Grid computing has been a target for IT developers and scientists for more than five years. It allows scientists to access computer power and data from around the world seamlessly, without needing to know where the computers are.
The key word here is "seamlessly." The problem with a world grid is the latency introduced by communication between nodes. If a computation is dependent on results from another computation happening half way around the world, I cannot see how a world grid can compete against a linux cluster. Besides, unless there is provision for redundancy (sorry, I did not read the entire article), a critical node may be down due to a power outage or something as mundane as the cleaning people turning off the computer. This would bring everything to a halt.
Also good for generating hydrogen for fuel cells
on
China Goes Nuclear
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· Score: 1
China is showing that it is forward-thinking enough to look beyond fossil fuels for its electricity. This can only be good for the environment and global warming in particular.
And it seems to be the cleanest and cheapest way to generate all the hydrogen that our hydrogen powered vehicles are going to use in the next several decades.
I told myself it was in all likelihood nothing special, but I'm still disappointed. Darn.
I think it is about time the world realizes that the ETs have been here all along and we are their handiwork. They've left us an important message which we refuse to acknowledge. We willfully blind ourselves to it. Why? Because we want an ET of our own making.
Look at it this way: The singularity already happened and the visible universe is the result. The real ETs are way too advanced to use cheesy low-tech EM signals for communication.
Most if not all of the manned space missions could be better accomplished by robots.
Yes. It would not only be less expensive but it would spur research in robotics and AI. In my opinion, AI research is a lot more important to humanity than space research. After all, it has been said that true AI is the invention to end all inventions.
If we get true AI, our space program would benefit immnesely from superior intelligence and a non-political approach to space exploration. Unless of course, our machines become political as well. That would not surprise me much but, at least, we would expect a lot more efficiency from robots than from the people (humans?) at NASA.
Of course he describes all the models before he concludes that from the three models, Word Shape Recognition (oldest), Serial Letter Recognition and Parallel Letter Recognition (newest), the latter is the one that is today the most accepted model.
In my opinion, the main conclusion which can be drawn from this research is that the brain is a discrete temporal signal processing machine. During eye saccades, signals are sent to the brain in a certain order. The brain cannot recognize anything unless the generated sensory signals arrive in an order which has already been learned from experience.
It is known that our vision becomnes severely impaired if the eye is prevented from moving. We are not much different than frogs and lizards in this regard. Temporal order expectation is the key aspect of recognition. This is true for all sorts of sensory modalities, not just for visual stimuli.
Yes, I saw that, but your objects are algorithmic. I saw AND gates and OR gates and other gates, built up into more complicated objects. Welcome to the world of algorithms.
You still don't get it. It is not the use of an algorithm that leads to unreliable software. It is the accumulation of many algorithms. Reliability decreases as the number of algorithms increases. In COSA there is only one algorithm. Adding a new software object does not add a new algorithm in COSA as it would in a conventional programming environment. For those of you who do get it, here's the link to the site:The Silver Bullet
PS. Thanks to all of you who have contacted me to offer your support and comments. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to answer all of your emails. Too many of them. But I'll give it a try.
They go on and on about how bad algorithms are... and create an alternate system that still runs on algorithms
The point of the article completely went over your head. I guess it is my fault for not being clear enough. But then again, one can never please the entire world. I'll give it a try.
Since a von Neumann computer is a sequential machine, algorithms cannot be eliminated. This is obvious to everybody. But, due to the availability of fast CPUs, one can easily emulate parallel systems in a computer. This is done all the time (e.g., neural networks, simulation programs, video games, etc...).
Note that using an algorithm does not necessarily mean bad software. A simple algorithm can certainly be reliable. It is when you use a lot of algorithms that the reliability problem increases proportionately and, at times, exponentially.
The idea is to minimize the number of algorithms as much as possible. In COSA, there is only one algorithm, the execution kernel, a very simple program which can be made bug-free through thorough testing. No new algorithmic code is ever allowed. At the application development level, it is all synchronous software objects.
In the future, when we develop non-von Neumann computers, there will no longer be a need for an execution kernel as all software objects will be self-running.
Fact 1: The most important factor in software work is not the tools or techniques used by the programmers, but rather the quality of the programmers themselves.
This may be true as far as conventional algorithmic programming is concerned. But the reason that algorithmic programming is wrong-headed has to do with this well-known fact:
Fact 31: Error removal is the most time-consuming phase of the life cycle.
Why is this true? It is because there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we program our computers. It has to do with the old practice of using the algorithm as the basis of software engineering. For an alternative approach to software construction, check out the info at this site: The Silver Bullet
it will only take ~ 5 Billion to build the first one
And a few hundred dollars to buy a small bomb to bring it all down, miles upon miles of it crashing to the earth. The space elevator is a cool idea but not in this hate-filled world. Too dangerous.
Sun Micrososystems evangelist Simon Phipps explores the metaphor of subscription (well, of course it's not just a metaphor any more from Sun's point of view) as the way that companies will make money off of deploying open source solutions.
This is not the way free/open source software should be approached, IMO. Nobody is going to make much money by trying to sell something that users can get for free. You can sell a service based on the software but that's about it.
The way to approach free software is for the big users of software (i.e., corporations) to form software development consortiums whose sole reason for being is to develop open software for its members. The cost of development should be shared among the members of the consortium. Of course, if you're not a paying member, you don't get the timely updates and you don't get the informed support. You have to wait until they make it out to general public. Just an idea.
Cooperation is always better than competition. Let us be humane toward members of our own species for a change.
Copying and sharing are like breathing. You can't regulate it. If you try, freedom will pop up when you least expect it and kick you in the ass for trying.
The only way to get rid of all the stupid copyright and patent laws in the world is for everybody on the planet to download it all and copy it all. Now, go arrest the world. The internet is a global thing. You can't control it with local laws.
IP laws are stupid because our economic systems are stupid. What will happen when intelligent machines start inventing things. Who will own the copyright then? And what will you do when you are no longer needed to do anything, i.e., when your labor and expertise is worthless? Any economic system based on labor is stupid. That includes both capitalism and communism.
You're right, although I don't think that was the main subject of the movie. But then again, I may be wrong again. Blade Runner touched on so many things, it's hard to unravel them and isolate the most important.
Millenium Man was a disaster, a stupid and annoying movie, IMO. I did not like A.I. either. Now Blade Runner was cool, especially the robot played by Rutger Hauer. However, I am not really interested in human-looking robots per se. I am more interested in their philosophy and motivation. In I, Robot, for example, we saw a little bit of the machines's (Viki) mind and rationale. Same thing in Blade Runner.
It would be cool to have a robot who did not know he was one, go on a hate-filled rampage against other robots, only to find out later that he/she is a robot as well. Can a machine have remorse? Would it self-destruct like Star Trek's Nomad?
One of the great things that Star Wars has over Star Trek is that Lucas uses a lot of robots in his films whereas smart robots are almost non-existent (except for Data and Nomad). Enterprise should have been filled with all sorts of robots.
I think it is about time that somebody does a major sci-fi movie from the robot's point of view. Also I would like to see a lot more attention spent on the villain. The nice thing about the old Star Wars was that Darth Vader was much more prominent in the screeplay. He was really cool.
So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?
The amygdala than this. It is responsible for love, hate, fear (all sorts of phobias), tastes, etc... We must understand that we do not control our emotions, as much as we would like to think that we do. Intelligence and reason are always at the service of emotion. In other words, the amydala is the real boss of our brains.
A "more active amygdala" can be good or bad or noth. It may mean that one is more compassionate or more hateful. It may mean that one is very creative or a complete nut. Artists, in general, have amore active amygdala. This probably is the reason that hollywood is liberal and artistically talented at the same time.
A very nice point. However I am not sure it works. Some of the earth's own mass is shielded so the orbit is slightly larger than it ought to be, so the gravitational pull on the sun side is slightly lower and that on the shielded side slightly higher than it should be. This will at least reduce any effect.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is getting much more complex than I originally thought.
If gravity is (very slightly) blocked by mass, then one would expect to have a different weight on the dark side of the earth than on the light side. It this observed? After all, if you're on the dark side, the entire mass of the earth should be shielding you (ever so slightly) from the gravitational pull of the sun.
Should we expect people who work hard to write software or create music (or for that matter, anything that can be distributed online) to do so without expecting something in return?
Of course not. Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven and Michael Angelo produced amazing creative work without the protection of artificial laws. How did they do it? They did it because the system was much more cooperative in those days than it is now. Now, we have a dog-eat-dog society where friendly cooperation is considered a sin. The operational motto is "Business is war!" I just don't think IP laws are conducive to good human relations.
The end result is evident all around us. We are at each other's throats on planet earth, more so now than ever.
Why can interested parties form various consortia as the primary method of sponsoring research? Why can't artists be sponsored freely by their fans and admirers? Do a concert if you're a musician. Sell your original artwork if you are a painter. Don't sell me a copy that cost you a few cents to make for thrity bucks. But the IP problem is much deeper than that. It is a symptom the sick economic and societal system we have been using for centuries. We have a system based on labor (i.e., slavery) where most of the income producing land is owned by a few and capital is allotted to a few. We need a system based on land ownership where everybody has free and equal access to capital, not just a bunch of banks who get to lend it to private borrowers on interest.
There is more to it than that, but I'll stop here for now. In conclusion, let me say that social cooperation leads to peace, brotherhood and good will. Greed and selfishness lead to war.
Is it really any wonder why the likes of the RIAA wants to hunt you down??
You got it backwards, chupacabra. We are hunting the RIAA down. And We won't let up. If you can't put chains on it, or put a fence around it or defend it with a police state, I got news for you: Like the air that we breathe, once you relase it, it belongs to nobody and everybody.
If you don't believe me, go ask the kid on the sidewalk in Hanoi or Rio who's selling MS Office right now for less than five bucks a copy. Go ask the millions of people who are using a free copy of Adobe Photoshop or MS Windows. You can't stop it.
This goes to show that the more you try to chase freedom away with a bunch of stupid intellectual property laws, the more it comes back galloping. You just can't beat freedom.
The internet is the last frontier of freedom. It is the lastest kink in the armor of a sick system that wants to take away your remaining liberties one by one. Don't let them take the internet away away from you. It is a global system and they can't control it with local laws. Do your file sharing stuff in a different country if you have to. Download it all and copy it all!
Your spouse might telecommute -- perhaps half of all white-collar workers will do so in 2014 -- but you might still have to physically go to your office. Along the way you'll take your kids to school.
I doubt this very much. Prediction: We will have an AI breakthrough within a few years. In ten years, you and your spouse will be replaced by a machine and will join millions of others on the unemployment line. Unless, of course, the Big Brother government du jour steps in and bars intelligent machines from the work place. Lots of luck to them, because other nations will not follow suit. Interesting times ahead.
On the other hand, supercomputers are purpose-built to handle HPC applications, which place enormous demands on both processing power and inter-processor communication. Their design includes high performance interconnects that provide high bandwidth, low-latency communications across the entire system, regardless of the number of processors required.
Why can't Linux clusters use the same high performance interconnects? Is it because of cable overhead (length, signal travel, insulation, etc...) or is it because of slow electronic switching? Why can't optical linkage provide the same low-latency interconnect performance as that of supercomputers. Somebody tell me, please. I need to know.
I was going to say that this would be perfect for spying on the enemy in the battlefield until I saw this. You would probably need at least 30 minutes of flight time to make this viable as a battlefield spying device.
Having said that, what are other possible applications of this technology? Any ideas?
Slashdot Mirror
Grid computing has been a target for IT developers and scientists for more than five years. It allows scientists to access computer power and data from around the world seamlessly, without needing to know where the computers are.
The key word here is "seamlessly." The problem with a world grid is the latency introduced by communication between nodes. If a computation is dependent on results from another computation happening half way around the world, I cannot see how a world grid can compete against a linux cluster. Besides, unless there is provision for redundancy (sorry, I did not read the entire article), a critical node may be down due to a power outage or something as mundane as the cleaning people turning off the computer. This would bring everything to a halt.
China is showing that it is forward-thinking enough to look beyond fossil fuels for its electricity. This can only be good for the environment and global warming in particular.
And it seems to be the cleanest and cheapest way to generate all the hydrogen that our hydrogen powered vehicles are going to use in the next several decades.
I told myself it was in all likelihood nothing special, but I'm still disappointed. Darn.
I think it is about time the world realizes that the ETs have been here all along and we are their handiwork. They've left us an important message which we refuse to acknowledge. We willfully blind ourselves to it. Why? Because we want an ET of our own making.
Look at it this way: The singularity already happened and the visible universe is the result. The real ETs are way too advanced to use cheesy low-tech EM signals for communication.
Most if not all of the manned space missions could be better accomplished by robots.
Yes. It would not only be less expensive but it would spur research in robotics and AI. In my opinion, AI research is a lot more important to humanity than space research. After all, it has been said that true AI is the invention to end all inventions.
If we get true AI, our space program would benefit immnesely from superior intelligence and a non-political approach to space exploration. Unless of course, our machines become political as well. That would not surprise me much but, at least, we would expect a lot more efficiency from robots than from the people (humans?) at NASA.
Of course he describes all the models before he concludes that from the three models, Word Shape Recognition (oldest), Serial Letter Recognition and Parallel Letter Recognition (newest), the latter is the one that is today the most accepted model.
In my opinion, the main conclusion which can be drawn from this research is that the brain is a discrete temporal signal processing machine. During eye saccades, signals are sent to the brain in a certain order. The brain cannot recognize anything unless the generated sensory signals arrive in an order which has already been learned from experience.
It is known that our vision becomnes severely impaired if the eye is prevented from moving. We are not much different than frogs and lizards in this regard. Temporal order expectation is the key aspect of recognition. This is true for all sorts of sensory modalities, not just for visual stimuli.
In COSA there is only one algorithm.
Your saying it does not make it true.
Your persistent denial does not make it false.
Good luck.
From you? I'll pass.
Yes, I saw that, but your objects are algorithmic. I saw AND gates and OR gates and other gates, built up into more complicated objects. Welcome to the world of algorithms.
You still don't get it. It is not the use of an algorithm that leads to unreliable software. It is the accumulation of many algorithms. Reliability decreases as the number of algorithms increases. In COSA there is only one algorithm. Adding a new software object does not add a new algorithm in COSA as it would in a conventional programming environment. For those of you who do get it, here's the link to the site:The Silver Bullet
PS. Thanks to all of you who have contacted me to offer your support and comments. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to answer all of your emails. Too many of them. But I'll give it a try.
They go on and on about how bad algorithms are... and create an alternate system that still runs on algorithms
The point of the article completely went over your head. I guess it is my fault for not being clear enough. But then again, one can never please the entire world. I'll give it a try.
Since a von Neumann computer is a sequential machine, algorithms cannot be eliminated. This is obvious to everybody. But, due to the availability of fast CPUs, one can easily emulate parallel systems in a computer. This is done all the time (e.g., neural networks, simulation programs, video games, etc...).
The Silver Bullet
Note that using an algorithm does not necessarily mean bad software. A simple algorithm can certainly be reliable. It is when you use a lot of algorithms that the reliability problem increases proportionately and, at times, exponentially.
The idea is to minimize the number of algorithms as much as possible. In COSA, there is only one algorithm, the execution kernel, a very simple program which can be made bug-free through thorough testing. No new algorithmic code is ever allowed. At the application development level, it is all synchronous software objects.
In the future, when we develop non-von Neumann computers, there will no longer be a need for an execution kernel as all software objects will be self-running.
Fact 1: The most important factor in software work is not the tools or techniques used by the programmers, but rather the quality of the programmers themselves.
This may be true as far as conventional algorithmic programming is concerned. But the reason that algorithmic programming is wrong-headed has to do with this well-known fact:
Fact 31: Error removal is the most time-consuming phase of the life cycle.
Why is this true? It is because there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we program our computers. It has to do with the old practice of using the algorithm as the basis of software engineering. For an alternative approach to software construction, check out the info at this site: The Silver Bullet
it will only take ~ 5 Billion to build the first one
And a few hundred dollars to buy a small bomb to bring it all down, miles upon miles of it crashing to the earth. The space elevator is a cool idea but not in this hate-filled world. Too dangerous.
Sun Micrososystems evangelist Simon Phipps explores the metaphor of subscription (well, of course it's not just a metaphor any more from Sun's point of view) as the way that companies will make money off of deploying open source solutions.
This is not the way free/open source software should be approached, IMO. Nobody is going to make much money by trying to sell something that users can get for free. You can sell a service based on the software but that's about it.
The way to approach free software is for the big users of software (i.e., corporations) to form software development consortiums whose sole reason for being is to develop open software for its members. The cost of development should be shared among the members of the consortium. Of course, if you're not a paying member, you don't get the timely updates and you don't get the informed support. You have to wait until they make it out to general public. Just an idea.
Cooperation is always better than competition. Let us be humane toward members of our own species for a change.
I don't really see copying textbooks as wrong
Copying and sharing are like breathing. You can't regulate it. If you try, freedom will pop up when you least expect it and kick you in the ass for trying.
The only way to get rid of all the stupid copyright and patent laws in the world is for everybody on the planet to download it all and copy it all. Now, go arrest the world. The internet is a global thing. You can't control it with local laws.
IP laws are stupid because our economic systems are stupid. What will happen when intelligent machines start inventing things. Who will own the copyright then? And what will you do when you are no longer needed to do anything, i.e., when your labor and expertise is worthless? Any economic system based on labor is stupid. That includes both capitalism and communism.
You're right, although I don't think that was the main subject of the movie. But then again, I may be wrong again. Blade Runner touched on so many things, it's hard to unravel them and isolate the most important.
Millenium Man was a disaster, a stupid and annoying movie, IMO. I did not like A.I. either. Now Blade Runner was cool, especially the robot played by Rutger Hauer. However, I am not really interested in human-looking robots per se. I am more interested in their philosophy and motivation. In I, Robot, for example, we saw a little bit of the machines's (Viki) mind and rationale. Same thing in Blade Runner.
It would be cool to have a robot who did not know he was one, go on a hate-filled rampage against other robots, only to find out later that he/she is a robot as well. Can a machine have remorse? Would it self-destruct like Star Trek's Nomad?
One of the great things that Star Wars has over Star Trek is that Lucas uses a lot of robots in his films whereas smart robots are almost non-existent (except for Data and Nomad). Enterprise should have been filled with all sorts of robots.
I think it is about time that somebody does a major sci-fi movie from the robot's point of view. Also I would like to see a lot more attention spent on the villain. The nice thing about the old Star Wars was that Darth Vader was much more prominent in the screeplay. He was really cool.
So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?
The amygdala than this. It is responsible for love, hate, fear (all sorts of phobias), tastes, etc... We must understand that we do not control our emotions, as much as we would like to think that we do. Intelligence and reason are always at the service of emotion. In other words, the amydala is the real boss of our brains.
A "more active amygdala" can be good or bad or noth. It may mean that one is more compassionate or more hateful. It may mean that one is very creative or a complete nut. Artists, in general, have amore active amygdala. This probably is the reason that hollywood is liberal and artistically talented at the same time.
A very nice point. However I am not sure it works. Some of the earth's own mass is shielded so the orbit is slightly larger than it ought to be, so the gravitational pull on the sun side is slightly lower and that on the shielded side slightly higher than it should be. This will at least reduce any effect.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is getting much more complex than I originally thought.
If gravity is (very slightly) blocked by mass, then one would expect to have a different weight on the dark side of the earth than on the light side. It this observed? After all, if you're on the dark side, the entire mass of the earth should be shielding you (ever so slightly) from the gravitational pull of the sun.
Should we expect people who work hard to write software or create music (or for that matter, anything that can be distributed online) to do so without expecting something in return?
Of course not. Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven and Michael Angelo produced amazing creative work without the protection of artificial laws. How did they do it? They did it because the system was much more cooperative in those days than it is now. Now, we have a dog-eat-dog society where friendly cooperation is considered a sin. The operational motto is "Business is war!" I just don't think IP laws are conducive to good human relations.
The end result is evident all around us. We are at each other's throats on planet earth, more so now than ever.
Why can interested parties form various consortia as the primary method of sponsoring research? Why can't artists be sponsored freely by their fans and admirers? Do a concert if you're a musician. Sell your original artwork if you are a painter. Don't sell me a copy that cost you a few cents to make for thrity bucks. But the IP problem is much deeper than that. It is a symptom the sick economic and societal system we have been using for centuries. We have a system based on labor (i.e., slavery) where most of the income producing land is owned by a few and capital is allotted to a few. We need a system based on land ownership where everybody has free and equal access to capital, not just a bunch of banks who get to lend it to private borrowers on interest.
There is more to it than that, but I'll stop here for now. In conclusion, let me say that social cooperation leads to peace, brotherhood and good will. Greed and selfishness lead to war.
Is it really any wonder why the likes of the RIAA wants to hunt you down??
You got it backwards, chupacabra. We are hunting the RIAA down. And We won't let up. If you can't put chains on it, or put a fence around it or defend it with a police state, I got news for you: Like the air that we breathe, once you relase it, it belongs to nobody and everybody.
If you don't believe me, go ask the kid on the sidewalk in Hanoi or Rio who's selling MS Office right now for less than five bucks a copy. Go ask the millions of people who are using a free copy of Adobe Photoshop or MS Windows. You can't stop it.
This goes to show that the more you try to chase freedom away with a bunch of stupid intellectual property laws, the more it comes back galloping. You just can't beat freedom.
The internet is the last frontier of freedom. It is the lastest kink in the armor of a sick system that wants to take away your remaining liberties one by one. Don't let them take the internet away away from you. It is a global system and they can't control it with local laws. Do your file sharing stuff in a different country if you have to. Download it all and copy it all!
Why mod me funny? It may sound funny to you but I am as serious as can be.
Your spouse might telecommute -- perhaps half of all white-collar workers will do so in 2014 -- but you might still have to physically go to your office. Along the way you'll take your kids to school.
I doubt this very much. Prediction: We will have an AI breakthrough within a few years. In ten years, you and your spouse will be replaced by a machine and will join millions of others on the unemployment line. Unless, of course, the Big Brother government du jour steps in and bars intelligent machines from the work place. Lots of luck to them, because other nations will not follow suit. Interesting times ahead.
On the other hand, supercomputers are purpose-built to handle HPC applications, which place enormous demands on both processing power and inter-processor communication. Their design includes high performance interconnects that provide high bandwidth, low-latency communications across the entire system, regardless of the number of processors required.
Why can't Linux clusters use the same high performance interconnects? Is it because of cable overhead (length, signal travel, insulation, etc...) or is it because of slow electronic switching? Why can't optical linkage provide the same low-latency interconnect performance as that of supercomputers. Somebody tell me, please. I need to know.
I was going to say that this would be perfect for spying on the enemy in the battlefield until I saw this. You would probably need at least 30 minutes of flight time to make this viable as a battlefield spying device.
Having said that, what are other possible applications of this technology? Any ideas?