Yeah. Gelentners been kinda going on about his time dependent stream of data thing for ages. I got a copy of his book "Aesthetics of Computing", which actually reads more like "Why my ideas are really sexy and other ideas are really crap".. And he had an earlier book on pretty much the same gig. Gelentner does seem to assume that stuff outside of HIS system is irrelevent in the awesome scheme of his genius or something.(?!) The problem is , is if you actually look at the implications of some of Gelentners ideas, there quite terrifying. Gelentern seems to advocate complete datacollection on everything everywhere and accessed by everyone. What underwhere does that girl wear? Ask the computer! Unfortunatunately such things managed to earn him a parcel from the unabomber who apparently took such things rather harshly. Not sure if he got injured by it or whatever.
Maybe an alternative would be to lose the concept of President all together and replace that whole whitehouse cabinet vibe with a lower house or something with ministerial portfolios and a primeminister. Doing it that way, and with properly proportioned non-gerimandered seats you take the glamor-politic crap out of the system and replace it with a situation where the two (or more of you do it with proportional voting!!!) parties actually have to campaign on policy rather than the whole "Gosh, Gore sure is smart, but Bush just has nicer teeth" kinda garbage.
Unfortunately that may be the case. If you actually look at the vote Nader get & you translated that into seats on a proportional basis, you would see a different issue altogether. 2 Dominant parties, with a "balance of power" held by smaller parties, which in a mathemajikal way theoretically works far more democratically than the absolute powers afforded to parties at the moment. With the dominant party having to either get the aproval of (A) The other dominant party or (B) one or more of the minors, the government is forced to make decisions that theoretically must represent 50%+ of the mandate of the public. First past the post & Presidential systems just don't really cut it. Lost the presidency position and get a primeminister!!!!
I presume you imply not to bother with "reading" Derrida! (Plowing thru 'Glas' is an exerience not unlike chewing ones own arms off)
As for the connections between the two, I tend to think it's pretty superficial. Derrida places subjectivity on a strictly textual plane of semiosis , while Foucault tends to look for the discursive practices and techniques behind subjectivity and being. Although both do seem to take some cues from the whole post-sausarian structuralist project, really they are both arguing entirely different things.
Eitherway, while I think Foucault has a *lot* to offer the whole debate over social construction and interaction with the net and the growing surveilance culture developing around it, trying to plug Derrida into IT is really inviting dark counsel. The only difference is that Derrida is stilll pluggin' away while Foucault rolled off the mortal coil before the whole net thing really happened (As we know it today).
Totally agreed. Having a CS qualification, and now having spent six years in the Liberal Arts, I personally believe I can argue with most people on most of these topics under the table. It's a funny thing. There are still those in the arts monstering about proclaiming that VR is the "next big thing" and will revolutionise the world in a sort of sadcase Wired sorta way. Most can barely even operate a mouse and have perhaps missed that VR has been and passed and the revolution *didn't happen*, and probably *aint gonna happen*. Or in the Journalism classes with lecurers on online journalism claiming that Altavista is the latest and greatest search engine and never having *hear* of Blog journalism and the whole gonzo paradigm shift. For a good giggle , try my old trick, and do a semiotics class and argue your paper using Catastrophy math... "I still don't understand why a small shift leading to a big jump is a catastrophy and WHAT THE F*CK IS THAT HORRID EQUATION ON YOUR PAGE?". Heeeee!
But that said, most CS guys are clueless on politics too. Many of our open source community have never gotten past the simplistic RMS/ESR libertarian gone wrong politics or can see why we look like goofs arguing for small government AND small business without understanding the subtlties of arguments used against such things.
Hands up is you "get" Rawls? What about Kants moral Imperrative? Do you understand what Foucault actually means when he talks about the Panopticon.
Sadly the culture divide between the sciences and the humanities runs both way. Time to "deconstruct the difference folks"
Indeed, due to the mindbending simplicity of the language... everything a stack op... writing compilers and interpreters are stupidly easy (actually a true forth compiler is a bit of a wierd gig when you think about it... forth sorta has the smalltalk-like "environment" vibe about it generally... Remember whipping one up in Qbasic , of all things, to pump code for a little Z80 op system I was working on... Took an afternoon to get the compiler to work.. Toooooo easy.
Dude, your just saying that. The guy gave a fairly cogent reason that Java does not scale well on FreeBSD because of screwey threading. The problem is, it's true. FreeBSD is not a friendly environ for Java. Get over it and live with it. The anger will pass.
Ok.. I remember reading that one in the paper as US military guys that where being shown the system by ADI (Australian Defence Industries). I also remember nearly falling off my chair laughing.
Oh yeah... At a previous job , we where having some after work drinks, and I started fking around with a RAD app we had developed for a military contract. In a fit of semi drunken bordeom we whacked in lots of pink fluffy clouds and a "my little pony" logo on the boot up screen.
Forgot to restore it.
Next morning the mil guys came in to look at how the prototype was going, and on boot up, up pops "my little pony" with all the little clouds and all. Extremely campy.
main () { for (;;) { printf ("Hung up\t\b\b\b\b\b\b"); } }
That has got to be the whackiest flaw I've ever seen. Aparently yo can run that tab backspace into a file, and then simply by "type"ing the file it'll crash the NT box. Unpriveleged. Sheer barking madness.
It's hard to call it either way. The navy are going to be extremely diplomatic when it comes to US companies, particularly ones they are dependant on (Microsoft same as everyone else). The problem may have been partly the sysadmins fault. I *believe* that NT services have some fail over options. Ie , first crash restart db. Second crash do same, third crash reboot machine (for example). None the less if the divide by zero was created by the DB , but happened while deep in the bowels of a OS call it could still take out the OS. Particularly if the exception handling was goofy and , like attempted to throw up an "BUGS! PLEASE HELP!" dialog box in a windowless context or something stupid (don't laugh, this is *exactly* what windows can do to services from time to time..... or at least ones written by me:(:( )
Thank God I don't have to write NT software anymore. rebooting everytime one tests a service (because it's crashed, lodged in NT's head and won't unload) really wears one down.
Isn't Ayn Rand dead or sumfin? Maybe I'm just trippin or I missed the meaning of that all together. (Grumbles about Stupid "Objectivists" and digging dead authors up JUST to kick them and bury them again).
Yeah. I work at the Murdoch Uni student union (Australia), and MS contracted some sort of campus-marketing PR firm to go and poster up the Uni. Yeah. All fine. We aproved, and let em use the tavern for a demo. Concurently a bunch of activist dudes did there own poster-up basically telling people to boycot the "X-BUX". We where cool on that too. Perhaps even more, since we are a linux/mac organisation. However we got word that some of those kids had been personally harrassed by people , *possibly* associated (Don't sue me!) with the campaign. Angry phone calls. All that. It appeared that much of this was *not* done by MS but, apparently, by the marketing company. I tell you, the demo went ahead, but we'll think twice before letting em on campus again. Not verry nice. (Oh and campus-marketing people;- f*k off!)
Yay! Someone said it! There is a magic quote from University of Queensland, Australia, academic John Hartley on the News. Unfortunately I can only paraphrase as the exact wording eludes me;- Propoganda is more honest than News because Propoganda admits it's bias.
It's one thing that I like about the indymedia press etc is that it's alternative propaganda to news propaganda. You can then pick and choose which fool you wish to believe.
Re:DOS didn't have automount.
on
Linux 3.0
·
· Score: 2
Actually, what's with CD's and intel machines? It seems the only thing that locks my windows. The whole damn machine just falls asleep while waiting for CD seek. Same with debian. On almost any pc it's the same. Do OS's traditionally implement these crappily or is it in the implementations in modern ide/mobo/cdrom hardware?
No Dude. That's unfair. If as you claim , you are a developer, then you know full bloody well the importance of keeping up to date with operating systems. And as for "go away". It's only as rude as "I don't care"(Which is code for "shutup" when you think about it). And Duh... This *is* a linux orientated site. That's why linux news is important. And when your users systems get ripped to shit by hackers because Redhat 5.2 was still "working for them", what do you usually explain to them?
Re:Some SF books that explore this idea
on
Downloading The Mind
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Amen on Greg egan. Permutation City Rocks. A more futurised (Ie 3000ad mega futurised) one was Diaspora. The ending wasn't as tight as permutation city (Endings aren't Egans strong point) but the discussion on rights etc is. I think , Egan is a anarcho-syndicalist from what I can tell. His book "Distress" deals with an anarcho-syndicalist utopia, and he has been involved with the Refugee rights movements etc around West Australia, traditionally leftie territories.
Hmmm.... Yeah and no. Certain sections of the brain do have a degree of redundancy, but like if I rip your medula out your fucked either way. There are some limited cases of what *appears* to be co-opting of other parts of brain for function in cases of brain damage, but it really depends on where the damage is. If one part is doing symbolic reasoning at the end chain of vision, and it goes silly than it is feasable that perhaps another part that is heuristically capable of similar tasks can take that over. But if edge detection goes awol for instance , dude your eye sight *aint* coming back in any sane form.
No but that's the amazing thing. The reaction time is outstanding. The coal is thrown or dropped before the message gets there . The eyes have nothing to do with it, because the decision is made in the spinal cord before it's registered in the brain. It's a fact! The spinal cord *can* make emergency decisions in these matters. Ie if you are blindfolded , and I put the coal in your hands, the intense heat message hits the spinal cord and the the spinal cord goes "Holy fuck! Don't wanna die! Retract!" (or something.. I shouldn't really attribute it with agency here) and it shoots back a RETRACT! message. That's why theres also a chance you might react by , like , throwing it at your head or something stupid. It's a pretty primative reaction. It's well reasearched too (Look up the "hot potatoe" thing on google, I'm pretty sure it'll be there)
Um. Yeah, this is true as well. Quite a bit of theory over in the liberal-arts side of the campus suggests that subjectivity (The sense and meaning of self among other things) is quite largely socially constructed. Lacan , a french psychiatrist dude (hotly contested as to his value as kook or genius), suggested that in the developmental stages the child sees itself as a shattered assemblage of body parts and functions. Then the child goes through a a stage("the mirror stage".. excuse me if I get this wrong , it's been a looooooong time for me) where the child starts to assemble a single sense of self that it can coherently call "me". As the subject continues thru life, it starts putting it's sense of self , through negotiating the symbolic interactions of itself and the world around it. In effect, the self and the body while coherent is embedded in the language and social structures of the world around it. It's more than it's mere physical self. It's a conversation with the environment and the socius. And we can just "download" that? (Sorry if the arts-speak is a bit heavy there folks, but its there clearest way to put it)
Interestingly, Greg Egan in his novel "Permutation City" (Read it folks, Greg Egan is amazing) makes a similar arguement. In it he has his clones (Downloaded dudes) split among distributed processors, he runs them backwards , forwards , at different speeds in parts and all synched up. The clone feels entirely coherent.... I won't tell you where it leads to. His conclusion is astonishing, but it makes for a fascinating read.
Right on. Our bodies certainly do form an overwhelming part of our experience of being human. We feel with our hands , and process with our brain. Note I didn't say feel with our brain. Theres the catch. I also think you are spot on in asserting the processing role performed neurologically by stuff outa the brain. Think about a hot coal. If you put your hands out and I dropped a frikkingly red hot piece of coal in your hand. Instinctivelly you will drop that coal before the "Holy crap this is hot" message even hits your brain. Your spinal cord will make that decision for you. Many of the decisions , for instance about sexual arousal are performed , at least in part, by hormone levels around the body and organs. Your hunger level includes in the loop your stomach. That's deciding too. That stupid mind body split of descartes really does have a lot to answer for. Fortunately it's only the Kurweizels of the world (and perhaps some religious folk, and I doubt *they* would buy Ray's assertion either.) that still seem to really believe it, because with what we know today, it's philosophically bunkum.
There are also other problematics at hand with Ray's vision as well. The first, is a mathematical one. The human brain seems to thrive on uncomputables. It's one of the odd-ball things about the human condition that in so many problems that seem intractably unsolvable, humans do it without a problem. Many of these problems just don't seem to break down to simple quantifiably algorithms or formulae. This does seem to imply that the human brain is capable of much computation that fits outside the scope allowed for under turing type caluclating machines. In many situations where there is no simple path between a problem space and a solution space, the old brain box just bee-lines it straight there.
Secondly there is a big problem with exactly what on earth is being refered to as "mind". Conventionally , we tend to think of it as software on the brain, which does invoke the old descartes mind/body split. The problem with that , is that experientially humans live through there bodies. Our experience of the world is mediated through touch, sensation , sexuality and all manner of phenomenon that are not strictly brain-only affairs. When you look in the mirror and see "you" are you seeing your brain or your whole body. You see your face, your hair, your skin, all of that. That's you. Without a complete body simulacra , it really is preposturous to assume that that braindump (And for the braindump to work we do need to remember that thought is encoded also in the arangements of neurons etc) will encode the whole body.
Say you want a webserver apt-cache search webserver will get you , like 2 pages of em. Then you go apt-get install and the name. you might then chose apache because it's on the top of the list and type apt-get install apache or apt-get install apache-common That's it. Want a game to nut with? Type apt-cache search game. Want something to program in friggin forth with? apt-cache search forth. So on. Want to get a beer? apt can't help you there..... Or maybe it can.
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Yeah. Gelentners been kinda going on about his time dependent stream of data thing for ages. I got a copy of his book "Aesthetics of Computing", which actually reads more like "Why my ideas are really sexy and other ideas are really crap".. And he had an earlier book on pretty much the same gig.
Gelentner does seem to assume that stuff outside of HIS system is irrelevent in the awesome scheme of his genius or something.(?!)
The problem is , is if you actually look at the implications of some of Gelentners ideas, there quite terrifying. Gelentern seems to advocate complete datacollection on everything everywhere and accessed by everyone. What underwhere does that girl wear? Ask the computer!
Unfortunatunately such things managed to earn him a parcel from the unabomber who apparently took such things rather harshly. Not sure if he got injured by it or whatever.
Mate, it's not linus I'd be worried about , it's that National Karate champion girlfriend of his. Tove vs Melinda? Damn yeah.
Maybe an alternative would be to lose the concept of President all together and replace that whole whitehouse cabinet vibe with a lower house or something with ministerial portfolios and a primeminister. Doing it that way, and with properly proportioned non-gerimandered seats you take the glamor-politic crap out of the system and replace it with a situation where the two (or more of you do it with proportional voting!!!) parties actually have to campaign on policy rather than the whole "Gosh, Gore sure is smart, but Bush just has nicer teeth" kinda garbage.
Unfortunately that may be the case. If you actually look at the vote Nader get & you translated that into seats on a proportional basis, you would see a different issue altogether. 2 Dominant parties, with a "balance of power" held by smaller parties, which in a mathemajikal way theoretically works far more democratically than the absolute powers afforded to parties at the moment. With the dominant party having to either get the aproval of (A) The other dominant party or (B) one or more of the minors, the government is forced to make decisions that theoretically must represent 50%+ of the mandate of the public.
First past the post & Presidential systems just don't really cut it.
Lost the presidency position and get a primeminister!!!!
I presume you imply not to bother with "reading" Derrida! (Plowing thru 'Glas' is an exerience not unlike chewing ones own arms off)
As for the connections between the two, I tend to think it's pretty superficial. Derrida places subjectivity on a strictly textual plane of semiosis , while Foucault tends to look for the discursive practices and techniques behind subjectivity and being. Although both do seem to take some cues from the whole post-sausarian structuralist project, really they are both arguing entirely different things.
Eitherway, while I think Foucault has a *lot* to offer the whole debate over social construction and interaction with the net and the growing surveilance culture developing around it, trying to plug Derrida into IT is really inviting dark counsel. The only difference is that Derrida is stilll pluggin' away while Foucault rolled off the mortal coil before the whole net thing really happened (As we know it today).
Totally agreed. Having a CS qualification, and now having spent six years in the Liberal Arts, I personally believe I can argue with most people on most of these topics under the table.
It's a funny thing. There are still those in the arts monstering about proclaiming that VR is the "next big thing" and will revolutionise the world in a sort of sadcase Wired sorta way. Most can barely even operate a mouse and have perhaps missed that VR has been and passed and the revolution *didn't happen*, and probably *aint gonna happen*.
Or in the Journalism classes with lecurers on online journalism claiming that Altavista is the latest and greatest search engine and never having *hear* of Blog journalism and the whole gonzo paradigm shift.
For a good giggle , try my old trick, and do a semiotics class and argue your paper using Catastrophy math... "I still don't understand why a small shift leading to a big jump is a catastrophy and WHAT THE F*CK IS THAT HORRID EQUATION ON YOUR PAGE?". Heeeee!
But that said, most CS guys are clueless on politics too. Many of our open source community have never gotten past the simplistic RMS/ESR libertarian gone wrong politics or can see why we look like goofs arguing for small government AND small business without understanding the subtlties of arguments used against such things.
Hands up is you "get" Rawls? What about Kants moral Imperrative? Do you understand what Foucault actually means when he talks about the Panopticon.
Sadly the culture divide between the sciences and the humanities runs both way. Time to "deconstruct the difference folks"
Indeed, due to the mindbending simplicity of the language... everything a stack op... writing compilers and interpreters are stupidly easy (actually a true forth compiler is a bit of a wierd gig when you think about it... forth sorta has the smalltalk-like "environment" vibe about it generally ...
Remember whipping one up in Qbasic , of all things, to pump code for a little Z80 op system I was working on... Took an afternoon to get the compiler to work.. Toooooo easy.
Dude, your just saying that.
The guy gave a fairly cogent reason that Java does not scale well on FreeBSD because of screwey threading.
The problem is, it's true. FreeBSD is not a friendly environ for Java.
Get over it and live with it. The anger will pass.
Ok.. I remember reading that one in the paper as US military guys that where being shown the system by ADI (Australian Defence Industries). I also remember nearly falling off my chair laughing.
You may be right tho. Fsking funny.
Oh yeah...
At a previous job , we where having some after work drinks, and I started fking around with a RAD app we had developed for a military contract. In a fit of semi drunken bordeom we whacked in lots of pink fluffy clouds and a "my little pony" logo on the boot up screen.
Forgot to restore it.
Next morning the mil guys came in to look at how the prototype was going, and on boot up, up pops "my little pony" with all the little clouds and all. Extremely campy.
Khaki guy not impressed.
That has got to be the whackiest flaw I've ever seen. Aparently yo can run that tab backspace into a file, and then simply by "type"ing the file it'll crash the NT box. Unpriveleged. Sheer barking madness.
It's hard to call it either way. The navy are going to be extremely diplomatic when it comes to US companies, particularly ones they are dependant on (Microsoft same as everyone else). :( :( )
The problem may have been partly the sysadmins fault. I *believe* that NT services have some fail over options. Ie , first crash restart db. Second crash do same, third crash reboot machine (for example).
None the less if the divide by zero was created by the DB , but happened while deep in the bowels of a OS call it could still take out the OS. Particularly if the exception handling was goofy and , like attempted to throw up an "BUGS! PLEASE HELP!" dialog box in a windowless context or something stupid (don't laugh, this is *exactly* what windows can do to services from time to time..... or at least ones written by me
Thank God I don't have to write NT software anymore. rebooting everytime one tests a service (because it's crashed, lodged in NT's head and won't unload) really wears one down.
Isn't Ayn Rand dead or sumfin? Maybe I'm just trippin or I missed the meaning of that all together. (Grumbles about Stupid "Objectivists" and digging dead authors up JUST to kick them and bury them again).
Yeah. I work at the Murdoch Uni student union (Australia), and MS contracted some sort of campus-marketing PR firm to go and poster up the Uni.
Yeah. All fine. We aproved, and let em use the tavern for a demo.
Concurently a bunch of activist dudes did there own poster-up basically telling people to boycot the "X-BUX". We where cool on that too. Perhaps even more, since we are a linux/mac organisation.
However we got word that some of those kids had been personally harrassed by people , *possibly* associated (Don't sue me!) with the campaign.
Angry phone calls. All that. It appeared that much of this was *not* done by MS but, apparently, by the marketing company. I tell you, the demo went ahead, but we'll think twice before letting em on campus again. Not verry nice.
(Oh and campus-marketing people;- f*k off!)
Yay! Someone said it!
There is a magic quote from University of Queensland, Australia, academic John Hartley on the News. Unfortunately I can only paraphrase as the exact wording eludes me;- Propoganda is more honest than News because Propoganda admits it's bias.
It's one thing that I like about the indymedia press etc is that it's alternative propaganda to news propaganda. You can then pick and choose which fool you wish to believe.
Actually, what's with CD's and intel machines?
It seems the only thing that locks my windows. The whole damn machine just falls asleep while waiting for CD seek. Same with debian. On almost any pc it's the same.
Do OS's traditionally implement these crappily or is it in the implementations in modern ide/mobo/cdrom hardware?
No Dude. That's unfair.
If as you claim , you are a developer, then you know full bloody well the importance of keeping up to date with operating systems.
And as for "go away". It's only as rude as "I don't care"(Which is code for "shutup" when you think about it).
And Duh... This *is* a linux orientated site. That's why linux news is important.
And when your users systems get ripped to shit by hackers because Redhat 5.2 was still "working for them", what do you usually explain to them?
Amen on Greg egan. Permutation City Rocks.
A more futurised (Ie 3000ad mega futurised) one was Diaspora. The ending wasn't as tight as permutation city (Endings aren't Egans strong point) but the discussion on rights etc is. I think , Egan is a anarcho-syndicalist from what I can tell. His book "Distress" deals with an anarcho-syndicalist utopia, and he has been involved with the Refugee rights movements etc around West Australia, traditionally leftie territories.
Hmmm.... Yeah and no. Certain sections of the brain do have a degree of redundancy, but like if I rip your medula out your fucked either way. There are some limited cases of what *appears* to be co-opting of other parts of brain for function in cases of brain damage, but it really depends on where the damage is. If one part is doing symbolic reasoning at the end chain of vision, and it goes silly than it is feasable that perhaps another part that is heuristically capable of similar tasks can take that over. But if edge detection goes awol for instance , dude your eye sight *aint* coming back in any sane form.
No but that's the amazing thing. The reaction time is outstanding. The coal is thrown or dropped before the message gets there . The eyes have nothing to do with it, because the decision is made in the spinal cord before it's registered in the brain. It's a fact! The spinal cord *can* make emergency decisions in these matters. Ie if you are blindfolded , and I put the coal in your hands, the intense heat message hits the spinal cord and the the spinal cord goes "Holy fuck! Don't wanna die! Retract!" (or something.. I shouldn't really attribute it with agency here) and it shoots back a RETRACT! message. That's why theres also a chance you might react by , like , throwing it at your head or something stupid. It's a pretty primative reaction. It's well reasearched too (Look up the "hot potatoe" thing on google, I'm pretty sure it'll be there)
Um. Yeah, this is true as well. Quite a bit of theory over in the liberal-arts side of the campus suggests that subjectivity (The sense and meaning of self among other things) is quite largely socially constructed.
Lacan , a french psychiatrist dude (hotly contested as to his value as kook or genius), suggested that in the developmental stages the child sees itself as a shattered assemblage of body parts and functions. Then the child goes through a a stage("the mirror stage".. excuse me if I get this wrong , it's been a looooooong time for me) where the child starts to assemble a single sense of self that it can coherently call "me".
As the subject continues thru life, it starts putting it's sense of self , through negotiating the symbolic interactions of itself and the world around it. In effect, the self and the body while coherent is embedded in the language and social structures of the world around it. It's more than it's mere physical self. It's a conversation with the environment and the socius. And we can just "download" that?
(Sorry if the arts-speak is a bit heavy there folks, but its there clearest way to put it)
Interestingly, Greg Egan in his novel "Permutation City" (Read it folks, Greg Egan is amazing) makes a similar arguement. In it he has his clones (Downloaded dudes) split among distributed processors, he runs them backwards , forwards , at different speeds in parts and all synched up. The clone feels entirely coherent.... I won't tell you where it leads to. His conclusion is astonishing, but it makes for a fascinating read.
Right on. Our bodies certainly do form an overwhelming part of our experience of being human. We feel with our hands , and process with our brain. Note I didn't say feel with our brain. Theres the catch.
I also think you are spot on in asserting the processing role performed neurologically by stuff outa the brain.
Think about a hot coal. If you put your hands out and I dropped a frikkingly red hot piece of coal in your hand. Instinctivelly you will drop that coal before the "Holy crap this is hot" message even hits your brain. Your spinal cord will make that decision for you.
Many of the decisions , for instance about sexual arousal are performed , at least in part, by hormone levels around the body and organs. Your hunger level includes in the loop your stomach. That's deciding too.
That stupid mind body split of descartes really does have a lot to answer for. Fortunately it's only the Kurweizels of the world (and perhaps some religious folk, and I doubt *they* would buy Ray's assertion either.) that still seem to really believe it, because with what we know today, it's philosophically bunkum.
There are also other problematics at hand with Ray's vision as well. The first, is a mathematical one. The human brain seems to thrive on uncomputables. It's one of the odd-ball things about the human condition that in so many problems that seem intractably unsolvable, humans do it without a problem. Many of these problems just don't seem to break down to simple quantifiably algorithms or formulae. This does seem to imply that the human brain is capable of much computation that fits outside the scope allowed for under turing type caluclating machines. In many situations where there is no simple path between a problem space and a solution space, the old brain box just bee-lines it straight there.
Secondly there is a big problem with exactly what on earth is being refered to as "mind". Conventionally , we tend to think of it as software on the brain, which does invoke the old descartes mind/body split. The problem with that , is that experientially humans live through there bodies. Our experience of the world is mediated through touch, sensation , sexuality and all manner of phenomenon that are not strictly brain-only affairs. When you look in the mirror and see "you" are you seeing your brain or your whole body. You see your face, your hair, your skin, all of that. That's you. Without a complete body simulacra , it really is preposturous to assume that that braindump (And for the braindump to work we do need to remember that thought is encoded also in the arangements of neurons etc) will encode the whole body.
Say you want a webserver
apt-cache search webserver will get you , like 2 pages of em. Then you go apt-get install and the name. you might then chose apache because it's on the top of the list and type
apt-get install apache
or
apt-get install apache-common
That's it.
Want a game to nut with? Type apt-cache search game. Want something to program in friggin forth with? apt-cache search forth. So on.
Want to get a beer? apt can't help you there..... Or maybe it can.