you apparently don't know what a singularity is, kinda hard to predict
No, really? It happens that I *do* know what a singularity is, and it's not hard at all to predict. Want an example? The function f(x) = 1 / (3 - x) has a singularity at x = 3. It's trivial to see where a singularity is, if you know a little bit of math.
It seems very similar to a "rapture" mentality, coming from people who claim to be 100% rational
Precisely. The only difference from religious people is that the coming of the singularity is something that can be predicted from observable facts, instead of old texts written by self-serving priests of long ago interpreted by self-serving priests of today.
it wasn't finished before it began to lean, so the upper levels were built to be level
So, it seems that those builders, besides not being able to choose a good place to begin with, were unable to extrapolate. Which part of "if this goes on" they couldn't understand?
If it were me, I would stop building when it started leaning, and do it over somewhere else. To reduce the cost, the stones could be reused, just take it apart and put it back together where the ground is more suitable.
MS' ass is still bleeding from the reaming over Java.
Only thing is, it wasn't Java the language, it was Sun the corporation behind Java that sued Microsoft. Now tell me, which is the big corporation behind Ruby with deep enough pockets to face Microsoft at the courts?
Here are some interesting (true) stories on what happens when sodium hits water. But those are about small blocks, one kilo or so, and solid at ambient temperature.
This guy now seems to bring this "sodium party" thing to a new, unprecedented level...
It's not communism-the-economic-model that's the problem, it's totalitarianism-the-political-model. You can't dissociate the two in your mind because your own nation has been brainwashing you to think of them as inseparable, most likely since the time you were born.
I can't dissociate the two in my mind because practical experience has amply demonstrated that the economic model of communism needs a totalitarian state to work. Can you cite one single example of a country that adopted a communist economy under a democratic government, and managed to keep it working for at least five years?
In the democratic state, you are dominated through economics
False, because states that have a free economy become prosper. You are much more dominated by economics in Cuba than in the USA. And don't start with this "embargo" thing, because if the Cuban economy were productive enough they wouldn't care a bit about having commerce with the USA.
Capitalism is the same as Totalitarianism, Communism is the same as Democracy,
And black is the same as white, wet is the same as dry, etc. Sorry, but you cannot play with words like that, not if you want to express a coherent thought.
The important lesson that must be learned from the current Chinese regime is that they abandoned the communist economic model, after trying and trying again with different ways to run a communist economy.
Now, OTOH, this meme about "Free Software is Communism" may be right, and this could be the one way in which a communist economy could function. It seems that there are enough people who are willing to share, as long as nothing is taken away from them.
There was even a joke in the Soviet Union about this: the party commissar asks a peasant to share his cows with the other and the peasant agrees. Then the commissar asks the peasant to share his pigs and again the peasant agrees. But when the commissar asks the peasant to share his hens, the answer is no. "Why", the commissar asks. "Because I raise hens, not cows or pigs" is the answer.
Maybe some day we will have fully automated production, and nanotechnology, and human-equivalent artificial intelligence, and whatever else is needed to have a totally automatic production of goods. In that day, a communist economy may function, but with restrictions. For instance, real estate will still be a scarce resource, which will have to be controlled in some way, be it a totalitarian state or a capitalist economy.
But for now, free software production is the only economic system that has ever been able to function adequately in a communist model.
they're allowed to charge a processing fee which by the way I think absolutely stinks. Why should you have to pay to see if they've fucked up your data?
Do you think they should raise their prices instead? So that any wannabe rock band can get a free recording paid by the other customers?
History teaches us that anything that's not charged directly to the interested parties will escalate into a "Tragedy of Commons" situation.
if they get lots of malicious requests designed to cost them money in man hours then maybe they should reconsider the need to store data on you in the first place
A company doesn't hold data on you for no reason at all. If they collect data on you it's because they get some profit from it. Again, the alternative would mean higher prices. I'd rather have cameras taping me than pay more for shopping in stores where one security guard per aisle is needed to keep petty theft under control.
more genetic variation means more resistance to the weakness of monoculture
I live in Brazil where there are many types of bananas available. Any supermarket has at least three different types. Just off my head, I can name at least six types of Brazilian bananas: Ouro ("gold"), Prata ("silver"), d'Agua ("water"), Maçã ("apple"), Nanica ("dwarf"), da Terra ("earth").
They are useful for applications that can be massively parallelized
Precisely. But that happens to be one of the areas where more performance is still needed.
You don't need a super-duper CPU for text editing, that's for sure. For most of the tasks people do on computers, we have had CPU enough for the last 15 years or more. But where we still need more CPU happens to be mostly in tasks that ARE massively parallel, for instance, physics simulations, of which you will find several examples in the nVidia site.
I'm following this technology with much interest, and I think I will have a major upgrade in my home computer soon. My old FX-5200 card has been more than enough for my gaming needs, but now I have a new reason for upgrading.
I think we should dismantle every building with naked babies perched on top of massive, rock-hard shafts
I agree. And not only on the outside, look at this room, for instance: notice the statues of nude children. And while we are at it, how come Google allows searches like this??? Shocking, absolutely shocking!
So, how much total raw data-handling capacity do the neurons in a human brain have?
We have a pretty good estimate, on an order of magnitude basis. About 100 billion neurons, each with an average of 1000 synapses, firing 100 pulses/second.
There are different types of neurons with different ion-channels, various proteins, etc.
Sure, but that's what averages are for. There are also different types of transistors: junction transistors, NPN and PNP, MOS type, N-Channel and P-channel, etc. There are AND gates, NAND gates, OR, NOR, XOR gates, flip-flops and shift registers, half-adders and full-adders, etc. Different levels of complexity.
The Brain isn't just hardware it is also the software at the same time.
Computers have instruction sets, micro-programming, RISC and CISC. Machine instructions, assembly language, compiled and interpreted languages, etc, etc. Computers aren't just hardware, they are hardware and software at the same time.
... put "reasoning like a human" at the 20 year mark and then, devoid of any thought of what technology might need to be developed, start working backwards with bemchmarks of achievement that approach "reasoning like a human".
The Stone Age lasted a few hundred thousand years. When we learned how to use metals, the Bronze Age lasted a few thousand years. Then came the Iron Age. We only learned how to make steel in an industrial scale in the nineteenth century, the Steel Age only lasted a hundred years, then we got into the plastics and composite materials age.
Technology accelerates exponentially, it's very risky to extrapolate from the past. We cannot work backwards and expect to get any reasonable predictions for the future.
remember the Rolling Stones singing "Start me up" over the start button?
No, I don't remember that. I remember the Rolling Stones singing "Start me up" in their 1981 album "Tattoo You". I have that album in four different versions, LP, cassette, CD, and mp3, so I should know.
Fourteen years later, microsoft bought the right to use that music in their marketing, but that's a different story.
Every few years the same thing. Somebody claims to be able to reach India by navigating westward from Europe. All efforts so far have failed.
So why these claims again and again, and (I believe) often against better knowledge by those making the claims? Simple: Funding. This is something people without a clue about geography, but with money to give away, can relate to.
It seems that computers with a capacity equivalent to human brains will be developed in the next twenty years or so.
OK. I know, this prediction has been made before, but now it's for real, because the hardware capacity is well within the reach of Moore's law. To build a cluster of processors with the same data-handling capacity of a human brain today is well within the range of a mid-size research grant.
Unfortunately, they have cried "wolf" too many times now, so most people will doubt this, but it's a reasonable prediction if one calculates how much total raw data-handling capacity the neurons in a human brain have. Now, software is another matter, of course, but given enough hardware, developing the software is a matter of time.
Why have we never seen similar shots of the Apollo moon landing equipment?
The answer is very simple: because the Apollo moon landing equipment is on the moon, not on Mars.
They have never done mapping of the moon on such a detailed resolution because the moon is not considered as interesting as Mars. Since there is no reason to believe the moon has ever had the smallest chance of developing life, it doesn't have the same scientific and popular appeal as Mars, where the possibility that life existed at some time in the past hasn't yet been disproved.
Sure, but it might save your life. Read about it in this book. When you are downwind from a big fire, set fire to the grass in front of you, then walk into the burned patch.
up until the last few years, Linux has been all of those things to the common "e-mail checking and web browsing" computer users
Define "few" years, please. I started using Linux in 1995 with the Yggdrasil "plug and play" distribution. At that time it was more or less like what the Microsoft shills claim, but still I was able to install and run it in less than an hour, without any outside help. Google didn't exist at the time and I had never met anyone who had ever used Linux.
Compared to that, at about the same period it took me nearly a week and several consultations with other people until I got Windows 95 to run on the same machine. The hardware drivers had to be carefully configured and installed in a precise sequence to boot windows 95, even though it had been running windows 3.11 before. So, even if Linux was in an extremely primitive state for the common user at the time, it wasn't any more difficult to install and configure than windows.
For normal use today, I think Linux with KDE is easier to use than XP (I have never tried Vista). For one thing, the "K" or "Start" menu is nicely organized, divided by application type instead of by software provider. Also, It's much easier to search and install software: click on "Add/Remove programs", search by keyword, click on "install" and "apply changes", and that's it. And copy/paste is easier too: select with the mouse, middle-click to paste. One handed, no need to CTRL-C, CTRL-V. And so on, etc, etc.
Now, if you think it's off-topic to mention Vista in a discussion about Linux, think again: why is it that Linux is mentioned 177000 times in the Microsoft website? It's always on-topic to mention the alternatives, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
No, really? It happens that I *do* know what a singularity is, and it's not hard at all to predict. Want an example? The function f(x) = 1 / (3 - x) has a singularity at x = 3. It's trivial to see where a singularity is, if you know a little bit of math.
Precisely. The only difference from religious people is that the coming of the singularity is something that can be predicted from observable facts, instead of old texts written by self-serving priests of long ago interpreted by self-serving priests of today.
So, it seems that those builders, besides not being able to choose a good place to begin with, were unable to extrapolate. Which part of "if this goes on" they couldn't understand?
If it were me, I would stop building when it started leaning, and do it over somewhere else. To reduce the cost, the stones could be reused, just take it apart and put it back together where the ground is more suitable.
Only thing is, it wasn't Java the language, it was Sun the corporation behind Java that sued Microsoft. Now tell me, which is the big corporation behind Ruby with deep enough pockets to face Microsoft at the courts?
Just wait for the the "Uranus ring" jokes!
Perhaps if you read more you would acquire a sense of humor?
This guy now seems to bring this "sodium party" thing to a new, unprecedented level...
I can't dissociate the two in my mind because practical experience has amply demonstrated that the economic model of communism needs a totalitarian state to work. Can you cite one single example of a country that adopted a communist economy under a democratic government, and managed to keep it working for at least five years?
False, because states that have a free economy become prosper. You are much more dominated by economics in Cuba than in the USA. And don't start with this "embargo" thing, because if the Cuban economy were productive enough they wouldn't care a bit about having commerce with the USA.
And black is the same as white, wet is the same as dry, etc. Sorry, but you cannot play with words like that, not if you want to express a coherent thought.
The important lesson that must be learned from the current Chinese regime is that they abandoned the communist economic model, after trying and trying again with different ways to run a communist economy.
Now, OTOH, this meme about "Free Software is Communism" may be right, and this could be the one way in which a communist economy could function. It seems that there are enough people who are willing to share, as long as nothing is taken away from them.
There was even a joke in the Soviet Union about this: the party commissar asks a peasant to share his cows with the other and the peasant agrees. Then the commissar asks the peasant to share his pigs and again the peasant agrees. But when the commissar asks the peasant to share his hens, the answer is no. "Why", the commissar asks. "Because I raise hens, not cows or pigs" is the answer.
Maybe some day we will have fully automated production, and nanotechnology, and human-equivalent artificial intelligence, and whatever else is needed to have a totally automatic production of goods. In that day, a communist economy may function, but with restrictions. For instance, real estate will still be a scarce resource, which will have to be controlled in some way, be it a totalitarian state or a capitalist economy.
But for now, free software production is the only economic system that has ever been able to function adequately in a communist model.
Do you think they should raise their prices instead? So that any wannabe rock band can get a free recording paid by the other customers?
History teaches us that anything that's not charged directly to the interested parties will escalate into a "Tragedy of Commons" situation.
A company doesn't hold data on you for no reason at all. If they collect data on you it's because they get some profit from it. Again, the alternative would mean higher prices. I'd rather have cameras taping me than pay more for shopping in stores where one security guard per aisle is needed to keep petty theft under control.
I live in Brazil where there are many types of bananas available. Any supermarket has at least three different types. Just off my head, I can name at least six types of Brazilian bananas: Ouro ("gold"), Prata ("silver"), d'Agua ("water"), Maçã ("apple"), Nanica ("dwarf"), da Terra ("earth").
Maybe your printer or printer driver is.
I opened the picture in Gimp and selected a region in square B. It's really weird, it seems to get darker and lighter as I move the selection around.
Precisely. But that happens to be one of the areas where more performance is still needed.
You don't need a super-duper CPU for text editing, that's for sure. For most of the tasks people do on computers, we have had CPU enough for the last 15 years or more. But where we still need more CPU happens to be mostly in tasks that ARE massively parallel, for instance, physics simulations, of which you will find several examples in the nVidia site.
I'm following this technology with much interest, and I think I will have a major upgrade in my home computer soon. My old FX-5200 card has been more than enough for my gaming needs, but now I have a new reason for upgrading.
Yeah. Right. No technology at all in Massachusetts.
I agree. And not only on the outside, look at this room, for instance: notice the statues of nude children. And while we are at it, how come Google allows searches like this??? Shocking, absolutely shocking!
We have a pretty good estimate, on an order of magnitude basis. About 100 billion neurons, each with an average of 1000 synapses, firing 100 pulses/second.
Sure, but that's what averages are for. There are also different types of transistors: junction transistors, NPN and PNP, MOS type, N-Channel and P-channel, etc. There are AND gates, NAND gates, OR, NOR, XOR gates, flip-flops and shift registers, half-adders and full-adders, etc. Different levels of complexity.
Computers have instruction sets, micro-programming, RISC and CISC. Machine instructions, assembly language, compiled and interpreted languages, etc, etc. Computers aren't just hardware, they are hardware and software at the same time.
The Stone Age lasted a few hundred thousand years. When we learned how to use metals, the Bronze Age lasted a few thousand years. Then came the Iron Age. We only learned how to make steel in an industrial scale in the nineteenth century, the Steel Age only lasted a hundred years, then we got into the plastics and composite materials age.
Technology accelerates exponentially, it's very risky to extrapolate from the past. We cannot work backwards and expect to get any reasonable predictions for the future.
Calm down, it's not such a big deal. The Rolling Stones also sang it in a concert sponsored by a local phone company in Rio de Janeiro in 2006. They will sing that song, and any other song, for any company that pays their rate, OK?
No, I don't remember that. I remember the Rolling Stones singing "Start me up" in their 1981 album "Tattoo You". I have that album in four different versions, LP, cassette, CD, and mp3, so I should know.
Fourteen years later, microsoft bought the right to use that music in their marketing, but that's a different story.
So why these claims again and again, and (I believe) often against better knowledge by those making the claims? Simple: Funding. This is something people without a clue about geography, but with money to give away, can relate to.
OK. I know, this prediction has been made before, but now it's for real, because the hardware capacity is well within the reach of Moore's law. To build a cluster of processors with the same data-handling capacity of a human brain today is well within the range of a mid-size research grant.
Unfortunately, they have cried "wolf" too many times now, so most people will doubt this, but it's a reasonable prediction if one calculates how much total raw data-handling capacity the neurons in a human brain have. Now, software is another matter, of course, but given enough hardware, developing the software is a matter of time.
Sorry, but that has already been done
The answer is very simple: because the Apollo moon landing equipment is on the moon, not on Mars.
They have never done mapping of the moon on such a detailed resolution because the moon is not considered as interesting as Mars. Since there is no reason to believe the moon has ever had the smallest chance of developing life, it doesn't have the same scientific and popular appeal as Mars, where the possibility that life existed at some time in the past hasn't yet been disproved.
This space station is a piece of shit. And that pisses me off.
Sure, but it might save your life. Read about it in this book. When you are downwind from a big fire, set fire to the grass in front of you, then walk into the burned patch.
Define "few" years, please. I started using Linux in 1995 with the Yggdrasil "plug and play" distribution. At that time it was more or less like what the Microsoft shills claim, but still I was able to install and run it in less than an hour, without any outside help. Google didn't exist at the time and I had never met anyone who had ever used Linux.
Compared to that, at about the same period it took me nearly a week and several consultations with other people until I got Windows 95 to run on the same machine. The hardware drivers had to be carefully configured and installed in a precise sequence to boot windows 95, even though it had been running windows 3.11 before. So, even if Linux was in an extremely primitive state for the common user at the time, it wasn't any more difficult to install and configure than windows.
For normal use today, I think Linux with KDE is easier to use than XP (I have never tried Vista). For one thing, the "K" or "Start" menu is nicely organized, divided by application type instead of by software provider. Also, It's much easier to search and install software: click on "Add/Remove programs", search by keyword, click on "install" and "apply changes", and that's it. And copy/paste is easier too: select with the mouse, middle-click to paste. One handed, no need to CTRL-C, CTRL-V. And so on, etc, etc.
Now, if you think it's off-topic to mention Vista in a discussion about Linux, think again: why is it that Linux is mentioned 177000 times in the Microsoft website? It's always on-topic to mention the alternatives, of course.
As I understood it, it's not for sale, you can get it at his MIT website