This is blatantly false, derived from blatant misunderstanding. Do you know what the C++ compiler does to objects and classes? Have you ever looked at the machine code that is produced? If you did you would know that you can use OOP in C++ with nearly zero, and often exactly zero, overhead, because the OOey stuff is done at compile time, not at run time!
Sure, a newbie C++ programmer doesn't know this stuff, but when you do, the code is not slower and the executable is not larger! There are real people using C and real people using C++ to do really intensive math, and they both work nice and fast. The OOP just helps you organize your code. Saves developer time that way. It's not some bloated piece of crap that gets added to your executable file.
I have implemented Monte Carlo radiation transport algorithms (read Global Illumination Renderers) and it would have taken me three times longer to do it without C++.
What people forget is that every little structure, every little piece of data can be considered an object. You have samples for your Monte Carlo system? Make a class. You have some kind of representation of the environment? Make classes. You have radiation sources? Make classes. You have several sampling techniques that can be chosen at runtime? Make classes.
Why? Haha. Because you get type-safeness, you get reusable code, you get increased readability, you get increased writability (no thinking "what was this int for now?) but *especially* the type-safeness, and it provides a nice framework for you to organize your code into (objects). Did I mention the type-safeness? How it saves yor brane from having to remember your structures?
Is this more code? Sometimes. More lines, yes, but usually much more readable (shorter lines). Is it slower to do it this way? Well, I didn't win the APICS programming competition by not using C++:)
I use classes for just about everything! People forget that if you program this stuff *well* in C++, it gets compiled away! It's not a "solution to an engineering problem", it's a tool! It gets the compiler to do a lot of things for you that you used to have to keep track of in your head. You can even do OOP in C, for instance, by pretending to do your own namespaces (adding prefixes to all your structs and functions) but why not let the compiler do it for you?
BTW, I strongly believe in the OO/procedural hybrid that is present in languages like C++. Data and functions are organized into objects, but the functions themselves are still procedural on the inside. So OOP is a tool for organizing your code!
That's so important I want us all to say it together: OOP is a tool for organizing your code.
Okay, so that means I'm not allowed to make any operating system component with a name ending in "indows"? This is almost as bad as McDonalds trademarking the "Mc" prefix. AAARRRRGGH!
Holy crap. People corrected you on this and they all got it wrong too. Why not google for it?? Goedel proved that any formal system powerful enough to express **arithmetic** must either be inconsistent (proves incorrect statements) or incomplete (doesn't prove all correct statements). There are plenty of other logics that have one or the other or both or none of these properties. But your main point remains true. Goedel's proof only applies to what it was intended to apply to, and not to my cat, for instance.
Okay, we've got all these great file sharing clients out there and all is well. I conjecture, however, that we can't completely survive a major crackdown by The Lawyers. What I mean is that we aren't experiencing problems right now only because we aren't being pursued very actively.
There are a few fundamental problems that need to be addressed:
1) The network can be monitored. This can be fixed using various encryption schemes, so that I can't tell what other people are doing unless I have the client. Even if I have a client, onion skinning can be used so that I don't know where the queries are coming from.
2) The queries can be monitored with a client. This can be fixed by using partial searches that return many false positives, and are combined at the source to get the final search results. This way even if searches match my files, I don't know if the user really searched for those files. I can't combine the partial searches from my end either, since each partial search is onion-skinned to look like it originates from a different place. Thus a lawyer CANNOT say "ooh, look at all the copyrighted stuff they're searching for"
3) A lawyer can get the client, search for, and download copyrighted material. "Look how easy that was. Let's ban the client!" This, I'm afraid, is THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM. I don't think there's any way to stop it, since we can't detect who is a lawyer and who is not. There may be some way to require a user to participate in sharing material before they're allowed access, but this would require strong AI in order to be fully automated and decentralized, and I'm afraid we don't have that. Plus the problem of who decides who gets access opens up a whole can of worms.
But as we continue to fill out the distribution of KBOs, approching Pluto's size, we are left with Pluto starting to fall IN this distribution, rather than appearing to be an outlier.
So if we find a KBO asteroid as big as or bigger than Pluto, we'll call Pluto a KBO minor planet? I mean, this discovery didn't change the characteristics of Pluto itself...
What if we find something that looks just like Earth in there, and also an asteroid even larger than Earth? (however unlikely) Do we call the Earth twin a KBO minor planet just because there's an asteroid that's larger than it?
A new body found to be half the size of Earth would probably be instantly recognized as a major planet, which would do nothing to affect Earth's classification.
Why? Because it's big? Because we don't want to reclassify Earth? What if it's all lumpy and oddly shaped like some asteroids?
When we have a definition of a set, and we find an object that is either included by our definition but we didn't want it included, or is not included by our definition but we do want it included, there are two logically consistent courses of action. 1) retain the definition, and change the classification of the object. 2) retain the object, and change the definition for the classification. Either one is fine. The decision to go with 1) or 2) is a 100% arbitrary, human decision having nothing to do with the objects themselves. I believe Lakatosh wrote about this, using polyhedra as an example.
In other words, Semantics!
IMO, the article should have focussed on "Scientists discover really huge asteroid! This is really cool!" instead of "Scientists change the label they made for Pluto! This is a major astronomical breakthrough!".
Okay, so if by some fluke we find a big, lumpy asteroid half the size of the Earth in some far off place, we would obviously consider this proof that the Earth is only a minor planet after all.
Sheesh! "shedding light" on an arbitrary human classification? Let me just yell semantics! and end the discussion right here.
The following events must occur, however unlikely:
Party 1 creates a crappy data encryption scheme "S" designed to protect copyright.
Party 1 doesn't realize that the method is so crappy it can be broken in
"real time", without too much processor overhead at all.
Party 2, without Party 1's knowledge, discovers the easy crack "C" and spreads the
word over the internet. Party 2 then spends some time dodging any DMCA enforcers
that find out, or goes to prison. Either one will do fine. Note that Party 1 mustn't have known about this idea, otherwise it's conspiracy and the whole exercise is illegal.
Everybody Else then realizes that a network that uses scheme "S" for copyright
protection is protected by the DMCA. Everybody Else then builds clients for
said network encorporating crack "C", so that the data is essentially
unencrypted. These clients are illegal under the DMCA, but Everybody Else
doesn't give a damn. Everybody Else then goes ahead and freely trades copyrighted
material over the network.
Big Business can't do a damned thing about what Everybody Else trades over the
network, because the network itself is protected by the DMCA. Thus admitting that
they know what is on the network is admitting to violating the DMCA. After all,
a select few users might be using the non-cracked clients, and Big Business would
be cracking into their data. Everybody Else is also violating the DMCA in a
similar fashion, but they don't give a rat's ass.
So either 1) We get a network that no one can admit to using, and use it anyway,
or 2) they amend the DMCA to not apply when "everybody's doing it", which pretty
much destroys its power in any of the recently publicized cases, or 3)
they just get rid of the DMCA altogether or at least stop enforcing it,
or 4) case 1 but where individual users have their data / computers broken into to see
which ones are using the cracked client, and are sent to prison, because someone makes
some new amendment somewhere that says it's okay to collect evidence in this fashion.
For case 4 to happen, I think the USA would have to be in such a state that a
revolution was imminent anyway, so it's moot.
Again, these events are unlikely to take place any time soon, but the very fact that it would legally create a legal network that hackers can illegally use without getting caught by Big Business is rather humorous. The Feds would probably still look at the network (because you have no privacy from the Feds), but Big Business can't legally look for things to complain to the Feds about:) All thanks to our good friend the DMCA.
Holy snot, this actually works! 'cat file1.ogg file2.ogg > file3.ogg' and play file3.ogg, and it happily plays one and then the other. Can you do this with MP3s?
Yes. Yes you can. I routinely trim my MP3s by lopping off hunks in a hex editor.
Oh, and I just remembered that the judge program can insert moves that are part of the game, but not initiated by your opponent. This means you don't know if the opponent made the move or if the judge did it. So you'll need some fuzzy matching on your identification algorithms... hmm. Maybe not so easy.
You can't send arbitrary strings. Read the webpage. You can only look at moves, and make moves when your asked, out of the list of legal moves you're given.
But you could adapt your idea to this situation. Simply have your "master" program know the internals of all your "slave" programs, so that it can identify a likely slave based on the first few moves. Since it knows the slave's internals, it can beat it 100% if it's actually a slave. If it deviates from the known slave behaviour, well then you need a real algorithm.
In this scenario, your slaves don't even have to suck. They can use the best algo you can muster, but the master prog will still beat them because it knows what they're thinking. You can even use the same algo in the master when it identifies a real opponent.
Dead simple to do this if you already have a half-decent algo. Someone want to try it? Easy 2K...
My DSL provider is making the same switch. Right now they can't figure out how much bandwidth I use (they're not too bright I guess), so they have an "unlimited use" plan. Always on, flat rate. Love it. PPPOE makes it easy for them to know how much bandwidth I use. So I figure one of the reasons they're switching over is to make it easier for them to sneak in "pay by the megabyte" type plans. And on top of that, they're increasing the rates! Bastards.
Plus, they have a complete monopoly over here, so I'm SOL.
Horse * theHorse = new Horse(theStory);
SlashDot->Kill(theHorse);
while (theHorse->IsDead())
{
SlashDot->Post(theHorse->GetStory());
SlashDot->Beat(theHorse);
}
delete theHorse;
Can't believe you forgot to delete the horse. Of course, the compiler will balk at that statement, saying warning: unreachable code:)
Semantics! (was Re:Normality)
on
Share The Pi!
·
· Score: 1
The philosopher Lakatos did some thinking about how if you're working with a definition, and then some object that you thought should fit your definition turns out not to, should you change your definition to include the object, or should you exclude the object?
He reasoned (correctly) that either course of action is viable. It's an arbitrary decision as to which you choose.
So, whenever you hear someone arguing about whether 1 is prime or other such arguments, simply yell "Semantics!" and end the conversation.
Why not chop off two of each researcher's fingers, so that they can use base 8 instead of base 10? I hear it's much easier to calculate base 8 digits of Pi than base 10. Surely there must be a theorem somewhere stating that normality is independant of the base. Is it?
And in some cases (specifically Steve Buschemi's character) the character look just didnt match the voice at all
Voice types don't match face types. It was jarring because you know what Steve Buschemi looks like, and the character didn't look like him. Disney's characters work because they make them look like the people you already associate with the voice. Ever see a popular radio host for the first time? Often a surprise, because you may have pictured them differently.
But Huffman coding is not compression unless you give it a probability model! Every compressor depends on a model, which is designed by humans to model our files here on Earth. There is no way around it. You cannot make a compressor that doesn't "make assumptions" about the input, and you cannot make a compressor that is not somehow tuned "to specific inputs", or at least specific classes of inputs.
The only way to compress something is to know something about it and model that something, and then you can only compress those things which follow the model.
Ximian just views C# as a nice language to build the next generation of Gnome on.
Have you seen C#? It has enough keywords to fill a tube sock and beat a beaver to death. And the example code I've seen (especially the bits involving COM) has structure that reminds me of C code that uses #defines to compile on ninety platforms. It's one of the more heterogeneous languages I've seen. Bleah! It's like Java, plus a few cool shortcuts, plus a whole crapload of M$-specific garbage squeezed in with a shoehorn.
C may be cumbersome to many. C++ may also be cumbersome to a few. (Note that "C/C++" is not a language!)
But C# is not the answer! Java is not the answer either, but is probably closer than C#. As far as languages go, we still do not have the answer.
And don't bother telling me that we can't have a single language to fit all of our purposes. Basic information theory tells me you're wrong:-) We probably won't ever have a single language like that, but it will be due to political and social (elitist) reasons as opposed to technical ones.
Rant rant rant. All I do is rant. Oh yeah, I code all day too.
I would argue against Julian Simon's view. If we had 100 times as many 'really smart' people as we do now, I doubt they could figure out how to get the planet to support 100 times as many people. Remember that they'll have 100 times as much red tape, and 100 times as many political boundaries to overcome. Well, those last two might only grow logarithmically with population, but still. Until we're all on brain-net, more brains is only better to a point. Let's hope we get brain-net before we get to that point. If that's the case, well then I'll agree with Julian Simon:)
there's plenty of room an a 1TB hard drive for some 1GB DivX;-) movies
There's room for about a thousand 1GB movies in a 1TB hard drive. A buddy of mine was thinking about buying a 3TB hard drive, and he said "That should last me a while. Let me do the math. My current hard drive is completely filled with MP3s and stuff. I bet with my new hard drive I'd collect DVD rips and DivX;-) movies too. I could get about... oh, crap. Yeah, I'd fill 3TB pretty quick."
I don't doubt him for a second. But you're right that companies will continue to make bigger, cheaper storage solutions. But 1TB is today, not 3 years from now:) I want my 240TB drive!!
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people ignore mathematically sound proofs? This has been proven to be impossible in many ways. Hello? Earth to morons?
But on all North-Americal telephone systems, the # sign is called "pound". Funny that. So some people call it "C-Pound", usually half-jokingly :)
:) It's funny.
You know, pound, as in to fornicate or to drink excessively and irresponsibly
This is blatantly false, derived from blatant misunderstanding. Do you know what the C++ compiler does to objects and classes? Have you ever looked at the machine code that is produced? If you did you would know that you can use OOP in C++ with nearly zero, and often exactly zero, overhead, because the OOey stuff is done at compile time, not at run time!
Sure, a newbie C++ programmer doesn't know this stuff, but when you do, the code is not slower and the executable is not larger! There are real people using C and real people using C++ to do really intensive math, and they both work nice and fast. The OOP just helps you organize your code. Saves developer time that way. It's not some bloated piece of crap that gets added to your executable file.
I have implemented Monte Carlo radiation transport algorithms (read Global Illumination Renderers) and it would have taken me three times longer to do it without C++.
:)
:)
What people forget is that every little structure, every little piece of data can be considered an object. You have samples for your Monte Carlo system? Make a class. You have some kind of representation of the environment? Make classes. You have radiation sources? Make classes. You have several sampling techniques that can be chosen at runtime? Make classes.
Why? Haha. Because you get type-safeness, you get reusable code, you get increased readability, you get increased writability (no thinking "what was this int for now?) but *especially* the type-safeness, and it provides a nice framework for you to organize your code into (objects). Did I mention the type-safeness? How it saves yor brane from having to remember your structures?
Is this more code? Sometimes. More lines, yes, but usually much more readable (shorter lines). Is it slower to do it this way? Well, I didn't win the APICS programming competition by not using C++
I use classes for just about everything! People forget that if you program this stuff *well* in C++, it gets compiled away! It's not a "solution to an engineering problem", it's a tool! It gets the compiler to do a lot of things for you that you used to have to keep track of in your head. You can even do OOP in C, for instance, by pretending to do your own namespaces (adding prefixes to all your structs and functions) but why not let the compiler do it for you?
BTW, I strongly believe in the OO/procedural hybrid that is present in languages like C++. Data and functions are organized into objects, but the functions themselves are still procedural on the inside. So OOP is a tool for organizing your code!
That's so important I want us all to say it together: OOP is a tool for organizing your code.
This concludes today's lecture
Yes, I here they stopped that once they tried to sue Lord McDonald himself. He has a restaurant.
Okay, so that means I'm not allowed to make any operating system component with a name ending in "indows"? This is almost as bad as McDonalds trademarking the "Mc" prefix. AAARRRRGGH!
Holy crap. People corrected you on this and they all got it wrong too. Why not google for it?? Goedel proved that any formal system powerful enough to express **arithmetic** must either be inconsistent (proves incorrect statements) or incomplete (doesn't prove all correct statements). There are plenty of other logics that have one or the other or both or none of these properties.
But your main point remains true. Goedel's proof only applies to what it was intended to apply to, and not to my cat, for instance.
- GLYPH
Okay, we've got all these great file sharing clients out there and all is well. I conjecture, however, that we can't completely survive a major crackdown by The Lawyers. What I mean is that we aren't experiencing problems right now only because we aren't being pursued very actively.
There are a few fundamental problems that need to be addressed:
1) The network can be monitored. This can be fixed using various encryption schemes, so that I can't tell what other people are doing unless I have the client. Even if I have a client, onion skinning can be used so that I don't know where the queries are coming from.
2) The queries can be monitored with a client. This can be fixed by using partial searches that return many false positives, and are combined at the source to get the final search results. This way even if searches match my files, I don't know if the user really searched for those files. I can't combine the partial searches from my end either, since each partial search is onion-skinned to look like it originates from a different place. Thus a lawyer CANNOT say "ooh, look at all the copyrighted stuff they're searching for"
3) A lawyer can get the client, search for, and download copyrighted material. "Look how easy that was. Let's ban the client!" This, I'm afraid, is THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM. I don't think there's any way to stop it, since we can't detect who is a lawyer and who is not. There may be some way to require a user to participate in sharing material before they're allowed access, but this would require strong AI in order to be fully automated and decentralized, and I'm afraid we don't have that. Plus the problem of who decides who gets access opens up a whole can of worms.
Oh well, I guess we can't win in the long run.
But as we continue to fill out the distribution of KBOs, approching Pluto's size, we are left with Pluto starting to fall IN this distribution, rather than appearing to be an outlier.
So if we find a KBO asteroid as big as or bigger than Pluto, we'll call Pluto a KBO minor planet? I mean, this discovery didn't change the characteristics of Pluto itself...
What if we find something that looks just like Earth in there, and also an asteroid even larger than Earth? (however unlikely) Do we call the Earth twin a KBO minor planet just because there's an asteroid that's larger than it?
A new body found to be half the size of Earth would probably be instantly recognized as a major planet, which would do nothing to affect Earth's classification.
Why? Because it's big? Because we don't want to reclassify Earth? What if it's all lumpy and oddly shaped like some asteroids?
When we have a definition of a set, and we find an object that is either included by our definition but we didn't want it included, or is not included by our definition but we do want it included, there are two logically consistent courses of action. 1) retain the definition, and change the classification of the object. 2) retain the object, and change the definition for the classification. Either one is fine. The decision to go with 1) or 2) is a 100% arbitrary, human decision having nothing to do with the objects themselves. I believe Lakatosh wrote about this, using polyhedra as an example.
In other words, Semantics!
IMO, the article should have focussed on "Scientists discover really huge asteroid! This is really cool!" instead of "Scientists change the label they made for Pluto! This is a major astronomical breakthrough!".
Okay, so if by some fluke we find a big, lumpy asteroid half the size of the Earth in some far off place, we would obviously consider this proof that the Earth is only a minor planet after all.
Sheesh! "shedding light" on an arbitrary human classification? Let me just yell semantics! and end the discussion right here.
Pendulums 6 meters and 150 meters away in a different building, separated by brick walls and an inch of steel, showed identical effects
So why didn't every pendulum on the planet get screwed up? I'm sure somebody would have noticed that. Anyways, I'd better read the paper now :-)
The following events must occur, however unlikely:
Party 1 creates a crappy data encryption scheme "S" designed to protect copyright. Party 1 doesn't realize that the method is so crappy it can be broken in "real time", without too much processor overhead at all.
Party 2, without Party 1's knowledge, discovers the easy crack "C" and spreads the word over the internet. Party 2 then spends some time dodging any DMCA enforcers that find out, or goes to prison. Either one will do fine. Note that Party 1 mustn't have known about this idea, otherwise it's conspiracy and the whole exercise is illegal.
Everybody Else then realizes that a network that uses scheme "S" for copyright protection is protected by the DMCA. Everybody Else then builds clients for said network encorporating crack "C", so that the data is essentially unencrypted. These clients are illegal under the DMCA, but Everybody Else doesn't give a damn. Everybody Else then goes ahead and freely trades copyrighted material over the network.
Big Business can't do a damned thing about what Everybody Else trades over the network, because the network itself is protected by the DMCA. Thus admitting that they know what is on the network is admitting to violating the DMCA. After all, a select few users might be using the non-cracked clients, and Big Business would be cracking into their data. Everybody Else is also violating the DMCA in a similar fashion, but they don't give a rat's ass.
So either 1) We get a network that no one can admit to using, and use it anyway, or 2) they amend the DMCA to not apply when "everybody's doing it", which pretty much destroys its power in any of the recently publicized cases, or 3) they just get rid of the DMCA altogether or at least stop enforcing it, or 4) case 1 but where individual users have their data / computers broken into to see which ones are using the cracked client, and are sent to prison, because someone makes some new amendment somewhere that says it's okay to collect evidence in this fashion. For case 4 to happen, I think the USA would have to be in such a state that a revolution was imminent anyway, so it's moot.
Again, these events are unlikely to take place any time soon, but the very fact that it would legally create a legal network that hackers can illegally use without getting caught by Big Business is rather humorous. The Feds would probably still look at the network (because you have no privacy from the Feds), but Big Business can't legally look for things to complain to the Feds about :) All thanks to our good friend the DMCA.
Holy snot, this actually works! 'cat file1.ogg file2.ogg > file3.ogg' and play file3.ogg, and it happily plays one and then the other. Can you do this with MP3s?
Yes. Yes you can. I routinely trim my MP3s by lopping off hunks in a hex editor.
Oh, and I just remembered that the judge program can insert moves that are part of the game, but not initiated by your opponent. This means you don't know if the opponent made the move or if the judge did it. So you'll need some fuzzy matching on your identification algorithms... hmm. Maybe not so easy.
You can't send arbitrary strings. Read the webpage. You can only look at moves, and make moves when your asked, out of the list of legal moves you're given.
But you could adapt your idea to this situation. Simply have your "master" program know the internals of all your "slave" programs, so that it can identify a likely slave based on the first few moves. Since it knows the slave's internals, it can beat it 100% if it's actually a slave. If it deviates from the known slave behaviour, well then you need a real algorithm.
In this scenario, your slaves don't even have to suck. They can use the best algo you can muster, but the master prog will still beat them because it knows what they're thinking. You can even use the same algo in the master when it identifies a real opponent.
Dead simple to do this if you already have a half-decent algo. Someone want to try it? Easy 2K...
My DSL provider is making the same switch. Right now they can't figure out how much bandwidth I use (they're not too bright I guess), so they have an "unlimited use" plan. Always on, flat rate. Love it. PPPOE makes it easy for them to know how much bandwidth I use. So I figure one of the reasons they're switching over is to make it easier for them to sneak in "pay by the megabyte" type plans. And on top of that, they're increasing the rates! Bastards. Plus, they have a complete monopoly over here, so I'm SOL.
No, ya got it all wrong. Here it is:
Horse * theHorse = new Horse(theStory);SlashDot->Kill(theHorse);
while (theHorse->IsDead())
{
SlashDot->Post(theHorse->GetStory());
SlashDot->Beat(theHorse);
}
delete theHorse;
Can't believe you forgot to delete the horse. Of course, the compiler will balk at that statement, saying warning: unreachable code :)
The philosopher Lakatos did some thinking about how if you're working with a definition, and then some object that you thought should fit your definition turns out not to, should you change your definition to include the object, or should you exclude the object?
He reasoned (correctly) that either course of action is viable. It's an arbitrary decision as to which you choose.
So, whenever you hear someone arguing about whether 1 is prime or other such arguments, simply yell "Semantics!" and end the conversation.
Why not chop off two of each researcher's fingers, so that they can use base 8 instead of base 10? I hear it's much easier to calculate base 8 digits of Pi than base 10. Surely there must be a theorem somewhere stating that normality is independant of the base. Is it?
And in some cases (specifically Steve Buschemi's character) the character look just didnt match the voice at all
Voice types don't match face types. It was jarring because you know what Steve Buschemi looks like, and the character didn't look like him. Disney's characters work because they make them look like the people you already associate with the voice. Ever see a popular radio host for the first time? Often a surprise, because you may have pictured them differently.
Voice types don't match face types.
Wow, when it comes to graphics, slashdot is way behind. I read that paper months ago :) Still very cool today. It has stood the test of time :)
But Huffman coding is not compression unless you give it a probability model! Every compressor depends on a model, which is designed by humans to model our files here on Earth. There is no way around it. You cannot make a compressor that doesn't "make assumptions" about the input, and you cannot make a compressor that is not somehow tuned "to specific inputs", or at least specific classes of inputs.
The only way to compress something is to know something about it and model that something, and then you can only compress those things which follow the model.
Ximian just views C# as a nice language to build the next generation of Gnome on.
Have you seen C#? It has enough keywords to fill a tube sock and beat a beaver to death. And the example code I've seen (especially the bits involving COM) has structure that reminds me of C code that uses #defines to compile on ninety platforms. It's one of the more heterogeneous languages I've seen. Bleah! It's like Java, plus a few cool shortcuts, plus a whole crapload of M$-specific garbage squeezed in with a shoehorn.
C may be cumbersome to many. C++ may also be cumbersome to a few. (Note that "C/C++" is not a language!)
But C# is not the answer! Java is not the answer either, but is probably closer than C#. As far as languages go, we still do not have the answer.
And don't bother telling me that we can't have a single language to fit all of our purposes. Basic information theory tells me you're wrong :-) We probably won't ever have a single language like that, but it will be due to political and social (elitist) reasons as opposed to technical ones.
Rant rant rant. All I do is rant. Oh yeah, I code all day too.
I would argue against Julian Simon's view. If we had 100 times as many 'really smart' people as we do now, I doubt they could figure out how to get the planet to support 100 times as many people. Remember that they'll have 100 times as much red tape, and 100 times as many political boundaries to overcome. Well, those last two might only grow logarithmically with population, but still. Until we're all on brain-net, more brains is only better to a point. Let's hope we get brain-net before we get to that point. If that's the case, well then I'll agree with Julian Simon :)
there's plenty of room an a 1TB hard drive for some 1GB DivX ;-) movies
There's room for about a thousand 1GB movies in a 1TB hard drive. A buddy of mine was thinking about buying a 3TB hard drive, and he said "That should last me a while. Let me do the math. My current hard drive is completely filled with MP3s and stuff. I bet with my new hard drive I'd collect DVD rips and DivX ;-) movies too. I could get about... oh, crap. Yeah, I'd fill 3TB pretty quick."
I don't doubt him for a second. But you're right that companies will continue to make bigger, cheaper storage solutions. But 1TB is today, not 3 years from now :) I want my 240TB drive!!