Windows is more like the Sherrif of Nottingham or (even closer) King John. In fact, if I understand the plot correctly, it is Linux that is being declared the outlaw. (Mind you, the Geste of Robin Hood is pretty violent and both sides are guilty of what would today be considered war-crimes. Robin Hood, at one point, bumps off kids who could be witnesses, for example. The most Linux could be said to have bumped off is the MACH-based version of HURD, but I think that's usually considered a mercy killing.)
The Japanese were looking at a format 30x high-definition, according to a story on Slashdot not too long ago. Dirac might be a reasonable competitor for storing or transmitting a video signal of that magnitude. Another possibility would be to have an all-digital IMAX - regular codecs aren't really up to the job of storing or delivering data of that quality and resolution. A third would be for transmitting video to hand-held devices. I'm not sure ultra-low-power buys you much after a while, but bandwidth to mobile devices is always at a premium, as is memory on the device itself. Any of these could be markets for Dirac, if sufficient research and development is put into the format and at least one implementation.
It was never made clear what the rockets will be driving in the race. But the sharks with lasers will send down lightning bolts from the previous story and fix the race anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.
If the web is heading in the direction of being an online virtual library and multimedia service, then yes, you want HDR. You want online photographs and mediascapes to be every bit as good as they are in other formats. Web 3.x (or whatever the latest version is under cvs) has chosen to compete with physical publishing, television and cinema. Those are tough fields to compete with, if you're operating at a significantly lower grade.
I'm not convinced it'll go that far, for exactly that reason, unless Sun does something really spectacular. Getting it into web browsers and having Youtube switch, for example. The BBC's Dirac codec is brilliant, but they don't even use their own codec on their own website. They could. They already offer a choice of codecs, one more wouldn't break the bank. They have obviously decided that Dirac just isn't used enough to be worth offering. I don't know what they use on their iPlayer, but I don't think they even use it there, where they have control over the entire process.
Or look at images. When was the last time you saw a website where the pictures were in OpenEXR or JPEG2000 format? They're regular JPEGs, for the most part, PNGs if you're very lucky.
This isn't to denigrate the developers in the least. Most of these new formats are superb and should be written. Part of the problem is that older formats are heavily entrenched, and the other part is that the companies/groups producing this software aren't being aggressive enough. Fine, you've a new codec for stills, video or audio. You've even got a reference implementation. But how many mainstream applications can use it? What incentives are being offered to the major websites to switch? If it's audio or video, are DVD or Blu-Ray vendors being approached? Chances are the answers are 'almost none, other than firefox', 'none at all' and 'none at all'. I'm not keen on marketroids, but they have value beyond decoration, in that they can produce the initial momentum needed to start things moving.
The "temperature" of the Big Bang is the theoretical hottest you can ever get, since at that point all mass was in the form of energy, and therefore you had the maximum energy at the maximum density. Nothing can ever exceed that. Thus, if you knew what that was, you could assign it a fixed value as your upper end of the scale. The ideal would be to then have a set of functions (linear, logarithmic, whatever), where a given function was selected for a specific type of application, with the exception of some specific function chosen as the 'standard'.
They must have done, because the last record I saw was 9998 mpg for a gasoline-only car, and over 10,000 mpg for mixed energy source. Presumably, the fuel efficiencies were getting so great that either the engineering costs got too great or the difficulty in measuring fuel consumption became too great. Either that, or they got bored with the old formula.
I find these challenges interesting. There are two ways to win - not bother with efficiency per-se and get as close to minimum permitted mass as possible, or find variables that can still be tweaked downwards. The latter, especially when we get to these absurd levels, is a real exploration of the physics of the problem. Simplifying assumptions that are valid at the mainstream end of the market aren't valid at the extremes, but what simplifying assumptions actually exist? Not all of them are going to be obvious, and the less obvious ones may be the most significant.
Of course, there are going to be hard limits on what you can do. There's only so much energy available, and there's a given amount of mass to accelerate. But we've discovered from eggmobiles and micromice that limited resources can go a surprisingly long way.
Then you get into philosophical arguments as to what defines conciousness, and indeed what defines the brain. If the brain is defined as the seat of conciousness, then conciousness exists entirely within the brain, regardless of how distributed it is. You simply modify how you define the brain. You also get into philosophical arguments as to whether an event (quantum or otherwise) is "outside the brain" and perceived by it, or "inside the brain" and manipulating it.
There's also the question of what we mean by conciousness, which implies an individual existance. Quantum mechanics, taken literally, defines everything as probability functions. A particle doesn't exist at a point, it exists everywhere but with different probabilities, or possibly degrees. You'd need to look up research on diffraction at very low particle rates to see what the current thinking is on whether duality exists because of statistics or because the particle really does have partial existance at multiple points. I think it's the latter, that diffraction patterns are observed even with what are nominally single photons, but I'm not certain.
Assuming it is the latter, then you literally exist everywhere. So do I. So does CowboyNeil (scary thought!). We merely exist at specific points to a greater degree than others, but at the most fundamental level, those are just a bunch of numbers with no "meaning" above and beyond any other set of numbers. As soon as you get to this level, the most fundamental view of the Universe possible, all that exists are functions and values. Matter, energy - these are simply how the functions are organized. Unless a single function, in and of itself, can be said to be concious, then at this level, conciouness does not exist, and individuality is merely an inequality in state machines. Well, presupposing that there is nothing external to physics and mathematics. If you add a paranormal dimension, then things get more complicated.
Wel, if "free will" does not exist, then all the brain is doing is shuffling symbols and applying rulesets. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean a regular supercomputer can simulate it. If (and it's a big if) the brain is a quantum computer, then it will require a quantum computer to simulate it correctly. However, some computer must be able to do so. Whether it's turing or quantum is merely a matter of degree. If "free will" were to exist, we have a problem. Each and every rule becomes optional and new rules can be added at any time. I don't see a whole lot of evidence for that, though. I see evidence that the rules are capable of creating chaotic (in the mathematical sense) behaviour, in which case the output cannot be directly inferred from the input, it must be calculated, but that's about it.
Incidently, if free will does not exist (ie: the mind is a set of rules, possibly self-referential and thus chaotic), I wonder if that implies Asimov's "Psychohistory" does. After all, a large enough set of chaotic systems produces the appearance of a stable system. Jupiter's "Red Spot", for example, or the Mandelbrot Set.
Not that I expect anyone to look this far back, but... Ingres is GPLed (and therefore Open Source). Why does that mater? Because it's a very solid system, provides lots of robustness, and is often forgotten as one of the major open source databases. PostgreSQL is great and for many real-world problems, it's perfect. MySQL - not sure where that fits in anymore, but it used to be that you'd want that to handle those components of a problem that needed a speed demon.
However, I would say that it depends on what you want to do. Scientific data is typically kept using NetCDF or HDF5 because records can be multi-gigabyte and types can be highly complex. I know of no RDBMS that could handle the import of maximum-sized records from these files. Because of that, you cannot use an RDBMS except as a glorified index into such files. In other cases, the difference between the major RDBMS systems may be so small that there is no measurable difference. These are extreme cases, sure, but anything can do well in a non-extreme case. The optimum conditions tell you little other than how to give the system an easy time.
Well, if you accept the multiple universe model of quantum mechanics (all possibilities are true, across the multiverse as a whole) then if something is physically a possible history for you, then yes, one or more of you have experienced that history. Such a model totally buggers up the notion of free will, as even if it exists in some sense, every possible decision you could make will be made - just not necessarily in any given universe.
If that is not a valid QM model, could free will exist? Free will, if it exists, resides in the brain and the structure of the brain (the internal wiring and the thickness of the outer layers) is determined through biology and experience. Thus, your capacity to make and evaluate decisions is based on external factors. In which case, free will cannot be entirely free, but must be significantly controlled by non-intelligent mechanics. (The garage I used to take my car had many of those.) The brain is then fed sensory data which is processed in a virtual space controlled by externally-programmed components of the brain, before being fed into wherever the conciousness resides. If, indeed, it does. (There have been many debates as to whether you need a conciousness to exist. If there is no free will, merely a virtual will, then a true conciousness is unnecessary. There'd be nothing for it to do.)
Alternatively, you could think of the Chinese Room Puzzle. This is one invented to disprove artificial intelligence, but can also be used to disprove the need of a true conciousness or a free will.
Oh, I absolutely agree. Human dignity is something we already understand and respect, so clearly that must be the keystone of any policy. All the other factors I listed are things that can be learned over time and added to the nucleus. It is senseless to do the reverse and make a decision based on things we have not yet fully developed an appreciation for, then bolt on what we do know afterwards. That way lies insanity.
I also agree that my points could be discussed forever. I would love it if they were, partly because people who think tend to not act rashly, and partly because what they think might create options that would not otherwise exist.
My personal way of tackling this sort of stuff is to launch into the longer-term, if not infinite-term, aspects. In some ways, it's quite useless. It doesn't help you here and now. But I assume that people who, like yourself, already know the immediate solution would prefer me not to state what must be obvious to them. I doubt anything I say on Slashdot or elsewhere will ever be considered "significant" or "noteworthy", but there's always a hope that one of my observations might stick in someone's mind and lead to something useful happening eventually.
(Great writer, I am not. Great anything, I am not. Barely adequate Yoda, am I, and a walking encyclopedia of trivia.)
If a server came ready-built with fail-safe plumbing and cooling mechanisms, the answer would be yes. Water, oil, flourinert - these would all be excellent. Total immersive cooling would be more logical than piped cooling, as there are fewer parts that could fail and less possible damage from a failure. You could have a completely sealed compute unit that contained everything and was ready to go, so eliminating any special skills on the part of the data centre or any special requirements in the way of plumbing for that centre. It would, however, require that things like the PCI bus be external to the main unit, or the system would be unmaintainable. That increases fragility. For pre-specced servers that aren't going to require significant upgrades, this would be an obvious solution.
You make an excellent point. I'd add a qualifier, though. Medical science - as with all science - isn't predictable. A diagnosis isn't necessarily 100% accurate, there can be mix-ups in giving results, apparently spontaneous remissions are recorded, and unexpected cures (as in the case of "Lorenzo's Oil") can be found. Predicting the future is notoriously unreliable and biology is particularly fickle. This is not to say one should always expect an improvement in the quality of life. The qualifiers are rare. They are not everyday things. They happen, and that should be factored in, but they aren't certainties. Terminal conditions usually are.
To me, the main question is one of how much weight one should give the exceptions, and how much effort should be placed in trying to fight the probabilities. Should there be a cut-off point? What is a reasonable level of effort in trying to stay above that point? How soon after falling below the threshold should a patient reasonably be able to insist that meaningful recovery is impossible?
A secondary question is how much attitude alters the equation. Do people give up on looking for recovery solutions if they start thinking of suicide? Do people hit the theoretical cut-off point sooner if they consider death a viable option? Or does it make no difference at all? Studies go both ways. If it does make a difference, to what extent are carers/physicians responsible for presenting information in a way that maximises the chances of a full recovery (even if unlikely) versus presenting the unvarnished facts in an 'accurate' but possibly harmful way? Once the threshold is hit, does that responsibility invert?
A I see it, both the pro- and anti- lobbies are so concerned with getting their message across that they don't look to see if they are extrapolating outside the range their message is valid for. They seem to assume that there is no range limit, no threshold, no tipping-point. They also make assumptions about resources. Healthcare is finite and expensive. If a threshold exists, then the threshold must vary to some degree according to those resources. What price a human life? It's not a theoretical question, but a determinate of the number who regain health and to what degree.
There's a final component in this, relating to the price on a human life. Do we see that price as an investment, on which we seek a return? Or as some sort of moral or ethical obligation to do one's best in the face of adversity? It changes things dramatically. It determines who should be treated, what priorities should be placed, and the like. But it has other consequences, not so obvious. If treatment is an investment in the future, then anything that damages that investment (lack of skills, lack of opportunity, whatever it happens to be) has a negative impact, including the condition being treated. In such a view, healthcare is not a profit-making business, it is a way to minimize loss. Damage control on society. It also means changing the view of the sick. The more inert a patient is, the more expensive they are. Should we expect the (potentially) terminally ill to work hard? Isn't that backsliding to the despised workhouses of Dickens' Victorian England?
This isn't as easy or as simple as the lobbies make out. It's a ruthlessly complicated question that cuts to the core of what distinguishes an enlightened attitude from one that isn't, or what defines a civilized society from a mere group of individuals. There isn't a neat dividing line, assuming a line exists at all.
Certainly. Cellular automata were used by Von Neumann to prove that simple rules were sufficient to produce a "Von Neumann machine" - a machine capable of replicating itself - and even a "universal constructor" - a machine capable of constructing any pattern at all from a blueprint. I am not positive, but I think a "Von Neuman machine" pattern is known for Conway's Game of Life.
I defected to the US eleven years ago, from the UK, so never saw many of the later channels, but I don't bother watching much TV in the States any more. The quality of BBC programming, in my opinion, is (by and large) superior to any US broadcaster. Not just television, either - I'd take BBC's radio services over Clear Channel's any day.
My one gripe is that broadband is not truly comparable to broadcasting unless the ISPs enable multicasting to the home. Point-to-point streaming is so harsh on bandwidth that it can't be considered a true competitor for regular programming at this time.
Once upon a time, application writers tried to make users do the right thing by making them confirm any significant operation. What it led to was users who just hit the "y" key automatically whenever they got a confirmation request. They stopped reading the message. It is unclear if Vista's system will produce a different result - either through the user confirming blindly or by the application dummying the signal. Either way, it ceases to have any real value.
So I gather you disagree, from your semi-intelligible response? Did we (collective humanity) or did we not create the computer you are reading this on? Did we not bring about the technological advances that are stated in the very article you are replying (hardly) to? If so, then are we not the ultimate computer? Equipped w/ the highest resolution video, audio, CPU/logic, etc?
Alan Turing was rather abhored by the collective humanity at the time, due to his orientation, so I'm not sure collective humanity has any right to barge in on his invention.
As for whether we are the ultimate computer, the computing power of the brain is limited by many factors. Chemical signals are slow, electrical signals are faster but are still very limited, the ability to eliminate heat is rather poor, the circulation of nutrients is limited, a lot of infrastructure is taken up by legacy functions, and redundant wiring and neurons die back after the first 20 years of operation. In terms of I/O, the human brain has a lot but is not the best. Dolphins have all the senses of humans plus stereoscopic ultrasound - both for communication and echo-location. (The I/O centers in their brains are also substantially larger, which is often mistaken for them having larger brains than humans. It is entirely possible that they are smarter, but that won't be why.)
An "ideal" brain would use much lower latency interconnects, would be interleaved with a rapid cooling system, and would prefer expansion to "garbage collection" (at the expense of needing more energy).
The philosophical problem comes with detecting design by non-human intelligence, possibly not even part of this universe. There are a ton of presuppositions as to how to recognize a message vs noise.
Yes and no. You cannot distinguish any signal from noise, but you CAN distinguish certain categories of signal from noise. For example, virtually nothing emits much of a signal at the frequency popularly known as "the water-hole". It's (almost) certainly not a maximum for anything. Natural sources are also generally unpolarised, unmodulated, either "random" (chaotic) or periodic, generally cover a fairly wide range of frequencies and have very specific energy characteristics according to the type of body.
It's probably not safe to go with just one parameter - pulsars were thought to be alien at one point because of that - but if you had three out of the six, it would not be unreasonable to suspect alien intelligence. Five or more, and youd need to be a hard-boiled cynic to insist on a natural origin.
So how do you know if something is "random" or not? A random signal will follow a distribution. It doesn't matter what the distribution is, you don't need to care. If you use a very long baseline and the distribution remains more-or-less constant, you have a random signal. This is because a large enough sample size will not have random values but will follow the probability for any given value very closely. Chaotic systems are (dynamically) "stable" and therefore won't vary for a long enough baseline. Non-random sources may or may not vary in their characteristics on a long baseline, but if a system is never stable over any baseline no matter how long, it's not random. There is no definable probability of anything, none of the usual rules governing randomness apply. That doesn't make it alien, there may be naturally-occuring systems that work off the prime number sequence, so you look and see if any other criteria apply.
What if an alien works off some exotic system we don't know anything about? The six criteria I listed will tell you if the source looks and acts natural, on the basis that the more exotic something is, the less likely it is to be indistinguishable from natural sources. We don't have to know anything about how "they" think or organize things, we only have to know that nature neither thinks nor organizes.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows is more like the Sherrif of Nottingham or (even closer) King John. In fact, if I understand the plot correctly, it is Linux that is being declared the outlaw. (Mind you, the Geste of Robin Hood is pretty violent and both sides are guilty of what would today be considered war-crimes. Robin Hood, at one point, bumps off kids who could be witnesses, for example. The most Linux could be said to have bumped off is the MACH-based version of HURD, but I think that's usually considered a mercy killing.)
Just because the movie is sponsored by SCO, Microsoft and NVidia does NOT mean that it is prejudice. Honest, gov.
The Japanese were looking at a format 30x high-definition, according to a story on Slashdot not too long ago. Dirac might be a reasonable competitor for storing or transmitting a video signal of that magnitude. Another possibility would be to have an all-digital IMAX - regular codecs aren't really up to the job of storing or delivering data of that quality and resolution. A third would be for transmitting video to hand-held devices. I'm not sure ultra-low-power buys you much after a while, but bandwidth to mobile devices is always at a premium, as is memory on the device itself. Any of these could be markets for Dirac, if sufficient research and development is put into the format and at least one implementation.
It was never made clear what the rockets will be driving in the race. But the sharks with lasers will send down lightning bolts from the previous story and fix the race anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.
If the web is heading in the direction of being an online virtual library and multimedia service, then yes, you want HDR. You want online photographs and mediascapes to be every bit as good as they are in other formats. Web 3.x (or whatever the latest version is under cvs) has chosen to compete with physical publishing, television and cinema. Those are tough fields to compete with, if you're operating at a significantly lower grade.
It's part of one of Baldrick's cunning plans. Clouds are made of water, right? And sharks swim in water. So if you kitted up the sharks with lasers...
Or look at images. When was the last time you saw a website where the pictures were in OpenEXR or JPEG2000 format? They're regular JPEGs, for the most part, PNGs if you're very lucky.
This isn't to denigrate the developers in the least. Most of these new formats are superb and should be written. Part of the problem is that older formats are heavily entrenched, and the other part is that the companies/groups producing this software aren't being aggressive enough. Fine, you've a new codec for stills, video or audio. You've even got a reference implementation. But how many mainstream applications can use it? What incentives are being offered to the major websites to switch? If it's audio or video, are DVD or Blu-Ray vendors being approached? Chances are the answers are 'almost none, other than firefox', 'none at all' and 'none at all'. I'm not keen on marketroids, but they have value beyond decoration, in that they can produce the initial momentum needed to start things moving.
The "temperature" of the Big Bang is the theoretical hottest you can ever get, since at that point all mass was in the form of energy, and therefore you had the maximum energy at the maximum density. Nothing can ever exceed that. Thus, if you knew what that was, you could assign it a fixed value as your upper end of the scale. The ideal would be to then have a set of functions (linear, logarithmic, whatever), where a given function was selected for a specific type of application, with the exception of some specific function chosen as the 'standard'.
I find these challenges interesting. There are two ways to win - not bother with efficiency per-se and get as close to minimum permitted mass as possible, or find variables that can still be tweaked downwards. The latter, especially when we get to these absurd levels, is a real exploration of the physics of the problem. Simplifying assumptions that are valid at the mainstream end of the market aren't valid at the extremes, but what simplifying assumptions actually exist? Not all of them are going to be obvious, and the less obvious ones may be the most significant.
Of course, there are going to be hard limits on what you can do. There's only so much energy available, and there's a given amount of mass to accelerate. But we've discovered from eggmobiles and micromice that limited resources can go a surprisingly long way.
For most purposes, -Wall will suffice on GCC. However, they should add a more comprehensive warning option and call it -Wall-to-wall.
There's also the question of what we mean by conciousness, which implies an individual existance. Quantum mechanics, taken literally, defines everything as probability functions. A particle doesn't exist at a point, it exists everywhere but with different probabilities, or possibly degrees. You'd need to look up research on diffraction at very low particle rates to see what the current thinking is on whether duality exists because of statistics or because the particle really does have partial existance at multiple points. I think it's the latter, that diffraction patterns are observed even with what are nominally single photons, but I'm not certain.
Assuming it is the latter, then you literally exist everywhere. So do I. So does CowboyNeil (scary thought!). We merely exist at specific points to a greater degree than others, but at the most fundamental level, those are just a bunch of numbers with no "meaning" above and beyond any other set of numbers. As soon as you get to this level, the most fundamental view of the Universe possible, all that exists are functions and values. Matter, energy - these are simply how the functions are organized. Unless a single function, in and of itself, can be said to be concious, then at this level, conciouness does not exist, and individuality is merely an inequality in state machines. Well, presupposing that there is nothing external to physics and mathematics. If you add a paranormal dimension, then things get more complicated.
Incidently, if free will does not exist (ie: the mind is a set of rules, possibly self-referential and thus chaotic), I wonder if that implies Asimov's "Psychohistory" does. After all, a large enough set of chaotic systems produces the appearance of a stable system. Jupiter's "Red Spot", for example, or the Mandelbrot Set.
However, I would say that it depends on what you want to do. Scientific data is typically kept using NetCDF or HDF5 because records can be multi-gigabyte and types can be highly complex. I know of no RDBMS that could handle the import of maximum-sized records from these files. Because of that, you cannot use an RDBMS except as a glorified index into such files. In other cases, the difference between the major RDBMS systems may be so small that there is no measurable difference. These are extreme cases, sure, but anything can do well in a non-extreme case. The optimum conditions tell you little other than how to give the system an easy time.
If that is not a valid QM model, could free will exist? Free will, if it exists, resides in the brain and the structure of the brain (the internal wiring and the thickness of the outer layers) is determined through biology and experience. Thus, your capacity to make and evaluate decisions is based on external factors. In which case, free will cannot be entirely free, but must be significantly controlled by non-intelligent mechanics. (The garage I used to take my car had many of those.) The brain is then fed sensory data which is processed in a virtual space controlled by externally-programmed components of the brain, before being fed into wherever the conciousness resides. If, indeed, it does. (There have been many debates as to whether you need a conciousness to exist. If there is no free will, merely a virtual will, then a true conciousness is unnecessary. There'd be nothing for it to do.)
Alternatively, you could think of the Chinese Room Puzzle. This is one invented to disprove artificial intelligence, but can also be used to disprove the need of a true conciousness or a free will.
It has to do with tea and crumpets. If free will truly existed, would they have not have had beer instead?
I also agree that my points could be discussed forever. I would love it if they were, partly because people who think tend to not act rashly, and partly because what they think might create options that would not otherwise exist.
My personal way of tackling this sort of stuff is to launch into the longer-term, if not infinite-term, aspects. In some ways, it's quite useless. It doesn't help you here and now. But I assume that people who, like yourself, already know the immediate solution would prefer me not to state what must be obvious to them. I doubt anything I say on Slashdot or elsewhere will ever be considered "significant" or "noteworthy", but there's always a hope that one of my observations might stick in someone's mind and lead to something useful happening eventually.
(Great writer, I am not. Great anything, I am not. Barely adequate Yoda, am I, and a walking encyclopedia of trivia.)
If a server came ready-built with fail-safe plumbing and cooling mechanisms, the answer would be yes. Water, oil, flourinert - these would all be excellent. Total immersive cooling would be more logical than piped cooling, as there are fewer parts that could fail and less possible damage from a failure. You could have a completely sealed compute unit that contained everything and was ready to go, so eliminating any special skills on the part of the data centre or any special requirements in the way of plumbing for that centre. It would, however, require that things like the PCI bus be external to the main unit, or the system would be unmaintainable. That increases fragility. For pre-specced servers that aren't going to require significant upgrades, this would be an obvious solution.
To me, the main question is one of how much weight one should give the exceptions, and how much effort should be placed in trying to fight the probabilities. Should there be a cut-off point? What is a reasonable level of effort in trying to stay above that point? How soon after falling below the threshold should a patient reasonably be able to insist that meaningful recovery is impossible?
A secondary question is how much attitude alters the equation. Do people give up on looking for recovery solutions if they start thinking of suicide? Do people hit the theoretical cut-off point sooner if they consider death a viable option? Or does it make no difference at all? Studies go both ways. If it does make a difference, to what extent are carers/physicians responsible for presenting information in a way that maximises the chances of a full recovery (even if unlikely) versus presenting the unvarnished facts in an 'accurate' but possibly harmful way? Once the threshold is hit, does that responsibility invert?
A I see it, both the pro- and anti- lobbies are so concerned with getting their message across that they don't look to see if they are extrapolating outside the range their message is valid for. They seem to assume that there is no range limit, no threshold, no tipping-point. They also make assumptions about resources. Healthcare is finite and expensive. If a threshold exists, then the threshold must vary to some degree according to those resources. What price a human life? It's not a theoretical question, but a determinate of the number who regain health and to what degree.
There's a final component in this, relating to the price on a human life. Do we see that price as an investment, on which we seek a return? Or as some sort of moral or ethical obligation to do one's best in the face of adversity? It changes things dramatically. It determines who should be treated, what priorities should be placed, and the like. But it has other consequences, not so obvious. If treatment is an investment in the future, then anything that damages that investment (lack of skills, lack of opportunity, whatever it happens to be) has a negative impact, including the condition being treated. In such a view, healthcare is not a profit-making business, it is a way to minimize loss. Damage control on society. It also means changing the view of the sick. The more inert a patient is, the more expensive they are. Should we expect the (potentially) terminally ill to work hard? Isn't that backsliding to the despised workhouses of Dickens' Victorian England?
This isn't as easy or as simple as the lobbies make out. It's a ruthlessly complicated question that cuts to the core of what distinguishes an enlightened attitude from one that isn't, or what defines a civilized society from a mere group of individuals. There isn't a neat dividing line, assuming a line exists at all.
Certainly. Cellular automata were used by Von Neumann to prove that simple rules were sufficient to produce a "Von Neumann machine" - a machine capable of replicating itself - and even a "universal constructor" - a machine capable of constructing any pattern at all from a blueprint. I am not positive, but I think a "Von Neuman machine" pattern is known for Conway's Game of Life.
My one gripe is that broadband is not truly comparable to broadcasting unless the ISPs enable multicasting to the home. Point-to-point streaming is so harsh on bandwidth that it can't be considered a true competitor for regular programming at this time.
Once upon a time, application writers tried to make users do the right thing by making them confirm any significant operation. What it led to was users who just hit the "y" key automatically whenever they got a confirmation request. They stopped reading the message. It is unclear if Vista's system will produce a different result - either through the user confirming blindly or by the application dummying the signal. Either way, it ceases to have any real value.
Alan Turing was rather abhored by the collective humanity at the time, due to his orientation, so I'm not sure collective humanity has any right to barge in on his invention.
As for whether we are the ultimate computer, the computing power of the brain is limited by many factors. Chemical signals are slow, electrical signals are faster but are still very limited, the ability to eliminate heat is rather poor, the circulation of nutrients is limited, a lot of infrastructure is taken up by legacy functions, and redundant wiring and neurons die back after the first 20 years of operation. In terms of I/O, the human brain has a lot but is not the best. Dolphins have all the senses of humans plus stereoscopic ultrasound - both for communication and echo-location. (The I/O centers in their brains are also substantially larger, which is often mistaken for them having larger brains than humans. It is entirely possible that they are smarter, but that won't be why.)
An "ideal" brain would use much lower latency interconnects, would be interleaved with a rapid cooling system, and would prefer expansion to "garbage collection" (at the expense of needing more energy).
Yes and no. You cannot distinguish any signal from noise, but you CAN distinguish certain categories of signal from noise. For example, virtually nothing emits much of a signal at the frequency popularly known as "the water-hole". It's (almost) certainly not a maximum for anything. Natural sources are also generally unpolarised, unmodulated, either "random" (chaotic) or periodic, generally cover a fairly wide range of frequencies and have very specific energy characteristics according to the type of body.
It's probably not safe to go with just one parameter - pulsars were thought to be alien at one point because of that - but if you had three out of the six, it would not be unreasonable to suspect alien intelligence. Five or more, and youd need to be a hard-boiled cynic to insist on a natural origin.
So how do you know if something is "random" or not? A random signal will follow a distribution. It doesn't matter what the distribution is, you don't need to care. If you use a very long baseline and the distribution remains more-or-less constant, you have a random signal. This is because a large enough sample size will not have random values but will follow the probability for any given value very closely. Chaotic systems are (dynamically) "stable" and therefore won't vary for a long enough baseline. Non-random sources may or may not vary in their characteristics on a long baseline, but if a system is never stable over any baseline no matter how long, it's not random. There is no definable probability of anything, none of the usual rules governing randomness apply. That doesn't make it alien, there may be naturally-occuring systems that work off the prime number sequence, so you look and see if any other criteria apply.
What if an alien works off some exotic system we don't know anything about? The six criteria I listed will tell you if the source looks and acts natural, on the basis that the more exotic something is, the less likely it is to be indistinguishable from natural sources. We don't have to know anything about how "they" think or organize things, we only have to know that nature neither thinks nor organizes.
Earth. Jupiter. Saturn. Alpha Geminorum. The Andromeda galaxy. The United States tax system.
I wondered why the contrast seemed a bit off. Thanks.