You can build dual Celeron systems for less than $2500 which can almost certainly match G3 (and probably beat it). My twin 450 came in at about $2200, but is somewhat overbuilt in places--for that price you could probably find a nice dual 550 now. I'm also *very* interested in how the K7 will stack up against the G3/G4, esp. in SMP configurations. (Of course, that only gives you faster; no chance of smaller and cooler.)
>IMO, something is a "great work" when enough people say it is.
So if everyone were to forget all about LotR, it would no longer be a great work? So there can be *no* 'lost great works'? Obviously they aren't great *while* they're lost--they aren't anything (except lost). But they *were* great, thus 'great works'. You're thinking too much in the present tense. Maybe you should consider including *everyone* who has experienced the work, not just the living.
And some people would debate the subjectivity of 'greatness'. If it is completely relative, why do so many people agree some things are great? If it is because of cultural or constitutional similarities, then it isn't really subjective, is it? (If you like, consider it this way: is the color blue subjective. Clearly the experience of seeing blue is, but then why do most people see roughly the same color? Subjectivity isn't as subjective as you seem to think.)
>And don't give me that standard elite crap that "the masses are too stupid or uninformed to understand". The masses are what make something "worthy", whether by direct indorsement (ie. LotR), or by deferral to acknowledged experts (ie. Shakespear).
There is a reason why 'popular' and 'worthy' are different words. It isn't because the masses are ignorant, it's because few people are exposed more than a small fraction of literature. Most people would agree that Shakespeare was great playwrite, but how may of them have read on of his plays, let alone seen one? How many North Americans are exposed to the German literature, which boasts poets at least as great as S.? Or African or Asian works? If all Greeks believed that a (untranslated) text was the greatest work of Greek literature, would they be wrong because most people have never read it? If not, if you are allowing that only people who could potentially have read a text can judge it's greatness, then why can there be no great lost works, as only those who could have read them, that is pre-loss, would count? You're arguement seems to suffer the more you ask of it.
People naturally are exposed to more contemporary than historical works. Is Steven King (sp on first name?) a greater writer then Tolkien? Because I can assure you that he is more widely read. The National Enquirer has more readers than most poets and writers of the last few centuries, so is it greater?
BTW, do you see the conflict you created by including "acknowledged experts"? If, as you say, the masses aren't bumbling fools (and I would agree with you here), why do they have experts to tell them if something is good? And why does that count toward somethings greatness if the masses aren't even exposed to it? Is it not the 'expert' who is making it great, via the masses?
>I answer, well, yes, obviously, otherwise, why are they still around?
Did you happen to notice all the complete crap that this statement would confer greatness on? *Everything* published in the last few decades, (in the Western World, anyway) will be arround in 100 years. So is all of that great? Obviously not. These things are still around because thy were saved, and they wee saved for any number of reasons--historical record, or perhaps an archive of just how *bad* some things are.
On to elitism, I believe that some mild 'elitist crap' is considerably more appealing than poorly applied relativism. Things may very well be entirely subjective, but that does not mean that there are no standards or norms, or that great literature is defined by being a best seller.
(PS: I wrote this inside-out, which is why a the same few ideas permeate every section.)
NO! (smashes head against keyboard as memories of Usenet threads flood in).
Microsoft purchased FASA Interactive, a division of FASA--the video game division. FASA is still independant, and maintaining Battletech (and Mechwarrior), Shadowrun, Crimson Skies and Vor (and abandoning Earthdawn, which was fast becoming my favorite FRP).
-jcl (Btech since '91, MW since '95, ED and SR since the beginning)
Second, anyone who challenges Tolkien's ability to write is a boob. Tolkien was an accomplished linguist, a student of the English language and mythology (he is the interpreter of Sir Gawain and the Green Night from Old English, many of the Rorrihim names in LOTR are in Old English). Of course his language uses archaic forms!
First, none of that means he can write well (as opposed to 'correctly', etc). My problem with him is that LotR seems dry. The writing was very good, but completely unlike what I prefer; in some ways he wrote too well, until it hurt the realism and distracted me from the story. I don't need him to make me believe in the dragon; I'm quite capable of that myself. I need him to give the dragon something to do, other than be described. (Such as speak, were it able; see below.)
And the way Tolkien downplays many of the more "fantastic" aspects of the story is a great style, IMO...
This is one thing I like about his world; it isn't so glaringly unrealistic as some. However, as you said, his story is still fantastic, which I don't like. In fact, that's what bugs me the most about it. It is story driven, and mythological, and very, very epic. And that's what put me off. (That and the Hobbit's. I hate Hobbits (and all the fantasy races they spawned)).
I prefer character driven stories and plots that don't reach mythological levels. No saving the world, epic battles, etc. I'm quite happy with writers willing to devote chapters to characters at the expense of the story--as you said, if you have space to stretch your arms.... (I'm including the world in the story--description without action isn't character-oriented.) Tolkien's characters never seemed real to me; they were more like roles: 'hero', 'mentor', 'warrior', etc. But this is really a fundamental divide--plot vs. character oriented stories. Both sides have good arguements, and no one gets anywhere fighting over it. (OTOH, it would have worked if 1) he had a character or two who could carry a story that size (in scale with the plot) or 2) made it extrememly epic, world-spanning, etc, and dazzled me into liking it.)
Well ask yourself where your writings will be 100 years later and where will Tolkien's be?
That's absurd. Where will your writings be in 100 years, your defence of Tolkien? I'm willing to bet that most of the great works of history have been lost, or aren't remembered by more than a handful of people. And popularity is never a good measure of skill--would Tolkien have been as brilliant if LotR had been destroyed in a fire? Or is the greatness of his style completely dependant on how many readers he's built up over the decades?
And all of this carries the standard disclaimers, if for no other reason than because I haven't read LotR in years, and didn't finish then, so I may be wrong about some things (though I doubt it).
Here's a story at Ars Technica comparing dual Celerons to dual PIII's, both oc'ed. Results were suprising, to say the least.
(I don't believe this is a fluke, either. My machine is basically the nerd box, but at 464, and it is thus far is proving to faster than I expected, close to PIII 500 speed (without SSE, of course).)
That's what I said: all computers aren't equal. In fact, that was the *whole* *point* of my post! (Not reading posts before responding is my second complaint about/. 'readers', but is rapidly moving up to #1.)
QC's aren't Turing machines, and apparently neither are brains (I'm currently studying the latter). However, I don't believe that QC's are more powerful than Turing machines. They are certainly faster in some ways, but the range of functions they can compute is quite small, and AFAIK they cannot compute anything beyond the capabilities of a Turing machine (given enough time). This would make them more of an optimized sub-Turing machine.
As far as what *is* more powerful than a Turing machine, most of the candidates are actually variations of TM's (oracles, etc), or analog (such as recurrent neural networks) systems. I don't believe QM has much to offer here, unless it can add a new realm to the analog-digital spectrum.
And for the record, I've never taken any CompSci courses, though I sometimes wander through the field chasing a neural network.
I find it fascinating that/. readers are so often scientific illiterate in so many fields, including computing. (Yes, this is a flame directed at almost everyone; moderate away...)
In this case, I refer to the belief that 'all computing is equal', that the only difference between, say, a QC, a Compaq and my brain is in the implementation and speed. QC's are not just really fast, expensive and fragile supercomputers, they won't run Quake or Linux, and they won't replace those anyones Compaq. They do a few things really well--sorts, searches, etc--but most things very poorly, if at all. They are less general purpose machines than accessories, designed to fulfill some specific needs--coprocessors for your Cray, rather then replacements. On top of that, they cost a fortune and are unimaginably fragile compared to a desktop machine.
In some fields they will be revolutionary, but for the most part the effects will be similar to the release of the K7 on the population of Iran.
Wasn't there something in the news a few months back--and on/., I believe--about the Chinese gov't planning to make a Unix variant the country's 'official' OS? I don't believe it had anything to do with Linux.
(And of course, I would search for it, but I'm getting about 10B/sec from/. right now. Must be a busy morning somewhere...)
(Those Marathon people here may remember me from the Story Page;-)
Ah, Marathon--still, IMHO, the best FPS ever (and maybe yet to come...). Incredible AI, story, graphics (who needs polygons!). AI seems to be Bungie's forte--PID was suprisingly good for it's time, Myth & MythII were very nice, and Oni...mmmm, individualized AI's for every character, adaptation, learning, etc.
But Marathon...back in those days, when the only real alternative was Doom, it was was breath taking (and still is). The primitive state 3D games only enhanced the effect--I can still remember dueling with Juggernauts (big barn-sized flying tanks), retreating to cover, only to have them sneak up behind me (sometimes going some distance) and toast me, sometimes even bringing help with them.
Links galore: bungie.org has lots of info on Marathon, Oni and PID (as well as a little on Blam, but would take some explaining). Some of the original designers jumped ship and formed Double Aught, made Marathon Infinity, and are currently working on Duality, yet another FPS.
"I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level but Total Carnage, to never use Caps Lock as my 'run' key, and to never, ever, leave a single Bob alive." -The Oath of the Vidmastar, Marathon
No it isn't, "photographic memory" refers specifically to long term storage. Lots of people have 'photographic' short-term memory. And there may be people who could remember all those pages, but since no one has done it (AFAIK--why would they want to?) I can't prove it.
The comment about the 100bps I/O and 2 gig storage came up last time/. took a question about brain capacity. I remember attacking it then (was it you, last time?).
Part of the problem is that you (I assume that the AC I'm replying to is the AC that started the thread) read this in an AI book. AI researchers tend to stretch reality to fit their models, specifically, trying to analyze the mind/brain in purely computeational terms, often not even as a parallel processor (I'm talking about Good Old Fashioned AI, not necessarily connectionism). Essentially, they think of the brain (and often other things) as computers, because that is what they work with. Physicists do it too (see Penrose for an example of trying to squeeze the mind into quantum mechanics), as do linguists (Chomsky, though not to such a degree), etc. And all of this involves trying to fit the mind into a mechanistic world-view, which also may not be the best way to go (sorry, I'm a panexperientialist, time for my bias to kick in;-)
Regarding your replies, you do store everything that comes in, albeit probably not in the same form as it arrived. The original comment about 44kHz is off, too, because the brain doesn't care about the sampling rate (that's what it is, isn't it?). Neuron's can't fire at 44kHz, anyway--and they certainly don't store at that speed. The brain is working at a higher level than that, with sounds, while the ear (and maybe some subsystems) take care of technical details.
(of course, this should all be taken with a grain of salt; I don't have a tremendous amount of confidence in neuroscience to begin with, and thus far it has produced next to nothing about memory (certainly nothing that can be used to terminate this thread).)
(Thanks God someone else saw it last month, no one would believe me;-)
It really should have been called 'Pirate...'; the entire movie is essentially about Jobs' personal life. Or about Jobs' evil twin. I don't think he ever came across as likeable throughout the movie. Even on the rare occasions when he wasn't acting like an ass, it was usually just because he was apologizing (or sitting and not talking; apparently it's the same thing.) No sign of his famous charisma--people follow him because they're afraid not too.
Gates, OTOH, comes across as a realy likable guy. He's evil, but in a friendly way, and Apple hands him everything ("here, take the source for the MacOS, please feel free to steal it"). Paul Allen seems to die early in the film and be resurrected as a zombie of some sort. ("Must keep back stiffer...speak less...")
Oh, and they don't say anything about computers. The Apple I and Lisa are kinda important in a few scenes, the Mac appears out of nowhere (though the Mac team is around long enough for Jobs' to drive them (literally) insane). I don't think we actually see Windows, though it comes up now and then. And then the movie ends with Sculley (sp?) ousting Jobs, followed by a tiny scene from the Apple-MS 'alliance' announcement. No Win95, Next, Pixar, Copland, OS X, etc.
It was on May 22nd (sometime that weekend, anyway); I have no idea why, it was supposed to be some Mt St Helens movie. Interesting, but too much about Jobs' personal life (not necessarily related to his real personal life--gotta keep the movie interesting), not enough about anything else. Kinda fun though.
(Hah! I didn't start the thread this time, let's see the moderators get me now;-)
US West's 'service' is poor enough that I've considered moving just to get away from them. The local office hasn't updated their equipment is something like 15 years, so there are half-completed calls, no dial tones, drops and every other telecom disaster you can imagine. Even on off hours they can barely bring enough capacity to bear to handle the local calls, let alone dialup, etc.
Of course it may not be a problem much longer. Things have gotten so bad that the city is trying to kick them out, or at least force them to try to harder. I'm helping with the research (evil grin).
(Of course, I'm in communications hell. Falcon Cable, home of the $29 basic cable service (up $8 since the FCC ruling was appealed). Oh, and enough line noise that I can barely top 26k on my 56k modem--thank you GTE...)
First off, I'd like to point out that brains are fundamentally different in every way from digital computers: storage, processing, etc. Estimated about brain capacity in computing terms tend to be based on enormously flawed concepts, like guesses about how many bits are stored per neuron. (Short answer: none. The information is stored in the network, not the nodes.) I can't imagine what playing 20 questions has to do with memory; as for 100bps I/O, consider that you're brain is processing (and storing, though perhaps not permanently) everything in the environment, not just what you consciously perceive. (This has been studied, but I can't find the references.)
Second, even assuming you could measure brain capacity this way, would it be meaningful? Is audio stored at.wav or mp3 level compression? Is visual data stored as complete frames or more like mpeg? Is the data actually compressed for storage, or is the (arguably) poor quality of memories a feature of how they recalled?
Anyway, a few months ago I heard (several times, can't remember where) that the capacity would have to be more like 10 to 100 terabits, based on how much people can recall over a lifetime. I don't believe this either, but it seems much closer than a couple gigs.
Are you sure that the machines really are running slow, or could they just feel that way? In my experience (which doesn't include >=OS 8; just 6.5-7.5.5) the MacOS *feels* much slower than Windows, no matter how fast the hardware is. I've run Win95 on a 486-66 and it's felt faster than any Mac I've used, even though I know (benchmarks and side-by-side comparisons) it's slower.
If they really are slow then there's definitely something wrong. It is *really* easy to cripple the MacOS; it would take an army of admins to keep 304 Mac's running smoothly, esp in school, no matter how tight the security. (The high school I'm adminning is very secure, theoretically--lots of passwords, profiles, logs and restrictions--and the kids *still* destroy a few machines a week.)
There could also be a hardware problem...just how large was the discount;-)
> It's cheap, but that's -all- it has going for it.
Um, no. It has a code base that OS X could be built from: FreeBSD. It also has Windows: people are more likely to try OS X if they can dual boot into Windows when they need to--good way of converting the WinNT folks. And there is a really, really large x86 market, which means more customers.
x86 does suck, and many people would like to see it dead, but it isn't about to happen, and it would be stupid to throw away that market because you prefer Alpha's.
(BTW, following sql*kitten, I'm going to fall for the flamebait and point out that while the Alpha may be the 'fastest' (for now), it isn't the most powerful. Right up there though, and probably the most common chip in the 'fastest' catagory.)
AFAIK the Celeron's won't work in an LX. In fact, I don't think much of anything will--I wouldn't even trust a 333 PII;-) I finally broke down an bought a dual Celeron system--now I just need to DL Quake III...
To keep this on topic: how exactly is better than a dual slot 1 with socket 370=>slot 1 adapters? It can't be any cheaper; the board may be (single slot and all) but the cost of the custom card should more than make up for that.
I also get the impression that who ever wrote that product description doesn't speak English as their first language (or second, or at all...). They seem to be using "motherboard" to describe both the dual card and the real mobo.
>Mac users say it about the fundamental shortcomings in its OS
True, but the subject you were addressing wasn't a 'fundamental shortcoming', it was a bug, and apparently a minor one at that. And Linux *does* say that about serious deficiencies in the OS. Perhaps not 'fundamental', but serious nonetheless. This isn't a criticism, of course, just a natural part of OS evolution; there are *always* going to be serious problems--many not the fault of the OS--and they will always be fixed 'in the next release'.
(You mentioned threading, which got me thinking. I seem to recall that threading, in some form, was added as a System 7.5 Extension, but I'm too lazy to get my PowerMac running agin to check. And the VM wasn't *that* bad...not fundamental anyway.)
>>...Linux is difficult to use, I should respond "OS's aren't difficult to use, CLI's are".
>Exactly!
Damn, should have stated that more clearly. The interface is part of the OS, and tends to be an inseperable part. It isn't by any means the most important, but it is still *part* of the OS. My objection was the idea (which you may not have been making; others have, though) that the UI can be 'skimmed off' while leaving the OS intact.
>OS's control the hardware, resources, and other low level abstraction layers of a computer
Hmm, we seem to be using different definitions of 'OS'. I would consider that to be part of the kernel, whereas the OS includes *everything* required for the machine to run correctly, including the UI (and the kernel, of course)--I think this is a Linuxism. In the case of the MacOS (until OS X) the GUI is absolutely required, thus part of the OS.
As for complexity, I think it varies quite a bit. Unix window managers typically are nothing but scripts and macros is a convenient visual wrapper. The CLI is still running the show from behind the scenes. The MacOS (again, until OS X) was purely graphical, and was quite a bit more complicated (the graphical portion that is--if you included the underlying command line and X, you could probably match it on Unix, but you said "GUI";-)
Pixel's *do* matter. They matter a great deal, in fact. What is important is that the machine do what the user wants, when he wants. The *only* value that computers have is in what they do for the user, and the user's connection to the machine is the interface. I couldn't care less if the the OS is complete garbage; as long as it does what I want, I'm happy. (A concession here: what I want requires the OS not be garbage, but I'm speaking hypothetically. Most people--that's out of *all* people, not just techies--would probably agree with my statement.)
If MacOSRumors is correct, this is far from a huge gash. It's an occasional, and not easily reproducable bug, in an young OS, which no one's using for servers anyway. As for Open Source, if this is a kernel problem, you can DL it and fix it yourself, unless Darwin doesn't include Mach.
As for Macisms, "we'll fix it in the next release" is just as common in Linux (more so actually, since Linux development is more open and problems are addressed more often[1]. The difference is that Linux takes hours where Apple takes days/weeks/months (getting better though...).
>OS's aren't user friendly - GUI's are.
OS's are user friendly; kernel's aren't. Or perhaps next time someone says Linux is difficult to use, I should respond "OS's aren't difficult to use, CLI's are".
>And GUI's are a just pixels being drawn at the right place at the right time.
GUI's aren't just pixels on the screen, and they definitely aren't quickly reproducable. As for the Mac GUI only being popular on Mac's, the same could be said for the Be GUI on Be. Or GNOME on Linux. (OTOH, if 'look and feel' ("just pixels") are all the make up a GUI, there are some nice Mac UI's for Linux. Try themes.org.)
[1] I said 'addressed', not that there are *more* problems. And I'll probably *still* get flamed...
> A) You screwed around during the school year and were told "do this huge project and you'll pass".
Heh, that how I graduated last Friday. I was behind, so the last day I dumped 70 pages of rough drafts and half-finished papers on the teachers desk. AFAIK they haven't read far enough to see that 20 pages of it is source I wrote while supposedly doing English. But I *did* graduate.
If this is in fact a late paper--though some schools have a few weeks to go yet--my only suggestion would to pad it, a lot. It's nice to have be inventive about the contents, and it great to reinterpret the assignment like that. But you can gain a *lot* from using long sentences and explaining everything twice. And analagies, metaphore and my favorite, discussion of *related* issues; the last is esp. good if you're writing for a non-tech audience, so you can justify the padding as important explanations.
It's simple enough to make neural networks, even leech networks, without using real neurons. They've already modeled and transplanted networks from animals (worms, IIRC) to simple robots. (Transplanted the models, not the nets.)
What these guys have done is use actual neurons to build network that does what NN's are probably worst at: math. I suppose it's an achievement that it can add, but I'm not terribly impressed. I would rather that it could, say, run a leech-bot than do multiplication. What the hell am I going to do with multiplying leech?;-)
What bothers me the most is that they've missed one of the more incredible parts of neurons: they are biological. This means they aren't restricted to just synapse-level weights and activation patterns. What about biochemistry? The most overlooked and, IMO, most important part of the brain (and bionets in general) is that it isn't just electrical. It's mostly chemical, and it's safe to say that a lot of the power of the brain comes from that fact. So what do you do when you finally are in a position to explor it? Say something about the size of supercomputers, and ignore it.
Actually, it has nothing to do with price or availability, or similarity to humans. Leech neurons have two real nice attributes: they big, for neurons, which makes it much easier to work with them. And they're simple; compared to human neurons they're about as complex as, well, *leech* neurons.
OTOH, they aren't very good for modelling human neurons. In fact, I wouldn't bet on finding any good humanesque neurons outside of mammals, let alone in billion year old, um, leechs. (Damn, I can't think of any way of insulting leechs...must suck to at the bottom;-)
>According, to the article, the leech computer can actually think for itself
Notice the quotes around "think for itself"; those are there for a reason. This parallel computer is no more able to think than any other--it is just (potentially) better suited to some things. Adaptaility != thought
>Just think of the implications...
Better supercomputers, and nice boost for connectionism, but that's about it.
>I say if AI does take over the world, it would have to be biological.
There isn't any reason to think that biological computers are any more suited to AI than flexible software--you still have to know *how* to build the AI, it won't just float together in a petri dish. Of course, I have *very* little confidence in AI anyway, for philosophical and technical reasons. (Actually, a few of them are mentioned in other responses, and it's takes a helluva lot of effort for me not to respond to them;-)
Right, which is why I included scale. You do see tribal warfare in other species, and not just primates. All things being equal, we probably aren't the most violent; but all things are definately *not* equal.
You are correct that it is a result of our tool-making skills. That is *exactly* what I meant; we have developed the tools to be more destructive that any other species, and thus *are* more destructive than any other. I'm sure that there are great apes, for example, that would have nuked themselves into oblivion, but they can't, so they are less destructive, even though they are *potentially* more destructive.
Slashdot Mirror
You can build dual Celeron systems for less than $2500 which can almost certainly match G3 (and probably beat it). My twin 450 came in at about $2200, but is somewhat overbuilt in places--for that price you could probably find a nice dual 550 now. I'm also *very* interested in how the K7 will stack up against the G3/G4, esp. in SMP configurations. (Of course, that only gives you faster; no chance of smaller and cooler.)
>IMO, something is a "great work" when enough people say it is.
So if everyone were to forget all about LotR, it would no longer be a great work? So there can be *no* 'lost great works'? Obviously they aren't great *while* they're lost--they aren't anything (except lost). But they *were* great, thus 'great works'. You're thinking too much in the present tense. Maybe you should consider including *everyone* who has experienced the work, not just the living.
And some people would debate the subjectivity of 'greatness'. If it is completely relative, why do so many people agree some things are great? If it is because of cultural or constitutional similarities, then it isn't really subjective, is it? (If you like, consider it this way: is the color blue subjective. Clearly the experience of seeing blue is, but then why do most people see roughly the same color? Subjectivity isn't as subjective as you seem to think.)
>And don't give me that standard elite crap that "the masses are too stupid or uninformed to understand". The masses are what make something "worthy", whether by direct indorsement (ie. LotR), or by deferral to acknowledged experts (ie. Shakespear).
There is a reason why 'popular' and 'worthy' are different words. It isn't because the masses are ignorant, it's because few people are exposed more than a small fraction of literature. Most people would agree that Shakespeare was great playwrite, but how may of them have read on of his plays, let alone seen one? How many North Americans are exposed to the German literature, which boasts poets at least as great as S.? Or African or Asian works? If all Greeks believed that a (untranslated) text was the greatest work of Greek literature, would they be wrong because most people have never read it? If not, if you are allowing that only people who could potentially have read a text can judge it's greatness, then why can there be no great lost works, as only those who could have read them, that is pre-loss, would count? You're arguement seems to suffer the more you ask of it.
People naturally are exposed to more contemporary than historical works. Is Steven King (sp on first name?) a greater writer then Tolkien? Because I can assure you that he is more widely read. The National Enquirer has more readers than most poets and writers of the last few centuries, so is it greater?
BTW, do you see the conflict you created by including "acknowledged experts"? If, as you say, the masses aren't bumbling fools (and I would agree with you here), why do they have experts to tell them if something is good? And why does that count toward somethings greatness if the masses aren't even exposed to it? Is it not the 'expert' who is making it great, via the masses?
>I answer, well, yes, obviously, otherwise, why are they still around?
Did you happen to notice all the complete crap that this statement would confer greatness on? *Everything* published in the last few decades, (in the Western World, anyway) will be arround in 100 years. So is all of that great? Obviously not. These things are still around because thy were saved, and they wee saved for any number of reasons--historical record, or perhaps an archive of just how *bad* some things are.
On to elitism, I believe that some mild 'elitist crap' is considerably more appealing than poorly applied relativism. Things may very well be entirely subjective, but that does not mean that there are no standards or norms, or that great literature is defined by being a best seller.
(PS: I wrote this inside-out, which is why a the same few ideas permeate every section.)
NO! (smashes head against keyboard as memories of Usenet threads flood in).
Microsoft purchased FASA Interactive, a division of FASA--the video game division. FASA is still independant, and maintaining Battletech (and Mechwarrior), Shadowrun, Crimson Skies and Vor (and abandoning Earthdawn, which was fast becoming my favorite FRP).
-jcl (Btech since '91, MW since '95, ED and SR since the beginning)
Second, anyone who challenges Tolkien's ability to write is a boob. Tolkien was an accomplished linguist, a student of the English language and mythology (he is the interpreter of Sir Gawain and the Green Night from Old English, many of the Rorrihim names in LOTR are in Old English). Of course his language uses archaic forms!
First, none of that means he can write well (as opposed to 'correctly', etc). My problem with him is that LotR seems dry. The writing was very good, but completely unlike what I prefer; in some ways he wrote too well, until it hurt the realism and distracted me from the story. I don't need him to make me believe in the dragon; I'm quite capable of that myself. I need him to give the dragon something to do, other than be described. (Such as speak, were it able; see below.)
And the way Tolkien downplays many of the more "fantastic" aspects of the story is a great style, IMO...
This is one thing I like about his world; it isn't so glaringly unrealistic as some. However, as you said, his story is still fantastic, which I don't like. In fact, that's what bugs me the most about it. It is story driven, and mythological, and very, very epic. And that's what put me off. (That and the Hobbit's. I hate Hobbits (and all the fantasy races they spawned)).
I prefer character driven stories and plots that don't reach mythological levels. No saving the world, epic battles, etc. I'm quite happy with writers willing to devote chapters to characters at the expense of the story--as you said, if you have space to stretch your arms.... (I'm including the world in the story--description without action isn't character-oriented.) Tolkien's characters never seemed real to me; they were more like roles: 'hero', 'mentor', 'warrior', etc. But this is really a fundamental divide--plot vs. character oriented stories. Both sides have good arguements, and no one gets anywhere fighting over it. (OTOH, it would have worked if 1) he had a character or two who could carry a story that size (in scale with the plot) or 2) made it extrememly epic, world-spanning, etc, and dazzled me into liking it.)
Well ask yourself where your writings will be 100 years later and where will Tolkien's be?
That's absurd. Where will your writings be in 100 years, your defence of Tolkien? I'm willing to bet that most of the great works of history have been lost, or aren't remembered by more than a handful of people. And popularity is never a good measure of skill--would Tolkien have been as brilliant if LotR had been destroyed in a fire? Or is the greatness of his style completely dependant on how many readers he's built up over the decades?
And all of this carries the standard disclaimers, if for no other reason than because I haven't read LotR in years, and didn't finish then, so I may be wrong about some things (though I doubt it).
Here's a story at Ars Technica comparing dual Celerons to dual PIII's, both oc'ed. Results were suprising, to say the least.
(I don't believe this is a fluke, either. My machine is basically the nerd box, but at 464, and it is thus far is proving to faster than I expected, close to PIII 500 speed (without SSE, of course).)
That's what I said: all computers aren't equal. In fact, that was the *whole* *point* of my post! (Not reading posts before responding is my second complaint about /. 'readers', but is rapidly moving up to #1.)
QC's aren't Turing machines, and apparently neither are brains (I'm currently studying the latter). However, I don't believe that QC's are more powerful than Turing machines. They are certainly faster in some ways, but the range of functions they can compute is quite small, and AFAIK they cannot compute anything beyond the capabilities of a Turing machine (given enough time). This would make them more of an optimized sub-Turing machine.
As far as what *is* more powerful than a Turing machine, most of the candidates are actually variations of TM's (oracles, etc), or analog (such as recurrent neural networks) systems. I don't believe QM has much to offer here, unless it can add a new realm to the analog-digital spectrum.
And for the record, I've never taken any CompSci courses, though I sometimes wander through the field chasing a neural network.
I find it fascinating that /. readers are so often scientific illiterate in so many fields, including computing. (Yes, this is a flame directed at almost everyone; moderate away...)
In this case, I refer to the belief that 'all computing is equal', that the only difference between, say, a QC, a Compaq and my brain is in the implementation and speed. QC's are not just really fast, expensive and fragile supercomputers, they won't run Quake or Linux, and they won't replace those anyones Compaq. They do a few things really well--sorts, searches, etc--but most things very poorly, if at all. They are less general purpose machines than accessories, designed to fulfill some specific needs--coprocessors for your Cray, rather then replacements. On top of that, they cost a fortune and are unimaginably fragile compared to a desktop machine.
In some fields they will be revolutionary, but for the most part the effects will be similar to the release of the K7 on the population of Iran.
Wasn't there something in the news a few months back--and on /., I believe--about the Chinese gov't planning to make a Unix variant the country's 'official' OS? I don't believe it had anything to do with Linux.
/. right now. Must be a busy morning somewhere...)
(And of course, I would search for it, but I'm getting about 10B/sec from
(Those Marathon people here may remember me from the Story Page ;-)
Ah, Marathon--still, IMHO, the best FPS ever (and maybe yet to come...). Incredible AI, story, graphics (who needs polygons!). AI seems to be Bungie's forte--PID was suprisingly good for it's time, Myth & MythII were very nice, and Oni...mmmm, individualized AI's for every character, adaptation, learning, etc.
But Marathon...back in those days, when the only real alternative was Doom, it was was breath taking (and still is). The primitive state 3D games only enhanced the effect--I can still remember dueling with Juggernauts (big barn-sized flying tanks), retreating to cover, only to have them sneak up behind me (sometimes going some distance) and toast me, sometimes even bringing help with them.
Links galore: bungie.org has lots of info on Marathon, Oni and PID (as well as a little on Blam, but would take some explaining). Some of the original designers jumped ship and formed Double Aught, made Marathon Infinity, and are currently working on Duality, yet another FPS.
"I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level but Total Carnage, to never use Caps Lock as my 'run' key, and to never, ever, leave a single Bob alive." -The Oath of the Vidmastar, Marathon
Rage Hard
>photographic memory is short term.
/. took a question about brain capacity. I remember attacking it then (was it you, last time?).
;-)
No it isn't, "photographic memory" refers specifically to long term storage. Lots of people have 'photographic' short-term memory. And there may be people who could remember all those pages, but since no one has done it (AFAIK--why would they want to?) I can't prove it.
The comment about the 100bps I/O and 2 gig storage came up last time
Part of the problem is that you (I assume that the AC I'm replying to is the AC that started the thread) read this in an AI book. AI researchers tend to stretch reality to fit their models, specifically, trying to analyze the mind/brain in purely computeational terms, often not even as a parallel processor (I'm talking about Good Old Fashioned AI, not necessarily connectionism). Essentially, they think of the brain (and often other things) as computers, because that is what they work with. Physicists do it too (see Penrose for an example of trying to squeeze the mind into quantum mechanics), as do linguists (Chomsky, though not to such a degree), etc. And all of this involves trying to fit the mind into a mechanistic world-view, which also may not be the best way to go (sorry, I'm a panexperientialist, time for my bias to kick in
Regarding your replies, you do store everything that comes in, albeit probably not in the same form as it arrived. The original comment about 44kHz is off, too, because the brain doesn't care about the sampling rate (that's what it is, isn't it?). Neuron's can't fire at 44kHz, anyway--and they certainly don't store at that speed. The brain is working at a higher level than that, with sounds, while the ear (and maybe some subsystems) take care of technical details.
(of course, this should all be taken with a grain of salt; I don't have a tremendous amount of confidence in neuroscience to begin with, and thus far it has produced next to nothing about memory (certainly nothing that can be used to terminate this thread).)
(Thanks God someone else saw it last month, no one would believe me ;-)
It really should have been called 'Pirate...'; the entire movie is essentially about Jobs' personal life. Or about Jobs' evil twin. I don't think he ever came across as likeable throughout the movie. Even on the rare occasions when he wasn't acting like an ass, it was usually just because he was apologizing (or sitting and not talking; apparently it's the same thing.) No sign of his famous charisma--people follow him because they're afraid not too.
Gates, OTOH, comes across as a realy likable guy. He's evil, but in a friendly way, and Apple hands him everything ("here, take the source for the MacOS, please feel free to steal it"). Paul Allen seems to die early in the film and be resurrected as a zombie of some sort. ("Must keep back stiffer...speak less...")
Oh, and they don't say anything about computers. The Apple I and Lisa are kinda important in a few scenes, the Mac appears out of nowhere (though the Mac team is around long enough for Jobs' to drive them (literally) insane). I don't think we actually see Windows, though it comes up now and then. And then the movie ends with Sculley (sp?) ousting Jobs, followed by a tiny scene from the Apple-MS 'alliance' announcement. No Win95, Next, Pixar, Copland, OS X, etc.
Still, it isn't as bad as most of what's on TNT.
It was on May 22nd (sometime that weekend, anyway); I have no idea why, it was supposed to be some Mt St Helens movie. Interesting, but too much about Jobs' personal life (not necessarily related to his real personal life--gotta keep the movie interesting), not enough about anything else. Kinda fun though.
;-)
(Hah! I didn't start the thread this time, let's see the moderators get me now
US West's 'service' is poor enough that I've considered moving just to get away from them. The local office hasn't updated their equipment is something like 15 years, so there are half-completed calls, no dial tones, drops and every other telecom disaster you can imagine. Even on off hours they can barely bring enough capacity to bear to handle the local calls, let alone dialup, etc.
Of course it may not be a problem much longer. Things have gotten so bad that the city is trying to kick them out, or at least force them to try to harder. I'm helping with the research (evil grin).
(Of course, I'm in communications hell. Falcon Cable, home of the $29 basic cable service (up $8 since the FCC ruling was appealed). Oh, and enough line noise that I can barely top 26k on my 56k modem--thank you GTE...)
Oh goody, my pet peeve...
.wav or mp3 level compression? Is visual data stored as complete frames or more like mpeg? Is the data actually compressed for storage, or is the (arguably) poor quality of memories a feature of how they recalled?
First off, I'd like to point out that brains are fundamentally different in every way from digital computers: storage, processing, etc. Estimated about brain capacity in computing terms tend to be based on enormously flawed concepts, like guesses about how many bits are stored per neuron. (Short answer: none. The information is stored in the network, not the nodes.) I can't imagine what playing 20 questions has to do with memory; as for 100bps I/O, consider that you're brain is processing (and storing, though perhaps not permanently) everything in the environment, not just what you consciously perceive. (This has been studied, but I can't find the references.)
Second, even assuming you could measure brain capacity this way, would it be meaningful? Is audio stored at
Anyway, a few months ago I heard (several times, can't remember where) that the capacity would have to be more like 10 to 100 terabits, based on how much people can recall over a lifetime. I don't believe this either, but it seems much closer than a couple gigs.
Are you sure that the machines really are running slow, or could they just feel that way? In my experience (which doesn't include >=OS 8; just 6.5-7.5.5) the MacOS *feels* much slower than Windows, no matter how fast the hardware is. I've run Win95 on a 486-66 and it's felt faster than any Mac I've used, even though I know (benchmarks and side-by-side comparisons) it's slower.
;-)
If they really are slow then there's definitely something wrong. It is *really* easy to cripple the MacOS; it would take an army of admins to keep 304 Mac's running smoothly, esp in school, no matter how tight the security. (The high school I'm adminning is very secure, theoretically--lots of passwords, profiles, logs and restrictions--and the kids *still* destroy a few machines a week.)
There could also be a hardware problem...just how large was the discount
> It's cheap, but that's -all- it has going for it.
Um, no. It has a code base that OS X could be built from: FreeBSD. It also has Windows: people are more likely to try OS X if they can dual boot into Windows when they need to--good way of converting the WinNT folks. And there is a really, really large x86 market, which means more customers.
x86 does suck, and many people would like to see it dead, but it isn't about to happen, and it would be stupid to throw away that market because you prefer Alpha's.
(BTW, following sql*kitten, I'm going to fall for the flamebait and point out that while the Alpha may be the 'fastest' (for now), it isn't the most powerful. Right up there though, and probably the most common chip in the 'fastest' catagory.)
Heh, I knew someone else must have an LX...
;-) I finally broke down an bought a dual Celeron system--now I just need to DL Quake III...
AFAIK the Celeron's won't work in an LX. In fact, I don't think much of anything will--I wouldn't even trust a 333 PII
To keep this on topic: how exactly is better than a dual slot 1 with socket 370=>slot 1 adapters? It can't be any cheaper; the board may be (single slot and all) but the cost of the custom card should more than make up for that.
I also get the impression that who ever wrote that product description doesn't speak English as their first language (or second, or at all...). They seem to be using "motherboard" to describe both the dual card and the real mobo.
>Mac users say it about the fundamental shortcomings in its OS
;-)
True, but the subject you were addressing wasn't a 'fundamental shortcoming', it was a bug, and apparently a minor one at that. And Linux *does* say that about serious deficiencies in the OS. Perhaps not 'fundamental', but serious nonetheless. This isn't a criticism, of course, just a natural part of OS evolution; there are *always* going to be serious problems--many not the fault of the OS--and they will always be fixed 'in the next release'.
(You mentioned threading, which got me thinking. I seem to recall that threading, in some form, was added as a System 7.5 Extension, but I'm too lazy to get my PowerMac running agin to check. And the VM wasn't *that* bad...not fundamental anyway.)
>>...Linux is difficult to use, I should respond "OS's aren't difficult to use, CLI's are".
>Exactly!
Damn, should have stated that more clearly. The interface is part of the OS, and tends to be an inseperable part. It isn't by any means the most important, but it is still *part* of the OS. My objection was the idea (which you may not have been making; others have, though) that the UI can be 'skimmed off' while leaving the OS intact.
>OS's control the hardware, resources, and other low level abstraction layers of a computer
Hmm, we seem to be using different definitions of 'OS'. I would consider that to be part of the kernel, whereas the OS includes *everything* required for the machine to run correctly, including the UI (and the kernel, of course)--I think this is a Linuxism. In the case of the MacOS (until OS X) the GUI is absolutely required, thus part of the OS.
As for complexity, I think it varies quite a bit. Unix window managers typically are nothing but scripts and macros is a convenient visual wrapper. The CLI is still running the show from behind the scenes. The MacOS (again, until OS X) was purely graphical, and was quite a bit more complicated (the graphical portion that is--if you included the underlying command line and X, you could probably match it on Unix, but you said "GUI"
Pixel's *do* matter. They matter a great deal, in fact. What is important is that the machine do what the user wants, when he wants. The *only* value that computers have is in what they do for the user, and the user's connection to the machine is the interface. I couldn't care less if the the OS is complete garbage; as long as it does what I want, I'm happy. (A concession here: what I want requires the OS not be garbage, but I'm speaking hypothetically. Most people--that's out of *all* people, not just techies--would probably agree with my statement.)
If MacOSRumors is correct, this is far from a huge gash. It's an occasional, and not easily reproducable bug, in an young OS, which no one's using for servers anyway. As for Open Source, if this is a kernel problem, you can DL it and fix it yourself, unless Darwin doesn't include Mach.
As for Macisms, "we'll fix it in the next release" is just as common in Linux (more so actually, since Linux development is more open and problems are addressed more often[1]. The difference is that Linux takes hours where Apple takes days/weeks/months (getting better though...).
>OS's aren't user friendly - GUI's are.
OS's are user friendly; kernel's aren't. Or perhaps next time someone says Linux is difficult to use, I should respond "OS's aren't difficult to use, CLI's are".
>And GUI's are a just pixels being drawn at the right place at the right time.
GUI's aren't just pixels on the screen, and they definitely aren't quickly reproducable. As for the Mac GUI only being popular on Mac's, the same could be said for the Be GUI on Be. Or GNOME on Linux. (OTOH, if 'look and feel' ("just pixels") are all the make up a GUI, there are some nice Mac UI's for Linux. Try themes.org.)
[1] I said 'addressed', not that there are *more* problems. And I'll probably *still* get flamed...
Whoops, forgot the spell check...and that was supposed to be "'related'", not "*related*".
> A) You screwed around during the school year and were told "do this huge project and you'll pass".
Heh, that how I graduated last Friday. I was behind, so the last day I dumped 70 pages of rough drafts and half-finished papers on the teachers desk. AFAIK they haven't read far enough to see that 20 pages of it is source I wrote while supposedly doing English. But I *did* graduate.
If this is in fact a late paper--though some schools have a few weeks to go yet--my only suggestion would to pad it, a lot. It's nice to have be inventive about the contents, and it great to reinterpret the assignment like that. But you can gain a *lot* from using long sentences and explaining everything twice. And analagies, metaphore and my favorite, discussion of *related* issues; the last is esp. good if you're writing for a non-tech audience, so you can justify the padding as important explanations.
It's simple enough to make neural networks, even leech networks, without using real neurons. They've already modeled and transplanted networks from animals (worms, IIRC) to simple robots. (Transplanted the models, not the nets.)
;-)
;-)
What these guys have done is use actual neurons to build network that does what NN's are probably worst at: math. I suppose it's an achievement that it can add, but I'm not terribly impressed. I would rather that it could, say, run a leech-bot than do multiplication. What the hell am I going to do with multiplying leech?
What bothers me the most is that they've missed one of the more incredible parts of neurons: they are biological. This means they aren't restricted to just synapse-level weights and activation patterns. What about biochemistry? The most overlooked and, IMO, most important part of the brain (and bionets in general) is that it isn't just electrical. It's mostly chemical, and it's safe to say that a lot of the power of the brain comes from that fact. So what do you do when you finally are in a position to explor it? Say something about the size of supercomputers, and ignore it.
I hate computer scientists
Actually, it has nothing to do with price or availability, or similarity to humans. Leech neurons have two real nice attributes: they big, for neurons, which makes it much easier to work with them. And they're simple; compared to human neurons they're about as complex as, well, *leech* neurons.
;-)
OTOH, they aren't very good for modelling human neurons. In fact, I wouldn't bet on finding any good humanesque neurons outside of mammals, let alone in billion year old, um, leechs. (Damn, I can't think of any way of insulting leechs...must suck to at the bottom
>Well, now it can finally become a reality.
;-)
Um, "now"? It's no more likely now than last week
>According, to the article, the leech computer can actually think for itself
Notice the quotes around "think for itself"; those are there for a reason. This parallel computer is no more able to think than any other--it is just (potentially) better suited to some things. Adaptaility != thought
>Just think of the implications...
Better supercomputers, and nice boost for connectionism, but that's about it.
>I say if AI does take over the world, it would have to be biological.
There isn't any reason to think that biological computers are any more suited to AI than flexible software--you still have to know *how* to build the AI, it won't just float together in a petri dish. Of course, I have *very* little confidence in AI anyway, for philosophical and technical reasons. (Actually, a few of them are mentioned in other responses, and it's takes a helluva lot of effort for me not to respond to them
Right, which is why I included scale. You do see tribal warfare in other species, and not just primates. All things being equal, we probably aren't the most violent; but all things are definately *not* equal.
You are correct that it is a result of our tool-making skills. That is *exactly* what I meant; we have developed the tools to be more destructive that any other species, and thus *are* more destructive than any other. I'm sure that there are great apes, for example, that would have nuked themselves into oblivion, but they can't, so they are less destructive, even though they are *potentially* more destructive.