The Matrix isn't even remotely CP. CP is a child of the 80's -- moral/ethical issues about the environment, disparity of wealth and crime, corporate ethics and growing corporate/MNC power, the affects of globalization on culture, genetic engineering, affects of technology on socialization, etc.
Er, those are themes that cyberpunk novels have addressed, but cyberpunk ultimately is about punks in cyberspace, hence the name. The Matrix had punks. The punks were in cyberspace.
Hey, Blade Runner is one of my favorite films too, but it isn't "Gibsonian cyberpunk" -- it came out two years before Neuromancer was written and lacked the key feature of cyberpunk -- cyberspace!
That being said, I'm sure that Blade Runner, with its dark and mostly Asian-controlled future, was an influence on Gibson.
Well, The Matrix had the advantage of being the first *good* cyberpunk movie. Sure, cyberpunk has been stale for ten years in written SF, but it has been hardly touched by cinematic SF. And really, the only scientific error you could say The Matrix made was that feeding the humans would take more energy than the computers could get out of them.
But "Mission to Mars" got nearly all of its physics and biology wrong, and really added nothing to the tired genre of space exploration movies
The bit about "filling in the two missing chromosomes" has to be the least accurate depiction of molecular biology ever to stink up a cinema. In comparsion, "Jurassic Park" looks like a documentary. Did these people ever think about doing *any* background research for their script?
I always like to suggest that people who are curious about genetics and molecular biology, but have had no biology since high school, should read "The Cartoon Guide to Genetics" by Wheeler and Gonick. It provides the basic information and definitions required to read more detailed treatments of the subject. And like anything from Gonick, it is pretty amusing as well. While it is a paper book, you could always order it from an on-line bookstore...
As an American living in Canada I can't help but notice a glaring omission in Canada's health coverage -- dental care. What's up with that, eh? Everybody seems to think it is perfectly normal to pay a hundred dollars or more for a dental checkup. Any reasonable job in the US includes health insurance with dental care -- you'd think with Canada's high taxes they could afford to do the same, no?
..why not game schools? What seems to be missed by many posters here is that this isn't some sort of fluffy basket-weaving course about how to appreciate games or something, but how to go about creating a good game. You might say "well, nobody needs to take a course to do that -- and you can't teach creativity anyway", but if this is true, why then do most succesful movie directors have a degree in film?
She believed, for instance, having learnt it at school, that the Party had invented airplanes. (In his own schooldays, Winston remembered, in the late Fifties, it was only the helicopter that the Party claimed to have invented; a dozen years later, when Julia was at school, it was already claiming the airplane; one generation more and it would be claiming the steam engine.) And when he told her that airplanes had been in existence before he was born, and long before the Revolution, the fact struct her as totally uninteresting. After all, what did it matter who had invented airplanes?
Fantasia does seem biased towards the Romantics (and proto-Romantics like Beethoven), which I agree is too bad -- I don't mind that style, but I know many people who can't stand it. Including baroque composers like Bach or true classical composers like Mozart would be a good idea.
I think part of the problem that causes people to think that they don't like "classical" music is that they don't realize that it is really many different music styles, some of which they may like and some of which they may not.
Imagine if jazz, blues, rock, gospel, and rap were considered one music style. People might never listen to the Beatles or Louis Armstrong if they had a negative reaction to rap music.
I don't agree with him as a Linux user myself, but I think he understands it. It's just that his attitude is probably something along the lines of "Well, if there is any legitimate market for playing DVDs on this Linux-thing, some company would have paid the licensing fees, signed the non-disclosure agreements and sold binary-only player software like people do on Windows and MacOS". Now, *we* may consider this unacceptable, but to him, this is how people should handle the situation.
Fighting games in arcades are always the games that pull the hardcore element.
Er, excuse me? I was a member of the hardcore element when arcades really were at the peak of their popularity (mid '80s) and then there was nary a fighting game to be seen. Give me spaceships any day!
Perhaps some of Tesla's more wacky inventions don't really merit the term "crackpot", but how about Tesla's ghost detector? Surely even you agree *that* is a crackpot invention, yes?
No. The danger of AC is that once you pick up a live wire, you just *can't* let go (That's why electricians are careful to touch potentially live AC wires only with the backs of their hands -- at worst you get a shock and your hand jerks backwards, rather than gripping the wire). This doesn't happen with DC, plain and simple. But DC is hard to transmit over long distances, so it lost out.
There is nothing "brain dead" about a unit called the Mho (the inverse of an Ohm) -- it is quite witty, actually, and is a great aid to memory. If other countries fail to use it, well, it's their loss.
Molecular biology has several of these clever names -- there is a technique called the Southern blot, and later techniques called the Western and Northern blot --the humor is that Southern blots have nothing to do with direction -- their inventor's last name was Southern.
Then we have the tradition of naming terminator mutations after semiprecious gems -- Amber, Opal, etc. Except the first such mutation (Amber) was discovered by Bernstein -- whose name happens to be the German word for amber!
Oh, please -- Edison did a lot of inventing too. Edison's major failing was that he failed to see that Tesla's AC was the wave of the future, despite being dangerous (and AC *is* dangerous, but we as a society have decided that the benefits outweigh a few people being electrocuted each year).
Additionally, while Tesla made many important contributions to science and engineering, there is a reason why Tesla is the patron saint of crackpots -- he rather had a crackpot side to him himself -- broadcast electricity, anyone?
Re:Scaling and physical limits
on
RNA Computer
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· Score: 1
When you say they wouldn't be able to solve NP-hard problems are you implying that they could possibly solve non-hard problems?
Well, computer scientists have a particular definition of "hard". CS people measure how hard a problem is by counting the number of steps the best algorithm for the problem takes to process some number of data n. An practical algorithm runs in n steps. Even n^5 steps isn't all that bad. But there exist problems where the n ends up in the exponent -- like 2^n steps. For large values of n, the time required to solve such problems just isn't reasonable, and while parallel computers can help a bit, for large values of n, the amount of help they can provide is insignificant compared to the number of steps needed. In practice this means that parallel computers can make easy problems solvable faster, but they really aren't a solution to hard problems.
Re:Scaling and physical limits
on
RNA Computer
·
· Score: 1
Obviously, anyone can solve a given *instance* of an NP-complete problem for a small n. An NP-complete problem is so called because no algorithm exists that can compute the solution in polynomial time, which means for large values of n, the time required by even the fastest supercomputer exceeds the expected life span of the Universe. Adelman in no way disproved that the TSP problem was NP-complete.
Re:Scaling and physical limits
on
RNA Computer
·
· Score: 2
Yes. It's the same problem, in fact. There is a general consensus among both biologists and computer scientists that this sort of molecular computing will never become practical due to the amount of RNA or DNA needed. Earlier in her career Laura Landwebber did brilliant work on RNA editing -- I really don't understand why she has decided to work on something that's clearly a dead end.
Additionally, one should remember that even ignoring the practical limits on the technology these molecular "computers" really offer no theoretical benefits over any other Turing-equivilent computer besides being massively parallel. They still wouldn't be able to solve NP-hard problems.
People write up their results, and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. After a paper has been printed anyone can use the results (although citing the original reference is generally considered polite). This method is how nearly every significant scientific discovery has been introduced for the past 150 years or so.
I have to wonder if this recent trend towards patents isn't because the patent departments seem to be considerbly more gullible than journal referees. Things can be patented that would never make it in a journal
It's not about people "trying to protect what is theirs" -- for the most part, the artists aren't calling for copy protection -- it's about the parasitic middlemen of the RIAA fighting for their piece of the pie in a world where their kind are becoming unnecessary. What gives *them* their attitude of entitlement to creative works that they didn't create? That's what *I* want to know.
The Globe article states that "most scientists believe life started with a single cell similar to modern bacteria". That's nonsense. Cellular life is far too complicated to have arisen from nothing -- researchers studying the origin of life almost universally agree to the necessity of the existence of pre-cellular forms.
Well, Uri Geller is a fake, but claiming that he is a fake because of his "body language" is absurd. "Body language" like handwriting analysis or phrenology is nearly as unscientific as paranormal claims.
Hey, as someone born on June 21, I don't know my sign. Some horoscopes classify me as a Gemini, others claim I'm a Cancer. I assume this happens with other people born on the edges of the categories. I guess like all systems, horoscopes have off-by-one errors.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, some of really top Newton guys -- like the guy who created Newtonscript (the name escapes me) went to Redmond...
The Matrix isn't even remotely CP. CP is a child of the 80's -- moral/ethical issues about the environment, disparity of wealth and crime, corporate ethics and growing corporate/MNC power, the affects of globalization on culture, genetic engineering, affects of technology on socialization, etc.
Er, those are themes that cyberpunk novels have addressed, but cyberpunk ultimately is about punks in cyberspace, hence the name. The Matrix had punks. The punks were in cyberspace.
God, I sound pretentious.
Yes.
Hey, Blade Runner is one of my favorite films too, but it isn't "Gibsonian cyberpunk" -- it came out two years before Neuromancer was written and lacked the key feature of cyberpunk -- cyberspace!
That being said, I'm sure that Blade Runner, with its dark and mostly Asian-controlled future, was an influence on Gibson.
Well, The Matrix had the advantage of being the first *good* cyberpunk movie. Sure, cyberpunk has been stale for ten years in written SF, but it has been hardly touched by cinematic SF. And really, the only scientific error you could say The Matrix made was that feeding the humans would take more energy than the computers could get out of them.
But "Mission to Mars" got nearly all of its physics and biology wrong, and really added nothing to the tired genre of space exploration movies
The bit about "filling in the two missing chromosomes" has to be the least accurate depiction of molecular biology ever to stink up a cinema. In comparsion, "Jurassic Park" looks like a documentary. Did these people ever think about doing *any* background research for their script?
I always like to suggest that people who are curious about genetics and molecular biology, but have had no biology since high school, should read "The Cartoon Guide to Genetics" by Wheeler and Gonick. It provides the basic information and definitions required to read more detailed treatments of the subject. And like anything from Gonick, it is pretty amusing as well. While it is a paper book, you could always order it from an on-line bookstore...
As an American living in Canada I can't help but notice a glaring omission in Canada's health coverage -- dental care. What's up with that, eh? Everybody seems to think it is perfectly normal to pay a hundred dollars or more for a dental checkup. Any reasonable job in the US includes health insurance with dental care -- you'd think with Canada's high taxes they could afford to do the same, no?
..why not game schools? What seems to be missed by many posters here is that this isn't some sort of fluffy basket-weaving course about how to appreciate games or something, but how to go about creating a good game. You might say "well, nobody needs to take a course to do that -- and you can't teach creativity anyway", but if this is true, why then do most succesful movie directors have a degree in film?
She believed, for instance, having learnt it at school, that the Party had invented airplanes. (In his own schooldays, Winston remembered, in the late Fifties, it was only the helicopter that the Party claimed to have invented; a dozen years later, when Julia was at school, it was already claiming the airplane; one generation more and it would be claiming the steam engine.) And when he told her that airplanes had been in existence before he was born, and long before the Revolution, the fact struct her as totally uninteresting. After all, what did it matter who had invented airplanes?
Fantasia does seem biased towards the Romantics (and proto-Romantics like Beethoven), which I agree is too bad -- I don't mind that style, but I know many people who can't stand it. Including baroque composers like Bach or true classical composers like Mozart would be a good idea.
I think part of the problem that causes people to think that they don't like "classical" music is that they don't realize that it is really many different music styles, some of which they may like and some of which they may not.
Imagine if jazz, blues, rock, gospel, and rap were considered one music style. People might never listen to the Beatles or Louis Armstrong if they had a negative reaction to rap music.
Well shouldn't Darwin take care of 2 and 3?
I don't agree with him as a Linux user myself, but I think he understands it. It's just that his attitude is probably something along the lines of "Well, if there is any legitimate market for playing DVDs on this Linux-thing, some company would have paid the licensing fees, signed the non-disclosure agreements and sold binary-only player software like people do on Windows and MacOS". Now, *we* may consider this unacceptable, but to him, this is how people should handle the situation.
Fighting games in arcades are always the games that pull the hardcore element.
Er, excuse me? I was a member of the hardcore element when arcades really were at the peak of their popularity (mid '80s) and then there was nary a fighting game to be seen. Give me spaceships any day!
Perhaps some of Tesla's more wacky inventions don't really merit the term "crackpot", but how about Tesla's ghost detector? Surely even you agree *that* is a crackpot invention, yes?
Certainly Woz doesn't believe in ghosts.
No. The danger of AC is that once you pick up a live wire, you just *can't* let go (That's why electricians are careful to touch potentially live AC wires only with the backs of their hands -- at worst you get a shock and your hand jerks backwards, rather than gripping the wire). This doesn't happen with DC, plain and simple. But DC is hard to transmit over long distances, so it lost out.
There is nothing "brain dead" about a unit called the Mho (the inverse of an Ohm) -- it is quite witty, actually, and is a great aid to memory. If other countries fail to use it, well, it's their loss.
Molecular biology has several of these clever names -- there is a technique called the Southern blot, and later techniques called the Western and Northern blot --the humor is that Southern blots have nothing to do with direction -- their inventor's last name was Southern.
Then we have the tradition of naming terminator mutations after semiprecious gems -- Amber, Opal, etc. Except the first such mutation (Amber) was discovered by Bernstein -- whose name happens to be the German word for amber!
Oh, please -- Edison did a lot of inventing too. Edison's major failing was that he failed to see that Tesla's AC was the wave of the future, despite being dangerous (and AC *is* dangerous, but we as a society have decided that the benefits outweigh a few people being electrocuted each year).
Additionally, while Tesla made many important contributions to science and engineering, there is a reason why Tesla is the patron saint of crackpots -- he rather had a crackpot side to him himself -- broadcast electricity, anyone?
When you say they wouldn't be able to solve NP-hard problems are you implying that they could possibly solve non-hard problems?
Well, computer scientists have a particular definition of "hard". CS people measure how hard a problem is by counting the number of steps the best algorithm for the problem takes to process some number of data n.
An practical algorithm runs in n steps. Even n^5 steps isn't all that bad. But there exist problems where the n ends up in the exponent -- like 2^n steps. For large values of n, the time required to solve such problems just isn't reasonable, and while parallel computers can help a bit, for large values of n, the amount of help they can provide is insignificant compared to the number of steps needed. In practice this means that parallel computers can make easy problems solvable faster, but they really aren't a solution to hard problems.
Obviously, anyone can solve a given *instance* of an NP-complete problem for a small n. An NP-complete problem is so called because no algorithm exists that can compute the solution in polynomial time, which means for large values of n, the time required by even the fastest supercomputer exceeds the expected life span of the Universe. Adelman in no way disproved that the TSP problem was NP-complete.
Yes. It's the same problem, in fact. There is a general consensus among both biologists and computer scientists that this sort of molecular computing will never become practical due to the amount of RNA or DNA needed. Earlier in her career Laura Landwebber did brilliant work on RNA editing -- I really don't understand why she has decided to work on something that's clearly a dead end.
Additionally, one should remember that even ignoring the practical limits on the technology these molecular "computers" really offer no theoretical benefits over any other Turing-equivilent computer besides being massively parallel. They still wouldn't be able to solve NP-hard problems.
People write up their results, and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. After a paper has been printed anyone can use the results (although citing the original reference is generally considered polite). This method is how nearly every significant scientific discovery has been introduced for the past 150 years or so.
I have to wonder if this recent trend towards patents isn't because the patent departments seem to be considerbly more gullible than journal referees. Things can be patented that would never make it in a journal
It's not about people "trying to protect what is theirs" -- for the most part, the artists aren't calling for copy protection -- it's about the parasitic middlemen of the RIAA fighting for their piece of the pie in a world where their kind are becoming unnecessary. What gives *them* their attitude of entitlement to creative works that they didn't create? That's what *I* want to know.
The Globe article states that "most scientists believe life started with a single cell similar to modern bacteria". That's nonsense. Cellular life is far too complicated to have arisen from nothing -- researchers studying the origin of life almost universally agree to the necessity of the existence of pre-cellular forms.
Well, Uri Geller is a fake, but claiming that he is a fake because of his "body language" is absurd. "Body language" like handwriting analysis or phrenology is nearly as unscientific as paranormal claims.
Hey, as someone born on June 21, I don't know my sign. Some horoscopes classify me as a Gemini, others claim I'm a Cancer. I assume this happens with other people born on the edges of the categories. I guess like all systems, horoscopes have off-by-one errors.