[ExI] cyprus banks

Tomasz Rola rtomek at ceti.pl
Fri Mar 22 02:38:37 UTC 2013


On Thu, 21 Mar 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:46:49PM +0100, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> 
[...]
> > trying to minimize negative (like noncompatibility) impact on 
> > software.
> 
> We're not communicating very well here, I think.

Hehe. But we're making some progress, it's something.

[...]
> The Parallella's dual ARM cores are just vestigal appendices on the DSP 
> array, and the FPGA (Zynq 7020). They're auxiliary, all the heavy 
> lifting is done elsewhere.

Ok, this is interesting even if still infant. Thanks.

> > > > 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.
> > 
> > We are not going to have even this, I'm afraid. But this is a 
> > different subject from computing hardware. And I agree on this one.
> 
> Not a different subject, since a metaphor.

Ah. I see. I thought you didn't get my metaphor so I turned metaphoric 
mode off and in effect I didn't get yours.

> I see no progress in software, as long as developing means human
> primates manually massaging data, and jabbering in meetings.

Yes. Unfortunately quite a lot o people thinks this is progress.

> For instance, one of our project is converting images to
> chemical structures. What strikes you about that problem?

Nothing yet. Out of curiosity, what images? By "converting to chemical 
structures", do you mean creating unambiguous description of such 
structures?

> > should receive some positive stimulation, rather than promotion of 
> > trash programming languages whose names start on "J", team work and 
> > other BS.
> 
> I'm happy I don't have to deal with that BS.

Me too. Albeit happiness does not come for free :-/ .

[...]
> > I am not sure if we should dispute much about it all. I wanted just to
> 
> We're not disputing, we're trying to figure out what each of us means. I 
> think we're making progress.

Some progress. Yep.

I think I now understand our disagreement better and it is not 
disagreement actually. More like, in multidimensional space (let's not 
define it too well) the meaning of "high level" is two rather different 
points. Yours is more about raw computing power, right? Mine is, well, I 
guess I have been infected by Lisp bug and it already started to convert 
my mind (despite clear similarity to some veneric disease, this one has a 
strong promise of happy end, although promise and delivery may differ in 
case of each patient). So I am more interested in algorithms, sometimes 
algorithms creating algorithms (this can be upped as many levels as one 
wishes but I am not this high on evolutionary ladder...) and so on. Speed 
is important later, when (if) the program starts doing something 
noticeable.

Wrt to software domination, I think I need to retract my previous 
statements a bit. Long ago, one bud showed me his "pocket clock" stuffed 
in a soap box, built on integrated circuits, diodes and other such stuff. 
I was in awe. It had no buttons, re/setting was done by shortcircuiting 
proper pair of wires. Nowadays, if I was to do such stunt, I'd go with 
some small 8bit cpu, readymade display module and some glue code in 
assembly to drive it. It would've been easier to design and test, and 
change the code until it does what I wanted, rather than solder ICs and 
later sit on the mess of wires, debugging it with multimeter. So there are 
situations where I would love to stay with software even if it was 
overkill in terms of hardware used, power drawn and overall ellegance. On 
the other hand, there is a charm of constructing things out of carefully 
counted number of gates (which I never did, just to be clear).

Actually, given a fact that I am a theoretical solderer, I'd love to stay 
with software every time.

Now, back to original quotation that started this "nondispute":

-  http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html
 
- "Progress in hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last 
  few decades. Based on this trend, I believe that the creation of 
  greater-than-human intelligence will occur during the next thirty 
  years."

I have heard/read this quotation few times over years, and it made me 
increasingly unhappy. It may be true that hardware eventually goes to 
"point S" or however we call it, but I'm afraid it is not going there fast 
enough. I would have been much more happier when someone said something 
like:

 "Progress in _software_ has followed an amazingly steady curve..."

or 

 "Progress in _hardware_ _and_ _software_ has followed an amazingly steady 
curve..."

It would have felt like we were going to somewhere. Software can be 
evolved much faster.

I have looked at the essay and I noticed there were some annotations 
added, so maybe I will be a bit happier when I read them.

Now, I'd rather not go into another iteration of our nondispute on hw vs 
sw. It feels more and more irrelevant, bifurcating and more irrelevant. 
There is a melt of hw and sw and what acts as piece of hw may be actually 
a melt. But for my own use, I will retain the notion that hw != sw. To me, 
hw is bought in a shop and it changes its ways only if this had been 
designed in. Sw is something I myself write in emacs or vim or cat. By 
this definition, Windows is hw but I don't actually care. Well, ok, to be 
exact it is intended to be hw but someone could change its ways if she sat 
on it for long enough. But OTOH, the same could have been said about 
Pentium. Frak it. It sounds idiotic but ok, Windows is hw. One more reason 
to frak it. All the way down to hell.

[...]
> What we need is Avogadro scale computing, which is 3d integrated 
> molecular electronics. Such things will be COTS sometime, but that time 
> is several decades removed yet.

I am not sure what kind of problem you want to solve with it, but even 
such thing moves the limit of possible computation only somewhat further. 
But I would like to have it, too. Actually, I need it too. Even thou I 
don't yet have a soft to keep it warm.

> > unprecedented hardware. We could as well boast about unprecedented 
> > colors of computer chassis. Irrelevant, without software, which nobody 
> > seems to say or aknowledge, AFAIK.
> 
> Modelling physical problems is not particularly demanding, in terms of 
> software complexity. Ideally, it's a direct physical implementation of a 
> particular kernel, as a ring of gates biting their own tails, and only 
> directly talking to similiar ouroboros loops packed in a closest packing 
> on a 3d lattice. Because it's the only game in town, relativistically.

Doeasn't sound optimistic and wasn't meant to be optimistic, I guess.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **



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