"So it would be impossible to write a program that could solve a problem that you, the programmer, could not solve."
Correct. Given enough pencil and paper, Red Bull, Fritos, time, and access to all the relevant (and correctly simulated) data, the programmer can do *exactly* what the computer does, step by trivial step. Generally we don't, because it hurts our brains to be so mind-numbingly pedantic and precise, so we like abstractions... but if you've ever 'traced' programs on paper, you know you can pretend to be a CPU just fine. In fact that's the mode we have to drop into when debugging; simulating the computer in our brain until we find the discrepancy between what we TOLD the computer to do and what the (higher-level part of our intelligence) THOUGHT we told the computer to do. Computers don't fundamentally do anything we can't; they just do it faster.
Now, if the solution to the problem requires data that the 'programmer' doesn't have... then at some point, someone's going to have to enter that. Alternatively, if the solution requires self-programming via feedback from the environment, then someone is going to have to simulate that environment. In that way a program might 'learn' information during its run that the programmer didn't anticipate. Networked systems do that all the time. In that case, the system is unpredictable and does indeed have a degree of 'free will' in that it has access to information / causal inputs that the programmer can't control.
A program can also be written such that it modifies itself at the deepest level. Stack overflow exploits do this all the time, but we could write code to do this on purpose. Would it be useful? Maybe, maybe not. After sufficient iterations and exposure to a random environment, however, could we honestly say such a self-modified program no longer has 'free will'? It may have followed a strictly deterministic path to get there, but it now has motivations and control structures not initially granted to it. Is even the idea of 'free will' useful in such a case?
Indeed, my Palm III was just wonderful for reading e-books. Ran for a whole weekend on four rechargeable AAAs, too.
Still got it in a drawer somewhere. The main pain is that it needs things converted to.pdb and can only take about four average novels (text-only,.5MB each). No Google Books scans.
"And, when NASA spent all the money on the X-33 [wikipedia.org] they ended up with nothing to show for it."
Well, the public face of NASA didn't, sure. But I wonder if the DoD has got something out of fifty years of hypersonic spaceplane research which they don't yet want to talk about?
Then again maybe I'm attributing competence where stupidity really is the simplest explanation.
"We've had it all out before. We had it out 26 hours ago. This story wasn't useful."
Bull.
If any large organisation (Apple, Microsoft, the US Government, the USSR, whatever) is doing something deeply ETHICALLY WRONG, and they're still doing it, then no, we or anyone else haven't "had it all out" until they STOP doing it.
That's basic Civics 101.
I was frustrated with MoveOn.org's "Censure and Move On (tm)" campaign back in the Clinton era for this kind of thinking, I was frustrated when Bush W brought out that line when people opposed the Iraq War, and I'm still frustrated with it.
If something wrong is happening YOU DO NOT "MOVE ON" FROM THAT ISSUE UNTIL IT GETS FIXED.
That's why we will keep discussing this bad stuff until it stops being bad.
"Apple loves the image-conscious, visual-creative crowd that accepts the functionality they're given, wrapped up in beautifully designed packages."
This is a great description of Apple's mission and core userbase.
But I wonder at the irony of what's happening. Why is it that "creative" types are actually the most *un*creative when it comes to modifying the technology they use?
They'll happily create visual artwork... "rip, mix, burn" their music... but they won't even think to remix their devices technologically. They don't see being tethered as a threat to their creative lifeblood like hackers do. There's no huge outcry from the "creatives" against these creative shackles.
Seriously, what's with that? Why are "creatives" so uncreative in practice? Why do "designers" not practice ACTUAL design?
This goes to the root of my frustration with "design". A lot of it seems obsessed with surface... with look, fashion, trend... very little of what is taught as design is actually how to design products. Just how to take someone else's design (the engineer) and put a shell or skin on it so it *looks* cool or stylish. But that's not design at all; that's cosmetics and marketing.
But there's also a literal fascistic connection to design too... a lot of the cult of big-D Design is also about the deliberate worship of centralised control. Look at architecturally designed houses which have to come with their own custom-built furniture. Great integration... but now you're locked into a single source for products and support, and you don't have any freedom to remix or compose elements. A lot of the Modernist 1930s designers had this approach, and it spilled over into, yes, literal Fascism. Which wasn't, on the surface, a necessarily evil ideology... it was about working together, creating a unified social state through conscious design... but it *was* about very deep, pervasive control, and the fruits of that weren't pretty. Apple are eating from that Big Design tree.
I think we need to seriously rethink a lot of what passes for the settled wisdom of design, and take a look at, for example, the work of Christopher Alexander - radical democracy in design. Like science fiction (see Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream"), which also had literal fascist connections from the same Modernist school, there's a lot of unquestioned assumptions which are still screwing us up.
"Because the iPhone isn't intended to be an all-purpose pocket computer - its a phone and music player. "
That's pretty dumb, if that's all they think it is. Even dumber if users are happy with that state of affairs. Pretty sad for humanity in general, though. See Zitttrain.
"If Apple allowed apps that ran arbitrary code they'd have to check not just the C64 emu but every app with a macro or scripting facility to ensure that they were adequately sandboxed. That would be a lot of work. "
That... does not logically follow. At all.
An interpreter is not 'arbitrary code' by any stretch of the imagination. It's not running arbitrary *machine code*.
And yes, every app with a macro or scripting facility that runs on any computer, anywhere, MUST be adequately sandboxed. And not by humans, but by security policy. That's what a sandboxing model is FOR, so that you don't have to do "a lot of work" to make things secure.
But hey, it's the GUI visual age! All pointy-clicky with the grunty. Wait, sorry, grunts aren't allowed, they could be interpreted as "language". Language bad, tree pretty.
"You'll simply have committed the crime at a time and place for which you have no alibi, or in a way that makes the time and location irrelevant."
Given the existence of Twitter and GPS location, 'a time and place for which you have no alibi' would have to mean 'more than five minutes after my last tweet'.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that concept.
Eek, that's no joke, it's real: http://www.opcfoundation.org/Default.aspx/01_about/01_whatis.asp?MID=AboutOPC --- OPC is a series of standards specifications. The first standard (originally called simply the OPC Specification and now called the Data Access Specification) resulted from the collaboration of a number of leading worldwide automation suppliers working in cooperation with Microsoft. Originally based on Microsoft's OLE COM (component object model) and DCOM (distributed component object model) technologies, the specification defined a standard set of objects, interfaces and methods for use in process control and manufacturing automation applications to facilitate interoperability. The COM/DCOM technologies provided the framework for software products to be developed. There are now hundreds of OPC Data Access servers and clients.
Everyone's favorite analogy for needing the original Data Access Specification is printer drivers in DOS and then in Windows. Under DOS the developer of each application had to also write a printer driver for every printer. So AutoCAD wrote the AutoCAD application and the printer drivers. And WordPerfect wrote the WordPerfect application and the printer drivers. They had to write a separate printer driver for every printer they wanted to support: one for an Epson FX-80 and one for the H-P LaserJet, and on and on. In the industrial automation world, Intellution wrote their Human Machine Interface (HMI) software and a proprietary driver to each industrial device (including every PLC brand). Rockwell wrote their HMI and a proprietary driver to each industrial device (including every PLC brand, not just their own).
... how about he makes a passionate plea to the PROGRAMMERS to say 'Guys, let's STOP PUTTING SECURITY HOLES IN OUR SOFTWARE?'
Just a thought.
It shouldn't be any user's problem to need to 'upgrade or get hacked'. If you're writing web software that's hackable, you're the one doing it wrong., not your users.
"I'm scared the repulsor coil fails and the car just FALLS OUT OF THE SKY."
The Sirius Cybernetics Legal Devision approach was to simply fit each Share'n'Joy FunCar (tm) with, installed at the last moment and at great expense, an emergency backup Someone Else's Problem Field generator.
This did nothing to reduce the incidence of repulsor coil failure or the resulting mass fatalities - but it did mean that every time a FunCar fell screaming out of the sky to explode in a ball of quantum flame, the resulting city-sized crater could always be blamed on someone else.
Slashdot Mirror
"the mark I cannot solve math problem EXCEPT by creating by mark II."
What's the difference between "creating" and "simulating"?
Is there a difference between simulating an algorithm and running it?
"So it would be impossible to write a program that could solve a problem that you, the programmer, could not solve."
Correct. Given enough pencil and paper, Red Bull, Fritos, time, and access to all the relevant (and correctly simulated) data, the programmer can do *exactly* what the computer does, step by trivial step. Generally we don't, because it hurts our brains to be so mind-numbingly pedantic and precise, so we like abstractions... but if you've ever 'traced' programs on paper, you know you can pretend to be a CPU just fine. In fact that's the mode we have to drop into when debugging; simulating the computer in our brain until we find the discrepancy between what we TOLD the computer to do and what the (higher-level part of our intelligence) THOUGHT we told the computer to do. Computers don't fundamentally do anything we can't; they just do it faster.
Now, if the solution to the problem requires data that the 'programmer' doesn't have... then at some point, someone's going to have to enter that. Alternatively, if the solution requires self-programming via feedback from the environment, then someone is going to have to simulate that environment. In that way a program might 'learn' information during its run that the programmer didn't anticipate. Networked systems do that all the time. In that case, the system is unpredictable and does indeed have a degree of 'free will' in that it has access to information / causal inputs that the programmer can't control.
A program can also be written such that it modifies itself at the deepest level. Stack overflow exploits do this all the time, but we could write code to do this on purpose. Would it be useful? Maybe, maybe not. After sufficient iterations and exposure to a random environment, however, could we honestly say such a self-modified program no longer has 'free will'? It may have followed a strictly deterministic path to get there, but it now has motivations and control structures not initially granted to it. Is even the idea of 'free will' useful in such a case?
"The Hobbit is by no means a slam-dunk"
Space Jam II: Middle Earth?
Hey, I *liked* Hellboy! Both movies.
Indeed, my Palm III was just wonderful for reading e-books. Ran for a whole weekend on four rechargeable AAAs, too.
Still got it in a drawer somewhere. The main pain is that it needs things converted to .pdb and can only take about four average novels (text-only, .5MB each). No Google Books scans.
But yes, why not revive the old b&w LCD?
"The textbook you read 15 years ago in most subjects will be wrong, not antique, not timeless but simply -wrong-."
The interesting thing is that if that's the case, the textbook was also -wrong- when it was taught. And yet it was taught as being -right-.
But truth simply *doesn't* get obsolete. It's either right or it's wrong.
Doesn't that say something disturbing about science, if what passes for truth changes so often?
"And, when NASA spent all the money on the X-33 [wikipedia.org] they ended up with nothing to show for it."
Well, the public face of NASA didn't, sure. But I wonder if the DoD has got something out of fifty years of hypersonic spaceplane research which they don't yet want to talk about?
Then again maybe I'm attributing competence where stupidity really is the simplest explanation.
"We've had it all out before. We had it out 26 hours ago. This story wasn't useful."
Bull.
If any large organisation (Apple, Microsoft, the US Government, the USSR, whatever) is doing something deeply ETHICALLY WRONG, and they're still doing it, then no, we or anyone else haven't "had it all out" until they STOP doing it.
That's basic Civics 101.
I was frustrated with MoveOn.org's "Censure and Move On (tm)" campaign back in the Clinton era for this kind of thinking, I was frustrated when Bush W brought out that line when people opposed the Iraq War, and I'm still frustrated with it.
If something wrong is happening YOU DO NOT "MOVE ON" FROM THAT ISSUE UNTIL IT GETS FIXED.
That's why we will keep discussing this bad stuff until it stops being bad.
"Apple loves the image-conscious, visual-creative crowd that accepts the functionality they're given, wrapped up in beautifully designed packages."
This is a great description of Apple's mission and core userbase.
But I wonder at the irony of what's happening. Why is it that "creative" types are actually the most *un*creative when it comes to modifying the technology they use?
They'll happily create visual artwork... "rip, mix, burn" their music... but they won't even think to remix their devices technologically. They don't see being tethered as a threat to their creative lifeblood like hackers do. There's no huge outcry from the "creatives" against these creative shackles.
Seriously, what's with that? Why are "creatives" so uncreative in practice? Why do "designers" not practice ACTUAL design?
This goes to the root of my frustration with "design". A lot of it seems obsessed with surface... with look, fashion, trend... very little of what is taught as design is actually how to design products. Just how to take someone else's design (the engineer) and put a shell or skin on it so it *looks* cool or stylish. But that's not design at all; that's cosmetics and marketing.
But there's also a literal fascistic connection to design too... a lot of the cult of big-D Design is also about the deliberate worship of centralised control. Look at architecturally designed houses which have to come with their own custom-built furniture. Great integration... but now you're locked into a single source for products and support, and you don't have any freedom to remix or compose elements. A lot of the Modernist 1930s designers had this approach, and it spilled over into, yes, literal Fascism. Which wasn't, on the surface, a necessarily evil ideology... it was about working together, creating a unified social state through conscious design... but it *was* about very deep, pervasive control, and the fruits of that weren't pretty. Apple are eating from that Big Design tree.
I think we need to seriously rethink a lot of what passes for the settled wisdom of design, and take a look at, for example, the work of Christopher Alexander - radical democracy in design. Like science fiction (see Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream"), which also had literal fascist connections from the same Modernist school, there's a lot of unquestioned assumptions which are still screwing us up.
Hmm, where that link came from I don't know.
"Because the iPhone isn't intended to be an all-purpose pocket computer - its a phone and music player. "
That's pretty dumb, if that's all they think it is. Even dumber if users are happy with that state of affairs. Pretty sad for humanity in general, though. See Zitttrain.
"If Apple allowed apps that ran arbitrary code they'd have to check not just the C64 emu but every app with a macro or scripting facility to ensure that they were adequately sandboxed. That would be a lot of work. "
That... does not logically follow. At all.
An interpreter is not 'arbitrary code' by any stretch of the imagination. It's not running arbitrary *machine code*.
And yes, every app with a macro or scripting facility that runs on any computer, anywhere, MUST be adequately sandboxed. And not by humans, but by security policy. That's what a sandboxing model is FOR, so that you don't have to do "a lot of work" to make things secure.
How hard is it to write some secure http://apple.slashdot.org/story/09/09/08/1714205/Apple-Pulls-C64-Emulator-From-the-App-Store?art_pos=5#APIs for "allocate memory", "output to screen", "input from keyboard", and make sure THOSE don't have bugs - and then let a program do what the heck it wants with only those APIs?
Java managed to do this. What's so hard about the concept for Apple?
Into your 64K of simulated VM RAM and simulated C64 chipset... which gets you precisely what in the real iPhone?
"I think they fear waking up to the news that a wide-spread vulnerability affected n million iPhone users."
And an "interpreted language" is magically vulnerable to exploits while a hard-coded app isn't.... why, exactly?
"What if that environment allowed the display of English text? What if the environment had English equivalents for some symbols?"
Like, for example, Inform 7?
It would suck if Apple disallowed that.
But hey, it's the GUI visual age! All pointy-clicky with the grunty. Wait, sorry, grunts aren't allowed, they could be interpreted as "language". Language bad, tree pretty.
"This isn't a NASA mission. If a book ends up being a crappy scan, it won't explode on re-entry killing its reader."
That would probably make reading cool again though.
"You'll simply have committed the crime at a time and place for which you have no alibi, or in a way that makes the time and location irrelevant."
Given the existence of Twitter and GPS location, 'a time and place for which you have no alibi' would have to mean 'more than five minutes after my last tweet'.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that concept.
Eek, that's no joke, it's real:
http://www.opcfoundation.org/Default.aspx/01_about/01_whatis.asp?MID=AboutOPC
---
OPC is a series of standards specifications. The first standard (originally called simply the OPC Specification and now called the Data Access Specification) resulted from the collaboration of a number of leading worldwide automation suppliers working in cooperation with Microsoft. Originally based on Microsoft's OLE COM (component object model) and DCOM (distributed component object model) technologies, the specification defined a standard set of objects, interfaces and methods for use in process control and manufacturing automation applications to facilitate interoperability. The COM/DCOM technologies provided the framework for software products to be developed. There are now hundreds of OPC Data Access servers and clients.
Everyone's favorite analogy for needing the original Data Access Specification is printer drivers in DOS and then in Windows. Under DOS the developer of each application had to also write a printer driver for every printer. So AutoCAD wrote the AutoCAD application and the printer drivers. And WordPerfect wrote the WordPerfect application and the printer drivers. They had to write a separate printer driver for every printer they wanted to support: one for an Epson FX-80 and one for the H-P LaserJet, and on and on. In the industrial automation world, Intellution wrote their Human Machine Interface (HMI) software and a proprietary driver to each industrial device (including every PLC brand). Rockwell wrote their HMI and a proprietary driver to each industrial device (including every PLC brand, not just their own).
"I guess he really wanted to become rich, whether it was through mroal or immortal ways."
I don't think he managed the second one.
"No, I will not upgrade my XP... At least right now the odds are against it."
So you're going to join a botnet then?
It's not like you have more than those two options...
... how about he makes a passionate plea to the PROGRAMMERS to say 'Guys, let's STOP PUTTING SECURITY HOLES IN OUR SOFTWARE?'
Just a thought.
It shouldn't be any user's problem to need to 'upgrade or get hacked'. If you're writing web software that's hackable, you're the one doing it wrong., not your users.
"I would rather not like to imagine a cluster of female Beowulf...."
The last half of Season 7 Buffy. Or all of Season 8.
"We're here to, like, kill your monster."
Aaaand right there we have the plot for the new Bond movie!
"The more horrible war is, the less likely it will happen."
An intriguing concept. Unfortunately history does not appear to support that hypothesis.
The more *likely* war is, the more likely it will be to happen.
The more horrible war is, the more horrible it will be when it happens.
If you want to stop war, make it less likely.
Otherwise, all you've done is made the war, when it comes, more horrible.
"Advanced AI doesn't require a flying car."
No. But it might be even less practical.
"I'm scared the repulsor coil fails and the car just FALLS OUT OF THE SKY."
The Sirius Cybernetics Legal Devision approach was to simply fit each Share'n'Joy FunCar (tm) with, installed at the last moment and at great expense, an emergency backup Someone Else's Problem Field generator.
This did nothing to reduce the incidence of repulsor coil failure or the resulting mass fatalities - but it did mean that every time a FunCar fell screaming out of the sky to explode in a ball of quantum flame, the resulting city-sized crater could always be blamed on someone else.