A physicist wrote the following statement about Wolfram's book. Is he wrong?
Dis-recommended
Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science [This is almost, but not quite, a case for the immortal "What is true is not new, and what is new is not true". The one new, true thing is a proof that the elementary CA rule 110 can support universal, Turing-complete computation. (One of Wolfram's earlier books states that such a thing is obviously impossible.) This however was shown not by Wolfram but by Matthew Cook (this is the "technical content and proofs" for which Wolfram acknowledges Cook, in miniscule type, in his frontmatter). In any case it cannot bear the weight Wolfram places on it. Watch This Space for a detailed critique of this book, a rare blend of monster raving egomania and utter batshit insanity.]
ANKOS is in my reading queue but I have not quite gotten to it yet.
"Suing an employee to gain ownership of a personal-time project would be a serious blow to their future recruiting efforts and would cost them untold amounts of geek cred. It's hard to see what kind of personal after-hours project would be worth enough to risk the huge damage such a suit would do to Google's brand name. Even if they win, they lose."
Apple took ownership of some code developed by one of their engineers in his spare time. I think he had his own side business. The odd thing here is that Steve Jobs paid Andy Hertzfield a lot of money for some code he wrote in his spare time but their attitude towards this has apparently changed.
Given all this, I imagine that they still attract a lot of top notch talent.
Did you know that when Doug Lenat was working on his Ph.D he developed AM (Automated Mathematician) which re-discovered one of Ramanujan's many discoveries.
I believe that the American Mathematical Society wrote up a nice review of his lost or last notebook a few years ago.
You're right about them having an excellent development team. One of the founders founded the 5k prize which was a contest to see who could create the coolest web app in 5k bytes. That contest has since been absorbed by SIGGRAPH.
I wonder if Darren got his idea for the movie PI based on the exploits of two mathematicians who built a supercomputer in their spare bedroom and computed PI to billions of digits. The story was in the New Yorker but it is now here.
about German military defeats (Hitler, Kaiser, etc.) or Italian military defeats (sacking of rome in ~400 AD, loss of armies at the hands of Spartacus, more losses at the hands of Hannibal, etc., more losses at the hands of the Germans, etc.).
I don't understand why people single out the French for this one.
over a hundred years old. It started out under a different name (something like Automatic Tabulating Co.) back in the 1880s.
Saying that a company like Microsoft, that not only has a lot of smart people, billions of dollars in the bank and a cream of the cream lab, is going to die is pretty simple minded. I guess you could have said that IBM was dead in the early 90s but is it dead? Nope.
"Plus, Google's research into search AI is not at the level of Microsoft's. (Never, ever underestimate the power of Microsoft Research.)"
Microsoft Research not only has at least one Field's medalist (Michael Freedman) but they've hired away whole groups from IBM's famous Thomas J. Watson research center.
Google has some excellent people (like Rob Pike) but if Microsoft wants to (only problem here is that the company looks down on the research division as non-productive in that they don't ship product) they could seriously tap into their research division.
perhaps we'll have the ability to make our own TV shows easily and those who have the motivation to write a good story will be able to publish their stories on the web for others to enjoy.
Of course, this could only solve Trek's woes if the copyrights on the Star Trek idea have expired and the everyman actually creates good content.
Sure it is. Burt Rutan has CAD drawings for a larger spacecraft and for a space hotel. How do you think he's going to get a hotel into space? Obviously by towing a lot of cargo into space. That's basically what the Saturn V did except it did it for Apollo-era space vehicles.
"I think it mostly DOES apply in Mozilla's case, but people cite it a little too blindly, as if a small team could create a Saturn V or Windows NT or something if they were just REALLY SMART and put in a lot of overtime."
Rutan's team at Scaled Composites is a small team who have built a spacecraft that may end up accomplishing much of what the Saturn V did. Also Windows NT was essentially designed by one guy (Dave Cutler) with a small staff of developers back in the late 80s, I think. I grant you that by now the Windows NT team probably is a behemoth but not in the beginning.
I can't believe you people like the PowerBook keyboard. They are much the same as other notebooks and that's the problem - cramped! I would probably buy one if the made the keyboard more like a standard one and replaced the trackpad gizmo with something that actually works well.
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Would only work if he used his left hand to shake hands.
And a link to the trailer.
ANKOS is in my reading queue but I have not quite gotten to it yet.
Apple took ownership of some code developed by one of their engineers in his spare time. I think he had his own side business. The odd thing here is that Steve Jobs paid Andy Hertzfield a lot of money for some code he wrote in his spare time but their attitude towards this has apparently changed.
Given all this, I imagine that they still attract a lot of top notch talent.
So maybe you should say "If I was a short Italian dude from the past where would I go?"
http://members.cox.net/xocxoc/humor/anyquestions.
My favorite question from the list:
I believe that the American Mathematical Society wrote up a nice review of his lost or last notebook a few years ago.
But still...did he write any other books that are nearly as good as Ender's Game?
You're right about them having an excellent development team. One of the founders founded the 5k prize which was a contest to see who could create the coolest web app in 5k bytes. That contest has since been absorbed by SIGGRAPH.
upload your photos to the internet so that other people can look at them and laugh at you. :)
she was actually pretty. If you've ever seen the old 50s movie Samson and Delilah then you'll know what I mean. Of course, that was fifty years ago!
the Boosterspice!!! Just think of how rich someone could get if they could live several lifetimes over.
I wonder if Darren got his idea for the movie PI based on the exploits of two mathematicians who built a supercomputer in their spare bedroom and computed PI to billions of digits. The story was in the New Yorker but it is now here.
I don't understand why people single out the French for this one.
Yeah, one of their biggest innovations was developing copper interconnects which was a risky ten year project.
Saying that a company like Microsoft, that not only has a lot of smart people, billions of dollars in the bank and a cream of the cream lab, is going to die is pretty simple minded. I guess you could have said that IBM was dead in the early 90s but is it dead? Nope.
it's just a Really Really Big Spaceship. Really Big.
IE on Macintosh isn't supported either.
Microsoft Research not only has at least one Field's medalist (Michael Freedman) but they've hired away whole groups from IBM's famous Thomas J. Watson research center.
Google has some excellent people (like Rob Pike) but if Microsoft wants to (only problem here is that the company looks down on the research division as non-productive in that they don't ship product) they could seriously tap into their research division.
Of course, this could only solve Trek's woes if the copyrights on the Star Trek idea have expired and the everyman actually creates good content.
On how Cyc is doing currently?
Sure it is. Burt Rutan has CAD drawings for a larger spacecraft and for a space hotel. How do you think he's going to get a hotel into space? Obviously by towing a lot of cargo into space. That's basically what the Saturn V did except it did it for Apollo-era space vehicles.
Rutan's team at Scaled Composites is a small team who have built a spacecraft that may end up accomplishing much of what the Saturn V did. Also Windows NT was essentially designed by one guy (Dave Cutler) with a small staff of developers back in the late 80s, I think. I grant you that by now the Windows NT team probably is a behemoth but not in the beginning.
I can't believe you people like the PowerBook keyboard. They are much the same as other notebooks and that's the problem - cramped! I would probably buy one if the made the keyboard more like a standard one and replaced the trackpad gizmo with something that actually works well.