> What's the point of living like someone in those pods depicted in the Matrix?
Hey, if you've got control over the programs, I'd say there's a lot of point. Want to make a few changes? Just upload girlfriend 2.0!;-)
Seriously, why would you *not* want to live like that? Wouldn't it be cool to be able to fly, or go hang out in the Jurassic, or do whatever else you please?
It's also hard to see the W3C as a worthwhile standards body when their processes allow abuses like Microsoft's patenting of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), for which they had participated in the standardization process. Who needs a consortium to develop proprietary standards?!
Interesting snippet from this ZDNet story on the andover.net IPO and/. aquisition:
Andover.net paid $1.5 million to acquire Slashdot.org and $367,000 to acquire another Linux/open-source site, Freshmeat.net. Both will receive further cash and stock considerations if the founders, notably Malda and a couple of others, remain with Andover.net for two years. Malda will receive an additional $3.5 million plus stock over the next two years should he remain with Andover.net.
It just means you have a better memory than me! Those backward jumps (now does that include the jump instruction itself..) always were a pain. I never had a case - just had the mobo, naked keyboard, PSU, etc all spread out on a table top, along with an old 19" B/W TV for that wobbly modulated 40 character display:-)
Actually, the Commodore PET also used the 6502, as did most of Acorn's range in the UK (the Atom, BBC Micro, and Electron). I used to work for Acorn, and co-authored Acornsoft ISO Pascal - the first ISO/BSI certified ISO Pascal implementation for an 8 bit micro! (compiler, interpreter, editor, runtime and CLI - all in 32K of ROM!).
The minimal 6502 also helped inspire the ARM (the Acorn RISC Machine, before it was renamed).
1MHz Z80, 2K of RAM (1K for the user, 1K for the monitor program), 300baud audio tape storage..
None of that high level mnemonic assember garbage, just poke those hex op-codes right into memory. I even wrote a line editor and hangman game for the thing.
Perhaps he's just a zombie? We certainly couldn't tell the difference, and neither I'm sure could he, given the bogosity of the construction.
I might be more inclined to believe dualist theories like Chalmer's if there was some problem with the more commonsensical view that consciousness is merely an emergent property of the mind. But there's not.
I don't find it any more troublesome that consiousness has a subjective quality, than I do that any other sense does. The greenness quale doesn't require us to invent a dualist notion of color, and neither should the consiousness quale. It's got to feel like *something*!
Reading the detailed paper, I can't help but see this "cat/brain" as essentially an implementation of Rodney Brooks's subsumption architecture. Maybe the "cat" will be capable of a few reactive behaviors, but it'll be just as brainless as it's technical soulmate Cog. The real breakthrough in making an artificial brain will be when we figure out how to do it (i.e. what the architecture is), not when Moore's law brings the number of neurons or processing power within reach.
Remember when Novell owned the server market, or Netscape owned the browser market? Or what a disaster Windows was until 3.0?
I share your feelings about Microsoft's technology, but what keeps them in the game - apart from money - is their tenacity when they have a target in their sights, and the surprising nimbleness of such a large company to turn around when they need to. Of course the money is a huge factor, since it allows them to fight these loss-leader wars of attrition and win.
The landscape may be changing, but I wouldn't discount Microsoft's ability to evolve [just] fast enough to keep up...
Think a year or so ahead, where cable modems are more ubiquitous, and Microsoft has continued to build up influential inventment positions in a large number of cable companies. Plus there's Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen whose independent cable buying spree included the $4.5B purchase of Charter Communications last year... Plus there's WebTV. AOL is desperatly cutting broadband access deals (both ADSL and Cable) wherever it can, but Microsoft is likely to be better positioned. Who gets hurt most by providing free ISP and/or set top box deals - Microsoft or AOL? Who gets hurt most if the UK's free ISP model spreads over here (notice AOL's free Netscape Online service just launched)?
Of course it remains to be seen to what degreee the regulators would prevent Microsoft from leveraging their potential ownership of a lot of the cable access infrastructure and standards to get into the content business, but I sure wouldn't want to be AOL or any other broadband content provider in this scenario.
If you're interested in this stuff then you should check out the work being done on complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and also James Gleick's classic book on Chaos, and M. Mitchell Waldrop's on Complexity (I forget the full titles).
Over the next couple of years Microsoft's earnings growth and margins are sure to decline for the reasons Cringley outlined, but look for Gates to reinvent Microsoft as an on-line media company.
Even if Microsoft loses the Internet server and home user markets (although they'll eventually drop personal use Windows license prices - to zero if necessary), they'll have the business and office application markets for a long time as a cash cow. They also have a *huge* warchest.
If you look at all of Microsoft's cable aquisitions (some 20-30 investments - incl. the recent $600M or so in Rogers), the battle they appear to be starting to get in with AOL, and Gate's long standing desire to get into the "razorblade" business, you can see pretty clearly where they are headed...
IMHO, I think your experience has more to do with issues of data and program representation, perhaps in addition to fitness evaluation, than with genetic programming per se. The algorithm can only explore the solution space that you define.
According to c|net's story, the original exploit web page claims to have been was written in June 1998!!!
There's also a great spin quote from Microsoft:
"Once we were notified we began investigating," the spokesperson said. "We found it was possible for a malicious hacker to gain access to the Hotmail servers through specific knowledge of advanced Web development languages. We turned off the servers in the interest of security and user privacy.
Whether or not UFO's (from another planet) exist, who in their right minds would expect the CIA to tell us if they did! This isn't paranoia, but just basic common sense. The government needs to maintain the appearance of being in control, which would hardly be helped if they admitted (if it were true) that we were being visited by another life form who had technology way beyond anything we do.
If the CIA is convinced there are NOT any UFO's, then perhaps they would write an article like this as a PR exercise, or for some other reason, but if they DID have any proof there are UFO's, they could be expected to write the exact same type of article....
Right now RHAT is a concept stock, based on the potential of Linux to do well. What's not so obvious is how RedHat is going to cash in on Linux's growth to the extent required to justify that $5B market cap. It may stay up there for a while, but at *some* point, fundamentals and reality will come to bear....
Let's be very generous and say that RHAT deserves a huge 100 P/E, so that $5B cap. would require $50M of earnings. So even at a huge 50% margin, they need at least $100M in sales...
But their last year's sales were only $10M, so even sales were to increase by 100% a year for the next 3 years, that would only take them to $80M - in three years time.
So it would appear that *todays* RHAT price *already* reflects an assumed 3 years of sales doubling, a fat 50% margin, and an extrememly generous 100 P/E ratio.... seems to me there's not much room for ANYTHING to go wrong, and no upside even if EVERYTHING goes right...
Slashdot Mirror
> What's the point of living like someone in those pods depicted in the Matrix?
;-)
Hey, if you've got control over the programs, I'd say there's a lot of point. Want to make a few changes? Just upload girlfriend 2.0!
Seriously, why would you *not* want to live like that? Wouldn't it be cool to be able to fly, or go hang out in the Jurassic, or do whatever else you please?
Hook me up!
It's also hard to see the W3C as a worthwhile standards body when their processes allow abuses like Microsoft's patenting of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), for which they had participated in the standardization process. Who needs a consortium to develop proprietary standards?!
Andover.net paid $1.5 million to acquire Slashdot.org and $367,000 to acquire another Linux/open-source site, Freshmeat.net. Both will receive further cash and stock considerations if the founders, notably Malda and a couple of others, remain with Andover.net for two years. Malda will receive an additional $3.5 million plus stock over the next two years should he remain with Andover.net.
Now *I* could be quite Zen with that!
It just means you have a better memory than me! Those backward jumps (now does that include the jump instruction itself..) always were a pain. I never had a case - just had the mobo, naked keyboard, PSU, etc all spread out on a table top, along with an old 19" B/W TV for that wobbly modulated 40 character display :-)
Intel release the 4004.com
:-)
Naturally it'll come in a choice of iMac inspired dayglo plastic packaging.
There was also the later 32 bit Z80000, which was an even worse flop than the Z8000.
Actually, the Commodore PET also used the 6502, as did most of Acorn's range in the UK (the Atom, BBC Micro, and Electron). I used to work for Acorn, and co-authored Acornsoft ISO Pascal - the first ISO/BSI certified ISO Pascal implementation for an 8 bit micro! (compiler, interpreter, editor, runtime and CLI - all in 32K of ROM!).
The minimal 6502 also helped inspire the ARM (the Acorn RISC Machine, before it was renamed).
Ah, the good olde days...
I remember building a NASCOM-1 back in 1978..
1MHz Z80, 2K of RAM (1K for the user, 1K for the monitor program), 300baud audio tape storage..
None of that high level mnemonic assember garbage, just poke those hex op-codes right into memory. I even wrote a line editor and hangman game for the thing.
Computing was never finer!
Perhaps he's just a zombie? We certainly couldn't tell the difference, and neither I'm sure could he, given the bogosity of the construction.
I might be more inclined to believe dualist theories like Chalmer's if there was some problem with the more commonsensical view that consciousness is merely an emergent property of the mind. But there's not.
I don't find it any more troublesome that consiousness has a subjective quality, than I do that any other sense does. The greenness quale doesn't require us to invent a dualist notion of color, and neither should the consiousness quale. It's got to feel like *something*!
Reading the detailed paper, I can't help but see this "cat/brain" as essentially an implementation of Rodney Brooks's subsumption architecture. Maybe the "cat" will be capable of a few reactive behaviors, but it'll be just as brainless as it's technical soulmate Cog. The real breakthrough in making an artificial brain will be when we figure out how to do it (i.e. what the architecture is), not when Moore's law brings the number of neurons or processing power within reach.
The cost of cabling is in the pulling, not the cable.
"Warning: rancid cheese, sector 9"
"Unidentified fungal growth detected in chinese leftovers"
:-)
That's got to be the finest Linux Powered Bat House on the internet that I've ever seen!
;-)
Just one small gripe, though:
Arn't Bat Houses meant to have bats?
Remember when Novell owned the server market, or Netscape owned the browser market? Or what a disaster Windows was until 3.0?
I share your feelings about Microsoft's technology, but what keeps them in the game - apart from money - is their tenacity when they have a target in their sights, and the surprising nimbleness of such a large company to turn around when they need to. Of course the money is a huge factor, since it allows them to fight these loss-leader wars of attrition and win.
The landscape may be changing, but I wouldn't discount Microsoft's ability to evolve [just] fast enough to keep up...
Think a year or so ahead, where cable modems are more ubiquitous, and Microsoft has continued to build up influential inventment positions in a large number of cable companies. Plus there's Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen whose independent cable buying spree included the $4.5B purchase of Charter Communications last year... Plus there's WebTV. AOL is desperatly cutting broadband access deals (both ADSL and Cable) wherever it can, but Microsoft is likely to be better positioned. Who gets hurt most by providing free ISP and/or set top box deals - Microsoft or AOL? Who gets hurt most if the UK's free ISP model spreads over here (notice AOL's free Netscape Online service just launched)?
Of course it remains to be seen to what degreee the regulators would prevent Microsoft from leveraging their potential ownership of a lot of the cable access infrastructure and standards to get into the content business, but I sure wouldn't want to be AOL or any other broadband content provider in this scenario.
If you're interested in this stuff then you should check out the work being done on complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and also James Gleick's classic book on Chaos, and M. Mitchell Waldrop's on Complexity (I forget the full titles).
Over the next couple of years Microsoft's earnings growth and margins are sure to decline for the reasons Cringley outlined, but look for Gates to reinvent Microsoft as an on-line media company.
Even if Microsoft loses the Internet server and home user markets (although they'll eventually drop personal use Windows license prices - to zero if necessary), they'll have the business and office application markets for a long time as a cash cow. They also have a *huge* warchest.
If you look at all of Microsoft's cable aquisitions (some 20-30 investments - incl. the recent $600M or so in Rogers), the battle they appear to be starting to get in with AOL, and Gate's long standing desire to get into the "razorblade" business, you can see pretty clearly where they are headed...
IMHO, I think your experience has more to do with issues of data and program representation, perhaps in addition to fitness evaluation, than with genetic programming per se. The algorithm can only explore the solution space that you define.
I believe the experiment's been tried in the Appalachians too.
http://nic.tf refers to:
.tc, .vg., .ms and .gs as well as .tf domains - all $50 each.
:-(
http://www.adamsnames.tc/
Which also sells
pi.gs is taken
Christmas Islands at http://nic.cx is still cheaper at 20 UK pounds (~$30).
According to c|net's story, the original exploit web page claims to have been was written in June 1998!!!
There's also a great spin quote from Microsoft:
"Once we were notified we began investigating," the spokesperson said. "We found it was possible for a malicious hacker to gain access to the Hotmail servers through specific knowledge of advanced Web development languages. We turned off the servers in the interest of security and user privacy.
> "trying to add memory to your computer" under a sidebar of 5 things *not* to try!
:-(
This was in the 50's, right?
Whether or not UFO's (from another planet) exist, who in their right minds would expect the CIA to tell us if they did! This isn't paranoia, but just basic common sense. The government needs to maintain the appearance of being in control, which would hardly be helped if they admitted (if it were true) that we were being visited by another life form who had technology way beyond anything we do.
If the CIA is convinced there are NOT any UFO's, then perhaps they would write an article like this as a PR exercise, or for some other reason, but if they DID have any proof there are UFO's, they could be expected to write the exact same type of article....
Conclusion: It's meaningless.
Dude, how long have you been playing this game?
How many sales? Average price? Total take?
Right now RHAT is a concept stock, based on the potential of Linux to do well. What's not so obvious is how RedHat is going to cash in on Linux's growth to the extent required to justify that $5B market cap. It may stay up there for a while, but at *some* point, fundamentals and reality will come to bear....
Let's be very generous and say that RHAT deserves a huge 100 P/E, so that $5B cap. would require $50M of earnings. So even at a huge 50% margin, they need at least $100M in sales...
But their last year's sales were only $10M, so even sales were to increase by 100% a year for the next 3 years, that would only take them to $80M - in three years time.
So it would appear that *todays* RHAT price *already* reflects an assumed 3 years of sales doubling, a fat 50% margin, and an extrememly generous 100 P/E ratio.... seems to me there's not much room for ANYTHING to go wrong, and no upside even if EVERYTHING goes right...
Caveat emptor.