An abacus may be seen to be a series of registers. Each string holds beads and the positioning of the beads on the string sets the value of the register.:>)
The human operator of the abacus is the executor of the machine code: it's the human that: -- reads the value of a register (by looking at it) -- stores a numeric value in a register (by sliding beads) -- performs the carry when overflow occurs by carriage returning the beads in one row and moving an extra bead in the next (above or below depending on your own definition) string -- transfers values from paper or mind onto the string . So obviously an abacus merely is a large temporary variable allowing a human being to perform calculations without holding all of the digits in their own memory: the abacus is a set of registers holding integer numeric values, an abacus by itself is not a computer, but just part of a computing system. It requires an agent, a human "computer" (or a sufficiently programmed and capable (vision + motion) robot !!!) actor in order to be a full computing system.
An abacus may be seen to be a series of registers. Each string holds beads and the positioning of the beads on the string sets the value of the register. :>)
The human operator of the abacus is the executor of the machine code: it's the human that: -- reads the value of a register (by looking at it)
-- stores a numeric value in a register (by sliding beads)
-- performs the carry when overflow occurs by carriage returning the beads in one row and moving an extra bead in the next (above or below depending on your own definition) string
-- transfers values from paper or mind onto the string .
So obviously an abacus merely is a large temporary variable allowing a human being to perform calculations without holding all of the digits in their own memory: the abacus is a set of registers holding integer numeric values, an abacus by itself is not a computer, but just part of a computing system. It requires an agent, a human "computer" (or a sufficiently programmed and capable (vision + motion) robot !!!) actor in order to be a full computing system.
Re: What does low Earth orbit have to do with it? ;>)
Well, it could either be that the jurisdictional boundaries of these peace officers does not extend far up enough over the surface of the earth to Low Earth Orbit, or it might be that Law Enforcement Officers call themselves LEOs for short.
There's a good picture of the "simulated results" vs. the results they really got in that Science magazine preview for an AND gate, and a relevant paragraph of the summary:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/assets/2013/03/28/sn-circuit.jpg The Stanford team then showed that they could line up multiple transcriptors to carry out logical functions, creating standard logical circuits called AND gates, OR gates, XOR gates, and so on, which combine signals according to certain rules. (A computer's processor is a vast assemblage of such gates.) They also showed that their novel biological circuit designs were adept at producing signals with large amplification and that they could be used to up the expression of a variety of genes, such as the production of fluorescent signals that made it simple to detect cells that were carrying out their programming.
I wonder exactly how they "assemble" the circuit and keep the components from diffusing or floating away, thus diassembling the circuit. What keeps the "circuit" of DNA strands in place?
One question directed to you, and then a joke (I've been waiting for someone to use the word 'badge')... .
Q re I can't wait for someone to try that out over here.: Where is "over here" for you? .
comment regarding what Law Enforcement would say about your comment "they're probably being operated without the appropriate RF licence":
License? We don't need no stinkin' license! --- your local LEO
(I know that the original is "badges", but "license" works perfectly fine in this context)
Harris makes them. The devices are supposedly only sold to law-enforcement agencies and government agencies. Disambiguate "stingray" to find a little info:
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
2 - Wall Street Journal article "'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash"
3 - another WSJ article about "Judge Questions Tools That Grab Cellphone Data on Innocent People"
Essentially, the "Stingray" sends out a signal pretending to be a cell-phone tower. Your cellphone thinks it's found a great super-strong tower nearby, detaches from the real cell-phone towers and bonds to the Stingray and attempts to communicate through it. Now, the DOJ (or whomever) has performed a Man in the Middle (a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack
MITM ) attack on your cell phone's communication with it's cellular service company. It impersonates a cellular tower. .
Here's an interesting point from the WSJ article:
... Stingray equipment can be carried by hand or mounted on vehicles or even drones. ... The best known stingray maker is Florida-based defense contractor Harris Corp. A spokesman for Harris declined to comment. ...
Harris holds trademarks registered between 2002 and 2008 on several devices, including the StingRay, StingRay II, AmberJack, KingFish, TriggerFish and LoggerHead. Similar devices are available from other manufacturers. According to a Harris document, its devices are sold only to law-enforcement and government agencies.
What's your objection to my opinion "that kind of behavior is an indicator of the performer's vanity/vain-ness"? Just wondering, especially if you agree with the underlying idea that this behavior will have little impact other than pointing out that these people/supermarkets are doing this behavior. Isn't performing a symbolic action to show others that you are performing that symbolic action "vanity"?
re: but 'nanotechnology' is sort of a concept that is doomed by nature to be spread vacuously thin across all sorts of things ;>)
But being nanotechnology, by definition it will have to be able to spread wide and be just a nanometer high/thick, (right?), so that means "vacuously thin" == "less than one nanometer thickness". .
Nanotechnology ought to be when the designing and engineering aspects are actually performed at the nano-scale level, not by standards procedures such as metallurgy and making carbon steel where the properties created are because of nano-scale changes anyway. .
So maybe DNA design technology, or creating new ribosomes or new protein structures in a de novo synthesis could be something that's considered "real nanotech". .
Wouldn't graphene sheets or graphene "nanotubes" or "buckminsterfullerenes filled with a bonus atom" be able to count as truly designed and engineered nanotechnology? I do agree with you that the term "nanotech" is being widely bandied about and abused.
No, she (I) meant "vain" as in "vanity", not as "in vain". It's the "vanity" of showing off one's superiority to others or the conspicuous show of charity such as calling serious attention to oneself as they slip the money onto the offering platter or wanting your name on a placque or certificate showing off how much money you donated to the hospital wing, or that you donated so much that they named the wing after you. .
It's vain to do "show off charity", and saying "I refuse to buy ze blood diamonds because I've heard they kill people and support wars and that's what the cool actors all tell me I ought to do" is that kind of vanity, instead of realizing that the concept of "blood diamonds" or "why won't china stop burning coal and wood" (when we export coal to them! especially the super-hot burning stuff used to make steel) is the kind of industrial vanity that the "superpowers" assert. You other countries can't take the shortcuts we did or strip-mine land or use your resources because it's bad for the rest of the world.
I always wondered about why Brazil couldn't protest to the WTO about the use of "Amazon" as a trademark to sell books and things... Is it that geographic names are not so protected, or is it that books are not oftenly commonly associated with a river?
Isn't this Closing the door a little too late? Kind of like shutting that barn door after those cows have already gotten out into that brazilian rainforest? There must be other ways to head off this deforestation. For ivory poaching in Africa, international sanctions and prohibitions on export and sale seems to work, so I guess if there were universal (United Nations?) agreement to restrict the export and sale of "amazon rainforest meat" at a governmental level then that might have some impact. .
Otherwise, a brazilian supermarket chain eschewing the sale of "amazon meat" is as useful as a bunch of hippies saying they won't work for no defense contractor no sirreee or a large bunch of idiots around the earth turning off non-essential power-consumption for one hour as occurred during the last week or weekend. It's a strange vain showing off of one's ideals and beliefs that will have very little impact or result in the real world. .
Why, yes, I am quite a cynic.
Even if I can't apply to submit code or algorithms for this particular case/scenario, the situation itself is very interesting to me. It makes me wonder and question what the point of doing the algorithms in space / microgravity would be... I guess one answer, as you said about transferring raw data to earth, would be better context-sensitive compression algorithms, or perhaps better "context-detecting filter algorithms" that can reject most uninteresting data (or log it onto magnetic media for later analysis when the HD is sent back to earth) but select the promising data that is worth transmitting over the low-bandwidth communications channel.
:>)
Too bad more/.ers are not posting on these interesting software based articles. Most of the posting seems to be occurring on the trolling articles about religion, or sexism, or inappropriate remarks, or mean bosses, or real trolls about creationism and their fake prizes baiting people into arguing on the troll's terms... I'm trying not to engage those topics by even posting on those articles. .
This topic, however, is interesting. What could you do with something like this? It would be more fun if it was part of a control system involved with doing laboratory-style experimentation in space : some sort of experiment or manufacturing technique that would do much better under microgravity. .
In that case, the interesting control algorithms or the intersting computer vision algorithms that could automatically control (say a centrifuge to provide artificial gravity/acceleration to plant growth) the experimental apparatus based upon changing conditions would be more fun. .
Otherwise, what exactly is the fun of having your code executing in space or in a micro-gravity environment beyond the "coolness of it"?
Do you have any insight or connections to the UCSD supercomputer center? I've always wanted to visit and see what's up there... .
Any stories, horror or otherwise, about UCSD's supercomputer set-up? I looked on their web-page about their graphics workstations, and the hardware seems ancient (like more than a decade old).
Re: The people who build and manage these machines aren't usually terribly interested in the needs of scientists running jobs on it. They are just obsessed in piling up hardware and getting the credits, like race car builders. The needs of the scientists tend to be an afterthought. Quite often, and I have that as an insider, these machines idle around because a lot of scientists have a nice quad-core machine under their desks fullfilling their computing needs just fine, and getting something to run on the monster machine is a hassle. .
Wow! I never thought of that! I have to admit that I spoke with one mathematics student at a university who keeps getting sucked into writing programs for some of the faculty members who then screw around with his code and run it on their 64 machine cluster. The genius emeritus professor of math who modified the code rewrote it so that it doesn't keep track of one particular state variable. .
That particular change meant that whenever the cluster burped and lost some memory bits (these idiots built a cluster without using ECC memory), the last known useful save-point was not saved anymore and the partial results were not available to continue from. So sad. And my friend had written it so that even if the program was ctrl-c-breaked to check, it would dump it's state variables and allow for resumption from there on. These faculty guys would rather waste the time of a "free" (to them) undergraduate or graduate student than spend $200 - $1000 either buying the real software they need or paying for a real professional coder to write the code which they really need. :>(
If that's the state of cluster usage at a university math department, then I can completely believe your statement about hot-rod gear-head syndrome in the builders of supercomputers.
Three-d city tour and rebirth with the trees in it is pretty cool. That's really great to have a bunch of cool demos to examine for their source code and workings! :>)
Pac man in the park is very pretty too.
Hey thanks! I'd never heard of that technique before. It must require extra "hidden behind this edge" info too, since each eye can see things that the other eye can't see obscured behind the edges of foreground objects.
Yeah, I was just talking about the "rendered stereo product" storage space, but you're right about the other assets. So that almost tells us that 70% of the original storage requirements were for the assets (textures, skeletons, linkages, etc) and sequence data and that only 30% of the original storage requirements were for the rendered raw frame images. Thanks for pointing it out to me.
You would think that for stereoscopic imagery instead of single-viewpoint imagery that the data-storage requirements would double rather than increasing by 30%. Maybe there's compression of imagery involved to save that space?
Regular 2-d imagery = one viewpoint = $K$ amount of storage.
3-d stereo imagery = two viewpoints = $2 \times K$ amount of storage
If I use bing to google something and i use google to bing something, will any of it ever make sense at all? Perhaps I should ask jeeves, or should I ask wooster? If only this fucking duck would duck instead of go! At least I have the sense not to yahoo it, 'cuz who wants Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle to tell us anything? Delphi? Delta-Phi? Delta-Delta-Delta? Animal House? Toga party? (I think this stream of consciousness is flooding my brain)....
Yeah, but the French have something silly like this also. The french want to avoid the assimilation of english words into their vocabulary, so "le weekend" is verboten:>) en francais! (How do you make the little cedilla under the c on this slashdot world?)
.
Despite these restrictions, there are many french cultural items that use english words, including a movie called Le Weekend !!! The Quebecois also have a bugginess about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_French_Language where French text prevails over the English one, in case of any discrepancy.
Thanks for explaining in good detail exactly what was bugging me about this cloudiness that has invaded the world. I've got to bookmark your comment to refer to it later.:>)
Hey, thanks! That's actually an informative summary and very helpful. I had not thought of the "platform as a service". But wasn't my guess of IaaS as almost like hosting or provisioning of (or access to) a server correct, since you are required to bring your own OS, your own applications, and your own data?
Slashdot Mirror
An abacus may be seen to be a series of registers. Each string holds beads and the positioning of the beads on the string sets the value of the register. :>)
The human operator of the abacus is the executor of the machine code: it's the human that:
-- reads the value of a register (by looking at it)
-- stores a numeric value in a register (by sliding beads)
-- performs the carry when overflow occurs by carriage returning the beads in one row and moving an extra bead in the next (above or below depending on your own definition) string
-- transfers values from paper or mind onto the string
.
So obviously an abacus merely is a large temporary variable allowing a human being to perform calculations without holding all of the digits in their own memory: the abacus is a set of registers holding integer numeric values, an abacus by itself is not a computer, but just part of a computing system. It requires an agent, a human "computer" (or a sufficiently programmed and capable (vision + motion) robot !!!) actor in order to be a full computing system.
An abacus may be seen to be a series of registers. Each string holds beads and the positioning of the beads on the string sets the value of the register.
:>)
The human operator of the abacus is the executor of the machine code: it's the human that:
-- reads the value of a register (by looking at it)
-- stores a numeric value in a register (by sliding beads)
-- performs the carry when overflow occurs by carriage returning the beads in one row and moving an extra bead in the next (above or below depending on your own definition) string
-- transfers values from paper or mind onto the string
.
So obviously an abacus merely is a large temporary variable allowing a human being to perform calculations without holding all of the digits in their own memory: the abacus is a set of registers holding integer numeric values, an abacus by itself is not a computer, but just part of a computing system. It requires an agent, a human "computer" (or a sufficiently programmed and capable (vision + motion) robot !!!) actor in order to be a full computing system.
Re: What does low Earth orbit have to do with it?
;>)
Well, it could either be that the jurisdictional boundaries of these peace officers does not extend far up enough over the surface of the earth to Low Earth Orbit, or it might be that Law Enforcement Officers call themselves LEOs for short.
The Stanford team then showed that they could line up multiple transcriptors to carry out logical functions, creating standard logical circuits called AND gates, OR gates, XOR gates, and so on, which combine signals according to certain rules. (A computer's processor is a vast assemblage of such gates.) They also showed that their novel biological circuit designs were adept at producing signals with large amplification and that they could be used to up the expression of a variety of genes, such as the production of fluorescent signals that made it simple to detect cells that were carrying out their programming.
I wonder exactly how they "assemble" the circuit and keep the components from diffusing or floating away, thus diassembling the circuit. What keeps the "circuit" of DNA strands in place?
Ah. Okay. I concede your point. I had not considered that particular type of intention in my thought process. Thanks for the explanation.
.
Q re I can't wait for someone to try that out over here.: Where is "over here" for you?
.
comment regarding what Law Enforcement would say about your comment "they're probably being operated without the appropriate RF licence": License? We don't need no stinkin' license! --- your local LEO
(I know that the original is "badges", but "license" works perfectly fine in this context)
Noxious hog, I thought someone like you would be aware of swooshing and joking.
2 - Wall Street Journal article "'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash"
3 - another WSJ article about "Judge Questions Tools That Grab Cellphone Data on Innocent People"
Essentially, the "Stingray" sends out a signal pretending to be a cell-phone tower. Your cellphone thinks it's found a great super-strong tower nearby, detaches from the real cell-phone towers and bonds to the Stingray and attempts to communicate through it. Now, the DOJ (or whomever) has performed a Man in the Middle (a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack MITM ) attack on your cell phone's communication with it's cellular service company. It impersonates a cellular tower.
.
Here's an interesting point from the WSJ article:
... The best known stingray maker is Florida-based defense contractor Harris Corp. A spokesman for Harris declined to comment.
... Harris holds trademarks registered between 2002 and 2008 on several devices, including the StingRay, StingRay II, AmberJack, KingFish, TriggerFish and LoggerHead. Similar devices are available from other manufacturers. According to a Harris document, its devices are sold only to law-enforcement and government agencies.
What's your objection to my opinion "that kind of behavior is an indicator of the performer's vanity/vain-ness"? Just wondering, especially if you agree with the underlying idea that this behavior will have little impact other than pointing out that these people/supermarkets are doing this behavior. Isn't performing a symbolic action to show others that you are performing that symbolic action "vanity"?
re: but 'nanotechnology' is sort of a concept that is doomed by nature to be spread vacuously thin across all sorts of things
;>)
But being nanotechnology, by definition it will have to be able to spread wide and be just a nanometer high/thick, (right?), so that means "vacuously thin" == "less than one nanometer thickness".
.
Nanotechnology ought to be when the designing and engineering aspects are actually performed at the nano-scale level, not by standards procedures such as metallurgy and making carbon steel where the properties created are because of nano-scale changes anyway.
.
So maybe DNA design technology, or creating new ribosomes or new protein structures in a de novo synthesis could be something that's considered "real nanotech".
.
Wouldn't graphene sheets or graphene "nanotubes" or "buckminsterfullerenes filled with a bonus atom" be able to count as truly designed and engineered nanotechnology? I do agree with you that the term "nanotech" is being widely bandied about and abused.
No, she (I) meant "vain" as in "vanity", not as "in vain". It's the "vanity" of showing off one's superiority to others or the conspicuous show of charity such as calling serious attention to oneself as they slip the money onto the offering platter or wanting your name on a placque or certificate showing off how much money you donated to the hospital wing, or that you donated so much that they named the wing after you.
.
It's vain to do "show off charity", and saying "I refuse to buy ze blood diamonds because I've heard they kill people and support wars and that's what the cool actors all tell me I ought to do" is that kind of vanity, instead of realizing that the concept of "blood diamonds" or "why won't china stop burning coal and wood" (when we export coal to them! especially the super-hot burning stuff used to make steel) is the kind of industrial vanity that the "superpowers" assert. You other countries can't take the shortcuts we did or strip-mine land or use your resources because it's bad for the rest of the world.
I always wondered about why Brazil couldn't protest to the WTO about the use of "Amazon" as a trademark to sell books and things... Is it that geographic names are not so protected, or is it that books are not oftenly commonly associated with a river?
Isn't this Closing the door a little too late? Kind of like shutting that barn door after those cows have already gotten out into that brazilian rainforest? There must be other ways to head off this deforestation. For ivory poaching in Africa, international sanctions and prohibitions on export and sale seems to work, so I guess if there were universal (United Nations?) agreement to restrict the export and sale of "amazon rainforest meat" at a governmental level then that might have some impact.
.
Otherwise, a brazilian supermarket chain eschewing the sale of "amazon meat" is as useful as a bunch of hippies saying they won't work for no defense contractor no sirreee or a large bunch of idiots around the earth turning off non-essential power-consumption for one hour as occurred during the last week or weekend. It's a strange vain showing off of one's ideals and beliefs that will have very little impact or result in the real world.
.
Why, yes, I am quite a cynic.
Even if I can't apply to submit code or algorithms for this particular case/scenario, the situation itself is very interesting to me. It makes me wonder and question what the point of doing the algorithms in space / microgravity would be... I guess one answer, as you said about transferring raw data to earth, would be better context-sensitive compression algorithms, or perhaps better "context-detecting filter algorithms" that can reject most uninteresting data (or log it onto magnetic media for later analysis when the HD is sent back to earth) but select the promising data that is worth transmitting over the low-bandwidth communications channel.
:>)
Too bad more /.ers are not posting on these interesting software based articles. Most of the posting seems to be occurring on the trolling articles about religion, or sexism, or inappropriate remarks, or mean bosses, or real trolls about creationism and their fake prizes baiting people into arguing on the troll's terms... I'm trying not to engage those topics by even posting on those articles.
.
This topic, however, is interesting. What could you do with something like this? It would be more fun if it was part of a control system involved with doing laboratory-style experimentation in space : some sort of experiment or manufacturing technique that would do much better under microgravity.
.
In that case, the interesting control algorithms or the intersting computer vision algorithms that could automatically control (say a centrifuge to provide artificial gravity/acceleration to plant growth) the experimental apparatus based upon changing conditions would be more fun.
.
Otherwise, what exactly is the fun of having your code executing in space or in a micro-gravity environment beyond the "coolness of it"?
Do you have any insight or connections to the UCSD supercomputer center? I've always wanted to visit and see what's up there...
.
Any stories, horror or otherwise, about UCSD's supercomputer set-up? I looked on their web-page about their graphics workstations, and the hardware seems ancient (like more than a decade old).
Re: The people who build and manage these machines aren't usually terribly interested in the needs of scientists running jobs on it. They are just obsessed in piling up hardware and getting the credits, like race car builders. The needs of the scientists tend to be an afterthought. Quite often, and I have that as an insider, these machines idle around because a lot of scientists have a nice quad-core machine under their desks fullfilling their computing needs just fine, and getting something to run on the monster machine is a hassle.
.
Wow! I never thought of that! I have to admit that I spoke with one mathematics student at a university who keeps getting sucked into writing programs for some of the faculty members who then screw around with his code and run it on their 64 machine cluster. The genius emeritus professor of math who modified the code rewrote it so that it doesn't keep track of one particular state variable.
.
That particular change meant that whenever the cluster burped and lost some memory bits (these idiots built a cluster without using ECC memory), the last known useful save-point was not saved anymore and the partial results were not available to continue from. So sad. And my friend had written it so that even if the program was ctrl-c-breaked to check, it would dump it's state variables and allow for resumption from there on. These faculty guys would rather waste the time of a "free" (to them) undergraduate or graduate student than spend $200 - $1000 either buying the real software they need or paying for a real professional coder to write the code which they really need.
:>(
If that's the state of cluster usage at a university math department, then I can completely believe your statement about hot-rod gear-head syndrome in the builders of supercomputers.
Three-d city tour and rebirth with the trees in it is pretty cool. That's really great to have a bunch of cool demos to examine for their source code and workings!
:>)
Pac man in the park is very pretty too.
Hey thanks! I'd never heard of that technique before. It must require extra "hidden behind this edge" info too, since each eye can see things that the other eye can't see obscured behind the edges of foreground objects.
Yeah, I was just talking about the "rendered stereo product" storage space, but you're right about the other assets. So that almost tells us that 70% of the original storage requirements were for the assets (textures, skeletons, linkages, etc) and sequence data and that only 30% of the original storage requirements were for the rendered raw frame images. Thanks for pointing it out to me.
3-d stereo imagery = two viewpoints = $2 \times K$ amount of storage
What's wrong with what I'm thinking?
If I use bing to google something and i use google to bing something, will any of it ever make sense at all? Perhaps I should ask jeeves, or should I ask wooster? If only this fucking duck would duck instead of go! At least I have the sense not to yahoo it, 'cuz who wants Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle to tell us anything? Delphi? Delta-Phi? Delta-Delta-Delta? Animal House? Toga party? (I think this stream of consciousness is flooding my brain)....
Yeah, but the French have something silly like this also. The french want to avoid the assimilation of english words into their vocabulary, so "le weekend" is verboten :>) en francais! (How do you make the little cedilla under the c on this slashdot world?)
.
Despite these restrictions, there are many french cultural items that use english words, including a movie called Le Weekend !!! The Quebecois also have a bugginess about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_French_Language where French text prevails over the English one, in case of any discrepancy.
Thanks for explaining in good detail exactly what was bugging me about this cloudiness that has invaded the world. I've got to bookmark your comment to refer to it later. :>)
Hey, thanks! That's actually an informative summary and very helpful. I had not thought of the "platform as a service". But wasn't my guess of IaaS as almost like hosting or provisioning of (or access to) a server correct, since you are required to bring your own OS, your own applications, and your own data?