As some one with an active interest in the field, here are some answers. Yes, quantumn computing allows for efficient factoring of numbers: but that is not the end of the world. Quantum Cryptography is at least a decade old and is a thriving research area amongst theorecical computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians. In fact these protocols are *provably* secure unlike RSA etc whose security in the classical world is based on unproven assumptions. This will guarantee unprecedented privacy over the internet or otherwise. There is nothing to worry on this count. Also, we do have a reasonable idea on what can and cannot be done using quantumn computing. For example, it is unlikely that it can solve NP-complete problems such as the travelling salesman problem. (Ok, I will not be too shocked if somebody discovered a way to solve NP-complete problems using a qm/c... but it cannot do much "more".) How far are we? Quite far from replacing the current chips, we are currently able to experiment with about 100-200 gates. Maybe in ten years, we can hope to have a reasonable machine which can do useful things.
I will take a linear algebra analogy. Suppose you want to define a two dimensional space (a plane), two vectors are necessary and sufficient: every other vector is a linear combination of these two (unit) vectors. Let the cost of implementing a vector be sum of the absolute value of the coefficients. For example, (5,6)=5*(1,0)+6*(0,1): so the cost is 11=5+6. But this would be a minimilistic implementation. Suppose I observe the vector (7,43) is a useful one, I would be tempted to include (7,43) along with the unit vectors (0,1) and (1,0). This would of course bring down the cost of implementing many vectors. And in this way, we can keep adding vectors because we want to make it easy for the linear algebraist.
Mathematics stops here and engineering takes over: it turns out that implementing (7,43) costs more than one unit in the kernel; but instead of costing 50 units, it costs only 46 units to implement it within the kernel. This is a good reason as any to include it there. Over time, we find Finally, we have the vectors (0,1) (1,0) (7,43) (34, 78) (1001,590) (12347,34578) with varying costs 1,2,46,90,1200 and 40000. Now we need to implement (1023455,21314324). What is the "best way" of doing this with the current set of primitives? OK, we can solve a linear program here; but that is complex! You see, for a long, long time nobody knew that linear programming can be solved efficiently!! (No, simplex takes exponetial time.)
Do we want a browser in the OS? Do we want (1023455,21314324) as one of our primitive vectors? In the long run, this sort of ad-hoc add-ons only make a programmers life miserable.
Of course, there is a cause for adding a set of vectors into the basis in a planned fashion. For example, (1,0) (2,0) (4,0) (8,0) (0,1) (0,2) etc.. would make a nice set and allows a progrmmer to be productive.
So if Windows 2000 has 40 million lines of code, how can we react except pray...
Probably all CMU had to do was to simply paste a notice up asking students to remove the illegal MP3s or face charges from RIAA. Of course, RIAA would be foolish to sue CMU (but then nothing they have done so far shows they cannot be!) and most of the time, students can self-regulate themselves. CMU did over-react. That said, I should say the penalties are quite mild in this case.
Quite expectedly, MS has picked up the only paragraph (408) they are not censured! They should be answering the questions about their behaviour in para 409-412, especially 412: this suit is not about their right to technically innovate, it is about their conduct (in the business world). To focus however on "innovation" is like arguing that a naughty boy in class should go unpunished because he got a A
I don't think predicting the impact of any technology is easy, especially when it is nascent. And eventually, all worthwhile technologies find some wonderful application that no one would have dreamt of -- including its inventor and the crystal-ball-types.
So what will nanotechonology do to us? well, who knows... but then some of us have to make a living...
I don't think predicting the impact of any technology is easy, especially when it is nascent. And eventually, all worthwhile technologies find some wonderful application that no one would have dreamt off -- including its inventor and the crystal-ball-types.
So what will nanotechonology do to us? well, who knows... but then some of us have to make a living...
Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen's website would be on linux? Probably none. It shows that linux is spreading, and spreading rapidly. We know this when OFOS (our favourite OS) springs up in unlikely places. (Whether the Queen herself uses linux is irrelevant to us.)
In this case, linux has replaced SUN: again, we may use this as anecdotal evidence that linux is eating into SUN space. Which is bad for SUN of course.
Question: How will SUN react? By supporting linux?
RMS Linux costs $29.95 and FSF will be paid at least $1. (Of course, this prevents us from interpreting it as exactly $1.)
We are supposed to buy this as it is "cool" and gets FSF a dollar! Works to 3.3% of the proceeds... tell you what, buy linux at $2/$3 from cheapbytes and donate $27 to FSF. This will show that *we* care for FSF.
RMS -- it used to mean Richard M. Stallman... over time, marketing and morphing will ensure that RMS stands for Red hat Means Source! To deprieve a man of his name is not cool, it is cruel.
Check out the Jane-Slashdot interaction on salon. It says: Cringely made his comments before Jane's announced it was killing the original story. One can only imagine his dismay now. News flash! Raging nerds silence journalist!
Cringely's reaction would now be quite different: after Jane not only subjected itself for "censorship" but also decided to use it!
Also, somebody here mentioned this is like peer review. Well, is it? When was the last time one sent a paper to a journal and the editor decided to publish the referee report instead!!
As somebody who teaches algorithms and complexity, I should say that a good fraction of students seem disinterested in an good algorithms course. They are more interested in the syntax of C++ or Java than in developing their algorithmic skills. They somehow do not realize that any professional programmer should be able to pick a programming language in three to four days. (At least a good working knowledge.) What therefore distinguishes two programmers is how algorithmic one is.
I have also met many programmers in the industry who do not know what a Turing machine is and are surprised to hear that there such things as an unsolvable problem! After all, cannot a computer solve everything!? And of course, NP-completeness is some near mystical theory with no relevance.
This is the second article on Knuth in a week on/. This will probably enthuse more youngsters into taking algorithmics more seriously.
From the contents, it seems like a basic book on data-structures and algorithms.
To get into more depth, it is best to learn from the masters: Knuth obviously,and Tarjan's book on data-structures. For algorithms, probably Kozen's book is the best. These books are, of course, at a higher level compared to Sedgewick etc...
Under a wide variety of models, it has been shown by several scientists that autocatalytic sets arise. What is a autocatalytic set? Basically a sequence of "chemicals" A,B,C,D etc with the property that A->C using B as a catalyst, B->D using C as a catalyst (and so on) so the the set of chemicals does not require any "new" catalysts outside of the set to be endless self sustaining chemical reaction.
This is just the abstract version of the so called methane experiment that many/.ers have quoted.
There is enough evidence to believe (including mathematical proofs under certain "well behaved" conditions) that over time, autocatalytic sets emerge eventually from almost any "reasonable" set of chemicals.
Of course, we are a long long way from understanding anything about life. But we have made a decent start and good progress.
By the way, the existence of autocatalytic sets under most conditions probably means earth is not alone...
>You only now have competition *because we're suing you*...(etc)
This argument is flawed. If in 18 months one can create reasonable competition and bring down a monopoly, it probably never was one! DOJ will not use this argument and tie itself in knots.
Secondly, it is unjust to say that linux or any other OS somehow became viable because of the DOJ proceedings: the "Justice" dept cannot be saying such things...
Knuth's contributions to computer science is awesome. If all he had done was TeX, he would still be among the greatest. Ditto even if he had'nt written Tex! Admittedly, Knuth probably knows more on combinatorics or "concrete mathematics" than most mathematicians; and more on alogrithms than any computer scientist.
I could'nt see a post mention another of Knuth's lasting contributions: to parsing. The Yaccs and Bisons owe much to Knuth.
Usually, I referee papers for a conference or a journal to which I may have a submission. This is not taken as a conflict of interest in research; on the contrary it is an indication that you will probably do a good job of peer review. Obviously, I won't kill a paper that comes to me because I need to get my paper in. But I find it very strange when this exclusivity is applied on/.
So long as we do not moderate our posting up, which is obviously unethical, most of us would be able to contribute meaningfully to the discussion and moderate as well.
The other problem is that a post can catch an eye of a moderator in the first hour or so and then it dwindles for obvious reasons. To alleviate this difficulty, the moderator must have some mechanism to be able to view sections of comments based on time intervals. ("give me the discussions in the last half an hour.")
Finally, "funny" is used rather funnily by many moderators. No "funny" commment should raise above a score of 2 if it has no other intrinsic merit.
Remember News; it died because Sun kept it too close to its heart. They learnt their lesson and when java was released, they said so. So there were some white papers on java but they held on to the language itself. The next time they do something substantial, hopefully they will go the gpl way; having learnt more lessons...
In the meantime, linux is gpl'd and it has reached the critical mass by now: it cannot die now.
So the article's comparision is completely misplaced; linux is bottom up not top down like java.
The book is well written and provides a good summary of the research in the area and especially at Santa Fe over the last decade or so.
The main contribution of Mitchell and others has been to explore GA without the hype surrounding it at that point in time. Langton had come up with the edge of chaos theory and was instrumental in getting lots of people interested in alife. But Langton's main contribution, the so called critical lambda, is in hindsight a lot of hype. (Langton made a important discovery when he designed a self reproducing cellular automata which is probably survive his edge of chaos theory)
Mitchell and others were responsible in steering the subject to more solid grounds and her work along with Crutchfield on the so called density problem have been very insightful and useful contributions.
GA's are good at providing insights we did not have before to a wide variety of things. For example, using GA's to understand elements of computation (say, by evolving cellular automata), elements of biology (say, as in tierra), self-reproduction (Koza's work) or in ant foraging (lots of papers) are very interesting. But they are not meant to be tools for optimization: GA is not a substitute for linear programming.
Political leadership in all countries and especially in developing countries merely need a precedent to impose similiar or worse legistation in their own countries. In this regard, the Australian law open new, although unwanted, doors.
I agree with the posting by an Australian ISP: why was not enough noise made about the Australian net censorship bill?
The truth is, Internet or otherwise, we still think in terms of the physical boundaries of our countries; if it is'nt a legislation in our country why should we care?
The traveling salesman is not only solvable in linear time, but also in constant time! In fact, even a bigger class of problems, called the polynomial hierarchy (PH) can be solved in constant time.
The catch is in the number of processors required to do so. This translates to the weight (or volume) of the DNA which grows exponentially in the size of the input.
DNA computing does not give us any additional power over traditional computing: quantumn computing does.
Slashdot Mirror
As some one with an active interest in the field, here are some answers. Yes, quantumn computing allows for efficient factoring of numbers: but that is not the end of the world. Quantum Cryptography is at least a decade old and is a thriving research area amongst theorecical computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians. In fact these protocols are *provably* secure unlike RSA etc whose security in the classical world is based on unproven assumptions. This will guarantee unprecedented privacy over the internet or otherwise. There is nothing to worry on this count.
Also, we do have a reasonable idea on what can and cannot be done using quantumn computing. For example, it is unlikely that it can solve NP-complete problems such as the travelling salesman problem. (Ok, I will not be too shocked if somebody discovered a way to solve NP-complete problems using a qm/c... but it cannot do much "more".)
How far are we? Quite far from replacing the current chips, we are currently able to experiment with about 100-200 gates. Maybe in ten years, we can hope to have a reasonable machine which can do useful things.
I will take a linear algebra analogy. Suppose you want to define a two dimensional space (a plane), two vectors are necessary and sufficient: every other vector is a linear combination of these two (unit) vectors. Let the cost of implementing a vector be sum of the absolute value of the coefficients. For example, (5,6)=5*(1,0)+6*(0,1): so the cost is 11=5+6. But this would be a minimilistic implementation. Suppose I observe the vector (7,43) is a useful one, I would be tempted to include (7,43) along with the unit vectors (0,1) and (1,0). This would of course bring down the cost of implementing many vectors. And in this way, we can keep adding vectors because we want to make it easy for the linear algebraist.
Mathematics stops here and engineering takes over: it turns out that implementing (7,43) costs more than one unit in the kernel; but instead of costing 50 units, it costs only 46 units to implement it within the kernel. This is a good reason as any to include it there. Over time, we find Finally, we have the vectors (0,1) (1,0) (7,43) (34, 78) (1001,590) (12347,34578) with varying costs 1,2,46,90,1200 and 40000. Now we need to implement (1023455,21314324). What is the "best way" of doing this with the current set of primitives? OK, we can solve a linear program here; but that is complex! You see, for a long, long time nobody knew that linear programming can be solved efficiently!! (No, simplex takes exponetial time.)
Do we want a browser in the OS? Do we want (1023455,21314324) as one of our primitive vectors? In the long run, this sort of ad-hoc add-ons only make a programmers life miserable.
Of course, there is a cause for adding a set of vectors into the basis in a planned fashion. For example, (1,0) (2,0) (4,0) (8,0) (0,1) (0,2) etc.. would make a nice set and allows a progrmmer to be productive.
So if Windows 2000 has 40 million lines of code, how can we react except pray...
Probably all CMU had to do was to simply paste a notice up asking students to remove the illegal MP3s or face charges from RIAA.
Of course, RIAA would be foolish to sue CMU (but then nothing they have done so far shows they cannot be!) and most of the time, students can self-regulate themselves. CMU did over-react.
That said, I should say the penalties are quite mild in this case.
Quite expectedly, MS has picked up the only paragraph (408) they are not censured!
They should be answering the questions about their behaviour in para 409-412, especially 412: this suit is not about their right to technically innovate, it is about their conduct (in the business world).
To focus however on "innovation" is like arguing that a naughty boy in class should go unpunished because he got a A
I don't think predicting the impact of any technology is easy, especially when it is nascent. And eventually, all worthwhile technologies find some wonderful application that no one would have dreamt of -- including its inventor and the crystal-ball-types.
So what will nanotechonology do to us? well, who knows... but then some of us have to make a living...
I don't think predicting the impact of any technology is easy, especially when it is nascent. And eventually, all worthwhile technologies find some wonderful application that no one would have dreamt off -- including its inventor and the crystal-ball-types.
So what will nanotechonology do to us? well, who knows... but then some of us have to make a living...
Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen's website would be on linux? Probably none. It shows that linux is spreading, and spreading rapidly. We know this when OFOS (our favourite OS) springs up in unlikely places.
(Whether the Queen herself uses linux is irrelevant to us.)
In this case, linux has replaced SUN: again, we may use this as anecdotal evidence that linux is eating into SUN space. Which is bad for SUN of course.
Question: How will SUN react? By supporting linux?
RMS Linux costs $29.95 and FSF will be paid at least $1. (Of course, this prevents us from interpreting it as exactly $1.)
We are supposed to buy this as it is "cool" and gets FSF a dollar! Works to 3.3% of the proceeds... tell you what, buy linux at $2/$3 from cheapbytes and donate $27 to FSF. This will show that *we* care for FSF.
RMS -- it used to mean Richard M. Stallman... over time, marketing and morphing will ensure that RMS stands for Red hat Means Source! To deprieve a man of his name is not cool, it is cruel.
Check out the Jane-Slashdot interaction on salon. It says:
Cringely made his comments before Jane's announced it was killing the original story. One can only imagine his dismay now. News flash! Raging nerds silence journalist!
Cringely's reaction would now be quite different: after Jane not only subjected itself for "censorship" but also decided to use it!
Also, somebody here mentioned this is like peer review. Well, is it? When was the last time one sent a paper to a journal and the editor decided to publish the referee report instead!!
The Jane-Slashdot story is a unique first...
Try +E-Business Advisor: using "+" before a stopword un-stops it.
As somebody who teaches algorithms and complexity, I should say that a good fraction of students seem disinterested in an good algorithms course. They are more interested in the syntax of C++ or Java than in developing their algorithmic skills. They somehow do not realize that any professional programmer should be able to pick a programming language in three to four days. (At least a good working knowledge.) What therefore distinguishes two programmers is how algorithmic one is.
/. This will probably enthuse more youngsters into taking algorithmics more seriously.
I have also met many programmers in the industry who do not know what a Turing machine is and are surprised to hear that there such things as an unsolvable problem! After all, cannot a computer solve everything!? And of course, NP-completeness is some near mystical theory with no relevance.
This is the second article on Knuth in a week on
From the contents, it seems like a basic book on data-structures and algorithms.
...
To get into more depth, it is best to learn from the masters: Knuth obviously,and Tarjan's book on data-structures. For algorithms, probably Kozen's book is the best. These books are, of course, at a higher level compared to Sedgewick etc
Under a wide variety of models, it has been shown by several scientists that autocatalytic sets arise. What is a autocatalytic set? Basically a sequence of "chemicals" A,B,C,D etc with the property that A->C using B as a catalyst, B->D using C as a catalyst (and so on) so the the set of chemicals does not require any "new" catalysts outside of the set to be endless self sustaining chemical reaction.
/.ers have quoted.
...
This is just the abstract version of the so called methane experiment that many
There is enough evidence to believe (including mathematical proofs under certain "well behaved" conditions) that over time, autocatalytic sets emerge eventually from almost any "reasonable" set of chemicals.
Of course, we are a long long way from understanding anything about life. But we have made a decent start and good progress.
By the way, the existence of autocatalytic sets under most conditions probably means earth is not alone
>You only now have competition *because we're suing you*...(etc)
This argument is flawed. If in 18 months one can create reasonable competition and bring down a monopoly, it probably never was one! DOJ will not use this argument and tie itself in knots.
Secondly, it is unjust to say that linux or any other OS somehow became viable because of the DOJ proceedings: the "Justice" dept cannot be saying such things...
Knuth's contributions to computer science is awesome. If all he had done was TeX, he would still be among the greatest. Ditto even if he had'nt written Tex! Admittedly, Knuth probably knows more on combinatorics or "concrete mathematics" than most mathematicians; and more on alogrithms than any computer scientist.
I could'nt see a post mention another of Knuth's lasting contributions: to parsing. The Yaccs and Bisons owe much to Knuth.
Usually, I referee papers for a conference or a journal to which I may have a submission. This is not taken as a conflict of interest in research; /.
on the contrary it is an indication that you will probably do a good job of peer review. Obviously, I won't kill a paper that comes to me because I need to get my paper in. But I find it very strange when this exclusivity is applied on
So long as we do not moderate our posting up, which is obviously unethical, most of us would be able to contribute meaningfully to the discussion and moderate as well.
The other problem is that a post can catch an eye of a moderator in the first hour or so and then it dwindles for obvious reasons. To alleviate this difficulty, the moderator must have some mechanism to be able to view sections of comments based on time intervals. ("give me the discussions in the last half an hour.")
Finally, "funny" is used rather funnily by many moderators. No "funny" commment should raise above a score of 2 if it has no other intrinsic merit.
If at 85, he cannot be honest, when will he every be! I don't understand why you are trading honesty with money...
Remember News; it died because Sun kept it too close to its heart. They learnt their lesson and when java was released, they said so. So there
were some white papers on java but they held on to the language itself. The next time they do something substantial, hopefully they will go the gpl way; having learnt more lessons...
In the meantime, linux is gpl'd and it has reached the critical mass by now: it cannot die now.
So the article's comparision is completely misplaced; linux is bottom up not top down like java.
The book is well written and provides a good summary of the research in the area and especially at Santa Fe over the last decade or so.
The main contribution of Mitchell and others has been to explore GA without the hype surrounding it at that point in time. Langton had come up with the edge of chaos theory and was instrumental in getting lots of people interested in alife. But Langton's main contribution, the so called critical lambda, is in hindsight a lot of hype. (Langton made a important discovery when he designed a self reproducing cellular automata which is probably survive his edge of chaos theory)
Mitchell and others were responsible in steering the subject to more solid grounds and her work
along with Crutchfield on the so called density problem have been very insightful and useful contributions.
GA's are good at providing insights we did not have before to a wide variety of things. For example, using GA's to understand elements of computation (say, by evolving cellular automata), elements of biology (say, as in tierra), self-reproduction (Koza's work) or in ant foraging (lots of papers) are very interesting. But they are not meant to be tools for optimization: GA is not a substitute for linear programming.
Regards
Vinay
Political leadership in all countries and especially in developing countries merely need a precedent to impose similiar or worse legistation in their own countries. In this regard, the Australian law open new, although unwanted, doors.
I agree with the posting by an Australian ISP: why was not enough noise made about the Australian net censorship bill?
The truth is, Internet or otherwise, we still think in terms of the physical boundaries of our countries; if it is'nt a legislation in our country why should we care?
Regards
Vinay
The traveling salesman is not only solvable in
linear time, but also in constant time!
In fact, even a bigger class of problems,
called the polynomial hierarchy (PH) can be
solved in constant time.
The catch is in the number of processors
required to do so. This translates to the weight (or volume) of the DNA which grows
exponentially in the size of the input.
DNA computing does not give us any additional
power over traditional computing: quantumn
computing does.
Vinay