"And they only need to increase that by 100,000 times to get to about the same number of neurons as a human brain, let alone the synaptic connections (which would be somewhere on the order of 2,000,000 times what they've done)."
From the link: "At the end of 2006, the Blue Brain project had created a model of the basic functional unit of the brain, the neocortical column. At the push of a button, the model could reconstruct biologically accurate neurons based on detailed experimental data, and automatically connect them in a biological manner, a task that involves positioning around 30 million synapses in precise 3D locations."
Note that some major parts of the model are down at the molecular level. Since then experiments using data from brain scans have shown that the simulated neocortex appears to behave like a real one.
I doubt people (particularly the religious) will accept a computer consciousness. A good number of scientists belive animals are prue programming (nobody home just trainable automata) and there are a shitload of ordinary people out there who still don't belive climate simulations are usefull predictors (scroll down to embedded movie).
"Regan had a team of science fiction advisers including Larry Niven back in the 80's to help him."
IIRC he also had an astrologer? My beef is with anti-science writers found in the opinion columns of major papers or masqurading as experts to congress.
"I'd sooner preserve some fascinating example of mediaeval architecture where the building itself is of historical interest"
I agree I had the good fortune to visit Fountains Abbey, it's ruins and the surrounding lands are orders of magnitute more awe inspiring than a few army huts. And yes, Turing is due a posthumous apology for the "sins of our fathers".
It's an anti-booby trap law, people who are "booby-traped" by a livestock fence (often a stone wall) are considered dumber than livestock and are not protected.
"At one time, this thing was the most critical machine in the entire world. Should that alone be cause to save it?"
The machines have been restored, it's the huts where they worked that are falling down. I appreciate the signifigance of the code-breakers efforts but having travelled the length and breadth of the UK I realise you cannot go 10 feet without tripping over something with historical significance. The artifacts could be housed in an existing museam but if they want to save the huts they need to make them usefull, perhaps renovate and house a modern sigint team? From what I saw, the military in the UK often share castles/forts with the historically inquisitive.
Talk to any west papuan highlander, I have seen many readily admit to it on Australian TV claiming it's part of their traditional legal system. For example; say someone in the tribe dies unexpectedly(heart attck, stroke), the "cause" is determined to be an evil spirt, the tribal elders get together and name the person who is inhabited by the spirit (usually the nerdy kid or someone from another tribe that's been sniffing around). It's then up to the males of the tribe to carry out the "sentencing" and kill the person, then destroy the evil spirit by some grotesque ritual such as the proverbial "eating brains". They also ritualistically eat the brains of monkeys for some spiritual reason that I can't recall. Most tribes understand killing a lumberjack or a miner is asking for trouble but they fight with each other as they always have done.
OTOH, These people and most of the forest they have lived in for 10,000yrs will be gone by 2030.:(
"Lots and lots of dolts went on camera to mouth a ton of excuses and 'buts' rather than admit that the Druids as Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings were bloodthirsty, life hating, human sacrificing cannibals."
Very little is known about the Druids since they had no written language, most of what is known was written by the Romans who were not above using propoganda on their enemies. This is the main reason why historians doubt the written (by the winner) accounts. The written accounts (and the arguments) have been around for centuries and I suspect you just pulled the "Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings" bit out of your arse because it suits your own worldview rather than anything to do with the content of the documentary.
Yep science is happy to say "gravity just is" where as religion goes one step too far and says "God did it" and "God just is". We see politics,science and religion as three seperate but overlapping subjects but for most of human history politics and science have been a subset of religion. Western religion is still coming to terms with the seperation, OTOH I doubt I will see an atheist POTUS in my lifetime.
And many people don't, they just use God as a way to project their personality onto the universe.
"And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so."
For those that do take Genisis literally, a literal interpretaion of the quote above is: "the sky is made of water" (and it is on a cloudy day:). A quote to literally support evolution is the one about God made man from earth (the exact words escape me). Anyway it implies man is made of dirt, what makes the dirt into a man is the "soul".
PS: Because I can make the argument does not mean I agree with it:)
"Christianity requires you to actually actively fight for a satisfactory understanding of God"
This is what they claim but what they teach is that you can't understand God, God "just is" and it's no use trying to figure out why he does what he does. "God works in mysterious ways" so it's best not to think to hard about things you don't understand and just accept "God's will", besides, if you don't he will crush you like a grape.
I accept that reading bible stories can give you something to think about however religion has done all the thinking for you and they certainly don't want you to come up with your own interpretations. No, the message from the church is - "Just follow the rules and let God do the thinking" - and many people get a great sense of relief from doing just that (ask any drill sergeant).
"In the few cases where someone really needs to use memcpy instead of relying on a library"
First of all, memcpy IS a libary call.
"but they should have to explain their need and the benefit over using a higher level wrapper to lots and lots of people."
One source tree, many O/S's. Memcpy is a ANSI C library call, I have been using it for more than 20yrs without a problem. IF MS want to pop up a warning that tells me my source will compile on gcc I can't stop them from doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
"And they only need to increase that by 100,000 times to get to about the same number of neurons as a human brain, let alone the synaptic connections (which would be somewhere on the order of 2,000,000 times what they've done)."
Not as far fetched as it once seemed.
From the link: "At the end of 2006, the Blue Brain project had created a model of the basic functional unit of the brain, the neocortical column. At the push of a button, the model could reconstruct biologically accurate neurons based on detailed experimental data, and automatically connect them in a biological manner, a task that involves positioning around 30 million synapses in precise 3D locations."
Note that some major parts of the model are down at the molecular level. Since then experiments using data from brain scans have shown that the simulated neocortex appears to behave like a real one.
I doubt people (particularly the religious) will accept a computer consciousness. A good number of scientists belive animals are prue programming (nobody home just trainable automata) and there are a shitload of ordinary people out there who still don't belive climate simulations are usefull predictors (scroll down to embedded movie).
"Regan had a team of science fiction advisers including Larry Niven back in the 80's to help him."
IIRC he also had an astrologer? My beef is with anti-science writers found in the opinion columns of major papers or masqurading as experts to congress.
Seperating an anti-social business from it's existing profits, levels the playing field.
"I'd sooner preserve some fascinating example of mediaeval architecture where the building itself is of historical interest"
I agree I had the good fortune to visit Fountains Abbey, it's ruins and the surrounding lands are orders of magnitute more awe inspiring than a few army huts. And yes, Turing is due a posthumous apology for the "sins of our fathers".
It's an anti-booby trap law, people who are "booby-traped" by a livestock fence (often a stone wall) are considered dumber than livestock and are not protected.
"At one time, this thing was the most critical machine in the entire world. Should that alone be cause to save it?"
The machines have been restored, it's the huts where they worked that are falling down. I appreciate the signifigance of the code-breakers efforts but having travelled the length and breadth of the UK I realise you cannot go 10 feet without tripping over something with historical significance. The artifacts could be housed in an existing museam but if they want to save the huts they need to make them usefull, perhaps renovate and house a modern sigint team? From what I saw, the military in the UK often share castles/forts with the historically inquisitive.
"I'm still inconvenienced"
Science does that.
"Oh, right - I'm responding to a well-known troll account."
Nah, BadAnalogyGuy is parody.
"No tribe had ever admitted to it."
:(
Talk to any west papuan highlander, I have seen many readily admit to it on Australian TV claiming it's part of their traditional legal system. For example; say someone in the tribe dies unexpectedly(heart attck, stroke), the "cause" is determined to be an evil spirt, the tribal elders get together and name the person who is inhabited by the spirit (usually the nerdy kid or someone from another tribe that's been sniffing around). It's then up to the males of the tribe to carry out the "sentencing" and kill the person, then destroy the evil spirit by some grotesque ritual such as the proverbial "eating brains". They also ritualistically eat the brains of monkeys for some spiritual reason that I can't recall. Most tribes understand killing a lumberjack or a miner is asking for trouble but they fight with each other as they always have done.
OTOH, These people and most of the forest they have lived in for 10,000yrs will be gone by 2030.
It's God's car, he sprinkled them all over the outback so nobody ever runs out of spare parts.
"acting in a foulish way that will probably be said by a court to be ridiculous"
Well who wants a chicken politician?
"Lots and lots of dolts went on camera to mouth a ton of excuses and 'buts' rather than admit that the Druids as Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings were bloodthirsty, life hating, human sacrificing cannibals."
Very little is known about the Druids since they had no written language, most of what is known was written by the Romans who were not above using propoganda on their enemies. This is the main reason why historians doubt the written (by the winner) accounts. The written accounts (and the arguments) have been around for centuries and I suspect you just pulled the "Mother Earth loving, New Age darlings" bit out of your arse because it suits your own worldview rather than anything to do with the content of the documentary.
Neanderthals are not the same species, eating them is on par with eating a great ape.
1. Wake up from dream.
2. Make a note; "Boobies"
3. ???
4. Profit!
Hulu works ok in Australia.
Simple rule: If you do not know what is in a structure/object then don't use memcpy. A good class library will implement a standard copy member.
Yep it's probably implemented as an inline function for performnce but still at the C level it's a library call.
Yep science is happy to say "gravity just is" where as religion goes one step too far and says "God did it" and "God just is". We see politics,science and religion as three seperate but overlapping subjects but for most of human history politics and science have been a subset of religion. Western religion is still coming to terms with the seperation, OTOH I doubt I will see an atheist POTUS in my lifetime.
I kinda like these militant atheists in Texas. About time we had our own talkback show!
"There is nothing to literally believe."
:). A quote to literally support evolution is the one about God made man from earth (the exact words escape me). Anyway it implies man is made of dirt, what makes the dirt into a man is the "soul".
:)
And many people don't, they just use God as a way to project their personality onto the universe.
"And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so."
For those that do take Genisis literally, a literal interpretaion of the quote above is: "the sky is made of water" (and it is on a cloudy day
PS: Because I can make the argument does not mean I agree with it
Yeah but you have to get past Peter at the front door.
"Christianity requires you to actually actively fight for a satisfactory understanding of God"
This is what they claim but what they teach is that you can't understand God, God "just is" and it's no use trying to figure out why he does what he does. "God works in mysterious ways" so it's best not to think to hard about things you don't understand and just accept "God's will", besides, if you don't he will crush you like a grape.
I accept that reading bible stories can give you something to think about however religion has done all the thinking for you and they certainly don't want you to come up with your own interpretations. No, the message from the church is - "Just follow the rules and let God do the thinking" - and many people get a great sense of relief from doing just that (ask any drill sergeant).
"In the few cases where someone really needs to use memcpy instead of relying on a library"
First of all, memcpy IS a libary call.
"but they should have to explain their need and the benefit over using a higher level wrapper to lots and lots of people."
One source tree, many O/S's. Memcpy is a ANSI C library call, I have been using it for more than 20yrs without a problem. IF MS want to pop up a warning that tells me my source will compile on gcc I can't stop them from doing so.
"Generic, boring and frankly badly composed"
My computer says you have no taste.
Thanks Uncle Buck.