However in this thread they are easily recognizable. Mostly it's a lot harder to tell who is talking shit en pick out the few comments that have any value.
>> Intelligence isn't going to make invention obsolete unless there is artificial creativity to go with it.
If the brain in the end appears to be a prediction machine (or may be modeled as such), then it may be very well that creativity and intelligence is just the same thing. My 0.02$.
Holography renders all 3D clues. Every other technique doesn't. For example, how would you hide an object behind an other one using plasma dots? Or create shadows? Therefore, I think, holography is the way to go and will eventually lead to interesting floating 3D images if the screens gets big enough. Though, some tricks are still really neat, like this one http://youtube.com/watch?v=LHj_9koofm8&mode=relate d&search= but it's still a trick, while holography (the kind of invented by Dennis Gabor) is not. Though, this one http://youtube.com/watch?v=iOKS8_QFooM is still pretty impressive too and works by focussing dots of light in front of the screen.
This is indeed stuff from February 2006 or before. Somewhat remarkable that in an age that so many people have access to the internet and ideas spread around the globe at more or less the speed of light, we'll sometimes still find ourselves in a sense gazing at a 30 km per hour locomotive in mid eighteenth century England.
The article is called "Monkeys miss out on music". But the article was about monkeys, not chimps. My mistake. But then again, except for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the bonobo and the orangutan, every other species is as distant or more distant from the human system as the monkey in the article. i.e. I doubt that a cow will feel more at ease, while listening to classical music. So, I guess it includes all species except the four I just mentioned plus the human. The tie between music and language, I can not find. I can find some articles if I do a Google search, but I'm not sure which one I've read.
I would like to add that music is thought to be tied to the human language system. Therefore it has no meaning to non humans. For example, if chimps are given the choice between two corners, one with pleasing music and the other with dissonant chords, they don't seem to differentiate and don't seem to care which corner to sit in.
we have also created new and beautiful ways to see the world through art, music, literature and performance
Although I wish it were true, there's actually no absolute value in that. Without humans, these intellectual achievements have no meaning. Meaning only exist in the mind of other humans.
> All our fashionable worries and all our prevailing dogmas will probably be obsolete > in fifty years. My heresies will probably also be obsolete. It is up to [the people of > 2070] to find new heresies to guide our way to a more hopeful future.'
The Great Filter (Drake's equation) teaches us that the number of other intelligent civilizations in our Galaxy alone is expected to be anything from several to tens of thousands at any given time. This equation is I think from the sixties. But Fermi could do his maths and figured this number during the war already. What Fermi's paradox teaches us is not that we are alone, but that something is preventing us from seeing it.
True. Our EM leakage is not decipherable beyond Pluto. For an outsider far away, we're just some star with a tiny tiny tiny amount of added noise in the radio spectrum. See http://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.6.FAQ
Babbage had lots of excuses. First of all, Babbage was a very wealthy man, who didn't need government funding to begin with.
Then Babbage did build a prototype, which worked flawlessly and which he used in numerous public occasions. He even programmed it to perform 'miracles' (disturbances in continuity that up till then was only thought possible by the act of God). "Darwin saw that if apparently inexplicable discontinuities could really be the result of a system of mechanical laws laid down in advance, then here was a useful analogue of the way new species could emerge entirely through natural law."
Then one of his Difference Engines (not the small proto, but a real one) was pretty much done. It could have been finished and assembled in a short period of time if conflicts had been solved (see below). But instead, this machine was in the end melted down!
Babbage got MAJOR issues. He was effectively moving a mountain with his bare hands.
Conflict of interests. He had a fierce enemy by the name of Airy. This man, who had to decide about the funding of Babbage's engines, called the machines worthless and made fun of it. He didn't like Babbage and he was willing to make things clear.
The unit of length was different for every workshop. So Babbage could not switch manufacturer. Which proved to be disastrous as Babbage and Clement didn't get along too well. For example, Clement insisted on Babbage paying for the making of his tools (nowadays, if you can't make it, you don't get the job). Also Clement didn't wanted to return Babbage's drawings (in these times of intellectual property this is absolutely unheard of).
Frequent change of government. So, momentum was lost over and over.
Babbage wanted to make something useful. He thought he needed a processor equivalent to 166 bits today. Absurd, but how could he have known? He needed to invent everything. For example his anticipatory carriage. The modern look ahead carry. The only difference was that this carry did look ahead the full 50 decimal figures. Try that with electronic gates. You will be able to do that for maybe 4 bits, then you have to cascade and ripple your carry. Well, for Babbage, this took some time apparently. For the rest of the world it took another 100 years. Can you blame him?
And many more issues. There's a lot of factual info on Babbage if you're willing to search for it. For example stuff written by Simon Schaffer.
CMOS gates do not draw current when idle, either. They only draw current when they switch. The slower they switch, the less power they use. So, what's the difference? The issue, I think, is that CMOS is just about moving some electrons. While a mechanical switch is about moving nuclei, which happen to be 2000 times havier. Considering Newton's F=m*a, this kind of swiching doesn't look fast nor energy efficient.
I understand this machine as being nano-electro-mechanical, i.e. some sort of relay computer. However, I don't understand how it could be that it uses less power compared to CMOS at equal switching speeds. Accelerating mass is costly, much more so for nuclei then electrons.
I've found some backup as apparently a few MIT guys in the late 70s also thought is was necessary to spent at least SOME time and persistance to be able to describe the game.
"Silverman analyzed the game. To appreciate the complexities involved even in this childhood pastime, readers might consult the game tree shown on the opposite page."
Well... you know... I have this magazine that dates from June 1953, called Practical Mechanics. It has the most charming and quaint article about an 'electronic brain' (1953 right). It is an electrical machine that actually plays tic tac toe. The only prerequisite is that the human plays first. Then either you loose or the game ends in a draw.
It has a static memory build out of nine disks, that contains the way the game should be played and has to be rotated (progressed) after each move. It has also has a 'perception unit', which keeps track of the current state of the game. This is in fact memory created out of metal balls (the noughts and crosses) creating a short circuit in the field. So, this game has actually several moving parts already just to play a forced game (but well thought out) that it could not lose (remember that the game tree already was cut drastically by forcing the player to go first).
I also know of an other toy computer, the Geniac, which was more versatile, and could also play tic tac toe. Let me challenge you to write a usable flow chart or something without searching the internet first (I bet there was no internet when you were 7). It really isn't that easy if you think about it. I know Charles Babbage once thought about building a mechanical version, but I don't know if any drawings of it exist. Also, it is much harder to write a program that occasionally loses than one that will never lose.
Me think a 7 year old can not solve a game of tic tac toe unless it has an IQ high enough to skip several grades. The game is easy to explain and play, but not as obvious to solve as it may look like.
Most programmers are just filthy people that don't apply the basic rules of user interface hygiene. Particularly regarding the access of functions without a mouse. It's often just not there, the TAB sequence is wrong or enter is given by either ENTER, F3 or F8, depending on the state of the program. Writing algorithms is easy. Interfacing with the user is hard.
Slashdot Mirror
> we will see again that nations look up to other nations that appear to be at the top of the technical pyramid
I think they're 50 years too late. What's next? China inventing the lightbulb and showing it off in Menlo Park?
However in this thread they are easily recognizable. Mostly it's a lot harder to tell who is talking shit en pick out the few comments that have any value.
I remember him from this article (had to buy it on paper, no internet that I was aware of then) http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products. ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=5FB5779F-4127-45C5 -9197-183F52218F0
>> all of our whizzy supercomputer centers and so forth, are powered by coal for the most part.
We haven't come such a long way after all since Babbage was planning on running his engines by steam.
>> It may be that machine intelligence will ultimately replace human
>> intelligence, but it may be that it will simply be too resource hungry
Remember this one? -> 'Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.'
>> Intelligence isn't going to make invention obsolete unless there is artificial creativity to go with it.
If the brain in the end appears to be a prediction machine (or may be modeled as such), then it may be very well that creativity and intelligence is just the same thing. My 0.02$.
Holography renders all 3D clues. Every other technique doesn't. For example, how would you hide an object behind an other one using plasma dots? Or create shadows? Therefore, I think, holography is the way to go and will eventually lead to interesting floating 3D images if the screens gets big enough. Though, some tricks are still really neat, like this one http://youtube.com/watch?v=LHj_9koofm8&mode=relate d&search= but it's still a trick, while holography (the kind of invented by Dennis Gabor) is not. Though, this one http://youtube.com/watch?v=iOKS8_QFooM is still pretty impressive too and works by focussing dots of light in front of the screen.
This is indeed stuff from February 2006 or before. Somewhat remarkable that in an age that so many people have access to the internet and ideas spread around the globe at more or less the speed of light, we'll sometimes still find ourselves in a sense gazing at a 30 km per hour locomotive in mid eighteenth century England.
The article is called "Monkeys miss out on music". But the article was about monkeys, not chimps. My mistake. But then again, except for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the bonobo and the orangutan, every other species is as distant or more distant from the human system as the monkey in the article. i.e. I doubt that a cow will feel more at ease, while listening to classical music. So, I guess it includes all species except the four I just mentioned plus the human. The tie between music and language, I can not find. I can find some articles if I do a Google search, but I'm not sure which one I've read.
don't you think force feeding geese is fun?
I would like to add that music is thought to be tied to the human language system. Therefore it has no meaning to non humans. For example, if chimps are given the choice between two corners, one with pleasing music and the other with dissonant chords, they don't seem to differentiate and don't seem to care which corner to sit in.
we have also created new and beautiful ways to see the world through art, music, literature and performance
Although I wish it were true, there's actually no absolute value in that. Without humans, these intellectual achievements have no meaning. Meaning only exist in the mind of other humans.
I never liked Mike and Mitch anyway
> All our fashionable worries and all our prevailing dogmas will probably be obsolete
> in fifty years. My heresies will probably also be obsolete. It is up to [the people of
> 2070] to find new heresies to guide our way to a more hopeful future.'
In the meantime let's grow fat and watch tv.
Would this be semantically valid patch for your holiday shots? http://www1.sch.im/wlp/large%20images/beaver%20nat %20geo.jpg
The Great Filter (Drake's equation) teaches us that the number of other intelligent civilizations in our Galaxy alone is expected to be anything from several to tens of thousands at any given time. This equation is I think from the sixties. But Fermi could do his maths and figured this number during the war already. What Fermi's paradox teaches us is not that we are alone, but that something is preventing us from seeing it.
True. Our EM leakage is not decipherable beyond Pluto. For an outsider far away, we're just some star with a tiny tiny tiny amount of added noise in the radio spectrum. See http://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.6.FAQ
Babbage had lots of excuses. First of all, Babbage was a very wealthy man, who didn't need government funding to begin with.
Then Babbage did build a prototype, which worked flawlessly and which he used in numerous public occasions. He even programmed it to perform 'miracles' (disturbances in continuity that up till then was only thought possible by the act of God). "Darwin saw that if apparently inexplicable discontinuities could really be the result of a system of mechanical laws laid down in advance, then here was a useful analogue of the way new species could emerge entirely through natural law."
Then one of his Difference Engines (not the small proto, but a real one) was pretty much done. It could have been finished and assembled in a short period of time if conflicts had been solved (see below). But instead, this machine was in the end melted down!
Babbage got MAJOR issues. He was effectively moving a mountain with his bare hands.
Conflict of interests. He had a fierce enemy by the name of Airy. This man, who had to decide about the funding of Babbage's engines, called the machines worthless and made fun of it. He didn't like Babbage and he was willing to make things clear.
The unit of length was different for every workshop. So Babbage could not switch manufacturer. Which proved to be disastrous as Babbage and Clement didn't get along too well. For example, Clement insisted on Babbage paying for the making of his tools (nowadays, if you can't make it, you don't get the job). Also Clement didn't wanted to return Babbage's drawings (in these times of intellectual property this is absolutely unheard of).
Frequent change of government. So, momentum was lost over and over.
Babbage wanted to make something useful. He thought he needed a processor equivalent to 166 bits today. Absurd, but how could he have known? He needed to invent everything. For example his anticipatory carriage. The modern look ahead carry. The only difference was that this carry did look ahead the full 50 decimal figures. Try that with electronic gates. You will be able to do that for maybe 4 bits, then you have to cascade and ripple your carry. Well, for Babbage, this took some time apparently. For the rest of the world it took another 100 years. Can you blame him?
And many more issues. There's a lot of factual info on Babbage if you're willing to search for it. For example stuff written by Simon Schaffer.
CMOS gates do not draw current when idle, either. They only draw current when they switch. The slower they switch, the less power they use. So, what's the difference? The issue, I think, is that CMOS is just about moving some electrons. While a mechanical switch is about moving nuclei, which happen to be 2000 times havier. Considering Newton's F=m*a, this kind of swiching doesn't look fast nor energy efficient.
I understand this machine as being nano-electro-mechanical, i.e. some sort of relay computer. However, I don't understand how it could be that it uses less power compared to CMOS at equal switching speeds. Accelerating mass is costly, much more so for nuclei then electrons.
I've found some backup as apparently a few MIT guys in the late 70s also thought is was necessary to spent at least SOME time and persistance to be able to describe the game.
n kertoyComputer/TinkerToy.html
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/Ti
"Silverman analyzed the game. To appreciate the complexities involved even in this childhood pastime, readers might consult the game tree shown on the opposite page."
Well... you know... I have this magazine that dates from June 1953, called Practical Mechanics. It has the most charming and quaint article about an 'electronic brain' (1953 right). It is an electrical machine that actually plays tic tac toe. The only prerequisite is that the human plays first. Then either you loose or the game ends in a draw.
It has a static memory build out of nine disks, that contains the way the game should be played and has to be rotated (progressed) after each move. It has also has a 'perception unit', which keeps track of the current state of the game. This is in fact memory created out of metal balls (the noughts and crosses) creating a short circuit in the field. So, this game has actually several moving parts already just to play a forced game (but well thought out) that it could not lose (remember that the game tree already was cut drastically by forcing the player to go first).
I also know of an other toy computer, the Geniac, which was more versatile, and could also play tic tac toe. Let me challenge you to write a usable flow chart or something without searching the internet first (I bet there was no internet when you were 7). It really isn't that easy if you think about it. I know Charles Babbage once thought about building a mechanical version, but I don't know if any drawings of it exist. Also, it is much harder to write a program that occasionally loses than one that will never lose.
Me think a 7 year old can not solve a game of tic tac toe unless it has an IQ high enough to skip several grades. The game is easy to explain and play, but not as obvious to solve as it may look like.
Most programmers are just filthy people that don't apply the basic rules of user interface hygiene. Particularly regarding the access of functions without a mouse. It's often just not there, the TAB sequence is wrong or enter is given by either ENTER, F3 or F8, depending on the state of the program. Writing algorithms is easy. Interfacing with the user is hard.