20 this first knowing, that no prophecy of the Writing doth come of private exposition,
2 Peter 1:21 for not by will of man did ever prophecy come, but by the Holy Spirit borne on holy men of God spake.
King James Version
2 Peter 1:18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
2 Peter 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
2 Peter 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake [as they were] moved by the Holy Ghost.
... biggest lump of crap to come along in a while. Several other posters have hit the nail right on the head, this guy definately does not understand QM, and the fact that he can even get a publisher is just strange.
I'm not sure that "this guy", that wrote the article, is the author of the book. The article is just a press release from the University of Surrey. In any case, can you expand on why "this guy" doesn't understand QM?
It always irks me when people say "No, that couldn't have happened" or "No, that won't happen" just because "It's too weird"! Anything can happen... deal with it.
But any theory which depends on something of high improbability is less likely to be true than one that doesn't.
Van Vogt used to write several books a day;) I have stack of them a couple of feet high. But even though he churned them out, and even though he didn't make any sense, he was a pretty cool writer.
Elate uses a "Virtual Processor" (VP) which is an imaginary processor that is targeted by compilers. VP code ends up being translated into native code. Interestingly, according to the marketing blurb on the web site, drivers are portable also.
I don't know a lot about BeOS, but I believe you when you say it could be ported in a week. Well, maybe the kernel, but what about all of the other software that makes up BeOS? All of that would have to be recompiled, tested (for endian problems at least) and maintained. What happens to software for which there is no source code available? Historically, Be has ported to new hardware, or rather migrated (hobbit --> PPC --> X86), for survival reasons, not because they want to support new hardware.
Tao has the raw OS. Amiga will be adding the rest of the Operating Environment.
As far as hardware goes, I think the idea is that you can use whatever hardware you like. X86 hardware is commodity stuff, i.e. cheap, no doubt most people will use that. Or if something better comes along, or if you have specialist needs, you could use that. The point is, you will have freedom of choice.
If you are thinking about the famous Classic Amiga ``Custom Chips'', they are irrelevant. Companies like Nvidia are the ones with the most expertise and dollars, they are the ones producing the best and cheapest Custom Chips.
Your links, ``First rumours'' and ``Speculation'' are out of date. They talk about Gateway's plans for the Amiga, but Gateway doesn't own Amiga any more.
I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them [Amigas], much less why they're still relevant to any of us
The Amiga is relevant because it has always had a powerful-but-easy-to-use design philosphy. Linux/Unix is powerful, but can it ever be easy to use (for Joe L. User)? I know, people are working on it, but Linux's hardcore-nerd roots make it very challenging. And Windows of course is easy to use, if you want to do easy things, but difficult if you want to do powerful things. So, there is a big opportunity here, don't you think?
Certainly Amiga has had many abortive attempts at rebirth since Commodore went under many years ago, but the latest attempt looks to me like a winner. Here is a press release from jan 8:
These guys who bought Amiga have some very interesting ideas to do with an Object Oriented Operating Environment; and the underlying OS, Elate from Tao, looks very interesting too. Some highlights of Elate:
real time (important for multimedia)
object based from the ground up
easy porting to new platforms (just one part of it needs ``just a few weeks to be written'' for a new platform).
hardware independant executables
can run hosted in another OS, so it can get on peoples computers by stealth (Be seems to be doing this too). If they like it, they can install it natively.
I imagine it will work well for certain games and not others.
Perhaps it would work well for driving games. One thing that annoys me about many driving games is that, when cornering, there is a point where your wheels begin to slip, but there are no real cues about when it will happen. With this Virtual Motion technology, you could feel the centrifugal forces.
An interesting thing about Eiffel is that as well as a programming language, it is a design language. The distance between design and implementation is shortened, which is a good thing because energy isn't wasted in translating back and forth between separate design and programming languages.
I don't think this is so uncommon. I know a few people who wanted to remove their Linux partitions simply because Linux wasn't ready for them yet. So maybe this is a valid support issue. Not everything that MS does is motivated by evil.
Yeah. That's life. But I do think it used to be better, back then when medias and society in general weren't making a majority of people become dumb, superficial lamers.
Just curious, why do you think life used to better way back then? I really doubt there was ever a golden age. Certainly our own age has its unique problems, but people have been saying how shitty the world is since (at least) the beginning of recorded history:)
Slashdot Mirror
``Every logician who I have ever seen discuss the topic says that Penrose completely misunderstands the contents of Goedel's theorem ... Here is a short explanation [hypertext link] of Goedel''
The linked-to item says this about Penrose: ``Does a marvelous job of explaining what goes into the proof --- his presentation could be understood by a bright high school student, or even an MBA''
Seems to be a contradiction here. The only ways to resolve the contradiction that I can see are (a) the author of the linked-to item is not a logician, or (b) tilly has not seen the linked-to item.
1. Commodore management went mad and corrupt, and coasted along on the momentum of earlier success. Each successive machine they released was slightly less powerful than the one before it. Obviously this was very depressing; many (and eventually most) Amigans jumped ship to the PC which, due to rapid increases in hardware technology, became more attractive, even though it was pushing a substandard OS.
2. The Amiga name and intellectual property was bought by Escom, a retailer of PCs. Perhaps they wanted to branch out into more creative realms, so they announced development on a new machine, but true to Commodore tradition, it was technologically equivalant to the previous generation of Amigas. The most notable feature of this machine was that it came in a funky case that made it look annoyingly like a vacuum cleaner.
3. The Amiga IP was bought by Gateway, another retailer of PCs, for its patent portfolio. Some of the Gateway people were getting bored stiff with endless Windows PCs, so they decided to make a new Amiga platform. They made some announcements about new a new AmigaOS that seemed encouraging, but there was not a great deal of technological vision. After some time they realised that they couldn't pull it off; management decided it wasn't in their business interests. Near the end they panicked and decided to stick their stuff on top of the Linux kernel. Many people wondered what the point of that could possibly be, and helpfully pointed out that there was a Linux platform in existance already. Eventually the project was cancelled or turned into a Set Top Box, much to the delight of some howling Slashdotters like yourself.
4. A few groups of independent Amigans (note, proper Amigans this time) thoroughly disillusioned by, and generally fucked over by the events of prevoius history, formed an alliance to create a new Amiga platform. One of these groups, the ones that are the subject of this Slashdot topic, managed to raise the capital to buy the Amiga name and continue development on a bigger scale.
This latest attempt at resurection, unlike the previous attempts, does seem to have much technological merit. Many of the ideas for the new Operating Environment seem to be truly revolutionary, as does the core OS itself. Now that there is soon to be a development machine released, hopefully there will be some technical information released, so that casual observers* like myself can make an informed decision about whether or not to get involved.
Long live the Amiga!
----------------------
* I've only kept one eye on the story of the Amiga, so I can't vouch that the history above is completely accurate.
Just to clarify things a bit, britannica.com says that Telsa was born in Smiljan, Croatia; and that he ``was from a family of Serbian origin''. Britannica calls him a ``Serbian-American''.
I did a BS in math a few years ago; there were just as many females as males, if not more, at the end.
I personally had self doubts about whether I could "do math"; I imagine this is not uncommon. As the electronic talking Barbie says, ``Math is hard!'', and I quite agree with her. Luckily for me, as a male, I didn't have the extra pressure of imagining that I was disqualified from the start by belonging to a certain gender.
Yes, in fact he dedicates the book to his friends who died from drug abuse:
If you start imagining that you have MSDOS installed in your brain, you are having a bad trip.
1. I find a dead body, in its hand is a 1,000,000,000 barrel revolver. Theory: the deceased died by playing Russian Roulette with one bullet.
It may of course turn out to be true, but I would investigate other theories first.
Please forgive in advance this (functional) atheist for butting in here. I looked up your first quote from various random bibles to see what I could make of it (the quotes are appended below for reference).
I think your interpretation is the direct opposite of the real intention of what is written. It says: ``no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation'', but what you are doing is making an interpretation -- a literal interpretation -- a fairly arbitrary interpretation ``made by an act of human will''.
Rather, it says that the truth of Scripture came from ``men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God''. That is, it is saying that the truth comes from mystical inspiration from God, via the Holy Spirit.
The original poster, Waldo, made the point well I think: a literal interpretation of the Bible ends up cutting down the grandeur of the physical world. I would add to this that a literal interpretation cuts down the grandeur of everything the Bible addresses; to do so would be to completely miss the metaphorical and mystical aspects of the Bible. It is in these aspects where I find the most value.
Finally, what I have said here may or may not be true, depending on the degree to which I was inspired by the Holy Spirit :) (I'm serious, I'm not trying to be flippant).
Peace be with you.
---------------------
New American Standard
2 Peter 1:18
and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
2 Peter 1:19
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
2 Peter 1:20
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation,
2 Peter 1:21
for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
Young's Literal
2 Peter 1:18
and this voice we -- we did hear, out of heaven borne, being with him in the holy mount.
2 Peter 1:19
And we have more firm the prophetic word, to which we do well giving heed, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, till day may dawn, and a morning star may arise -- in your hearts;
2 Peter 1:20
this first knowing, that no prophecy of the Writing doth come of private exposition,
2 Peter 1:21
for not by will of man did ever prophecy come, but by the Holy Spirit borne on holy men of God spake.
King James Version
2 Peter 1:18
And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
2 Peter 1:19
We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
2 Peter 1:20
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
2 Peter 1:21
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake [as they were] moved by the Holy Ghost.
I'm not sure that "this guy", that wrote the article, is the author of the book. The article is just a press release from the University of Surrey. In any case, can you expand on why "this guy" doesn't understand QM?
It always irks me when people say "No, that couldn't have happened" or "No, that won't happen" just because "It's too weird"! Anything can happen... deal with it.
But any theory which depends on something of high improbability is less likely to be true than one that doesn't.
And all of the energy that drives life comes from the sun. As the sun gives off energy, there is an increase in entropy.
Van Vogt used to write several books a day ;) I have stack of them a couple of feet high. But even though he churned them out, and even though he didn't make any sense, he was a pretty cool writer.
Elate uses a "Virtual Processor" (VP) which is an imaginary processor that is targeted by compilers. VP code ends up being translated into native code. Interestingly, according to the marketing blurb on the web site, drivers are portable also.
I don't know a lot about BeOS, but I believe you when you say it could be ported in a week. Well, maybe the kernel, but what about all of the other software that makes up BeOS? All of that would have to be recompiled, tested (for endian problems at least) and maintained. What happens to software for which there is no source code available? Historically, Be has ported to new hardware, or rather migrated (hobbit --> PPC --> X86), for survival reasons, not because they want to support new hardware.
Yes, of course, you made some very good points. I too get tired of whinings about Amiga not being news for nerds.
As far as hardware goes, I think the idea is that you can use whatever hardware you like. X86 hardware is commodity stuff, i.e. cheap, no doubt most people will use that. Or if something better comes along, or if you have specialist needs, you could use that. The point is, you will have freedom of choice.
If you are thinking about the famous Classic Amiga ``Custom Chips'', they are irrelevant. Companies like Nvidia are the ones with the most expertise and dollars, they are the ones producing the best and cheapest Custom Chips.
Your links, ``First rumours'' and ``Speculation'' are out of date. They talk about Gateway's plans for the Amiga, but Gateway doesn't own Amiga any more.
I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them [Amigas], much less why they're still relevant to any of us
The Amiga is relevant because it has always had a powerful-but-easy-to-use design philosphy. Linux/Unix is powerful, but can it ever be easy to use (for Joe L. User)? I know, people are working on it, but Linux's hardcore-nerd roots make it very challenging. And Windows of course is easy to use, if you want to do easy things, but difficult if you want to do powerful things. So, there is a big opportunity here, don't you think?
Certainly Amiga has had many abortive attempts at rebirth since Commodore went under many years ago, but the latest attempt looks to me like a winner. Here is a press release from jan 8:
Amiga Incorporated has entered into a strategic relationship with Tao Group for the New Amiga
These guys who bought Amiga have some very interesting ideas to do with an Object Oriented Operating Environment; and the underlying OS, Elate from Tao, looks very interesting too. Some highlights of Elate:
More info on Elate can be found at www.tao-group.com.
But it's still very early days, so don't get too excited just yet.
I imagine it will work well for certain games and not others.
Perhaps it would work well for driving games. One thing that annoys me about many driving games is that, when cornering, there is a point where your wheels begin to slip, but there are no real cues about when it will happen. With this Virtual Motion technology, you could feel the centrifugal forces.
An interesting thing about Eiffel is that as well as a programming language, it is a design language. The distance between design and implementation is shortened, which is a good thing because energy isn't wasted in translating back and forth between separate design and programming languages.
One of my math lecturers knitted a Klein bottle
Yes, he was pretty cool.
But it's e^(pi*i) = -1 isn't it?
From page 3 of the patent:
``The light pattern projected by the laser cat exerciser is invisible until intersection with an opaque surface.''
I don't think this is so uncommon. I know a few people who wanted to remove their Linux partitions simply because Linux wasn't ready for them yet. So maybe this is a valid support issue. Not everything that MS does is motivated by evil.
Yeah. That's life. But I do think it used to be better, back then when medias and society in general weren't making a majority of people become dumb, superficial lamers.
Just curious, why do you think life used to better way back then? I really doubt there was ever a golden age. Certainly our own age has its unique problems, but people have been saying how shitty the world is since (at least) the beginning of recorded history :)