It seems to me that clustering quantum computers is likely to have the same effect as clustering classical computers, since there is no quantum effect involved in the clustering.
It'll be interesting to see what consequences this result will have on quantum computing. If the tipping point between the quantum and the classical world is something fundamental to physics and cannot be overcome, that means there is a limit to how big quantum computers can be. And if there is such a limit, will the largest possible quantum computers be any useful or does it mean that the whole field of quantum computing amounted to nothing?
There is nothing that says that a functional language needs to have automatic memory management (such as garbage collection). The kind of language design I have in mind would not.
Yes, I know. Your point is entirely valid. I just wish there weren't so much inertia in the field of programming languages. Programmers could start learning languages with a syntax different from C and with a funkier (more powerful) semantics. It will make them better programmers. But I guess I just have to keep on dreaming about this.
Sigh.....
It really hurts my language designer nerve when I see the state of shading languages. They are all supposedly based on C, which is total nonsense. Only the syntax looks like C, the semantics is much more like Ada than anything else. And then there is the question of whether C or Ada are the most suitable language to mimic in this situation. I think not. Shading computations are inherently functional. Any shader is easily and succinctly specified as a mathematical formula. I think that should be reflected in the shading language as well. Design the language so that it is suitable for its application! It is a truism that functional languages are much better suited in modelling these kinds of mathematical equations that C or Ada (although C and Ada both have their merits as well in other areas).
</rant>
OK. Well I just needed to get that off my chest. I feel much better already.
I just hope for Google's sake they don't make Google Wallet a Beta when they first release it. I wouldn't trust my money to something that said Beta on it. When all your money suddenly disappears you'll get some more guarantees than just: "Sorry, this service is still in Beta and don't say we didn't warn you".
I said: Just because the idea came from M$ doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from it.
Parent said: Yes it does. Can you honestly believe Microsoft hasn't already applied for a dozen patents over this?
I do not believe that Microsoft has applied for a dozen patents already. Why? I know two people who works at Microsoft research in Cambridge. They've told me how they do research there. The researcher there are not in Microsofts leash, the pretty much do what they are interested in. Any contact with normal Microsoft happens on the initiative of the researcher NOT the top guys in Redmond. It is pretty much like any research institute.
I realize that this might be hard for some anti-Microsoft people to accept. I don't like Microsoft either but it won't work to spread FUD about them as the parent did. If we do that then we are no better than them.
There's been a lot of comments about how M$ will try to compete with BitTorrent and how the whole idea sucks just because it originates from M$.
BUT. There is nothing stopping Bram Cohen from incorporating these new ideas into a future version of BitTorrent. The ideas behind Avalanche ARE good and would improve BitTorrent just as they claim. Just because the idea came from M$ doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from it.
.. a set of riddles that require a little bit of Python programming to be solved.
Cross out the "Python" above. There is no need to use Python to solve these puzzles. I use Haskell. Some other language might work for someone else. There is nothing Python specific about the challenges. But they are indeed quite amusing.
Hasn't this feature been around for a while? Old new on/. again.
Anyway, I tried searching on area codes. It works well except I would expect it to link to Google Maps. Instead it gives me Whitepages.com. Seems a bit odd. Why would Google want to link to their own map?
Like many other posters I'm not totally impressed with this piece of work. I guess that ever since programming languages have been around people have tried the idea of programming a computer with natural language. But natural language is inherently bad for this task due to its imprecision.
There is some related work which I find much more convincing. It's the work on Grammatical Framework (GF). GF is a programming language for writing multi lingual grammars. In GF you can if you wish specify the relation between a natural language and a programming language and write programs in the natural language. But that would not be idiomatic GF. Instead they have an editor where you can construct your natural language text out of a number of choices which makes sense in that particular context. The GF guys have also made successful experiments with converting OCL specification to and from several natural languages such as English, Swedish and German.
But the MIT people seem to have one big talent for making publicity. And I'll give them credit for that.
I was a bit disappointed with these ten points. I live in Sweden and compared to our standards this list isn't that impressive. Our mobilephones work everywhere and they cost you 10 cents to buy (honestly!). We have computer seating maps in the theaters and movie theaters. And parking signs contain the number of free spaces.
Sure, we don't have everything on the list though. I'd love to have those intelligent stop lights for instance.
I guess the bottom line is that Canada is pretty far behind.
"Premature optimization is the root to all evil"
No you simply don't want a company which puts speed in the first room. It is very hard to get fast code right. I'd rather have well working slow code than buggy fast code.
Sure, it is possible to write fast correct code but very few people can. And I wouldn't want all companies to try that.
OK, so we're all impressed with the speed at which they can compile and boot the kernel. But if we really are looking for speed this is not what we want. TCC generates pretty bad code. So even if the machine is booting quickly every thing else will be slower since the kernel is compiled with a poor compiler.
Duh!
I attended the ICFP conference where Paul gave his invited talk. When I first heard that we was invited I was very much excited and hoped for a talk on the advantages of functional programming in industry. Something along the lines of his essay "beating the averages". So when he starts to talk about "the bubble" I was a little disappointed.
However, Paul is a very entertaining speaker. He did not use any visual aid at all but it still wasn't boring for a single minute. He kept pacing backwards and forwards as he talked about all the things you read in his essay. I must say I found it pretty interesting even though it was not my topic of choice.
Well, when we got time to ask him questions after the talk the discussion went more towards functional programming as you would expect at a functional programming conference. So I got what I was hoping for in the end. I heartly recommend Pauls writings about why one should use a more high level language in production.
A language such as Java can do it, but tail-call optimization sets the stack pointer to the original stack pointer of the preceeding call. Thus giving the current function to the last function's stack address space, which can be a security problem.
Indeed it is problematic to mix stack inspection as in Java with tail recursion (Here I'm refering to languages like Scheme which promise to give you tail recursion.) But they can actually work together. See the paper "A Tail-Recursive Machine with Stack Inspection" on the following page:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/scheme/pubs/cf-toplas04.pdf
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that clustering quantum computers is likely to have the same effect as clustering classical computers, since there is no quantum effect involved in the clustering.
It'll be interesting to see what consequences this result will have on quantum computing. If the tipping point between the quantum and the classical world is something fundamental to physics and cannot be overcome, that means there is a limit to how big quantum computers can be. And if there is such a limit, will the largest possible quantum computers be any useful or does it mean that the whole field of quantum computing amounted to nothing?
There is nothing that says that a functional language needs to have automatic memory management (such as garbage collection). The kind of language design I have in mind would not.
Yes, I know. Your point is entirely valid. I just wish there weren't so much inertia in the field of programming languages. Programmers could start learning languages with a syntax different from C and with a funkier (more powerful) semantics. It will make them better programmers. But I guess I just have to keep on dreaming about this.
Sigh.....
It really hurts my language designer nerve when I see the state of shading languages. They are all supposedly based on C, which is total nonsense. Only the syntax looks like C, the semantics is much more like Ada than anything else. And then there is the question of whether C or Ada are the most suitable language to mimic in this situation. I think not. Shading computations are inherently functional. Any shader is easily and succinctly specified as a mathematical formula. I think that should be reflected in the shading language as well. Design the language so that it is suitable for its application! It is a truism that functional languages are much better suited in modelling these kinds of mathematical equations that C or Ada (although C and Ada both have their merits as well in other areas).
</rant>
OK. Well I just needed to get that off my chest. I feel much better already.
I just hope for Google's sake they don't make Google Wallet a Beta when they first release it. I wouldn't trust my money to something that said Beta on it. When all your money suddenly disappears you'll get some more guarantees than just: "Sorry, this service is still in Beta and don't say we didn't warn you".
I said: Just because the idea came from M$ doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from it.
Parent said: Yes it does. Can you honestly believe Microsoft hasn't already applied for a dozen patents over this?
I do not believe that Microsoft has applied for a dozen patents already. Why? I know two people who works at Microsoft research in Cambridge. They've told me how they do research there. The researcher there are not in Microsofts leash, the pretty much do what they are interested in. Any contact with normal Microsoft happens on the initiative of the researcher NOT the top guys in Redmond. It is pretty much like any research institute.
I realize that this might be hard for some anti-Microsoft people to accept. I don't like Microsoft either but it won't work to spread FUD about them as the parent did. If we do that then we are no better than them.
There's been a lot of comments about how M$ will try to compete with BitTorrent and how the whole idea sucks just because it originates from M$.
BUT. There is nothing stopping Bram Cohen from incorporating these new ideas into a future version of BitTorrent. The ideas behind Avalanche ARE good and would improve BitTorrent just as they claim. Just because the idea came from M$ doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from it.
It is really not that difficult to write that function yourself.
Cross out the "Python" above. There is no need to use Python to solve these puzzles. I use Haskell. Some other language might work for someone else. There is nothing Python specific about the challenges. But they are indeed quite amusing.
Reeta Skeeter. Anyone else had that association?
Anyway, I tried searching on area codes. It works well except I would expect it to link to Google Maps. Instead it gives me Whitepages.com. Seems a bit odd. Why would Google want to link to their own map?
There is some related work which I find much more convincing. It's the work on Grammatical Framework (GF). GF is a programming language for writing multi lingual grammars. In GF you can if you wish specify the relation between a natural language and a programming language and write programs in the natural language. But that would not be idiomatic GF. Instead they have an editor where you can construct your natural language text out of a number of choices which makes sense in that particular context. The GF guys have also made successful experiments with converting OCL specification to and from several natural languages such as English, Swedish and German.
But the MIT people seem to have one big talent for making publicity. And I'll give them credit for that.
I was a bit disappointed with these ten points. I live in Sweden and compared to our standards this list isn't that impressive. Our mobilephones work everywhere and they cost you 10 cents to buy (honestly!). We have computer seating maps in the theaters and movie theaters. And parking signs contain the number of free spaces.
Sure, we don't have everything on the list though. I'd love to have those intelligent stop lights for instance.
I guess the bottom line is that Canada is pretty far behind.
Cables are living organisms. I fold them neatly and put them in a box. The next time I open the box its a complete mess.
"Premature optimization is the root to all evil"
No you simply don't want a company which puts speed in the first room. It is very hard to get fast code right. I'd rather have well working slow code than buggy fast code.
Sure, it is possible to write fast correct code but very few people can. And I wouldn't want all companies to try that.
OK, so we're all impressed with the speed at which they can compile and boot the kernel. But if we really are looking for speed this is not what we want. TCC generates pretty bad code. So even if the machine is booting quickly every thing else will be slower since the kernel is compiled with a poor compiler. Duh!
I attended the ICFP conference where Paul gave his invited talk. When I first heard that we was invited I was very much excited and hoped for a talk on the advantages of functional programming in industry. Something along the lines of his essay "beating the averages". So when he starts to talk about "the bubble" I was a little disappointed. However, Paul is a very entertaining speaker. He did not use any visual aid at all but it still wasn't boring for a single minute. He kept pacing backwards and forwards as he talked about all the things you read in his essay. I must say I found it pretty interesting even though it was not my topic of choice. Well, when we got time to ask him questions after the talk the discussion went more towards functional programming as you would expect at a functional programming conference. So I got what I was hoping for in the end. I heartly recommend Pauls writings about why one should use a more high level language in production.
My thesis on programming books:
No matter how many books there are in a particular subject you can only find about 5 books that are good.
My colleauges thinks that 5 is an overestimation. Anyway, it's nice to hear about yet another good programming book. I'll make sure to check it out.
A language such as Java can do it, but tail-call optimization sets the stack pointer to the original stack pointer of the preceeding call. Thus giving the current function to the last function's stack address space, which can be a security problem.
f
Indeed it is problematic to mix stack inspection as in Java with tail recursion (Here I'm refering to languages like Scheme which promise to give you tail recursion.) But they can actually work together. See the paper "A Tail-Recursive Machine with Stack Inspection" on the following page:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/scheme/pubs/cf-toplas04.pd