Q: How can you design a computer to be better than a human so as to control a passenger aircraft that's so unstable humans are unable to keep it in the air?
A: Don't. The problem with such an aircraft is not that it needs an artificially intelligent control system - it's that it needs to be remade into something it's good at, like tent poles and grounding rods, and leave the flying passengers around to the aircraft that fly well enough to be operated by humans. Don't construct an aircraft for carrying human passengers that is so complex a human cannot command it.
/Of course different rules for military craft. They still put meat pilots in those? I wonder how long that will go on.
When Microsoft twists the arms of OEMs to prevent innovation on netbooks - by proscribing storage, processor and screen size limits - this is what happens. Many OEMs stay inside the limits and sell lots of Microsoft boxes. And the innovators change the rules, gaining a free space to create product differentiation - guaranteeing they get a good return on their investments. Along the way the MS solution cements its reputation - boring and old.
You tell him! Why, all those truly parallel massive Windows supercomputer system installations just blow those Linux boxes in the top500 away when they're doing real work.
Like... Like... help me out here, I'm lost for an example.
Also, the terabyte PCIe attached SSD's are in the market now. If you RAID them you get over 1000 MB/s throughput and latencies around 100 microseconds, in volumes as large as 6TB or more. With reasonable progress from here it's easy to see that disk speed is about to go away as a database design constraint.
Starting one day after computers are granted the right to vote.
Until then let's have people do it. If it's not important enough of an issue for some people to take the time to even count the votes, it's not important enough to put to a vote.
And then we invent some stuff and every fool that just got his AOL account feels qualified to call us an idiot because we didn't do things the way he expected.
Sometimes I like to include circular reasoning that when unlooped points out that I know I'm being a fool. Foolishness is fun sometimes, don't you think?
These days large corporations expect the government to pay for the land their buildings sit on, the buildings themselves, and an annual stipend to cover part of their operating costs. It's like the reverse of taxation.
I believe the quote is "Any idiot can design a bridge that will stand for 30 years. It takes an engineer to design a bridge that stands for exactly 30 years".
I didn't mean to say "functional programming" at all. While I believe in the idea of functional programming, I have to say that, like Scientology, it is a rabid cult best left unmentioned. It would take over the world except that any time two more more members meet they immediately foam at the mouth and fight to the death, which self-limits the contagion. But hell, there are so many symbolic mines in this field it's a tough walk and I'm lucky to have gotten this far without being modded to oblivion.
C was designed by K&R to be useful to them. To be useful to them it needed to be portable from one machine to another and bring its operating system too because platforms were changing quite frequently and every vendor had their own special tools and ways of doing things and if K&R wanted to keep their data they had to bring not just their language to the new platform, but the OS too. So the word I was looking for is more like "useful". Or is that one taken by some cult too?
You know sometimes to put some information into a format that fits in a slashdot post, you have to take some shortcuts - especially if the baby wants the keyboard.
I'm sorry if you think I've taken excessive liberties with the truth. That was not my intent.
Ray, the difference between what he said and what you said is you saying "Hey! I could use (some specific type of) help here!"
If you asked for help here I'm pretty sure you would get it. How can we help? Money? Bodies? Protestors? Pushing your message far and wide? Whatever you need. We're here for you as long as you keep doing what you're doing because we believe in it and you. You're working hard for us. I'm sure some of us have time to work for you.
There toward the end I meant to post this Zen summary:
After all that you begin to realize that the more you know, the more aware you are of the vast expanse of things you don't know. And then I arrive at what you said in 16 simple words, by a long discussion. I guess you're smarter than me.
The support of non-Intel architectures is a facility that's worth money. Since Intel has no interest, either in favor or against in this instance (because spinning it off wouldn't prevent the support of non-Intel architectures), it stands to reason that when economic times are better they'll spin this off without handicap, and at a profit. Because they're not dumb and that's how they play this game. Intel is not Microsoft.
Y'know, since I'm an X certified Y engineer I'm qualified to tell you that you're full of stuff. Not once in the field has a question been multiple choice.
The word engineer is well abused these days, and perhaps fairly so. Michelangelo was an engineer, and he didn't have any certs at all.
Then we learn about functional programming from the guys who invented it: Kernighan and Ritchie. Grok lex and yacc and we're halfway there. After we've written three or four languages we realize their purpose is to formalize our interaction with libraries of prewritten code. Along the way we learn about the importance of portable compilers and the interdependence of portable compilers and portable operating systems and libraries of prewritten code, and the importance of all of those to the persistence of data.
Then we study the evolution of C++ and figure out by ourselves why its inventor Bjarne Stroustroup is a brilliant idiot. (Hint: it has to do with interface hiding).
We join the ACM and read and understand their Communications up until 1990 (anything after that is encumbered by patents). This takes a very long time.
And then we invent some stuff and every fool that just got his AOL account feels qualified to call us an idiot because we didn't do things the way he expected.
How about a rigorous, ever changing, ever intriguing discipline? It already is and will be more so.
If you're an X Certified Y Engineer, you're a technician.
If you can be counted on to design a system that reliably works without killing people, you're an engineer.
If you can observe phenomena, reliably document previously unobserved phenomena, and from that produce useful but not mathematically precise practices or products you're a scientist.
If you can gather observed facts into a sheaf of postulates and a system of symbols that can predict unobserved phenomena, you're a mathematician.
If you can't do any of the above, you can always check bags at LAX for $150K a year.
If you can't get bags from the trunk to the belt, you might consider a position in middle management.
WindRiver has their hand in a lot of stuff. It's incredible that they were available for so cheap. No doubt Intel will spin off the parts they don't want like non-Intel product support, and yield a good profit on the deal just from that. Which makes the software and engineering teams they keep, the patent library and technology sharing deals just a free bonus. That really is brilliant. It's like technology arbitrage, where you realize that the price for something in one place is far less than the price in another place plus shipping so you execute a deal where you keep the difference.
Now that Intel has realized that if they want to get further into your back pocket, they have to get their products into your front pocket phone and media player, your car, your refrigerator and your TV, they're going to be doing more plays like this. They're out of their customary box and suddenly all the world's their oyster. I'm glad for them that their finance arm was late to the party and didn't get to play more than they did in the meltdown of dumbness. Intel is not a finance company. It's a technology company. In this sense, "technology" means building people the tools to do cool and fun new stuff, and letting them do whatever they want with those tools - because people are clever and just because you built them a tool doesn't mean you know every purpose to which they could put it.
This one buy is a master stroke for them - it means they've scanned the markets they're looking at getting into who have not only the most market penetration, but also the best products, and then bought the single one that was the most oversold. Somebody in their executive suite is due a large bonus. I actually expect more of this from them now but the fruit that hangs the lowest is plucked first so I expect they'll get diminishing returns unless they're very lucky or extremely smart. Seeing this, my money's on smart.
/Gotta get me some stock.
//No, I don't work for them and I don't own stock or have options. Yet.
Holy crap! Talk about throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater. I had missed this bit and hope some mod recognizes how informative this is.
Hopefully Intel is bright enough to reorganize the rocket scientists who launched that one into a corner where they can do no more harm. Maybe they have an antarctic thermal development lab, for space products.
Slashdot Mirror
Q: How can you design a computer to be better than a human so as to control a passenger aircraft that's so unstable humans are unable to keep it in the air?
A: Don't. The problem with such an aircraft is not that it needs an artificially intelligent control system - it's that it needs to be remade into something it's good at, like tent poles and grounding rods, and leave the flying passengers around to the aircraft that fly well enough to be operated by humans. Don't construct an aircraft for carrying human passengers that is so complex a human cannot command it.
/Of course different rules for military craft. They still put meat pilots in those? I wonder how long that will go on.
Came here to say this, leaving satisfied.
Seriosly, the guy's problem seems to be that the code doesn't violate any Microsoft patents.
Maybe Google could work that in to shut him up.
It's an interesting story.
When Microsoft twists the arms of OEMs to prevent innovation on netbooks - by proscribing storage, processor and screen size limits - this is what happens. Many OEMs stay inside the limits and sell lots of Microsoft boxes. And the innovators change the rules, gaining a free space to create product differentiation - guaranteeing they get a good return on their investments. Along the way the MS solution cements its reputation - boring and old.
Brilliant!
You tell him! Why, all those truly parallel massive Windows supercomputer system installations just blow those Linux boxes in the top500 away when they're doing real work.
Like... Like... help me out here, I'm lost for an example.
Also, the terabyte PCIe attached SSD's are in the market now. If you RAID them you get over 1000 MB/s throughput and latencies around 100 microseconds, in volumes as large as 6TB or more. With reasonable progress from here it's easy to see that disk speed is about to go away as a database design constraint.
Starting one day after computers are granted the right to vote.
Until then let's have people do it. If it's not important enough of an issue for some people to take the time to even count the votes, it's not important enough to put to a vote.
Bjarne Stroustrup is not any sort of an idiot.
Agreed. He's not.
And then we invent some stuff and every fool that just got his AOL account feels qualified to call us an idiot because we didn't do things the way he expected.
Sometimes I like to include circular reasoning that when unlooped points out that I know I'm being a fool. Foolishness is fun sometimes, don't you think?
Was it too subtle?
Try and see the sarcasm here. It's very subtle.
Like the taxes that paid for this bridge?
These days large corporations expect the government to pay for the land their buildings sit on, the buildings themselves, and an annual stipend to cover part of their operating costs. It's like the reverse of taxation.
Steve, don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya. Bubye.
I believe the quote is "Any idiot can design a bridge that will stand for 30 years. It takes an engineer to design a bridge that stands for exactly 30 years".
Maybe that's what I meant. If you can postulate, formulate and predict without ever having observed a fact, you don't exist.
If you can postulate things that are contradictory to observed facts, you're a shaman?
I didn't mean to say "functional programming" at all. While I believe in the idea of functional programming, I have to say that, like Scientology, it is a rabid cult best left unmentioned. It would take over the world except that any time two more more members meet they immediately foam at the mouth and fight to the death, which self-limits the contagion. But hell, there are so many symbolic mines in this field it's a tough walk and I'm lucky to have gotten this far without being modded to oblivion.
C was designed by K&R to be useful to them. To be useful to them it needed to be portable from one machine to another and bring its operating system too because platforms were changing quite frequently and every vendor had their own special tools and ways of doing things and if K&R wanted to keep their data they had to bring not just their language to the new platform, but the OS too. So the word I was looking for is more like "useful". Or is that one taken by some cult too?
You know sometimes to put some information into a format that fits in a slashdot post, you have to take some shortcuts - especially if the baby wants the keyboard.
I'm sorry if you think I've taken excessive liberties with the truth. That was not my intent.
Ray, the difference between what he said and what you said is you saying "Hey! I could use (some specific type of) help here!"
If you asked for help here I'm pretty sure you would get it. How can we help? Money? Bodies? Protestors? Pushing your message far and wide? Whatever you need. We're here for you as long as you keep doing what you're doing because we believe in it and you. You're working hard for us. I'm sure some of us have time to work for you.
How can we help?
There toward the end I meant to post this Zen summary:
After all that you begin to realize that the more you know, the more aware you are of the vast expanse of things you don't know. And then I arrive at what you said in 16 simple words, by a long discussion. I guess you're smarter than me.
The support of non-Intel architectures is a facility that's worth money. Since Intel has no interest, either in favor or against in this instance (because spinning it off wouldn't prevent the support of non-Intel architectures), it stands to reason that when economic times are better they'll spin this off without handicap, and at a profit. Because they're not dumb and that's how they play this game. Intel is not Microsoft.
Y'know, since I'm an X certified Y engineer I'm qualified to tell you that you're full of stuff. Not once in the field has a question been multiple choice.
The word engineer is well abused these days, and perhaps fairly so. Michelangelo was an engineer, and he didn't have any certs at all.
Don't we all need more experience?
The basics are pretty simple. And by the basics, I mean where Niklaus Wirth got his ideas for the mathematical basis for algorithms, Alan Turing.
Then we learn about functional programming from the guys who invented it: Kernighan and Ritchie. Grok lex and yacc and we're halfway there. After we've written three or four languages we realize their purpose is to formalize our interaction with libraries of prewritten code. Along the way we learn about the importance of portable compilers and the interdependence of portable compilers and portable operating systems and libraries of prewritten code, and the importance of all of those to the persistence of data.
Then we study the evolution of C++ and figure out by ourselves why its inventor Bjarne Stroustroup is a brilliant idiot. (Hint: it has to do with interface hiding).
We join the ACM and read and understand their Communications up until 1990 (anything after that is encumbered by patents). This takes a very long time.
And then we invent some stuff and every fool that just got his AOL account feels qualified to call us an idiot because we didn't do things the way he expected.
How about a rigorous, ever changing, ever intriguing discipline? It already is and will be more so.
It is. You were right.
If you're an X Certified Y Engineer, you're a technician.
If you can be counted on to design a system that reliably works without killing people, you're an engineer.
If you can observe phenomena, reliably document previously unobserved phenomena, and from that produce useful but not mathematically precise practices or products you're a scientist.
If you can gather observed facts into a sheaf of postulates and a system of symbols that can predict unobserved phenomena, you're a mathematician.
If you can't do any of the above, you can always check bags at LAX for $150K a year.
If you can't get bags from the trunk to the belt, you might consider a position in middle management.
You need more of it.
WindRiver has their hand in a lot of stuff. It's incredible that they were available for so cheap. No doubt Intel will spin off the parts they don't want like non-Intel product support, and yield a good profit on the deal just from that. Which makes the software and engineering teams they keep, the patent library and technology sharing deals just a free bonus. That really is brilliant. It's like technology arbitrage, where you realize that the price for something in one place is far less than the price in another place plus shipping so you execute a deal where you keep the difference.
Now that Intel has realized that if they want to get further into your back pocket, they have to get their products into your front pocket phone and media player, your car, your refrigerator and your TV, they're going to be doing more plays like this. They're out of their customary box and suddenly all the world's their oyster. I'm glad for them that their finance arm was late to the party and didn't get to play more than they did in the meltdown of dumbness. Intel is not a finance company. It's a technology company. In this sense, "technology" means building people the tools to do cool and fun new stuff, and letting them do whatever they want with those tools - because people are clever and just because you built them a tool doesn't mean you know every purpose to which they could put it.
This one buy is a master stroke for them - it means they've scanned the markets they're looking at getting into who have not only the most market penetration, but also the best products, and then bought the single one that was the most oversold. Somebody in their executive suite is due a large bonus. I actually expect more of this from them now but the fruit that hangs the lowest is plucked first so I expect they'll get diminishing returns unless they're very lucky or extremely smart. Seeing this, my money's on smart.
/Gotta get me some stock.
//No, I don't work for them and I don't own stock or have options. Yet.
Holy crap! Talk about throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater. I had missed this bit and hope some mod recognizes how informative this is.
Hopefully Intel is bright enough to reorganize the rocket scientists who launched that one into a corner where they can do no more harm. Maybe they have an antarctic thermal development lab, for space products.
Obama's CrackBerry has even better security: it's being operated by somebody who's not stupid.
/Was that a state secret? Should I not have said that?