yes, this announcement is serious. our robotics group at northwestern had been using them for robotics research for quite a while now, and they're very cool.
btw, just look at the specifications (scroll all the way down that page) for more info...
i've 731 - got it at a very reasonable price, and just couldn't bring myself to spend $1000 more on the only-half-an-inch-thinner 505...:)
c1 is the picturebook, right? you lucky bastard!:) but guess what - as an early adopter of new technology, you get to write device drivers for the camera...;)
You run Linux on your VAIO...? I've caught myself drooling after them from time to time, but wondered whether Linux would work...
oh yes, i've a pcg-731, and it does dual-boot windows/linux without a problem! i even installed silly things like opengl libraries and allegro common lisp (i use linux side for work and windows for games...:)
there's a page somewhere about "linux on laptops" - it has howtos for installing linux on all sorts of laptops, including a number of different vaios...
unfortunately, i must agree. wall is a great writer (i don't think any software manual other than the camel book made me laugh out loud), but he shouldn't engage philosophy in his writings.
i was especially confused about his comments on deconstruction. he seems to equate deconstruction with a method of taking different elements from different genres and nailing them together into one strange-looking structure - the sort of algorithm that sometimes passes as postmodern art.
but there was no mention of deconstruction as attempt at discovering and inverting basic cultural assumptions - the same assumptions that that made so many philosophers assert they've discovered metaphysical truths. really, perl is not even close to a deconstructionist language, as it never attempted to discover the bases for 'goodness' and 'badness' behind other languages - in fact, it's primarily pragmatic in that it does not critically analyze other languages, but simply assimilates whatever conventions it finds useful.
yes, i just saw it for the first time a few days ago. and the most scary thing - i could understand the main character, and his reasons for doing what he did!
yes, there were a few blunders (the four-pin, automatically-configurable chip?), but in spite of those, the movie truly great! highly recommended to all mathy geeks on/.
This virus is not indicative of a flaw in PGP, it is an example of how even the best protection scheme can be compromised by unintelligent things done by us.
amen!
the virus does not compromise pgp, because to do so it would have to crack public-key encryption. the virus does compromise the ways in which people use pgp, which is completely different from cracking the program!
this is actually a common problem with cryptographic technology - people don't realize that a strong cryptosystem won't help if it's not used intelligently.
having recently seen jeff ullman (yes, of the dragon book fame!) speak about the google engine, i must say it's quite amazing.
turns out the creators had some very interesting insights about the web. for one, the page rank is based on the number of links pointing to the page, based on idea that if people point to that page, then it must be a key resource to that community.
secondly, the pay some attention to the words on the page, but much more attention to the words in the links pointing to that page, because links usually summarize the page they're pointing to. (this is tweaked, of course, for phrases like 'click here'...:)
simulating a human brain in hardware? that has to be the silliest myth of modern computing.
just thinking of it this way - human brain is a massively parallel machine. computer processor is a serial machine. simulating the former in the latter will be linear in the number of neurons simulated, but exponential (and possibly with pretty big constants!) in the number of connections between them! we can't even properly build neural networks of size of an insect brain, let alone human. besides, there's the small issue of neural networks being 'opaque' to the creator - all's good when they work, but when they break it's difficult to figure out why.
it seems that we'd get farther by concentrating on advancing 'traditional' symbolic artificial intelligence, rather than simulating huge neural networks on puny serial hardware...
it looks like the former is a much bigger challenge than the latter. the problem is that the human brain is a massively parallelized multiprocessing machine, and emulating it in a serial (von neumann) processor will be a futile attempt. we need to develop algorithms that use the serial characteristics of the processor, rather than try to improve hardware...
At such a time, and for all sorts of good and obvious reasons, people need to feel in control of their own lives. They need to answer yes to philosopher Paul Valery's elemental question about technology: "Can the human mind master what the human mind has made?"
contrary to what katz seems to be saying in the posting, it's not at all apparent that oss by itself is going to make technology any less frightening.
it's not the things we control (or think we control) that terrify us, but those that we can't control. software is something we (still) have a hold on - for example, there are always people capable of writing operating systems, and there will always be alternatives to windows. but it's things we have no control over - the tons of our personal information being stored in huge private databases, the increased reliance on systems that were explicitly not designed for mission-critical performance(*) - that are truly terrifying.
exactly because we have no impact on them, but they have a great impact on us.
--- (*) remember the problem with a paging network satellite from a few months back?
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yes, this announcement is serious. our robotics group at northwestern had been using them for robotics research for quite a while now, and they're very cool.
btw, just look at the specifications (scroll all the way down that page) for more info...
i've 731 - got it at a very reasonable price, and just couldn't bring myself to spend $1000 more on the only-half-an-inch-thinner 505... :)
:) but guess what - as an early adopter of new technology, you get to write device drivers for the camera... ;)
c1 is the picturebook, right? you lucky bastard!
r
You run Linux on your VAIO...? I've caught myself drooling after them from time to time, but wondered whether Linux would work...
oh yes, i've a pcg-731, and it does dual-boot windows/linux without a problem! i even installed silly things like opengl libraries and allegro common lisp (i use linux side for work and windows for games...:)
there's a page somewhere about "linux on laptops" - it has howtos for installing linux on all sorts of laptops, including a number of different vaios...
as a proud VAIO owner, i must say - truly, they're creatures of infinite coolness. :)
unfortunately, i must agree. wall is a great writer (i don't think any software manual other than the camel book made me laugh out loud), but he shouldn't engage philosophy in his writings.
i was especially confused about his comments on deconstruction. he seems to equate deconstruction with a method of taking different elements from different genres and nailing them together into one strange-looking structure - the sort of algorithm that sometimes passes as postmodern art.
but there was no mention of deconstruction as attempt at discovering and inverting basic cultural assumptions - the same assumptions that that made so many philosophers assert they've discovered metaphysical truths. really, perl is not even close to a deconstructionist language, as it never attempted to discover the bases for 'goodness' and 'badness' behind other languages - in fact, it's primarily pragmatic in that it does not critically analyze other languages, but simply assimilates whatever conventions it finds useful.
but i still think the camel book is great.
yes, i just saw it for the first time a few days ago. and the most scary thing - i could understand the main character, and his reasons for doing what he did!
/.
yes, there were a few blunders (the four-pin, automatically-configurable chip?), but in spite of those, the movie truly great! highly recommended to all mathy geeks on
maybe it's just me, but i find it very fitting that this time around our millenial fears are so fundamentally secular.
we've replaced religion with technology.
This virus is not indicative of a flaw in PGP, it is an example of how even the best protection scheme can be compromised by unintelligent things done by us.
amen!
the virus does not compromise pgp, because to do so it would have to crack public-key encryption. the virus does compromise the ways in which people use pgp, which is completely different from cracking the program!
this is actually a common problem with cryptographic technology - people don't realize that a strong cryptosystem won't help if it's not used intelligently.
having recently seen jeff ullman (yes, of the dragon book fame!) speak about the google engine, i must say it's quite amazing.
:)
turns out the creators had some very interesting insights about the web. for one, the page rank is based on the number of links pointing to the page, based on idea that if people point to that page, then it must be a key resource to that community.
secondly, the pay some attention to the words on the page, but much more attention to the words in the links pointing to that page, because links usually summarize the page they're pointing to. (this is tweaked, of course, for phrases like 'click here'...
how about that for an interesting engine?
simulating a human brain in hardware? that has to be the silliest myth of modern computing.
just thinking of it this way - human brain is a massively parallel machine. computer processor is a serial machine. simulating the former in the latter will be linear in the number of neurons simulated, but exponential (and possibly with pretty big constants!) in the number of connections between them! we can't even properly build neural networks of size of an insect brain, let alone human. besides, there's the small issue of neural networks being 'opaque' to the creator - all's good when they work, but when they break it's difficult to figure out why.
it seems that we'd get farther by concentrating on advancing 'traditional' symbolic artificial intelligence, rather than simulating huge neural networks on puny serial hardware...
r
-- "away, connectionism!"
it looks like the former is a much bigger challenge than the latter. the problem is that the human brain is a massively parallelized multiprocessing machine, and emulating it in a serial (von neumann) processor will be a futile attempt. we need to develop algorithms that use the serial characteristics of the processor, rather than try to improve hardware...
...was right on target. congrats, katz!
one comment, though - you write:
"AC's are a unique sub-species of the Net and the Web, like hackers or cypherpunks.
hmm. and i thought hackers (as in 'linux hackers', and not as in 'c00l hackerz') were the prototypical netizens, rather than a 'unique subspecies'...
At such a time, and for all sorts of good and obvious reasons, people need to feel in control of their own lives. They need to answer yes to philosopher Paul Valery's elemental question about technology: "Can the human mind master what the human mind has made?"
contrary to what katz seems to be saying in the posting, it's not at all apparent that oss by itself is going to make technology any less frightening.
it's not the things we control (or think we control) that terrify us, but those that we can't control. software is something we (still) have a hold on - for example, there are always people capable of writing operating systems, and there will always be alternatives to windows. but it's things we have no control over - the tons of our personal information being stored in huge private databases, the increased reliance on systems that were explicitly not designed for mission-critical performance(*) - that are truly terrifying.
exactly because we have no impact on them, but they have a great impact on us.
---
(*) remember the problem with a paging network satellite from a few months back?