Eventually a barrier will be reached that cannot be breached without a serious change of technology. Previous advancements have been no more than refinements of old technology (but damn clever refinements, mind you). When we cannot realistically extract more power from hardware, software developers will have to re-examine the way programs are written in order to beat their competitors. The major constraint on getting more speed out of a computer will eventually become one of efficient algorithm design and project managment, not of hardware.
With the current trend in high-end processor design, where an increase in power is paired with an increase in heat dissipation, we are likely to run into a physical barrier relatively soon: cooling technology (like most engineering industries) advances linearly, but microprocessor complexity increases exponentially.
The problem of efficient software is a far more important issue than that of hardware limitations; it is a largely unsolved problem that will eventually have to be solved.
The web was like that once...
with the state of the web now - overuse of images, tables, frames, java(Script), flash etc - there's no chance that it could be viewed adequetly in a text only fashion - let alone outputted as speech.
i say scrap it and start again.
Programmers don't suck either... it's the programmers who think they can teach that suck.
In my limited experience the best programmers are mathematically trained.
Why?
Because, for your average computer enthusiast/hacker/nerd/geek, a computer science course is boring and moves s o s l o w l y.
The maths course, on the other hand, moves far more quickly and trains you to think in increasingly less obvious and more contorted ways.
At the end of the three years of degree, a lot of the mathematicians take a diploma in CS, (1 year), which covers all the computing in the 3 year CS course.
The result? Mathematicians, trained to pick holes in their own logic at every step for an intense 3 years, armed with all the knowledge from the CS degree, make the best programmers, and they write the most reliable code.
I expect the people who commented the code felt the need to make up for the fact that while using linux you are far less likely to use the word 'fuck' than when using certain other OSs.
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> What kind of processor would ever be "enough"
:)
> (ahem!) for those?
"The Brain is a computer made of meat" (can't remember who this quote is attributed to, sorry)
Something other than silicon is probably the answer!
To the layperson (ie me) it's a lot easier to quantify graphics processing power than the "goodness"/"intelligence" of an AI
Eventually a barrier will be reached that cannot be breached without a serious change of technology. Previous advancements have been no more than refinements of old technology (but damn clever refinements, mind you). When we cannot realistically extract more power from hardware, software developers will have to re-examine the way programs are written in order to beat their competitors. The major constraint on getting more speed out of a computer will eventually become one of efficient algorithm design and project managment, not of hardware.
With the current trend in high-end processor design, where an increase in power is paired with an increase in heat dissipation, we are likely to run into a physical barrier relatively soon: cooling technology (like most engineering industries) advances linearly, but microprocessor complexity increases exponentially.
The problem of efficient software is a far more important issue than that of hardware limitations; it is a largely unsolved problem that will eventually have to be solved.
The film is actually based on a short story by Philip K. Dick of the same name. It was first published in 1956 in the magazine Fantastic Universe.
The award winning Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep has already been (loosely) turned into a movie, Bladerunner. Both book at film are excellent.
> That would likely require a computer many
> thousands of times faster than what we have
> available today.
assuming a doubling of computer power every 18 months:
log_base_2 (1000) * 18 months ~= 10 * 18 months = 15 years.
if the actual increase in power is 10,000 times:
log_base_2 (10000) * 18 months = 13.3 * 18 months = 20 years.
that's a long time in computing terms, but not in human terms
The web was like that once... with the state of the web now - overuse of images, tables, frames, java(Script), flash etc - there's no chance that it could be viewed adequetly in a text only fashion - let alone outputted as speech. i say scrap it and start again.
Programmers don't suck either... it's the programmers who think they can teach that suck.
In my limited experience the best programmers are mathematically trained.
Why?
Because, for your average computer enthusiast/hacker/nerd/geek, a computer science course is boring and moves s o s l o w l y.
The maths course, on the other hand, moves far more quickly and trains you to think in increasingly less obvious and more contorted ways. At the end of the three years of degree, a lot of the mathematicians take a diploma in CS, (1 year), which covers all the computing in the 3 year CS course.
The result? Mathematicians, trained to pick holes in their own logic at every step for an intense 3 years, armed with all the knowledge from the CS degree, make the best programmers, and they write the most reliable code.
I expect the people who commented the code felt the need to make up for the fact that while using linux you are far less likely to use the word 'fuck' than when using certain other OSs.