Perhaps you did not finish reading my post? I didn't claim that MacOs X was a Unix. My complaint was against the premise that Linux is a Unix and MacOS X is not. Neither of them are...
I don't disagree with your general point but: "6. It's not a real Unix." Neither is Linux. It's certainly Unix-like, but it's a cousin. MacOS X is built with FreeBSD, with some modifications. I suppose you could call it a cousin as well. However, if you mean that MacOS X is untested in a high performance environment like corporate computing, then I'd agree that for the most part is true.
Seems more like CAD than Photoshop...
on
Photoshop for DNA
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· Score: 1
Unless all they plan to produce is pretty pictures of DNA... I wonder if it will incorporate the physical and chemical properties of the agents or will they just be able to string together whatever sequences they want?
Uh, say what? http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?s tory_id=3958438 It didn't happen as quickly as most people expected, but it's almost assured that the Japanese will own the car market and maybe the truck market. I do agree that the competition has made American cars better, but apparently not good enough.
There is no news in this article, just a splashy title. Intel will eventual build something based on the Pentium M. The Pentium M is much more efficient and will be more so in the future. The next generation of dual core Pentium Ms will be an interesting challenge for AMD. I still think AMD will win, but the war is far from over.
I never suggested that making something easier means dumbing it down. That's your bias, not mine. There are ways of gradually introducing complexity that do not equal "dumbing down". However since your goal was not to make it easier but faster, then that's a different matter. I'll have to try it, but I still say it will almost of necessity be less flexible.
BTW, as a design philosophy, "Please direct all complaints to/dev/null." is a pretty poor one. I wasn't complaining. I don't have to use it. So, why should I complain? I was criticizing and criticism when conveyed properly can make things better. But if you feel you are so clever as to know all of the answers, then by all means continue to ignore all criticism.
It is still just as confusing for the casual user. Anything that requires the user to figure out what/dev/hda or ext2/3 or ReiserFS or Network Mounts, etc, means is still too complicated for the average user. There should be a default and advanced setting for advanced users. It requires what? Another dialogue box. That's not much to ask. The graphical interface may simplify things for advanced users but advanced users don't really need it simplified and the simplification reduces flexibility.
Re:I hope the author of the book is more careful..
on
Mapping the Mind
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· Score: 1
If you want to accept Hume's epistemology, then all we have are correlations, however, I don't think you or anyone else would want to accept Hume's epistemology as it would commit you to many other beliefs that are repugnant (e.g. other organic beings that appear to look like me are not really people because I cannot directly sense their thoughts). In any case, Hume's epistemology contradicts his ontology or vice versa depending on which you favor. So we are left to wonder to which he was really comitted (probably his epistemology as he was uncomfortable with his ontology) but his overall philisophical project is incoherent. There is some validity to Hume's point, belief is a component of truth but he over plays his hand and doesn't consider some important issues.
I think most people would accept a more realistic position in which a causal explanation is agreed to be one in which the fewest possible steps are taken from what is known to what is to be explained. Of course, this may entail restructuring the framework from which the explanation is derived based on results discovered during the inquiry into the unexplained phenomenon.
I do not object to using correlations as a place to begin an inquiry, as I said: "So, till a causal mechanism is elucidated, I recommend taking these "studies" that map function to location as the beginning of the inquiry, not the end." That to which I do object is saying that x causes y rather than as you said "Broca's area must have something important to do specifically with speech", as this is not a claim of causality. It admits that there may be other possibilities. It may be that another area as well as Broca's area is damaged during a stroke. It also may be that Broca's area is merely a path between two parts of the brain that are responsible for speech and therefore the Broca area is not responsible for speech per se although it would be involved in it. I have no idea what the true explanation is as I'm not an expert in the field. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
I can't wait to find out how the brains works, but it's counter-productive to believe or lead others to believe that we know more than we actually do.
I hope the author of the book is more careful...
on
Mapping the Mind
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· Score: 2, Insightful
with the facts then the reviewer. Many of the reviewer's comments seem to impute causality to certain structures of the brain, but it's often an open question whether the deviant structures are cause or effect or side-effect. The question is open because these are simply correlations between behaviour and structure, but there is no causal explanation. It's somewhat similar to these "studies" that come out every so often about diet. People who drink coffee die earlier than people that don't. Then the next study says, "Oh wait, no, it's the other way around!" And so on... They flip-flop because they have no fucking clue by what causal mechanism the effect is produced. So, till a causal mechanism is elucidated, I recommend taking these "studies" that map function to location as the beginning of the inquiry, not the end.
There is an API that they developed and Epic is using in Unreal 3 called NovodeX (http://www.ageia.com/novodex.html). It's proprietary but it seems to serve the same function as OpenGL (i.e. cross-platform API).
Well, it certainly might seem that he is being a hypocrite. See:
"In another part of the article, Blachford claims that the cell processing units have no "cache." Instead, they each have a "local memory" that fetches data from main memory in 1024-bit blocks. Well, that's sort of like saying that an iMac doesn't have a "monitor," but it does have a surface on which visual output is displayed. In other words, the Cell "local memories," which are roughly analogous to the vector units' "scratchpad RAM" on the PS2's Emotion Engine, function as caches for the PUs. What has thrown the author for a loop is that they're small, and the fact that they're tied to each cellular processing unit means that they don't function in the memory heirarchy in the exact same way that an L1 does in a traditional processor design. They do, however, cache things. But maybe I'm being nitpicky with this."
and
"Finally, to address something more specific to the Cell architecture itself, on page 1 we find this claim:
It has been speculated that the vector units are the same as the AltiVec units found in the PowerPC G4 and G5 processors. I consider this highly unlikely as there are several differences. Firstly the number of registers is 128 instead of AltiVec's 32, secondly the APUs use a local memory whereas AltiVec does not, thirdly Altivec is an add-on to the existing PowerPC instruction set and operates as part of a PowerPC processor, the APUs are completely independent processors.
The author appears to be confusing an instruction set with an implementation. The 128-register detail is a problem, because, as the author correctly points out, conventional Altivec has only 32 vector registers. So obviously it's a given that Cell won't be using straight-up Altivec. But it's entirely possible that it'll use some kind of 128-register derivative of the Altivec instruction set. The fact that the individual processing units have a local cache has little to do with whether or not the PUs themselves implement some hypothetical Altivec derivative. Finally, the statement, "Altivec is an add-on to the existing PowerPC instruction set," is correct, but the rest of that sentence--"and operates as part of a PowerPC processor"--doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me in this context. Altivec is an ISA extension that is implemented in different ways on different PowerPC processors. The Cell processor's PUs could very well implement a hypothetical 128-register Altivec2 ISA extension, or they could implement some other SIMD ISA extension. The fact that SIMD code, written to whatever ISA, is farmed out to individual PUs has nothing to do with it. (If what I just said confuses you, you might check out this article.) "
compared to
"The main differences between an individual SPE and an early RISC machine are twofold. First, and most obvious, is the fact that the Cell SPE is geared for single-precision SIMD computation. Most of its arithmetic instructions operate on 128-bit vectors of four 32-bit elements. So the execution core is packed with vector ALUs, instead of the traditional fixed-point ALUs. The second difference, and this is perhaps the most important, is that the L1 cache has been replaced by 256K of locally addressable memory. The SPE's ISA, which is not VMX/Altivec-derivative (more on this below), includes instructions for using the DMA controller to move data between main memory and local storage. The end result is that each SPE is like a very small vector computer, with its own "CPU" and RAM."
But if you read closely you will see that Blachford, to generalize, was "right" (e.g. local memory and no AltiVec on SPE) for the wrong reasons, and even then some of the info was factually incorrect (e.g. SPE fetches blocks of 1024 bits). I do think that Hannibal was too hard on the guy (probably because of his completely unsubstantied claims about performance) and I think Hannibal should've cut Blachford some slack based on the source material that Blachford had available to him (although Blachford's
I would guess the PowerBook G% should have shown up at MacWorld and the site was prepper for it, but they just couldn't get it done. We'll be lucky to see a PowerBook G5 in 2H of 2005.
Mouse cursor and arrow keys? Two hands to do what you can do with one? There is this brand new invention (from about five years ago) called the *scroll wheel*. That would be a lot easier than the arrow key. Granted, that would make it difficult for those that don have a scroll wheel, but why not have both? Not a very auspicious beginning. Of course, I'm cynical about these things. I think he is full of crap and I'd be happy for him to prove me wrong.
I completely agree. I just think that if we are going to extend the concept of machines to humans, then we may need to reasses what we mean by machines. We may need to expand the concept of "machine" rather than reducing humans to "mere" machines. Obviously I'm not a big fan of reductionism, although it has its uses in appropriate circumstances.
You might be referring to glial cells, but, anyhow, computation is computation. Thought *may* be something that cannot be simulated by computation. See the problem with most computation is that it goes from one determinate state to another. It's somewhat like a deductive system. One deduction follows from another inevitably. Humans don't think that way. Clearly some forms of thought can already be simulated to a certain degree, logic, mathematics, and even to a certain extent science. For the most part these are very much based on rules and do not require what I would consider "creative" thought. In other words, developing the axioms from which deductions would be made, developing new kinds of maths, designing new experiments, or coming up with it's own rules.
Incidentally, the robot that can do science is the most interesting to me because it seems to be the most creative. It even comes up with new experiments. http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/012804/Robot_au tomates_science_012804.html Yet it has no idea what it is doing and it is only following rules. It can't create it's own rules. This example is the one that seems to indicate the immediate future of AI to me.
Of course, you never know. It could be that thinking can be simulated perfectly fine with computation, but I don't think it is an obvious conclusion, nor are the similarities between the brain and a computer that great. I definitely think it is worth researching, but I just don't think it will end up turning out that way. But that's just a hunch. I don't think there is definitive evidence either way because, like I said, we don't know how the brain works.
Of course, all of this assumes that human intelligence can be simulated by computation, in the classical sense. By simulation, I mean that a machine would demonstrate human-like intelligence. I don't think this is the case, but I don't see why we shouldn't pursue the brute force strategy, at least to rule it out. I don't really buy your guess on the number flops that would be necessary either, even if I assume that computation could simulate human-like intelligence. Every few years the number gets bumped up by an order of magnitude. If you look ten years ago, they were saying all we would need is 3 Tflops. Obviously, that's not true unless the problem is software-based. The real fundamental problem is that we do not even understand what intelligence is. It's hard to simulate something that you don't understand.
As for thought itself, I seriously doubt it works in the same way that a hardware simulation that you are describing would work. Think about how much energy would be required and how much heat would be generated compared to a human brain. Biology simply doesn't work in that way. Look at protein folding. It's extremely computationally intensive to determine the way a protein will fold, but biologically the process of folding is relatively simple. It's the same with thought. If we could figure out how the brain works, then we could probably simulate it with hardware that we could make now.
but the theoretical 30% isn't bad especially for plastic cells. See here for the latest: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8225/8225solare nergy1.html
It sounds like some small scale prototypes of devices that can detect infrared have have been developed but there is no solar cell. My favorite quote from the University press release:
"Professor Peter Peumans of Stanford University, who has reviewed the U of T team's research, also acknowledges the groundbreaking nature of the work. "Our calculations show that, with further improvements in efficiency, combining infrared and visible photovoltaics could allow up to 30 per cent of the sun's radiant energy to be harnessed, compared to six per cent in today's best plastic solar cells."
The two key points being "calculations" and "plastic solar cells". In other words the 30% figure is a theoretical one and unlikely realistic. Also, six percent is accurate for plastic solar cells, but more modern multi-material cells are up around 35% or better. In short, this is just PR.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you did not finish reading my post? I didn't claim that MacOs X was a Unix. My complaint was against the premise that Linux is a Unix and MacOS X is not. Neither of them are...
I don't disagree with your general point but: "6. It's not a real Unix." Neither is Linux. It's certainly Unix-like, but it's a cousin. MacOS X is built with FreeBSD, with some modifications. I suppose you could call it a cousin as well. However, if you mean that MacOS X is untested in a high performance environment like corporate computing, then I'd agree that for the most part is true.
Unless all they plan to produce is pretty pictures of DNA... I wonder if it will incorporate the physical and chemical properties of the agents or will they just be able to string together whatever sequences they want?
meetings, then what is it for? Everyone is thinking it, but nobdy has said it: Pr0n. Obviously...
Uh, say what? http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?s tory_id=3958438
It didn't happen as quickly as most people expected, but it's almost assured that the Japanese will own the car market and maybe the truck market. I do agree that the competition has made American cars better, but apparently not good enough.
There is no news in this article, just a splashy title. Intel will eventual build something based on the Pentium M. The Pentium M is much more efficient and will be more so in the future. The next generation of dual core Pentium Ms will be an interesting challenge for AMD. I still think AMD will win, but the war is far from over.
I never suggested that making something easier means dumbing it down. That's your bias, not mine. There are ways of gradually introducing complexity that do not equal "dumbing down". However since your goal was not to make it easier but faster, then that's a different matter. I'll have to try it, but I still say it will almost of necessity be less flexible.
/dev/null." is a pretty poor one. I wasn't complaining. I don't have to use it. So, why should I complain? I was criticizing and criticism when conveyed properly can make things better. But if you feel you are so clever as to know all of the answers, then by all means continue to ignore all criticism.
BTW, as a design philosophy, "Please direct all complaints to
Agreed, but that is the majority of people that use computers, right? Oh sure, some of us care, but most "just want it to work".
It is still just as confusing for the casual user. Anything that requires the user to figure out what /dev/hda or ext2/3 or ReiserFS or Network Mounts, etc, means is still too complicated for the average user. There should be a default and advanced setting for advanced users. It requires what? Another dialogue box. That's not much to ask. The graphical interface may simplify things for advanced users but advanced users don't really need it simplified and the simplification reduces flexibility.
If you want to accept Hume's epistemology, then all we have are correlations, however, I don't think you or anyone else would want to accept Hume's epistemology as it would commit you to many other beliefs that are repugnant (e.g. other organic beings that appear to look like me are not really people because I cannot directly sense their thoughts). In any case, Hume's epistemology contradicts his ontology or vice versa depending on which you favor. So we are left to wonder to which he was really comitted (probably his epistemology as he was uncomfortable with his ontology) but his overall philisophical project is incoherent. There is some validity to Hume's point, belief is a component of truth but he over plays his hand and doesn't consider some important issues.
I think most people would accept a more realistic position in which a causal explanation is agreed to be one in which the fewest possible steps are taken from what is known to what is to be explained. Of course, this may entail restructuring the framework from which the explanation is derived based on results discovered during the inquiry into the unexplained phenomenon.
I do not object to using correlations as a place to begin an inquiry, as I said: "So, till a causal mechanism is elucidated, I recommend taking these "studies" that map function to location as the beginning of the inquiry, not the end." That to which I do object is saying that x causes y rather than as you said "Broca's area must have something important to do specifically with speech", as this is not a claim of causality. It admits that there may be other possibilities. It may be that another area as well as Broca's area is damaged during a stroke. It also may be that Broca's area is merely a path between two parts of the brain that are responsible for speech and therefore the Broca area is not responsible for speech per se although it would be involved in it. I have no idea what the true explanation is as I'm not an expert in the field. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
I can't wait to find out how the brains works, but it's counter-productive to believe or lead others to believe that we know more than we actually do.
with the facts then the reviewer. Many of the reviewer's comments seem to impute causality to certain structures of the brain, but it's often an open question whether the deviant structures are cause or effect or side-effect. The question is open because these are simply correlations between behaviour and structure, but there is no causal explanation. It's somewhat similar to these "studies" that come out every so often about diet. People who drink coffee die earlier than people that don't. Then the next study says, "Oh wait, no, it's the other way around!" And so on... They flip-flop because they have no fucking clue by what causal mechanism the effect is produced. So, till a causal mechanism is elucidated, I recommend taking these "studies" that map function to location as the beginning of the inquiry, not the end.
There is an API that they developed and Epic is using in Unreal 3 called NovodeX (http://www.ageia.com/novodex.html). It's proprietary but it seems to serve the same function as OpenGL (i.e. cross-platform API).
Their close proximity to Akamai must be wearing off on them.
Well, it certainly might seem that he is being a hypocrite. See:
"In another part of the article, Blachford claims that the cell processing units have no "cache." Instead, they each have a "local memory" that fetches data from main memory in 1024-bit blocks. Well, that's sort of like saying that an iMac doesn't have a "monitor," but it does have a surface on which visual output is displayed. In other words, the Cell "local memories," which are roughly analogous to the vector units' "scratchpad RAM" on the PS2's Emotion Engine, function as caches for the PUs. What has thrown the author for a loop is that they're small, and the fact that they're tied to each cellular processing unit means that they don't function in the memory heirarchy in the exact same way that an L1 does in a traditional processor design. They do, however, cache things. But maybe I'm being nitpicky with this."
and
"Finally, to address something more specific to the Cell architecture itself, on page 1 we find this claim:
It has been speculated that the vector units are the same as the AltiVec units found in the PowerPC G4 and G5 processors. I consider this highly unlikely as there are several differences. Firstly the number of registers is 128 instead of AltiVec's 32, secondly the APUs use a local memory whereas AltiVec does not, thirdly Altivec is an add-on to the existing PowerPC instruction set and operates as part of a PowerPC processor, the APUs are completely independent processors.
The author appears to be confusing an instruction set with an implementation. The 128-register detail is a problem, because, as the author correctly points out, conventional Altivec has only 32 vector registers. So obviously it's a given that Cell won't be using straight-up Altivec. But it's entirely possible that it'll use some kind of 128-register derivative of the Altivec instruction set. The fact that the individual processing units have a local cache has little to do with whether or not the PUs themselves implement some hypothetical Altivec derivative. Finally, the statement, "Altivec is an add-on to the existing PowerPC instruction set," is correct, but the rest of that sentence--"and operates as part of a PowerPC processor"--doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me in this context. Altivec is an ISA extension that is implemented in different ways on different PowerPC processors. The Cell processor's PUs could very well implement a hypothetical 128-register Altivec2 ISA extension, or they could implement some other SIMD ISA extension. The fact that SIMD code, written to whatever ISA, is farmed out to individual PUs has nothing to do with it. (If what I just said confuses you, you might check out this article.) "
compared to
"The main differences between an individual SPE and an early RISC machine are twofold. First, and most obvious, is the fact that the Cell SPE is geared for single-precision SIMD computation. Most of its arithmetic instructions operate on 128-bit vectors of four 32-bit elements. So the execution core is packed with vector ALUs, instead of the traditional fixed-point ALUs. The second difference, and this is perhaps the most important, is that the L1 cache has been replaced by 256K of locally addressable memory. The SPE's ISA, which is not VMX/Altivec-derivative (more on this below), includes instructions for using the DMA controller to move data between main memory and local storage. The end result is that each SPE is like a very small vector computer, with its own "CPU" and RAM."
But if you read closely you will see that Blachford, to generalize, was "right" (e.g. local memory and no AltiVec on SPE) for the wrong reasons, and even then some of the info was factually incorrect (e.g. SPE fetches blocks of 1024 bits). I do think that Hannibal was too hard on the guy (probably because of his completely unsubstantied claims about performance) and I think Hannibal should've cut Blachford some slack based on the source material that Blachford had available to him (although Blachford's
Preview button is my friend, I know. Should be PowerBook "G5", not "G%", and "prepper" should be "prepared".
I would guess the PowerBook G% should have shown up at MacWorld and the site was prepper for it, but they just couldn't get it done. We'll be lucky to see a PowerBook G5 in 2H of 2005.
Never made it to the introduction. I used the direct link to the demo and the interface was crap, so... ;-) But, point taken.
Mouse cursor and arrow keys? Two hands to do what you can do with one? There is this brand new invention (from about five years ago) called the *scroll wheel*. That would be a lot easier than the arrow key. Granted, that would make it difficult for those that don have a scroll wheel, but why not have both? Not a very auspicious beginning. Of course, I'm cynical about these things. I think he is full of crap and I'd be happy for him to prove me wrong.
Fair enough. Good point. Well said. Although it might not be obvious to everyone what you mean at first.
I completely agree. I just think that if we are going to extend the concept of machines to humans, then we may need to reasses what we mean by machines. We may need to expand the concept of "machine" rather than reducing humans to "mere" machines. Obviously I'm not a big fan of reductionism, although it has its uses in appropriate circumstances.
You might be referring to glial cells, but, anyhow, computation is computation. Thought *may* be something that cannot be simulated by computation. See the problem with most computation is that it goes from one determinate state to another. It's somewhat like a deductive system. One deduction follows from another inevitably. Humans don't think that way. Clearly some forms of thought can already be simulated to a certain degree, logic, mathematics, and even to a certain extent science. For the most part these are very much based on rules and do not require what I would consider "creative" thought. In other words, developing the axioms from which deductions would be made, developing new kinds of maths, designing new experiments, or coming up with it's own rules.
u tomates_science_012804.html
Incidentally, the robot that can do science is the most interesting to me because it seems to be the most creative. It even comes up with new experiments. http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/012804/Robot_a
Yet it has no idea what it is doing and it is only following rules. It can't create it's own rules. This example is the one that seems to indicate the immediate future of AI to me.
Of course, you never know. It could be that thinking can be simulated perfectly fine with computation, but I don't think it is an obvious conclusion, nor are the similarities between the brain and a computer that great. I definitely think it is worth researching, but I just don't think it will end up turning out that way. But that's just a hunch. I don't think there is definitive evidence either way because, like I said, we don't know how the brain works.
Of course, all of this assumes that human intelligence can be simulated by computation, in the classical sense. By simulation, I mean that a machine would demonstrate human-like intelligence. I don't think this is the case, but I don't see why we shouldn't pursue the brute force strategy, at least to rule it out. I don't really buy your guess on the number flops that would be necessary either, even if I assume that computation could simulate human-like intelligence. Every few years the number gets bumped up by an order of magnitude. If you look ten years ago, they were saying all we would need is 3 Tflops. Obviously, that's not true unless the problem is software-based. The real fundamental problem is that we do not even understand what intelligence is. It's hard to simulate something that you don't understand.
As for thought itself, I seriously doubt it works in the same way that a hardware simulation that you are describing would work. Think about how much energy would be required and how much heat would be generated compared to a human brain. Biology simply doesn't work in that way. Look at protein folding. It's extremely computationally intensive to determine the way a protein will fold, but biologically the process of folding is relatively simple. It's the same with thought. If we could figure out how the brain works, then we could probably simulate it with hardware that we could make now.
but the theoretical 30% isn't bad especially for plastic cells. See here for the latest: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8225/8225solare nergy1.html
BTW, for anyone interested, here is the latest on non-platic solar cells: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8225/8225solare nergy1.html.
It sounds like some small scale prototypes of devices that can detect infrared have have been developed but there is no solar cell. My favorite quote from the University press release:
"Professor Peter Peumans of Stanford University, who has reviewed the U of T team's research, also acknowledges the groundbreaking nature of the work. "Our calculations show that, with further improvements in efficiency, combining infrared and visible photovoltaics could allow up to 30 per cent of the sun's radiant energy to be harnessed, compared to six per cent in today's best plastic solar cells."
The two key points being "calculations" and "plastic solar cells". In other words the 30% figure is a theoretical one and unlikely realistic. Also, six percent is accurate for plastic solar cells, but more modern multi-material cells are up around 35% or better. In short, this is just PR.