No, because during each of these single cell replacements, the conciousness running on the machine as a whole continued to function, continued to be *me*, even though it changed slightly each time.
You could think of it like a shoal of fish or a flock of birds. The flock operates according to a set of rules, remove one bird from the flock of thousands and replace it with another the flock continues to function as a single unit as it did before.
However, if you could somehow freeze the flock and create another of the exactly same size with all of the birds in exactly the same relative position, you now have a second instance of the flock, it will operate according to exactly the same rules and will function exactly the same but the first flock is still there. The second copy of me is nothing more than that, a second instance, no longer *me*, though it thinks it is.
As a humanist I don't believe in any sort of a supernatural soul, so your premise is incorrect. I do firmly believe however that my conciousness is firmly attached to the physical hardware that is my brain.
If you would like to prove me wrong, you could perform a simple scientific experiment involving a large rock and your brain.
*You*, are the instance of conciousness that is currently executing on the hardware of your brain.
The only way I see that you could be downloaded to a computer and still remain *you* is if the individual neurons of your brain were replaced basically one at a time with a functionally identical artificial neuron in a sort of hot swap fashion as the conciousness continued to function.
Oh, I pretty much agree, it's technically good but it all comes down to cost, and mass production is inevitably going to make ix86 cheaper. They basically have to be able to make them for less than fifty quid, sell them for less than a hundred.
RISC OS is just a little bit more efficient than Windows, MAC or even Linux. Where 256Mb is a struggle for Windows + GUI apps and 128Mb a struggle for a MAC or Linux + GUI apps, ITYF that we're talking 16Mb being the lower limit for RISC OS + GUI apps.
You're really comparing melons and apples to cherries.
The mass produced machine will probably be smaller, if it ever does reach mass production stage. It'll have to be *really* cheap to make it into any significant number of homes.
And power requirements significantly increases the cost of your data centre. There's no point buying lots of cheap servers if you have to then spend a fortune on uprating your air conditioning and UPS.
Google are doing to I.T. what Arkwright did to textiles during the Industrial Revolution and Ford did to manufacturing at the turn of the century. The vast majority of those in I.T. who don't follow their basic model are going out of business in the near future. There will only be a few niche players and a few Google like companies.
Anyway, the magic formula for the system to use is MIPS per Watt, or MFLOPS per Watt. The power requirements and heat produced by high density computers is a real problem to deal with, it's the real limiting factor for your data centre. The cost of the individual computers is relatively small in comparison.
Anyway, I'd be building a Transmeta based cluster even though the absolute per CPU performance is lower than the latest AMD or Intel offerings (I'm assuming you need to keep ix86 compatability). So, go look for Transmeta blades or Transmeta 1/2 U or 1 U based servers.
Yeah, but you don't have the largest stocks of uranium for nuclear power, which is what the post I was replying to was talking about. For nuclear you would be importing from Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan.
Most power stations just burn the stuff. Not very efficient or particularly clean.
If you put a gasification stage in though, you can produce power and saleable chemical byproducts. In addition, the gas can power a much smaller scale CCGT which can be closer to the consumption, this makes district heating, district cooling feasible and efficiencies reach nearly 90% rather than 40%.
The whole reason the glycemic index appeared was to help diabetic people to regulate their blood sugar, the research does show that the body will convert excess to fat. Food with a high glycemic index will in general terms lead to more body fat, at least partially because it is digested quicker leading to feelings of hunger and subsequent snacking. Foods with lower glycemic indexes are digested slower, so less hunger and less snacking.
BTW, differnt types of rice and different preparations of it have different glycemic indexes, from low 40ish to high 95. Noodles are also low GI.
However, you're basically right, more calories in = more body fat and vegetable and animal fats have lots of calories, energy density is after all why we burn them in our cars.
For the World Wide Web. Wiki is maybe a bit closer.
However I've been looking into it and it seems to me to be a sad, isolated, lonely world, there are no connections between the people producing these blogs. No community.
I mean this is Naperville we're talking about here, hotbed of political intrigue. People could be reading *anything* on the internet, communists or even them tree hugger perverts objecting to another golf course or country club.
Sorry but this stuff is particularly trivial, patching 10, 100 or 1000 machines.
e.g. echo 'ALL:root: 15 18 * * */afs/admin/scripts/patchme' >>/etc/crontab.master
Where the crontabs are centrally managed, patchme checks for resources, goes to sleep for a while, runs OS, platform and rev specific patch download and install subroutines which run yum update, apt-get update, patchadd, rpm -Uvh etc. Report progress to a central monitoring system like Big Brother or Zabbix as the patching process runs through the various stages.
Even talking about the cost of the patching process itself is missing the point. Anyone who has a lot of machines will already have a largely automated enterprise wide cross platform patching system in place. Applying a specific patch will be a case of dropping a pre-tested file into a directory on a file server. If you don't have such a system WTF are you doing wasting your time on Slashdot?
The chinese set their exchange rate, it doesn't (really) float on the markets. They set the rate so that chinese people are very very cheap. World businesses flood in to China.
In the meantime, the dollar decreases in value as the trade deficit increases, China buys dollars to keep the exchange rate the same driving exports to the US, increasing the deficit this further depresses the dollar making Americans cheaper on the world market. To the detriment of Europe and the UK BTW.
It's an unstable situation which cannot continue forever. It *will* change sooner rather than later. The yuan will be allowed to move more freely, chinese people will become more expensive as their economy modernises and the trade deficits will sort themselves out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Care to redefine your idea of conciousness?"
No, because during each of these single cell replacements, the conciousness running on the machine as a whole continued to function, continued to be *me*, even though it changed slightly each time.
You could think of it like a shoal of fish or a flock of birds. The flock operates according to a set of rules, remove one bird from the flock of thousands and replace it with another the flock continues to function as a single unit as it did before.
However, if you could somehow freeze the flock and create another of the exactly same size with all of the birds in exactly the same relative position, you now have a second instance of the flock, it will operate according to exactly the same rules and will function exactly the same but the first flock is still there. The second copy of me is nothing more than that, a second instance, no longer *me*, though it thinks it is.
As a humanist I don't believe in any sort of a supernatural soul, so your premise is incorrect. I do firmly believe however that my conciousness is firmly attached to the physical hardware that is my brain.
If you would like to prove me wrong, you could perform a simple scientific experiment involving a large rock and your brain.
*You*, are the instance of conciousness that is currently executing on the hardware of your brain.
The only way I see that you could be downloaded to a computer and still remain *you* is if the individual neurons of your brain were replaced basically one at a time with a functionally identical artificial neuron in a sort of hot swap fashion as the conciousness continued to function.
You know, like a photocopy. What's the point, you'd still be dead.
Just you wait until it's $6.50/gallon.
Really. It looks really difficult when written, but spoken Norwegian is *almost* understandable to English speakers. Much like Geordie in fact.
Oh, I pretty much agree, it's technically good but it all comes down to cost, and mass production is inevitably going to make ix86 cheaper. They basically have to be able to make them for less than fifty quid, sell them for less than a hundred.
(Typed on a cheap Linux Laptop)
It's what you do with it.
RISC OS is just a little bit more efficient than Windows, MAC or even Linux. Where 256Mb is a struggle for Windows + GUI apps and 128Mb a struggle for a MAC or Linux + GUI apps, ITYF that we're talking 16Mb being the lower limit for RISC OS + GUI apps.
You're really comparing melons and apples to cherries.
The mass produced machine will probably be smaller, if it ever does reach mass production stage. It'll have to be *really* cheap to make it into any significant number of homes.
Comparison of various CPU in MIPS/Watt or MFLOPS/Watt.
p a=showpage&pid=80&page=4
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&
And some suppliers of efficient servers.
http://www.transmeta.com/success/server.html
Having dealt with HP, I would be inclined to look at one of the other vendors.
And power requirements significantly increases the cost of your data centre. There's no point buying lots of cheap servers if you have to then spend a fortune on uprating your air conditioning and UPS.
Google are doing to I.T. what Arkwright did to textiles during the Industrial Revolution and Ford did to manufacturing at the turn of the century. The vast majority of those in I.T. who don't follow their basic model are going out of business in the near future. There will only be a few niche players and a few Google like companies.
p a=showpage&pid=80&page=4
Anyway, the magic formula for the system to use is MIPS per Watt, or MFLOPS per Watt. The power requirements and heat produced by high density computers is a real problem to deal with, it's the real limiting factor for your data centre. The cost of the individual computers is relatively small in comparison.
e.g.
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&
Anyway, I'd be building a Transmeta based cluster even though the absolute per CPU performance is lower than the latest AMD or Intel offerings (I'm assuming you need to keep ix86 compatability). So, go look for Transmeta blades or Transmeta 1/2 U or 1 U based servers.
Well, he's just one of many, I'm sure there are more worthy. As I said, wiki is probably closer.
His comment:
"I'm lonely, cold, and need assurance people are actually reading my stuff"
Is telling though, it goes along with what I was saying about no sense of community.
Yeah, but you don't have the largest stocks of uranium for nuclear power, which is what the post I was replying to was talking about. For nuclear you would be importing from Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan.
Nokia 9210. A bit of a brick but I always have the information I need with me. Plus I can plug it into a Sun box as a console should i need to.
It does still have to be dug up from somewhere. Seems to me you are replacing one external fuel source with another external fuel source.
Will you be invading Canada or Australia in the future then? Maybe Kazakhstan.
Most power stations just burn the stuff. Not very efficient or particularly clean.
If you put a gasification stage in though, you can produce power and saleable chemical byproducts. In addition, the gas can power a much smaller scale CCGT which can be closer to the consumption, this makes district heating, district cooling feasible and efficiencies reach nearly 90% rather than 40%.
At some time during the day. The other option is unhealthy food at school *and* unhealthy food at home.
Are you saying that excess sugars in the bloodstream are not converted to fat?
= News&file=article&sid=2623
http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/modules.php?name
The whole reason the glycemic index appeared was to help diabetic people to regulate their blood sugar, the research does show that the body will convert excess to fat. Food with a high glycemic index will in general terms lead to more body fat, at least partially because it is digested quicker leading to feelings of hunger and subsequent snacking. Foods with lower glycemic indexes are digested slower, so less hunger and less snacking.
BTW, differnt types of rice and different preparations of it have different glycemic indexes, from low 40ish to high 95. Noodles are also low GI.
However, you're basically right, more calories in = more body fat and vegetable and animal fats have lots of calories, energy density is after all why we burn them in our cars.
For the World Wide Web. Wiki is maybe a bit closer.
However I've been looking into it and it seems to me to be a sad, isolated, lonely world, there are no connections between the people producing these blogs. No community.
Which you can buy in... Book shops?
I mean this is Naperville we're talking about here, hotbed of political intrigue. People could be reading *anything* on the internet, communists or even them tree hugger perverts objecting to another golf course or country club.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/st ory/0,9865,1486811,00.html
And an artificial womb. It's only a matter of time before all that will be required is a sample of genetic material, skin scraping etc.
Sorry but this stuff is particularly trivial, patching 10, 100 or 1000 machines.
/afs/admin/scripts/patchme' >> /etc/crontab.master
e.g.
echo 'ALL:root: 15 18 * * *
Where the crontabs are centrally managed, patchme checks for resources, goes to sleep for a while, runs OS, platform and rev specific patch download and install subroutines which run yum update, apt-get update, patchadd, rpm -Uvh etc. Report progress to a central monitoring system like Big Brother or Zabbix as the patching process runs through the various stages.
Even talking about the cost of the patching process itself is missing the point. Anyone who has a lot of machines will already have a largely automated enterprise wide cross platform patching system in place. Applying a specific patch will be a case of dropping a pre-tested file into a directory on a file server. If you don't have such a system WTF are you doing wasting your time on Slashdot?
The chinese set their exchange rate, it doesn't (really) float on the markets. They set the rate so that chinese people are very very cheap. World businesses flood in to China.
In the meantime, the dollar decreases in value as the trade deficit increases, China buys dollars to keep the exchange rate the same driving exports to the US, increasing the deficit this further depresses the dollar making Americans cheaper on the world market. To the detriment of Europe and the UK BTW.
It's an unstable situation which cannot continue forever. It *will* change sooner rather than later. The yuan will be allowed to move more freely, chinese people will become more expensive as their economy modernises and the trade deficits will sort themselves out.
e.g.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4560371.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4521969.stm
http://www.dawn.com/2005/05/06/ebr8.htm
Of course, on the down side there are still 800 million chinese who are going to need jobs as their agriculture is modernised.