The game of Chess is not a measure of intelligence. It's a measure of mathematics and memory. A computer is no smarter if it's able to play chess than one that isn't.
The reason for this is that Chess is a game where the rules are strictly defined. For each move, there can only be a limited - and known - number of outcomes. This reduces the entire game to a matter of mathematics and statistics.
No, the real test of intelligence would be for a computer to react to and handle a situation where the rules are NOT predefined - such as a real world scenario.
When a computer is able to take a limited number of inputs and make a judgement based on the (possibly) inaccurate and (definitely) insufficient data available, you can start talking about intelligence. Still, even then you're not talking about true intelligence. AND, for that matter, such programs do exist - they're called expert systems.
No, what I'm prepared to call intelligence is a program that not only is able to make a judgement based on possibly bad data, but is also prepared to admit that it made a mistake and learn from those mistakes. That would, in my opinion, be a truly intelligent program.
After all, assuming it's able to do that, it'd certainly be a lot more intelligent than a lot of humans I know. =)
Then why didn't North America get the NES disk drive ("Famicom Disk System") or the N64 disk drive ("64DD") that came out in Japan? Simple: after Nintendo test-marketed those formats in Japan, the company decided that they were too easy to pirate.
Except that few ISPs implement multicast because they don't know of a fair revenue model.
I think one of the biggest obstacles is the fact that there aren't any services that use multicast. The reason for there not being any services is that no ISPs support multicast. This is very similar to IPv6, where there's very little implementation due to the lack of demand. The lack of demand is because no one else uses IPv6 (hey, why should I upgrade my systems, when it'd make me unable to talk to almost anyone else?).
Telia, Sweden's largest ISP and the defacto telecoms monopoly (it was previously known as Televerket, the state monopoly telco, before it was "privatized"), was blocked by AOL a few months ago.
Personally, I think it wasn't all that bad. Apparently, the reason for the blocking was Telia's excessively poor abuse handling. This was very much due to Telia being the largest - and most arrogant - of the telcos in Sweden, and the realization that they weren't the biggest fish in the pond struck hard. Needless to say, their abuse management has improved significantly afterwards.
This only brings up the question, when will AOL realise that their pond is quite a lot bigger than they think? AOL is playing the very same arrogant I'm Holier Than Thou-game that Telia used to play on its local market. And, big as AOL might be, the Internet is a lot, lot larger.
Oh, they come in pills now. My boyfriend tried them out for a month and he gained an amazing eight inches to his penis. Unfortunately, he also gained two cupsizes, lost 60 pounds and started receiving NBC and FOX.
Excellent. Now, please explain how I use DNS to enable me to take my IP-number (for instance 172.31.3.70) from my old operator to my new operator.
For extra credit, please describe how BGP, ASNs and the global routing table works and what changes would be required to implement this. Be prepared to explain your findings to the class.
Yes, DNS exists. So does phonebooks. The issue is not to keep the entry in the phonebook (DNS), the issue is to keep the phonenumber (IP) when you switch operators.
This is what we've got in Sweden, and I suspect in most other European countries.
My cellphone provider (Vodafone) is using the area-code 0733 (among others). This "areacode" is the same all over the country - a Vodafone customer in Kiruna in the north of Sweden will have the same areacode as a customer in Lund in the south.
The reason this works is because there is no such thing as a local cellphone call. All calls to cellphones are charged at the cellphone rate (about 15-40 cents/minute), no matter where you or the cellphone are in the country.
Number portability is a very good idea. Unfortunately, there's some real costs and problems involved in implementing it.
For instance, operators get large series of numbers. This can be blocks of tens of thousands to tens of millions of numbers, with a specific prefix. Just like Internet routing, those blocks (or prefixes, if you want to think that way) decide where a call goes.
Now, what happens when you want to make a number portable? Well, those blocks still exist. The problem is that whenever you make a phonecall, the connection goes to the operator who owns the block. That operator, in turn, looks up the number and decides what to do with it. If it's a number that's moved to another operator, they either redirect the connection, or establishes additional connections to the new operator (depending on the technology used). The costs of doing so is sometimes greater than just accepting a call to one of their own customers.
Now, add the cost of updating the exchanges, the billing systems, educating the staff and so on and you'll quickly realise that this is not a trivial task. Also remember that this adds a huge amount of complexity to the telephone system, a system that's already overly complex.
Compare this, for instance, with trying to implement portable IP-numbers. It's not the same thing (different technology among other things), but the complexity issues are similar.
Apparently, a 14 year old girl recently asked the Ericsson board why their phones didn't look as cool as Nokia's. I've asked myself that question a lot of times.
Being Swedish, I'd love to have an Ericsson. They've got plenty of features that I want in a phone. Unfortunately, the only ones that have all the features I'm looking for are the ones that are ugly as heck. And they wonder why they're not selling as well as Nokia.
In the end, I actually went with the German alternative. My Siemens S55 does all I want it to do. Bluetooth and IR connectivity, which allows me to connect my laptop to the net via GPRS. It's got neat features such as a color screen and MIDI ringtones. It's designed to make PHONECALLS on (why, imagine that!) and, it actually looks pretty darn good too.
And the best part is, it has no stinking camera! =D
No, we postponed our project due to electricity bill reasons. =)
And yes, there is a reason for why those cards are available cheaply. It's called "Upgrading".
The QLA 2100 is 1Gbps. Half duplex if I remember correctly. For modern FC Arrays, this is too slow. The QLA 2200 (1Gbps full duplex) and 2300 (2Gbps full duplex) are much more attractive, which is why they're still expensive. Big Corporations(tm) want to take advantage of the newer technology and upgrade to the newer standards. The older cards are recycled or sold (cheaply), hence the $40 pricetag.
The point isn't performance. The point for us was simply to do something fun that we hadn't done before.
Ask yourself, who buys Fibre Channel drives? Is it home users who need space for their mp3 and warez, or is it major corporations who need multi-terabyte storage for business-critical data?
These big corporations used to buy hundreds, perhaps thousands of FC drives a few years ago. The drives back then were about 9 or 18 gigs in size, meaning that hundreds of drives were required for a sizeable array.
Now (as we also discovered), hundreds of drives have several disadvantages. Not counting the physical space required, you have heat, power usage and the number of drives on each chain to take into consideration. This means, of course, that those big corporations want to replace their old 9 and 18 gig drives for something bigger (Like, a few 72 gig drives).
Many corporations destroy their old drives (for data security among other things), but some sell them off to computer recycling companies who wipe the drives and sell them off, for instance on eBay.
Of course, there's the question of who's buying FC drives. Most home users or even companies can't afford the equipment required for a SAN. Low demand therefore results in lower prices for the drives, which gives us the result that a tenpack of 18-gig drives can go for as low as $99.
Quite nice, if you know what you're looking for. =)
We make them ourselves. Take a look at http://overclockers.com/tips681/ for a guide. We etched our own PCBs though, which is a lot easier in the long run. =)
For the fun of doing it, for one thing. For instance, I have Token Ring, ATM and serial equipment in my home LAN. Why, when there is FE or even GigE? Because it's fun to play around with, and I learn a lot as well.
Second, you might get pretty darn good performance out of a relatively cheap setup. Modern ATA-drives are pretty fast, but the problem is, there's just a single spindle. Random access will kill your drive. A home-built FC array for the price of an ATA-drive will get you perhaps five to ten separate drives. Mostly, these drives will be 10k drives as well (Almost all ATA-drives are 7.2k or less). The slightly higher rotation speed combined with the fact that you've got a large amount of individual spindles gives you much better random access. Also, remember that ATA usually is a huge CPU hog, which adds to the performance bottleneck.
Of course, there's the cost of running the array as well, which is the reason we never finished our project (We did get the hostadapter and built a couple of T-cards though). We calculated that our FC array would cost us an additional $2-300 in electricity every year. After getting hit with a $500 surprise electricity bill for our current equipment, we simply decided it wasn't worth it and got another IDE drive instead. Still, an interresting project. =)
An interresting spinoff of this could be the disposable computer. Like disposable cameras and things like that, an item such as a notepad (PDA) could be designed for a very short lifetime. Write your meeting-notes with a normal pen, on your notepad. After the meeting, you take your notepad to your computer, press the transmit button on the pad and discard the page(s) you've used up.
...the Slashdot article, that is. I've been watching this since I got up this morning (about five hours ago, local time). There's been plenty of discussions about this on various mailinglists, including NANOG and NordNOG, as well as several IRC channels I frequent. I'm surprised it took this long for Slashdot to post anything about it.
According to unconfirmed sources on NANOG, the worm seems to eat up bandwidth at line rate (even at GigE links), is rumored to amplify itself via Cisco routers, and is the creation of Saddam Hussein.
Slashdot Mirror
The game of Chess is not a measure of intelligence. It's a measure of mathematics and memory. A computer is no smarter if it's able to play chess than one that isn't.
The reason for this is that Chess is a game where the rules are strictly defined. For each move, there can only be a limited - and known - number of outcomes. This reduces the entire game to a matter of mathematics and statistics.
No, the real test of intelligence would be for a computer to react to and handle a situation where the rules are NOT predefined - such as a real world scenario.
When a computer is able to take a limited number of inputs and make a judgement based on the (possibly) inaccurate and (definitely) insufficient data available, you can start talking about intelligence. Still, even then you're not talking about true intelligence. AND, for that matter, such programs do exist - they're called expert systems.
No, what I'm prepared to call intelligence is a program that not only is able to make a judgement based on possibly bad data, but is also prepared to admit that it made a mistake and learn from those mistakes. That would, in my opinion, be a truly intelligent program.
After all, assuming it's able to do that, it'd certainly be a lot more intelligent than a lot of humans I know. =)
Then why didn't North America get the NES disk drive ("Famicom Disk System") or the N64 disk drive ("64DD") that came out in Japan? Simple: after Nintendo test-marketed those formats in Japan, the company decided that they were too easy to pirate.
He wouldn't know, considering that he's a fraud.
Except that few ISPs implement multicast because they don't know of a fair revenue model.
I think one of the biggest obstacles is the fact that there aren't any services that use multicast. The reason for there not being any services is that no ISPs support multicast. This is very similar to IPv6, where there's very little implementation due to the lack of demand. The lack of demand is because no one else uses IPv6 (hey, why should I upgrade my systems, when it'd make me unable to talk to almost anyone else?).
Telia, Sweden's largest ISP and the defacto telecoms monopoly (it was previously known as Televerket, the state monopoly telco, before it was "privatized"), was blocked by AOL a few months ago.
Personally, I think it wasn't all that bad. Apparently, the reason for the blocking was Telia's excessively poor abuse handling. This was very much due to Telia being the largest - and most arrogant - of the telcos in Sweden, and the realization that they weren't the biggest fish in the pond struck hard. Needless to say, their abuse management has improved significantly afterwards.
This only brings up the question, when will AOL realise that their pond is quite a lot bigger than they think? AOL is playing the very same arrogant I'm Holier Than Thou-game that Telia used to play on its local market. And, big as AOL might be, the Internet is a lot, lot larger.
Oh, they come in pills now. My boyfriend tried them out for a month and he gained an amazing eight inches to his penis. Unfortunately, he also gained two cupsizes, lost 60 pounds and started receiving NBC and FOX.
Dear Mr Gupta,
I thought you worked at Sega?
How's your Smell-o-vision (also here) project going?
Your educational background is pretty impressive too.
What about Super Marx Brothers?
Finally, how's the Gameboy Advance Porn Industry going?
Anyway, good luck at your job.
(Thanks to Klaruz and cascino)
Excellent. Now, please explain how I use DNS to enable me to take my IP-number (for instance 172.31.3.70) from my old operator to my new operator.
For extra credit, please describe how BGP, ASNs and the global routing table works and what changes would be required to implement this. Be prepared to explain your findings to the class.
Yes, DNS exists. So does phonebooks. The issue is not to keep the entry in the phonebook (DNS), the issue is to keep the phonenumber (IP) when you switch operators.
This is what we've got in Sweden, and I suspect in most other European countries.
My cellphone provider (Vodafone) is using the area-code 0733 (among others). This "areacode" is the same all over the country - a Vodafone customer in Kiruna in the north of Sweden will have the same areacode as a customer in Lund in the south.
The reason this works is because there is no such thing as a local cellphone call. All calls to cellphones are charged at the cellphone rate (about 15-40 cents/minute), no matter where you or the cellphone are in the country.
Number portability is a very good idea. Unfortunately, there's some real costs and problems involved in implementing it.
For instance, operators get large series of numbers. This can be blocks of tens of thousands to tens of millions of numbers, with a specific prefix. Just like Internet routing, those blocks (or prefixes, if you want to think that way) decide where a call goes.
Now, what happens when you want to make a number portable? Well, those blocks still exist. The problem is that whenever you make a phonecall, the connection goes to the operator who owns the block. That operator, in turn, looks up the number and decides what to do with it. If it's a number that's moved to another operator, they either redirect the connection, or establishes additional connections to the new operator (depending on the technology used). The costs of doing so is sometimes greater than just accepting a call to one of their own customers.
Now, add the cost of updating the exchanges, the billing systems, educating the staff and so on and you'll quickly realise that this is not a trivial task. Also remember that this adds a huge amount of complexity to the telephone system, a system that's already overly complex.
Compare this, for instance, with trying to implement portable IP-numbers. It's not the same thing (different technology among other things), but the complexity issues are similar.
...the General Public License procedure ...not to be confused with the Generic Public License, or the Public GUN License.
...and to be quite honest, it looks UGLEEE!
Apparently, a 14 year old girl recently asked the Ericsson board why their phones didn't look as cool as Nokia's. I've asked myself that question a lot of times.
Being Swedish, I'd love to have an Ericsson. They've got plenty of features that I want in a phone. Unfortunately, the only ones that have all the features I'm looking for are the ones that are ugly as heck. And they wonder why they're not selling as well as Nokia.
In the end, I actually went with the German alternative. My Siemens S55 does all I want it to do. Bluetooth and IR connectivity, which allows me to connect my laptop to the net via GPRS. It's got neat features such as a color screen and MIDI ringtones. It's designed to make PHONECALLS on (why, imagine that!) and, it actually looks pretty darn good too.
And the best part is, it has no stinking camera! =D
No, we postponed our project due to electricity bill reasons. =)
And yes, there is a reason for why those cards are available cheaply. It's called "Upgrading".
The QLA 2100 is 1Gbps. Half duplex if I remember correctly. For modern FC Arrays, this is too slow. The QLA 2200 (1Gbps full duplex) and 2300 (2Gbps full duplex) are much more attractive, which is why they're still expensive. Big Corporations(tm) want to take advantage of the newer technology and upgrade to the newer standards. The older cards are recycled or sold (cheaply), hence the $40 pricetag.
The point isn't performance. The point for us was simply to do something fun that we hadn't done before.
Ask yourself, who buys Fibre Channel drives? Is it home users who need space for their mp3 and warez, or is it major corporations who need multi-terabyte storage for business-critical data?
These big corporations used to buy hundreds, perhaps thousands of FC drives a few years ago. The drives back then were about 9 or 18 gigs in size, meaning that hundreds of drives were required for a sizeable array.
Now (as we also discovered), hundreds of drives have several disadvantages. Not counting the physical space required, you have heat, power usage and the number of drives on each chain to take into consideration. This means, of course, that those big corporations want to replace their old 9 and 18 gig drives for something bigger (Like, a few 72 gig drives).
Many corporations destroy their old drives (for data security among other things), but some sell them off to computer recycling companies who wipe the drives and sell them off, for instance on eBay.
Of course, there's the question of who's buying FC drives. Most home users or even companies can't afford the equipment required for a SAN. Low demand therefore results in lower prices for the drives, which gives us the result that a tenpack of 18-gig drives can go for as low as $99.
Quite nice, if you know what you're looking for. =)
We make them ourselves. Take a look at http://overclockers.com/tips681/ for a guide. We etched our own PCBs though, which is a lot easier in the long run. =)
Uhh, yes we DID get a host adapter for $40. =)
QLogic 2100 copper, purchased on eBay for $32, shipping was about $8.
Check it out yourself, there's some on there right now for less than $30.
Why would one want to use it in a home setup?
For the fun of doing it, for one thing. For instance, I have Token Ring, ATM and serial equipment in my home LAN. Why, when there is FE or even GigE? Because it's fun to play around with, and I learn a lot as well.
Second, you might get pretty darn good performance out of a relatively cheap setup. Modern ATA-drives are pretty fast, but the problem is, there's just a single spindle. Random access will kill your drive. A home-built FC array for the price of an ATA-drive will get you perhaps five to ten separate drives. Mostly, these drives will be 10k drives as well (Almost all ATA-drives are 7.2k or less). The slightly higher rotation speed combined with the fact that you've got a large amount of individual spindles gives you much better random access. Also, remember that ATA usually is a huge CPU hog, which adds to the performance bottleneck.
Try eBay. We got a QLogic 2100 (Copper) for $40. Drives can be found for $99 for a tenpack of 18.2GB Seagate 10k drives.
We had great plans for building an FC array up until a while ago. For those who think FC is too expensive, take a look at this:
180GB ATA drive: $200
Qlogic FC host adapter: $40
10 18GB 10k drives (eBay): $99
10 T-cards: $50
UTP-cable: $20
--------------
Total: $209
Of course, there's the cost of running the array as well, which is the reason we never finished our project (We did get the hostadapter and built a couple of T-cards though). We calculated that our FC array would cost us an additional $2-300 in electricity every year. After getting hit with a $500 surprise electricity bill for our current equipment, we simply decided it wasn't worth it and got another IDE drive instead. Still, an interresting project. =)
An interresting spinoff of this could be the disposable computer. Like disposable cameras and things like that, an item such as a notepad (PDA) could be designed for a very short lifetime. Write your meeting-notes with a normal pen, on your notepad. After the meeting, you take your notepad to your computer, press the transmit button on the pad and discard the page(s) you've used up.
"Paperless office" anyone? =)
It's those darn Al-Quaeda, I tell you! Them and Saddam Hussein! Damn them for retaliating against our Righteous Attacks!
...the Slashdot article, that is. I've been watching this since I got up this morning (about five hours ago, local time). There's been plenty of discussions about this on various mailinglists, including NANOG and NordNOG, as well as several IRC channels I frequent. I'm surprised it took this long for Slashdot to post anything about it.
According to unconfirmed sources on NANOG, the worm seems to eat up bandwidth at line rate (even at GigE links), is rumored to amplify itself via Cisco routers, and is the creation of Saddam Hussein.
My journal on the worm.
Yahoo even.
ZDNet and Yahoo.
...for a department that, *SURPRISE*, has the exact same name as the other department you've tried to troll off? =)
>Dr. SAMIR GUPTA, Ph.D
>Head, SEGA New Technology Research Department
>Tokyo, Japan
>sgupta@research.sega.jp
CD-writer? Video-recorder? First-poster? =)
What I'd be interrested in is knowing how fast it reads, preferably in another sane measurement, like 8" floppies per forthnight.