It's a good thing that these days computers have plenty of memory. It's not quite yet true on smaller devices such as smartphones, but it will be soon. With each year, memory use is becoming less of a problem and how to take advantage of parallel processing is becoming more of a problem.
Programs written in some languages run more quickly than those written in other languages. Some languages allow you to write programs more quickly than other languages. Therefore, the choice of language is always a tradeoff. There is no perfect programming language, and no, not all programming languages are alike as you seem to believe. If I want to write a program quickly, I write it in Python even though I know the program will run quite slowly.
Governments can make anything they want to illegal. The U.S. government still claims marijuana is a highly dangerous drug with no known medicial properties, and therefore it is a Schedule I drug. The government doesn't have to prove anything to make something illegal.
It's the most accepted way to give a number to intelligence for a human being. In other words, the score on the IQ test is correlated highly with the intelligence of the person who took the test. There isn't necessarily such a correlation for computer programs. A relatively simple computer program might score highly on an IQ test designed for humans, but that certainly doesn't mean it's as smart as a human. I've taught this idea to AI classes -- it's a question near the beginning of the Russell & Norvig AI book.
I think it has more to do with socio-economic status. Someone rich and famous, such as O.J. Simpson, is likely to be found not guilty, and poor people are likely to be found guilty regardless of race. Of course, race and socio-economic status are strongly correlated in the U.S. so the two effects are roughly the same.
I took a graduate-level security class from Alex Halderman (of Internet voting fame) and what I came away with is that security comes down to trust. To take an example, when I walk down the street, I want to stay safe and avoid being run over by a car. If I think that the world is full of crazy drivers, the only way to be safe is to lock myself inside. If I want to function in society, I have to trust that when I walk down the sidewalk that a driver will not veer off the road and hit me.
When you order a computer, you simply trust that it doesn't have a keylogger or "secret knock" CPU code installed at the factory. It's exactly the same with software binaries, of course. In the extreme case, even examining all the source code will not help. You must trust!
You're confusing the carbon that's already in the carbon cycle and the carbon that humans are adding to the carbon cycle by digging up coal and drilling oil and burning them. Humans are responsible for nearly all of the excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere in the past 200 years. We don't want to stop the carbon cycle -- that would destroy life as we know it. We just need to slow the pace at which we add carbon to the carbon cycle so the system can have time to absorb and deal with the excess. We're not only causing warming, but also acidifying the oceans.
I explain this below and another poster says the same thing. What Hansen actually said and what you're claiming he said are two completely different things. He is referring to a possibility, and you're acting like he's saying it's a certainty.
If you look carefully, there is an IF in the sentence. IF we burn all fossil fuel [it would lead to] a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently" Similarly, IF I put a loaded gun to my head and pull the trigger I will die. That doesn't mean I'm saying it will happen. It would be quite difficult to burn ALL the fossil fuel, and I don't think we'd keep doing it after the effects became undeniable to the most ardent "skeptic".
I haven't heard of any solid data suggesting what the actual cost and benefits are, beyond the "sky is falling" arguments
I don't think you've been listening hard if you haven't heard of the Sterm Review. It's 700 pages long and doesn't refer to the sky falling at all. I keep seeing references to "sky is falling" arguments, but I haven't heard of any. Could you point me to one?
That absolutely is a classic denier position, because it sounds sensible on the surface (just give me some more proof), but in practice the goalposts move, so that there is never enough proof. The whole argument is set up that way -- science can never "prove it irrefutably" because that wouldn't be science.
But we've been burning fossil fuels on a massive scale for less than 200 years. Why not look at about 200 years of data to see if doing so caused warming? The consensus is that it has. If you disagree, I'd like to see some evidence.
Let's start with Arrhenius over 100 years ago. The falsifiable claim is that burning fossil fuels will raise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause warming. We have observed the warming. Had we not, it would have falsified the hypothesis. Surely you've been following this over the years and this is all old news.
Right, you can never validate a hypothesis in science. You can only fail to falsify it. In other words, no one can seem to come up with another good explanation for the warming we've observed, so we've failed to falsify the idea that it's due to carbon dioxide emissions, a hypothesis first proposed in 1896. That doesn't mean it's the truth, but I sure know which way I'd bet!
I'm not confusing patents and copyrights. A computer can process computer code, literature, or a photograph. They are all copyrightable, not patentable. Interestingly enough, a computer can also process a patent, which certainly is patentable. The idea that anything a computer can process is not patentable is obviously absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a good thing that these days computers have plenty of memory. It's not quite yet true on smaller devices such as smartphones, but it will be soon. With each year, memory use is becoming less of a problem and how to take advantage of parallel processing is becoming more of a problem.
Programs written in some languages run more quickly than those written in other languages. Some languages allow you to write programs more quickly than other languages. Therefore, the choice of language is always a tradeoff. There is no perfect programming language, and no, not all programming languages are alike as you seem to believe. If I want to write a program quickly, I write it in Python even though I know the program will run quite slowly.
Governments can make anything they want to illegal. The U.S. government still claims marijuana is a highly dangerous drug with no known medicial properties, and therefore it is a Schedule I drug. The government doesn't have to prove anything to make something illegal.
It's the most accepted way to give a number to intelligence for a human being. In other words, the score on the IQ test is correlated highly with the intelligence of the person who took the test. There isn't necessarily such a correlation for computer programs. A relatively simple computer program might score highly on an IQ test designed for humans, but that certainly doesn't mean it's as smart as a human. I've taught this idea to AI classes -- it's a question near the beginning of the Russell & Norvig AI book.
I think it has more to do with socio-economic status. Someone rich and famous, such as O.J. Simpson, is likely to be found not guilty, and poor people are likely to be found guilty regardless of race. Of course, race and socio-economic status are strongly correlated in the U.S. so the two effects are roughly the same.
No, that is not my point at all. Please re-read my post.
But nuking it from orbit is the only way to be sure.
Compiling it yourself does not necessarily help.
I took a graduate-level security class from Alex Halderman (of Internet voting fame) and what I came away with is that security comes down to trust. To take an example, when I walk down the street, I want to stay safe and avoid being run over by a car. If I think that the world is full of crazy drivers, the only way to be safe is to lock myself inside. If I want to function in society, I have to trust that when I walk down the sidewalk that a driver will not veer off the road and hit me.
When you order a computer, you simply trust that it doesn't have a keylogger or "secret knock" CPU code installed at the factory. It's exactly the same with software binaries, of course. In the extreme case, even examining all the source code will not help. You must trust!
Just run AdBlock and most animations on web pages are gone.
[citation needed]
You're confusing the carbon that's already in the carbon cycle and the carbon that humans are adding to the carbon cycle by digging up coal and drilling oil and burning them. Humans are responsible for nearly all of the excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere in the past 200 years. We don't want to stop the carbon cycle -- that would destroy life as we know it. We just need to slow the pace at which we add carbon to the carbon cycle so the system can have time to absorb and deal with the excess. We're not only causing warming, but also acidifying the oceans.
I explain this below and another poster says the same thing. What Hansen actually said and what you're claiming he said are two completely different things. He is referring to a possibility, and you're acting like he's saying it's a certainty.
If you look carefully, there is an IF in the sentence. IF we burn all fossil fuel [it would lead to] a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently" Similarly, IF I put a loaded gun to my head and pull the trigger I will die. That doesn't mean I'm saying it will happen. It would be quite difficult to burn ALL the fossil fuel, and I don't think we'd keep doing it after the effects became undeniable to the most ardent "skeptic".
I don't think you've been listening hard if you haven't heard of the Sterm Review. It's 700 pages long and doesn't refer to the sky falling at all. I keep seeing references to "sky is falling" arguments, but I haven't heard of any. Could you point me to one?
That absolutely is a classic denier position, because it sounds sensible on the surface (just give me some more proof), but in practice the goalposts move, so that there is never enough proof. The whole argument is set up that way -- science can never "prove it irrefutably" because that wouldn't be science.
But we've been burning fossil fuels on a massive scale for less than 200 years. Why not look at about 200 years of data to see if doing so caused warming? The consensus is that it has. If you disagree, I'd like to see some evidence.
Let's start with Arrhenius over 100 years ago. The falsifiable claim is that burning fossil fuels will raise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause warming. We have observed the warming. Had we not, it would have falsified the hypothesis. Surely you've been following this over the years and this is all old news.
Right, you can never validate a hypothesis in science. You can only fail to falsify it. In other words, no one can seem to come up with another good explanation for the warming we've observed, so we've failed to falsify the idea that it's due to carbon dioxide emissions, a hypothesis first proposed in 1896. That doesn't mean it's the truth, but I sure know which way I'd bet!
I suppose you could say that about anything that happened over 120 years ago.
I'm not confusing patents and copyrights. A computer can process computer code, literature, or a photograph. They are all copyrightable, not patentable. Interestingly enough, a computer can also process a patent, which certainly is patentable. The idea that anything a computer can process is not patentable is obviously absurd.
So the human brain is not a computer?
Code is not patentable. Algorithms are patentable.
A computer can interpret Shakespeare, so therefore literature is math. No, I don't think that's a sound argument.
Prove that physical reality is not math. Start by showing that it is not represented by 1s and 0s at the lowest level.