It's worth noting that Larry and Andy W cited Godel, Escher, Bach as an influence in an article in Time or Newsweek at around the time the original Matrix was released.
...computer science or of computer graphics. The title says one thing, the story another.
Because, if you mean computer science, then The Matrix and Reloaded must be the first movies ever about Godel's Theorem and the Halting problem. Remember the scene with the video displays behind the Architect? That was the diagonal argument. Remember the first meeting with the Oracle? It was basically a summary of the halting problem. Think about it.
You're buying their marketing line and you even half know it. Their storylines are not great. They are crap. They are the usual Disney fare. They keep talking about how "Story is King" but their stories are nothing special at all.
Nonetheless their work is amazing. It is visually amazing as well as having some pretty funny gags along the way.
Why do so many organisms reproduce sexually? They're shuffling their genes around meaning that each generation has variety. If a virus attacks chances are some members of any generation will have the genes required for surviving it. What is fatal is to have a monoculture. If the wrong virus hits everything is wiped out.
Here's the important point: given any organism there's a virus that'll defeat it. So the strategy is to ensure that your offspring have variety.
Unfortunately what we have in the computing world is something of a monoculture. Everyone (OK, I exaggerate, but only slightly) runs Windows and everyone is at risk from the same viruses. And when those viruses hit everyone is taken out.
If people valued security, and chose an OS with a smaller user base as a strategy to deal with security, we'd have that variety and we'd all be much better off.
It's funny. When A says "I use Linux and don't get any viruses" and B repsonds "that's because so few people use Linux" B is failing to see that that's actually a perfectly good reason to choose Linux.
The UK has much less weather (heat, snow, electrical storms, wind, whatever!) all round than the US. Also much more cabling is underground in the UK so it's better protected when weather does happen.
Some stories are plot driven. If they're not then the science might not matter. But if a story is plot driven the science can matter a lot.
One of the things that a story does is set up the rules by which the rest of the story plays. Part of the tension of a story is trying to understand how it is yet to unfold within the constraints that have been set up. When those constraints are violated we have a deus ex machina and it defuses the tension incorrectly and ruins the pleasure. A simple example: imagine a detective story where the protagonist tries to find a thief. In the last chapter they give up using their conventional methods and reveal they are telepathic and find the criminal that way. Crap story right? It's like losing at chess because your opponent suddenly decided to implement a novel rule giving them an extra queen at a crucial moment.
One of the problems with bad science is that you can't ever learn the rules of the game. It means the story loses its tension. But this only matters if the story is initially presented as one where science matters. If the story clearly isn't hard-science, it doesn't matter about the accuracy of the science, as long as we can figure out the rules.
For example: in Star Trek it bothers me more that the crew suddenly forget they can use intra-ship transporting than that the underlying science of the story makes no sense.
But in a spy story set in the early 21st century the rules have been set and having, say, an invisible car, is completely dumb. But not just because the science is bad. The rules have been messed with and there can be no dramatic tension as anything goes. Who knows, maybe the baddy will suddenly turn out to have some mega space weapon that can wipe out entire countries. If anything goes then you might as well just play random events unconnected by story.
And of course rules are made to be broken. Sometimes it's fun to see a movie that plays with the rules. But even then there needs to be a set of meta-rules otherwise it's just random events again. (And even that's OK if the events look pretty, say, but then we're no longer talking about plot.)
They do plenty. But one thing is good in the UK: blackouts are rare. I seem to suffer blackouts all the time in the US whether unintentional or 'rolling'.
Bragging about Macs not being susceptible to this round of viruses is merely bragging about how few Macs there are...
That's a perfectly good thing to brag about. Look. We have a software monoculture. Any environmentalist will tell you a monoculture is a bad thing. Choosing an OS with fewer users is a smart move just as exogamous mating is a good way for humans to survive disease. That's something worth bragging about.
What does user input have to do with C++? C++ is a programming language. You can do things with it like traverse a file structure, poll the registers on some hardware on your PCI bus, figure out the optimal way to use fuel to boost your satellite into a higher orbit or identify a potential missile target. What the hell place does "checking user input" have in a book about a tool that does these thongs? Being able to code CGI routines doesn't make you a programmer. Programmers do a lot more than write code to check credit card numbers on second rate ecommerce web sites.
You know, sometimes that abstraction serves a purpose. Consider a library like FADBAD++ that allows you to differentiate C++ functions for use in problems like numerical optimization. I'd like to see you implement that code in C. The C++ solution is shorter, more elegant, easier to maintain and very easy to use. In fact, for numerical work in general, generic programming in C++ is an incredibly powerful tool allowing you to achieve the performance of FORTRAN with the conciseness and readability of normal mathematical notation. Blitz++ is a good example too.
I find that the people who advocate C over C++ have really done nothing but use C++ as a glorified C. Even the people who claim that they are using C++ properly with high falutin' OO methodologies are still writing code that can be transformed into C with a minimum of effort. Code written generically with C++ templates cannot trivially (in a precisely definable sense) be transformed into C code and hence can be used to efficiently solve problems that are a nightmare in C.
I've heard rumors that if you're caught committing a crime then a cop can get a thing called a search warrant from a judge that allows them to search your home! That's not all either! If they can convince a dozen random people off the street that you did indeed commit it then they can haul you off to be incarcerated. In prison you lose many of your constitutional rights. Can you believe it! It's unconstitutional!
Good point. There is no doubt that there is a correlation and the cause and effect is two way between soft tissues and bone. But I really haven't seen evidence that a face can be reconstructed well enough that you might be able to identify a relative, say, from skeletal remains. I feel a lot more confident about something like reconstructing the approximate features of a proto-human from a skull than about reconstructing an individual's face.
We can argue until we're blue in the face about responsibility but frankly it doesn't matter. Make anyone vaguely connected (and catchable) responsible and the problem will be solved. Make MS responsible and they'll tighten up their OSes. Make users responsible for sending viruses from their computers and they'll soon put pressure on MS for better OSes and keep their virus checkers up-to-date. Make the PC vendors responsible and I'm sure we'll get imporvements too. But as it is we have a situation where nobody is held accountable and that means it's simply never going to be fixed.
I'm sure they have and that they will work their damnedest to ensure that nobody actually does it. This technique simply doesn't work. Skull shape doesn't determine face shape. Simple as that. It doesn't matter though. The fact that computers with video cameras can't pick out criminals from a crowd never stopped people paying money for systems to do this. The same will happen here.
...technologies that seem so far beyond what I thought was possible that it upsets my world view. I sometimes work in image processing. Finding features in photos of scenes can be damn hard. Just finding a face reliably can be hard, let alone identifying its owner! Sure, you'll find lots of papers claiming to be able to do these things but my success rate with implementing (or just downloading) code from papers is pretty low. Publish or perish, even if you have a exaggerate a wee bit. So when I read about face identification software actually being used in airports it surprised me a lot. How can these guys be a quantum leap above everyone else? But now I see I had no need to be surprised.
I remember 20 years ago the father of a friend of mine claimed he had hardware/software that could identify faces. It was all over the TV and newspapers. Nothing's changed.
Computers are better only in the special case where you're recognizing exact patterns
How did you get away with saying that. Computers can recognize more patterns than just a list and it can recognize many of those patterns much better than a human. Here's a pattern a simple numerical pattern recognizer might spot faster than a human: 1,12,36,80,150,... It's n^3+n^2. There are infinitely many simple polynomial series so it's pretty obvious you can't list 'em all in a table.
Lice could have made the jump from fur to clothing many times. If the last time it happened the lice were so successful they displaced the previous species we'd only see one recently jumped species today. You really need a lot of caution with this data even if you do assume that evolution rapidly fills new niches.
The content of the movie you are about to see is protected by copyright. Duplication in any form, including verbal description to your friends, is punishable by fines of up to $250,000.
Probably because any monkey can get a PhD if their parents pay for it. I don't know about other subjects.
Not in pure mathematics they can't.
why the hell should I value education in its own right
There are means and there are ends. Education serves as both. As an end there's nothing more I can say. Either you value it or you don't. That's what "in its own right means". If answer your question then I'm treating as a means to an end.
As for considering it as a means: if you expect to do work which is built on cutting edge research and you're going to spend much of your time keeping up with recent papers then a PhD is going to give you a good start. It might be worth sacrificing 3 years of salary for the benefits that come later. If you don't plan to do that then a PhD isn't really of much use. I think it paid off for me: but then I've tried to carve myself a niche at work where I do get to work with recent research. Other people with the equivalent role in other companies might not be doing that. I think I get paid more than most of them.
The US has a reputation for having an anti-intellectual culture but it's nothing compared to the UK where education simply isn't valued in its own right. It's not surprising then that so many qualified people leave the UK for the US. Me included.
I don't work in research but in an R&D group within a company that writes software for entertainment applications. The PhD is useful because I make it so. There is tons of research into 2D and 3D graphics and related topics. Having a strong backgound in reading research papers givs me many advantages.
But I guess I could have a job where I simply turn off my brain and implement specs that are handed to me by management. If that were the case then my PhD would be of no use and wouldn't be reflected in my position or salary.
So if you want to succeed as a PhD you need to make sure you are keeping up-to-date with relevant research and doing work that needs that research. Having a PhD should make that easier. Just getting a PhD doesn't automatically qualify you to rest on your laurels and earn a pay bonus for nothing. You have to use it.
...that you can build a tictactoe playing machine, that learns to play from experience with a bunch of matchboxes and marbles. It's in a Martin Gardner book as well as a Scientific American article.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth noting that Larry and Andy W cited Godel, Escher, Bach as an influence in an article in Time or Newsweek at around the time the original Matrix was released.
Because, if you mean computer science, then The Matrix and Reloaded must be the first movies ever about Godel's Theorem and the Halting problem. Remember the scene with the video displays behind the Architect? That was the diagonal argument. Remember the first meeting with the Oracle? It was basically a summary of the halting problem. Think about it.
Nonetheless their work is amazing. It is visually amazing as well as having some pretty funny gags along the way.
Here's the important point: given any organism there's a virus that'll defeat it. So the strategy is to ensure that your offspring have variety.
Unfortunately what we have in the computing world is something of a monoculture. Everyone (OK, I exaggerate, but only slightly) runs Windows and everyone is at risk from the same viruses. And when those viruses hit everyone is taken out.
If people valued security, and chose an OS with a smaller user base as a strategy to deal with security, we'd have that variety and we'd all be much better off.
It's funny. When A says "I use Linux and don't get any viruses" and B repsonds "that's because so few people use Linux" B is failing to see that that's actually a perfectly good reason to choose Linux.
The UK has much less weather (heat, snow, electrical storms, wind, whatever!) all round than the US. Also much more cabling is underground in the UK so it's better protected when weather does happen.
One of the things that a story does is set up the rules by which the rest of the story plays. Part of the tension of a story is trying to understand how it is yet to unfold within the constraints that have been set up. When those constraints are violated we have a deus ex machina and it defuses the tension incorrectly and ruins the pleasure. A simple example: imagine a detective story where the protagonist tries to find a thief. In the last chapter they give up using their conventional methods and reveal they are telepathic and find the criminal that way. Crap story right? It's like losing at chess because your opponent suddenly decided to implement a novel rule giving them an extra queen at a crucial moment.
One of the problems with bad science is that you can't ever learn the rules of the game. It means the story loses its tension. But this only matters if the story is initially presented as one where science matters. If the story clearly isn't hard-science, it doesn't matter about the accuracy of the science, as long as we can figure out the rules.
For example: in Star Trek it bothers me more that the crew suddenly forget they can use intra-ship transporting than that the underlying science of the story makes no sense.
But in a spy story set in the early 21st century the rules have been set and having, say, an invisible car, is completely dumb. But not just because the science is bad. The rules have been messed with and there can be no dramatic tension as anything goes. Who knows, maybe the baddy will suddenly turn out to have some mega space weapon that can wipe out entire countries. If anything goes then you might as well just play random events unconnected by story.
And of course rules are made to be broken. Sometimes it's fun to see a movie that plays with the rules. But even then there needs to be a set of meta-rules otherwise it's just random events again. (And even that's OK if the events look pretty, say, but then we're no longer talking about plot.)
They do plenty. But one thing is good in the UK: blackouts are rare. I seem to suffer blackouts all the time in the US whether unintentional or 'rolling'.
Er...you can do that with parts from ebay or craigslist without too much trouble.
What does user input have to do with C++? C++ is a programming language. You can do things with it like traverse a file structure, poll the registers on some hardware on your PCI bus, figure out the optimal way to use fuel to boost your satellite into a higher orbit or identify a potential missile target. What the hell place does "checking user input" have in a book about a tool that does these thongs? Being able to code CGI routines doesn't make you a programmer. Programmers do a lot more than write code to check credit card numbers on second rate ecommerce web sites.
I find that the people who advocate C over C++ have really done nothing but use C++ as a glorified C. Even the people who claim that they are using C++ properly with high falutin' OO methodologies are still writing code that can be transformed into C with a minimum of effort. Code written generically with C++ templates cannot trivially (in a precisely definable sense) be transformed into C code and hence can be used to efficiently solve problems that are a nightmare in C.
I've heard rumors that if you're caught committing a crime then a cop can get a thing called a search warrant from a judge that allows them to search your home! That's not all either! If they can convince a dozen random people off the street that you did indeed commit it then they can haul you off to be incarcerated. In prison you lose many of your constitutional rights. Can you believe it! It's unconstitutional!
Good point. There is no doubt that there is a correlation and the cause and effect is two way between soft tissues and bone. But I really haven't seen evidence that a face can be reconstructed well enough that you might be able to identify a relative, say, from skeletal remains. I feel a lot more confident about something like reconstructing the approximate features of a proto-human from a skull than about reconstructing an individual's face.
We can argue until we're blue in the face about responsibility but frankly it doesn't matter. Make anyone vaguely connected (and catchable) responsible and the problem will be solved. Make MS responsible and they'll tighten up their OSes. Make users responsible for sending viruses from their computers and they'll soon put pressure on MS for better OSes and keep their virus checkers up-to-date. Make the PC vendors responsible and I'm sure we'll get imporvements too. But as it is we have a situation where nobody is held accountable and that means it's simply never going to be fixed.
I'm sure they have and that they will work their damnedest to ensure that nobody actually does it. This technique simply doesn't work. Skull shape doesn't determine face shape. Simple as that. It doesn't matter though. The fact that computers with video cameras can't pick out criminals from a crowd never stopped people paying money for systems to do this. The same will happen here.
Damn! I'm sure I was really close to enlightenment for a moment there. But it's gone now. Ho hum.
I remember 20 years ago the father of a friend of mine claimed he had hardware/software that could identify faces. It was all over the TV and newspapers. Nothing's changed.
Lice could have made the jump from fur to clothing many times. If the last time it happened the lice were so successful they displaced the previous species we'd only see one recently jumped species today. You really need a lot of caution with this data even if you do assume that evolution rapidly fills new niches.
The content of the movie you are about to see is protected by copyright. Duplication in any form, including verbal description to your friends, is punishable by fines of up to $250,000.
As for considering it as a means: if you expect to do work which is built on cutting edge research and you're going to spend much of your time keeping up with recent papers then a PhD is going to give you a good start. It might be worth sacrificing 3 years of salary for the benefits that come later. If you don't plan to do that then a PhD isn't really of much use. I think it paid off for me: but then I've tried to carve myself a niche at work where I do get to work with recent research. Other people with the equivalent role in other companies might not be doing that. I think I get paid more than most of them.
The US has a reputation for having an anti-intellectual culture but it's nothing compared to the UK where education simply isn't valued in its own right. It's not surprising then that so many qualified people leave the UK for the US. Me included.
I don't work in research but in an R&D group within a company that writes software for entertainment applications. The PhD is useful because I make it so. There is tons of research into 2D and 3D graphics and related topics. Having a strong backgound in reading research papers givs me many advantages.
But I guess I could have a job where I simply turn off my brain and implement specs that are handed to me by management. If that were the case then my PhD would be of no use and wouldn't be reflected in my position or salary.
So if you want to succeed as a PhD you need to make sure you are keeping up-to-date with relevant research and doing work that needs that research. Having a PhD should make that easier. Just getting a PhD doesn't automatically qualify you to rest on your laurels and earn a pay bonus for nothing. You have to use it.
...that you can build a tictactoe playing machine, that learns to play from experience with a bunch of matchboxes and marbles. It's in a Martin Gardner book as well as a Scientific American article.