exponential curves, s-curves, and bell-curves
on
Kurzweil on the Future
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Its often dangerous to extrapolate an exponential trend, much less a linear trend because they can have the nasty effect of flattening out or even turning over (bubble investing). Who knows whether we are at the middle, base or top of the curve for computing or biotechnology?
They've bassically found bacteria where ever they've drilled deep. The stuff in oil deposits is obvious - that a source of buriend biomaterial transformation into oil and energy for the bacteria. Less obvious are bacteria found in igneous basement, perhaps from ground water over millions or billions of years.
Google, MicroSoft and others are generalizing their map software to pan and zoom through huge astronomical databases such as this. The first two are partnering the massive telescope surveys to manage the petabytes of data to be acquired.
Kurzweil's predictions will come to pass, by not on the time-scale he envisions. probably centuries. He has been hoping for personal immortality through technology and takes over 200 anti-aging pills a day.
Phrenology was 19th century "science" of discerning personality types by look at fine detail of skull shape. This shares some aspects with 21st century brain scans:
(1) They are both based on head geometry. Phrenology just looked at the surface, while MRI looks at volumes.
(2) They are both derived from empirical measurements, rather than first-principles of why geometry is the way it is. This is not bad if it really works. Although more people would believe it if the underlying mechanisms for the geometric patterns were known, and improving the predictablity of new patterns.
(3) There seems to be some degree of interpretation of data. This degenerated into prejudice against certain kinds of humans for phrenology, eventually defeating that method.
Supposedly in the 21st century there is more objective statistical discrimination of results.
(4) The majority of scientists arent convinced of either.
Several groups such as Glatzmeir at Harvard have tried computer simulations. Since it is a non-linear, turbelent phenomena they have to make a very small grid with a large number of grid cells. It took 80 days of NSF supercomputer time in the mid-1990s.
Plus there are some uncertainties:
(1) The equations of state at the high pressures and temperatures inside the earth arent well known. People have squished minerals in diamond presses or in super-guns to measure the equations of state. However a Berkeley group claims the inner-most core is twice as hot as others claim. A factor of two uncertainty is not good.
(2) The coupling of elastic equations with magnetic equations is not well thought out either. People have done each independently fairly comprehensively, but not both together.
The Harvard guy got some interesting results:
(1) There is an inter-play between the solid inner iron core and liquid iron outer core. The solid holds magnetisation better than the liquid. So he sees over a hundred thousand year simulation a "flickering" as the field looks like it might reverse then really doesnt. Then eventually it reverses about every 40,000 years. This is a little faster than observed in rocks. Currently the earth's magnetic field is abotu 10% weaker than meaured right around 1800. People think is this more likely a "flicker" than an impending reversal, but who knows?
(2) The model predicted convection spins the whole core once time extra about every 400 years. Convection is driven by both thermal and magnetic force. Seismologists have looked for this "extra core day" and think they have found it. There has been comprehensive global seismic data for about 45 years, or about a tenth of a rotation. Seismologists have see inner core velocity anomalies moving about this rate. You know a theory is really fabulous when it predicts something completely unexpected such as extra core days, and then scientists verify it.
Comparing somthing to an old supercomputer is stupid. At any given time a s supercomputer is faster order of magnitude machines (60 to 600 teraflops in mid-2008).
I heard anthropologist try to establish that "normal" tribal war-death rate was a fairly constant number over much of the world, and in psuedo-tribal situations like inner city gangs.
I've heard that this rate has generally decreased in the modern era. Its different when have large organizations like nation-states and technical weapons. Although side effects like starvation and disease jack up deaths. The US has never had a sustained one percent death rate - imaging if three million every year were dying in formal war or terrorism. Maybe a few, inquent "big ones" could occur to bring society to its long-term average.
Thats pretty much standard for conventional underwriting. That all went out the door in the dot.com era. Valuations switched to revenue streams, which meant much less. Google waited until it had profits.
The history of computers is littered with nifty idea that were only 1.5x 2x or even 5x better price-performance than the establishment. Theres too much invested in existing vendor relationships, hardware and especially software otherwise.
> Mutations from what? They didn't sequence his parents, did they?
Human Genome Project Reference Genome, allegedly an almagmation of 10-20 individuals.
Various groups are trying to expand this to 100 - 1000 personal genomes by the end of the this decade to better characterize what is constant, what varies, what it is dangerous, etc.
Thats my term for going to some public space like a coffee house or park and seeing all these people plugged into machines instead of interacting with each other. There reading laptops, chatting on cells, zoned out with ear-buds, etc. Its just like a scene out Invasion of the Body Snatchers(*), except real life.
(*) The Snatchers have sustituted human beings with emotionless aliens who walk glassy-eyed down the street.
An article in Nature (proprietry web) a month ago analyzed the genetic content of James Watson, the co-discoverer of the genetic code, and the 2nd of four known people to have their genomes fully sequenced. Dr. Watson had three thousand observed mutations of which 32 were in the database of genetic diseases. This included Retinitis Pigmentosa, kidney failure and other potentially devasting diseases. However, it is not known why they were not expressed in his case. This is all the more reason to keep insurance companies from canceling insurances to those who might have any sort of genetic defect.
P.S. No, they did not discover the gene for making stupid racist remarks, which forced Dr. Watson into retirement last year.
You should watch videos of our first satellite attempts. I'm surprised we didnt have more fried astronauts.
farm tractors that look like airplane cockpits
on
Big Rigs Go High Tech
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· Score: 1
Earlier this year I wandering around the local county fair. A compnay was exhibiting its latest in tractor cabs. It looked like an airplane cockpit. First,there were 360-view TV screens to see what what is happening everywhere. These things take a while a while to stop and start and you want to be stopping for every bump. Then they had GPS navigation for precision planting and harvesting. Not a foot of land would need go to waste. Plus there are computers and sftware to optimize energy usage.
Another activity is that several institutions around the world will have "landing parties" with live NASA TV feeds. Denver Science museum is one of them. They will fill two auditoriums and their IMAX with spectators for the @4PM landing and @8PM first picture feed. Plus they will have various planetary sciences and construction engineers (probe built in Denver area) fill in with lectures. They are even selling dinner for the hard-care who may stay the full six hours. Its sold out. They had successful parties for the past three Mars probe arrivals.
I debating whether to be a real nerd and "dress up" for the occasion. I have something that look like the attennae in "My Favorite Martian" or the Saturday morning cartoons....
Slashdot Mirror
Its often dangerous to extrapolate an exponential trend, much less a linear trend because they can have the nasty effect of flattening out or even turning over (bubble investing). Who knows whether we are at the middle, base or top of the curve for computing or biotechnology?
They've bassically found bacteria where ever they've drilled deep. The stuff in oil deposits is obvious - that a source of buriend biomaterial transformation into oil and energy for the bacteria. Less obvious are bacteria found in igneous basement, perhaps from ground water over millions or billions of years.
They generally copy other people's ideas - BASIC, DOS, MacWindows, google-size data-centers, Apple multi-touch ... The list is as long as MS products.
Google, MicroSoft and others are generalizing their map software to pan and zoom through huge astronomical databases such as this. The first two are partnering the massive telescope surveys to manage the petabytes of data to be acquired.
He's probably got it sewn up, but things can happen before then.
Kurzweil's predictions will come to pass, by not on the time-scale he envisions. probably centuries. He has been hoping for personal immortality through technology and takes over 200 anti-aging pills a day.
Phrenology was 19th century "science" of discerning personality types by look at fine detail of skull shape. This shares some aspects with 21st century brain scans:
(1) They are both based on head geometry. Phrenology just looked at the surface, while MRI looks at volumes.
(2) They are both derived from empirical measurements, rather than first-principles of why geometry is the way it is. This is not bad if it really works. Although more people would believe it if the underlying mechanisms for the geometric patterns were known, and improving the predictablity of new patterns.
(3) There seems to be some degree of interpretation of data. This degenerated into prejudice against certain kinds of humans for phrenology, eventually defeating that method. Supposedly in the 21st century there is more objective statistical discrimination of results.
(4) The majority of scientists arent convinced of either.
Several groups such as Glatzmeir at Harvard have tried computer simulations. Since it is a non-linear, turbelent phenomena they have to make a very small grid with a large number of grid cells. It took 80 days of NSF supercomputer time in the mid-1990s.
Plus there are some uncertainties:
(1) The equations of state at the high pressures and temperatures inside the earth arent well known. People have squished minerals in diamond presses or in super-guns to measure the equations of state. However a Berkeley group claims the inner-most core is twice as hot as others claim. A factor of two uncertainty is not good.
(2) The coupling of elastic equations with magnetic equations is not well thought out either. People have done each independently fairly comprehensively, but not both together.
The Harvard guy got some interesting results:
(1) There is an inter-play between the solid inner iron core and liquid iron outer core. The solid holds magnetisation better than the liquid. So he sees over a hundred thousand year simulation a "flickering" as the field looks like it might reverse then really doesnt. Then eventually it reverses about every 40,000 years. This is a little faster than observed in rocks. Currently the earth's magnetic field is abotu 10% weaker than meaured right around 1800. People think is this more likely a "flicker" than an impending reversal, but who knows?
(2) The model predicted convection spins the whole core once time extra about every 400 years. Convection is driven by both thermal and magnetic force. Seismologists have looked for this "extra core day" and think they have found it. There has been comprehensive global seismic data for about 45 years, or about a tenth of a rotation. Seismologists have see inner core velocity anomalies moving about this rate. You know a theory is really fabulous when it predicts something completely unexpected such as extra core days, and then scientists verify it.
Comparing somthing to an old supercomputer is stupid. At any given time a s supercomputer is faster order of magnitude machines (60 to 600 teraflops in mid-2008).
I heard anthropologist try to establish that "normal" tribal war-death rate was a fairly constant number over much of the world, and in psuedo-tribal situations like inner city gangs.
I've heard that this rate has generally decreased in the modern era. Its different when have large organizations like nation-states and technical weapons. Although side effects like starvation and disease jack up deaths. The US has never had a sustained one percent death rate - imaging if three million every year were dying in formal war or terrorism. Maybe a few, inquent "big ones" could occur to bring society to its long-term average.
Amazon and Yahoo to name a couple.
Thats pretty much standard for conventional underwriting. That all went out the door in the dot.com era. Valuations switched to revenue streams, which meant much less. Google waited until it had profits.
Permanently and unchangeable.
The history of computers is littered with nifty idea that were only 1.5x 2x or even 5x better price-performance than the establishment. Theres too much invested in existing vendor relationships, hardware and especially software otherwise.
John McCarthy did. They were inventors of COBOL, FORTRAN and LISP - three languages still in use from the 1950s.
If you read the Mormon books. (I've been seeing too many FLDS stories on the tely lately.)
Right in the very middle.
> Mutations from what? They didn't sequence his parents, did they? Human Genome Project Reference Genome, allegedly an almagmation of 10-20 individuals.
Various groups are trying to expand this to 100 - 1000 personal genomes by the end of the this decade to better characterize what is constant, what varies, what it is dangerous, etc.
Thats my term for going to some public space like a coffee house or park and seeing all these people plugged into machines instead of interacting with each other. There reading laptops, chatting on cells, zoned out with ear-buds, etc. Its just like a scene out Invasion of the Body Snatchers(*), except real life.
(*) The Snatchers have sustituted human beings with emotionless aliens who walk glassy-eyed down the street.
An article in Nature (proprietry web) a month ago analyzed the genetic content of James Watson, the co-discoverer of the genetic code, and the 2nd of four known people to have their genomes fully sequenced. Dr. Watson had three thousand observed mutations of which 32 were in the database of genetic diseases. This included Retinitis Pigmentosa, kidney failure and other potentially devasting diseases. However, it is not known why they were not expressed in his case. This is all the more reason to keep insurance companies from canceling insurances to those who might have any sort of genetic defect.
P.S. No, they did not discover the gene for making stupid racist remarks, which forced Dr. Watson into retirement last year.
You should watch videos of our first satellite attempts. I'm surprised we didnt have more fried astronauts.
Earlier this year I wandering around the local county fair. A compnay was exhibiting its latest in tractor cabs. It looked like an airplane cockpit. First,there were 360-view TV screens to see what what is happening everywhere. These things take a while a while to stop and start and you want to be stopping for every bump. Then they had GPS navigation for precision planting and harvesting. Not a foot of land would need go to waste. Plus there are computers and sftware to optimize energy usage.
The line to see the new movie Indiana Jones. I beleive a few hard core line up to see anything Lucas does, even thought they dont have to.
Another activity is that several institutions around the world will have "landing parties" with live NASA TV feeds. Denver Science museum is one of them. They will fill two auditoriums and their IMAX with spectators for the @4PM landing and @8PM first picture feed. Plus they will have various planetary sciences and construction engineers (probe built in Denver area) fill in with lectures. They are even selling dinner for the hard-care who may stay the full six hours. Its sold out. They had successful parties for the past three Mars probe arrivals.
....
I debating whether to be a real nerd and "dress up" for the occasion. I have something that look like the attennae in "My Favorite Martian" or the Saturday morning cartoons
So some loser is going to keep themselves ignorant, then whine about it, because of some past slight. Get lost.