[ExI] cyprus banks

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 05:52:28PM +0100, Tomasz Rola wrote:

> Oh. I think hardware was a king in 1940-s, after that software became a 

Hard tasks remain computation-limited, and hardware limits the amount
of computation. This is the reason why http://top500.org sees
to much attention (even though LINPACK is a crappy, biased
benchmark -- the only way to make sure is run your own problem).

> king. I mean, doing new functionality was relegated to software, and 
> hardware was more and more expected to just execute software fast(er) and 
> reliable(r).

This might have happened in some alternative universe, but not in
this universe.
 
> Therefore exciting oneself with great developments in hardware domain 
> (true, there is amazing amount of Nobel-level thinking, I admit) is kind 
> of like boasting about faster and faster cars, not telling there is not so 
> many places to drive them to.

If you want to reach the stars in nogeological times you need
to do better than chemical rockets.
 
> When one looks at software, I might be biased but if there is any kind of 
> amazingly steady curve, I wouldn't say it is upwards.

There is no fundamental progress in software. The progress in hardware has
recently been limited, especially since Moore has ended.
 
> So unless you, predictators reading my words :-), want to build 
> Singularity out of transistors (doomed by design, too many elements, 

Transistors would do fine, but we've ran into scale limits.

> requires higher level Singularity to build it), you should rather think of 
> other ways. Just MHO.
> 
> For a start, few words from Niklaus Wirth:
> 
> - "Reliable and transparent programs are usually not in the interest of 
>   the designer."
> 
> - "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster."

There is no fundamental difference between hardware and software.
At the hight end there's no software, only hardware, and its state.