So, I guess the flu virus ain't a virus either, under the reasoning you exhibit above?
AIDS is not a virus, but "AIDS virus" simply means "the virus that causes AIDS", just as "flu virus" means "the virus that causes the flu". Of course, the actual _name_ of the "AIDS virus" is HIV.
The person writing the phrase "AIDS virus" knows what he means, as does everyone reading the phrase. There's not even anything misleading about it: AIDS referes to a syndrome which is caused by infection by HIV, and the phrase AIDS virus is just a reference to human immunodeficiency virus - nothing misleading about it. While I would prefer that someone refer to HIV as simply HIV, calling it the AIDS virus is not wrong.
"AIDS vaccine" is slightly misleading, for the reason you give, but it is also a case of everyone involved knowing precisely what is meant, and no actual confusion is likely to result.
+5 informative my arse. The above is not unlike complaining about the usage of who versus whom in some random sentence.
(This post brought to you by a lack of coffee and a distaste for grammar fascism and related disorders.)
There may, in truth, be a relationship between physical entropy and informational entropy but the relationship has not yet been discovered, as this article would lead us to believe. If it ever is discovered, the form of the relationship will certainly not be as simple as is stated here.
Well, I entirely ommitted Lloyd's calculation for this (as I said in the article). It's too technical to include in an article on a tech enthusiast site like Ars. It's quite followable, mind you, but technical enough that I didn't think it belonged in the article.
I invite you to read Lloyd's paper for yourself, and examine his approach. If you find fault with his math and physics, well, congrats!:) I'd suggest that you let Lloyd know about this, and certainly announce the results of your analysis here. An extra pair of eyes looking at Lloyd's fascinating ideas is good.
Now, it is quite possible that I have made errors in my article. I've gone to some pains to avoid them, but things might have slipped through anyway. One never knows.
However, I do not think the matter you raise is an error. Allow me to try to explain.
First, you must keep in mind that the article is an exploration of theoretical limits, not practical ones. Practical considerations are well and good if you want to actually build such devices, but that isn't what I was intending to explore. What I wanted to talk about (and did talk about) are the absolute maximum speed limits for computers. These are almost guaranteed to be ridiculous and impractical, but as a limiting case, I think that they are still interesting.
The calculation is based on the idea that 1kg of matter has a certain maximum energy associated with it, and that maximum energy is given by Einstein's formula. Because it turns out that the theoretical speed limit of a 'computer' (which as the term is used in the article is simply anything that processes information, basically - particular architectures aren't considered) can be related to the time-energy uncertainty from quantum mechanics, it is then necessary to find out how much energy a given lump of matter can contain. And that's given by the whole E = mc^2 business.
Of course this limit is not practical. It's a theoretical upper bound. I haven't the faintest idea as to how you'd go about converting 1kg of matter into energy controllably (without, say, temporarily warming up the climate of the city you're working in), or how you'd control it enough to make it compute something you're interested in, and so on. The point isn't to look at the practical limits (those are better looked at from the perspective of current technology, i.e., Moore's law and whatnot, in my opinion), but rather the general theoretical limit.
Just as a note, you may want to look at Lloyd's paper, as the ideas for the calculation are his, and I'm just summarizing and reporting them. (Lloyd's paper, by the way, is very well written, and it's recommended reading for just about anyone who isn't scared away by some equations).
But if the above explanation doesn't satisfy you, please post why, and perhaps you can convince me that I (and Lloyd) are in error.
Language is great. But it's not always the best approach. In real life, people don't generally sit there, in one place, and _just_ talk all day. People move around, handle objects, and interact with the world through physical means. In fact, we're kind of evolved to seek out and use physical feedback in our interactions with the world around us. Merely talking at the world isn't enough for most people, in most applications.
Now, there _are_, of course, some cases where people can get away with just 'talking' at the world and be productive. Like programming, generally, and writing, and perhaps things like theoretical physics and mathematics, where you write strings of formulas (language!). But this already gets borderline, because you have to start visualizing these things, drawing graphs, and then you end up _building_ physical models to test your equations.
If an activity is heavily abstaracted from the physical, then just language can be enough. The closer to the physical you get, the more you need to use other ways of interaction, like touching, or seeing, or smelling, or pointing, or whatever.
Some people, in some professions, rely on abstract 'language' heavily. The mathematicians, physicists, the engineers in some ways - people like that. To them, this abstract way of interacting with the 'world' is simple, natural, elegant, and powerful. I lean that way myself. These sorts of people were the ones who _invented_ computers, who created the first user interfaces. And naturally, these interfaces were very heavily language oriented. (The fact that anything else was basically not feasible on the hardware of the time was of course another factor).
But it is very important to see that most people are _not_ in professions that are heavily abstracted from the physical. They do _not_ use abstract thought, abstract language to interact with their world, not nearly as much as the coders and scientists. Their lives are far closer to the physical, and abstract text, memory-based commands, atomicity, etc, etc, are just _alien_. They aren't trained to think in these ways. They prefer more visceral interactions, like taking things in through vision (and not just the 'vision' that is used to see text, which then has to parsed and absorbed - vision as in seeing things move, seeing data visually represented, actually _seeing_ your tools, and seeing them in some more-or-less familiar form). They want to be able to grab things and drag them to where they want them to be. And so on, and so forth.
And so some sort of graphical user interface becomes necessary. And command-line interfaces are 'bad' here, because these people aren't familiar with the very modes of thought it takes to use one, and they don't want to learn - they don't see why they should have to, if there's another, more comfortabe way. And so we have the spectacular success of the Mac model of GUI.
This drastic change in user interfaces, from the heavily abstract to the far more 'intuitive', visceral interface allowed great numbers of people to use computers in their daily lives who hadn't a hope of doing so before. This was far from a 'dumbing down'. That's rank elitism. This was the 'eligatarinization' (not a word, I know) of computing. And computers _were_ useful to these people's lives. Word processors, spreadsheets, drawing, games, email, the internet, and the many 'killer apps' did a lot of good for a lot of people.
These people that rushed into computing with the coming of the Mac-style interfaces were not, and are not, any dumber than the geeks that had been using them before. They were, and are, simply _different_.
And there are a hell of a lot more of them then of us geeks. To deny them the means to use computers easily so that we can hang on to our elite self-image, trying to remold them in our own image ("Our way or the highway") strikes me as wrong.
Command-line interfaces have their strengths and weaknesses. So do GUIs. The problem is, some people just _can't_, or won't (which is really the same thing) use the command-line interfaces. In fact, it's not 'some', it's 'most'. Which is why there's such a dominance of GUI-emphasis OSes.
And until Linux and its ilk learn to be so GUIfied that essentially any typical-user-land task can be done in the GUI, without having to go the command-line, it will not become mainstream. You don't have to give up the CLI, of course. You just have to make the GUI good enough that people don't _have_ to use the command-line to work productively. Until then, Linux will not be a big success on the desktop. And the elitism displayed by the community only serves to turn potential users away.
Use a Bussard ramjet in interstellar space (i.e, use interstellar gas as a propellant).
Naively, Bussard ramjets would use magnetic fields to form a 'scoop', and the magnetic bubble idea uses B fields, so perhaps the two types of propulsion complement each other nicely?
-Geon
The content providers on TV for instance are paid to run the ad whether *you* watch the ads or not. Therefore, they lose no money if *you* turn away from the TV during commercials.
It is different on the web. Content providers are typically paid per impression (i.e., the more downloads of a company's banner, the more the content provider gets paid).
By not downloading the banners, and yet still consuming the content provider's content, you *are* stealing from them - i.e., you get their content without them getting paid for it.
It may not be illegal as such, but it is certainly immoral.
I understand and share the concerns about privacy issues. I also don't like pop-ups. But are there not better solutions to this than completely blocking the ability of content providers to support themselves?
Remember, There Ain't NO Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
I've found that for me it is easier to communicate most things by email type stuff. I have a much better sense of humor when writing (I can carefully construct each joke and pun to achieve maximum effect). I am far less likely to put my foot far up my mouth - email and other written forms of communication allow plenty of time to think, consider, and assemble any arguments.
There are some things online, written communication is unsuited for. But there is a lot that it works well with. At least for me.
a black hole weapon really would be devastating. So devastating, in fact, its use would be suicide.
There is a book, Forge of God by John Barnes (a good read), where a couple of mini-black-holes are dropped onto the earth's surface by malicious aliens.
The two black holes start eating through the earth, spriraling in towards the Earth's center, growing all the while. There, they meet and merge, liberating enough energy to blow the earth to hell.
1). He knows he is ignorant. No need to point it out.
2). He is like most users, therefore his experience is valuable info.
3). I don't think he really should have known all this stuff. I mean, the guy probably just used his pc for word, email, the web, and maybe a game or two. There is really no need for him to learn all of this stuff.
4). Don't wail about stupid users - you were once like that too. More importantly, you have to realize that most people don't give a rats ass about the insides of their computers, and don't want to. Just cause you like to putz about with arcane stuff doesn't mean others do.
5). This was supposed to be funny - and I think it was hilarious. So those of you planning to roast the guy, get the sticks out of your ass.
This kind of a preemptive strike directed at the very vocal majority who always seem to take these things to heart. I don't mean to offend anyone.
err... You're saying 28.8K and 56K modems are not in common use? Get real. The overwhelming majority uses them. So a 11Mb/s connection would kick (although they would have to upgrade to someting like a DSL or cable to get that kind of speed). Point is, if you buy a few ibooks, and happen to have DSL, you can have a wireless network, running at ethernet speeds. No way that is commonplace.
Some are saying that be does not like open source and linux, and so on. There is overwhelming evidence to the contrary (be has denied this many times and said that they like linux (see their FAQ). However, in the June 16 1999 issue of their newslette rthey have an article that seems to me to show be's ideas on linux, and also their great sense of humor (hilarious bits are scattered throughout their newsletters -- look up "The Cow Piano"). Also, this issue of the newsletter contains stuff about BeOS kernel programming, for those intersted.
/*disclaimer -- i am getting my numbers from the top of my head -- I am merely trying to make a logical point*/
well, if you were to do a survey of 1000 random computer users, I am pretty sure that you would find one person who knows how to programm (maybe none -- Remember, the *vast* majority of computer users just run internet, word and excel, and that's it about it.) Of any decent programmers, I would say maybe somewhere around 20% are advanced enough to be able to actually *use* the source code of a commercial application. (a good percentage of programmers are casual dabblers, students, etc)
Basically, what I am trying to say that the people who can't *use* the source won't care about open source simply because it is open source. (I'd like to see someone sell software by saying "well, if you (the user) think it sucks, you can hope that maybe someone else will improve it".
Very well said (and perfectly correct). Unfortunately a majority of the people on slashdot don't seem to see it this way, and jist of their comments are rather offensive (or distasteful) to non-Linux users. (ex: your priorities are different from mine, therefore you are evil, stupid, lazy, crazy, and etc).
Sigh. Why can't we all just get along and be open minded?
Slashdot Mirror
So, I guess the flu virus ain't a virus either, under the reasoning you exhibit above?
AIDS is not a virus, but "AIDS virus" simply means "the virus that causes AIDS", just as "flu virus" means "the virus that causes the flu". Of course, the actual _name_ of the "AIDS virus" is HIV.
The person writing the phrase "AIDS virus" knows what he means, as does everyone reading the phrase. There's not even anything misleading about it: AIDS referes to a syndrome which is caused by infection by HIV, and the phrase AIDS virus is just a reference to human immunodeficiency virus - nothing misleading about it. While I would prefer that someone refer to HIV as simply HIV, calling it the AIDS virus is not wrong.
"AIDS vaccine" is slightly misleading, for the reason you give, but it is also a case of everyone involved knowing precisely what is meant, and no actual confusion is likely to result.
+5 informative my arse. The above is not unlike complaining about the usage of who versus whom in some random sentence.
(This post brought to you by a lack of coffee and a distaste for grammar fascism and related disorders.)
Thanks for the feedback.
You said:
Well, I entirely ommitted Lloyd's calculation for this (as I said in the article). It's too technical to include in an article on a tech enthusiast site like Ars. It's quite followable, mind you, but technical enough that I didn't think it belonged in the article.I invite you to read Lloyd's paper for yourself, and examine his approach. If you find fault with his math and physics, well, congrats! :) I'd suggest that you let Lloyd know about this, and certainly announce the results of your analysis here. An extra pair of eyes looking at Lloyd's fascinating ideas is good.
Cheers,
-Geon
geonSPAM@ISBADarstechnica.com
First, thanks for the feedback.
Now, it is quite possible that I have made errors in my article. I've gone to some pains to avoid them, but things might have slipped through anyway. One never knows.
However, I do not think the matter you raise is an error. Allow me to try to explain.
First, you must keep in mind that the article is an exploration of theoretical limits, not practical ones. Practical considerations are well and good if you want to actually build such devices, but that isn't what I was intending to explore. What I wanted to talk about (and did talk about) are the absolute maximum speed limits for computers. These are almost guaranteed to be ridiculous and impractical, but as a limiting case, I think that they are still interesting.
The calculation is based on the idea that 1kg of matter has a certain maximum energy associated with it, and that maximum energy is given by Einstein's formula. Because it turns out that the theoretical speed limit of a 'computer' (which as the term is used in the article is simply anything that processes information, basically - particular architectures aren't considered) can be related to the time-energy uncertainty from quantum mechanics, it is then necessary to find out how much energy a given lump of matter can contain. And that's given by the whole E = mc^2 business.
Of course this limit is not practical. It's a theoretical upper bound. I haven't the faintest idea as to how you'd go about converting 1kg of matter into energy controllably (without, say, temporarily warming up the climate of the city you're working in), or how you'd control it enough to make it compute something you're interested in, and so on. The point isn't to look at the practical limits (those are better looked at from the perspective of current technology, i.e., Moore's law and whatnot, in my opinion), but rather the general theoretical limit.
Just as a note, you may want to look at Lloyd's paper, as the ideas for the calculation are his, and I'm just summarizing and reporting them. (Lloyd's paper, by the way, is very well written, and it's recommended reading for just about anyone who isn't scared away by some equations).
But if the above explanation doesn't satisfy you, please post why, and perhaps you can convince me that I (and Lloyd) are in error.
Cheers, -Geon
geonSPAM@arsISBORINGtechinca.com
I can't say I agree.
Language is great. But it's not always the best approach. In real life, people don't generally sit there, in one place, and _just_ talk all day. People move around, handle objects, and interact with the world through physical means. In fact, we're kind of evolved to seek out and use physical feedback in our interactions with the world around us. Merely talking at the world isn't enough for most people, in most applications.
Now, there _are_, of course, some cases where people can get away with just 'talking' at the world and be productive. Like programming, generally, and writing, and perhaps things like theoretical physics and mathematics, where you write strings of formulas (language!). But this already gets borderline, because you have to start visualizing these things, drawing graphs, and then you end up _building_ physical models to test your equations.
If an activity is heavily abstaracted from the physical, then just language can be enough. The closer to the physical you get, the more you need to use other ways of interaction, like touching, or seeing, or smelling, or pointing, or whatever.
Some people, in some professions, rely on abstract 'language' heavily. The mathematicians, physicists, the engineers in some ways - people like that. To them, this abstract way of interacting with the 'world' is simple, natural, elegant, and powerful. I lean that way myself. These sorts of people were the ones who _invented_ computers, who created the first user interfaces. And naturally, these interfaces were very heavily language oriented. (The fact that anything else was basically not feasible on the hardware of the time was of course another factor).
But it is very important to see that most people are _not_ in professions that are heavily abstracted from the physical. They do _not_ use abstract thought, abstract language to interact with their world, not nearly as much as the coders and scientists. Their lives are far closer to the physical, and abstract text, memory-based commands, atomicity, etc, etc, are just _alien_. They aren't trained to think in these ways. They prefer more visceral interactions, like taking things in through vision (and not just the 'vision' that is used to see text, which then has to parsed and absorbed - vision as in seeing things move, seeing data visually represented, actually _seeing_ your tools, and seeing them in some more-or-less familiar form). They want to be able to grab things and drag them to where they want them to be. And so on, and so forth.
And so some sort of graphical user interface becomes necessary. And command-line interfaces are 'bad' here, because these people aren't familiar with the very modes of thought it takes to use one, and they don't want to learn - they don't see why they should have to, if there's another, more comfortabe way. And so we have the spectacular success of the Mac model of GUI.
This drastic change in user interfaces, from the heavily abstract to the far more 'intuitive', visceral interface allowed great numbers of people to use computers in their daily lives who hadn't a hope of doing so before. This was far from a 'dumbing down'. That's rank elitism. This was the 'eligatarinization' (not a word, I know) of computing. And computers _were_ useful to these people's lives. Word processors, spreadsheets, drawing, games, email, the internet, and the many 'killer apps' did a lot of good for a lot of people.
These people that rushed into computing with the coming of the Mac-style interfaces were not, and are not, any dumber than the geeks that had been using them before. They were, and are, simply _different_.
And there are a hell of a lot more of them then of us geeks. To deny them the means to use computers easily so that we can hang on to our elite self-image, trying to remold them in our own image ("Our way or the highway") strikes me as wrong.
Command-line interfaces have their strengths and weaknesses. So do GUIs. The problem is, some people just _can't_, or won't (which is really the same thing) use the command-line interfaces. In fact, it's not 'some', it's 'most'. Which is why there's such a dominance of GUI-emphasis OSes.
And until Linux and its ilk learn to be so GUIfied that essentially any typical-user-land task can be done in the GUI, without having to go the command-line, it will not become mainstream. You don't have to give up the CLI, of course. You just have to make the GUI good enough that people don't _have_ to use the command-line to work productively. Until then, Linux will not be a big success on the desktop. And the elitism displayed by the community only serves to turn potential users away.
Cheers,
-Geon
Use a Bussard ramjet in interstellar space (i.e, use interstellar gas as a propellant). Naively, Bussard ramjets would use magnetic fields to form a 'scoop', and the magnetic bubble idea uses B fields, so perhaps the two types of propulsion complement each other nicely? -Geon
look here: http://www.benews.com/story/3270.7.html
That comparison to TV/radio does not work.
The content providers on TV for instance are paid to run the ad whether *you* watch the ads or not. Therefore, they lose no money if *you* turn away from the TV during commercials.
It is different on the web. Content providers are typically paid per impression (i.e., the more downloads of a company's banner, the more the content provider gets paid).
By not downloading the banners, and yet still consuming the content provider's content, you *are* stealing from them - i.e., you get their content without them getting paid for it.
It may not be illegal as such, but it is certainly immoral.
I understand and share the concerns about privacy issues. I also don't like pop-ups. But are there not better solutions to this than completely blocking the ability of content providers to support themselves?
Remember, There Ain't NO Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
-Geon
Have a look here:e ase12.htm
http://www.manhattsci.com/media_center/pressrel
It looks like these guys came up with basically the same thing, a year ago.
At the time I was posting there were 0 (zero) replies to the article. Apparently the script that generates the page had not updated yet.
Some time significantly AFTER I posted, someone finally posted a link to the preprint of the paper - which is what I was asking for.
The reason I had to ask for info is that the slashdot peeps didn't put up a link to any substance-filled info, like a preprint.
Seriously, think before you loose the flames - otherwise you tend to make an idiot of yourself.
Boors like you is the reason I've grown to be highly critical of slashdot.
sounds fascinating, but we have a few more details?
Also, would stuff like this be observable? ie what effects would something like this have?
I dunno. You're right of course, but...
I've found that for me it is easier to communicate most things by email type stuff. I have a much better sense of humor when writing (I can carefully construct each joke and pun to achieve maximum effect). I am far less likely to put my foot far up my mouth - email and other written forms of communication allow plenty of time to think, consider, and assemble any arguments.
There are some things online, written communication is unsuited for. But there is a lot that it works well with. At least for me.
a black hole weapon really would be devastating. So devastating, in fact, its use would be suicide.
There is a book, Forge of God by John Barnes (a good read), where a couple of mini-black-holes are dropped onto the earth's surface by malicious aliens.
The two black holes start eating through the earth, spriraling in towards the Earth's center, growing all the while. There, they meet and merge, liberating enough energy to blow the earth to hell.
Using black holes as weapons is suicide.
Cheers,
Geon
sorry, I meant minority, not majority. Majority is pretty reasonable, but minority is very loud.
1). He knows he is ignorant. No need to point it out.
2). He is like most users, therefore his experience is valuable info.
3). I don't think he really should have known all this stuff. I mean, the guy probably just used his pc for word, email, the web, and maybe a game or two. There is really no need for him to learn all of this stuff.
4). Don't wail about stupid users - you were once like that too. More importantly, you have to realize that most people don't give a rats ass about the insides of their computers, and don't want to. Just cause you like to putz about with arcane stuff doesn't mean others do.
5). This was supposed to be funny - and I think it was hilarious. So those of you planning to roast the guy, get the sticks out of your ass.
This kind of a preemptive strike directed at the very vocal majority who always seem to take these things to heart. I don't mean to offend anyone.
Cheers, Geon
err... You're saying 28.8K and 56K modems are not in common use? Get real. The overwhelming majority uses them. So a 11Mb/s connection would kick (although they would have to upgrade to someting like a DSL or cable to get that kind of speed). Point is, if you buy a few ibooks, and happen to have DSL, you can have a wireless network, running at ethernet speeds. No way that is commonplace.
Cheers,
Geon
They are available. Check this out:
x .zip
ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/contrib/drivers/sb16-0.91-
They are experimental, so be careful, but i heard they work fine.
Look at www.ast.com LEARN before spouting nonsense.
Congratulations. It seems like a good decision, and good luck
Some are saying that be does not like open source and linux, and so on. There is overwhelming evidence to the contrary (be has denied this many times and said that they like linux (see their FAQ). However, in the June 16 1999 issue of their newslette rthey have an article that seems to me to show be's ideas on linux, and also their great sense of humor (hilarious bits are scattered throughout their newsletters -- look up "The Cow Piano"). Also, this issue of the newsletter contains stuff about BeOS kernel programming, for those intersted.
/*disclaimer -- i am getting my numbers from the top of my head -- I am merely trying to make a logical point*/
well, if you were to do a survey of 1000 random computer users, I am pretty sure that you would find one person who knows how to programm (maybe none -- Remember, the *vast* majority of computer users just run internet, word and excel, and that's it about it.) Of any decent programmers, I would say maybe somewhere around 20% are advanced enough to be able to actually *use* the source code of a commercial application.
(a good percentage of programmers are casual dabblers, students, etc)
Basically, what I am trying to say that the people who can't *use* the source won't care about open source simply because it is open source. (I'd like to see someone sell software by saying "well, if you (the user) think it sucks, you can hope that maybe someone else will improve it".
Very well said (and perfectly correct). Unfortunately a majority of the people on slashdot don't seem to see it this way, and jist of their comments are rather offensive (or distasteful) to non-Linux users. (ex: your priorities are different from mine, therefore you are evil, stupid, lazy, crazy, and etc).
Sigh. Why can't we all just get along and be open minded?