« "I believe all God's creatures have a soul...except bears, bears are godless killing machines!" | Main | "Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul; woe to the soul that depends on the flesh." »
April 05, 2006
"That war be, and the same is hereby, declared to exist."
Last June, when Apple announced the switch to Intel, the first thought that popped into my head was: "Apple just declared war on Microsoft." Today, that war escalates with Apple's Boot Camp. Boot Camp lets a MacIntel boot Windows. A huge impediment to the adoption of Mac OS by the masses is that testing it requires buying a Mac. Macs are expensive, and it's hard for a PC user to justify buying an expensive computer that's incompatible with all their software. Geeks had already hacked XP to boot, but Apple is bundling all the correct drivers for video, etc., and making the boot process smooth and GUI-tiful. Apple's intention, no doubt, is that users will boot Windows up less and less as they become addicted to the quality experience of OS X. But this is only the first step. Dual-booting is a way for Apple to remove all the kinks Windows might have on Apple hardware. Once Windows is happy in its own runtime environment, the next step is virtual machines. Instead of booting up in Windows, users will boot a Windows runtime environment inside of OS X. Step 3? "There's no step 3!" as Jeff Goldblum put it. But what if there is? Step 3 would be the computing world's nuclear option. Step 3 is Apple reverse-engineering the Windows API like the WINE project has for Linux, allowing Windows applications to launch in OS X itself. But this is all speculation. For now, we only have Boot Camp. Apple's page for Boot Camp is filled with delightful snark. via
With Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world.
Google has a new service called Google Related. via
Google Related Links use the power of Google to automatically bring fresh, dynamic and interesting content links to any website.
By the way, it can also be moved back, according to whatever's politically correct, what show it is and who owns the network. Friends who created American Dad were told they had to remove more egregious anti-Bush comments from their pilot and series. Yet, I'm pretty certain that The Simpsons would be afforded this kind of leeway, since they are a huge money maker for Fox (in the billions when you include merchandising) and they can't afford to lose it.
For years, Linksys's popular WRT series of wireless routers ran Linux. Recently, Linksys switched to an OS called VxWorks, and marked up the Linux routers to $80. Now it looks like you can get Linux to run on the new Linksys WRTs. via
Now based on VxWorks, the WRT54GSv5 and WRT54Gv5 come with a significantly reduced memory architecture and a different firmare setup that many assumed would be impossible to replace with a 3rd party linux solution.
Fascinating Ask MetaFilter thread about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem:
What does all this mean for non-math folks? It is still a topic of hot debate in the logic community. At minimum, it indicates that there are certain things that cannot be reached by language, since even if language is paraconsistent, there exists some consistent formal language that simulates it and is incomplete. This is why people often connect Goedel and Wittgenstein, and there are some similarities in their arguments.
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:18 AM EST on April 5 [!]
The future of science, as imagined by Kevin Kelly: via
Compiled Negative Results — Negative results are saved, shared, compiled and analyzed, instead of being dumped. Positive results may increase their credibility when linked to negative results.
Triple Blind Experiments – In a double blind experiment neither researcher nor subject are aware of the controls, but both are aware of the experiment. In a triple blind experiment all participants are blind to the controls and to the very fact of the experiment itself. The way of science depends on cheap non-invasive sensor running continuously for years generating immense streams of data. While ordinary life continues for the subjects, massive amounts of constant data about their lifestyles are drawn and archived. Out of this huge database, specific controls, measurements and variables can be "isolated" afterwards.
Combinatorial Sweep Exploration – Much of the unknown can be explored by systematically creating random varieties of it at a large scale. You can explore the composition of ceramics (or thin films, or rare-earth conductors) by creating all possible types of ceramic (or thin films, or rare-earth conductors), and then testing them in their millions. You can explore certain realms of proteins by generating all possible variations of that type of protein and they seeing if they bind to a desired disease-specific site. You can discover new algorithms by automatically generating all possible programs and then running them against the desired problem. Indeed all possible Xs of almost any sort can be summoned and examined as a way to study X.
Multiple Hypothesis Matrix – Instead of proposing a series of single hypothesis, in which each hypothesis is falsified and discarded until one theory finally passes and is verified, a matrix of many hypothesis scenarios are proposed and managed simultaneously. An experiment travels through the matrix of multiple hypothesis, some of which are partially right and partially wrong. Veracity is statistical; more than one thesis is permitted to stand with partial results.
Unrelenting rivers of sensory data will flow day and night from zillions of sources.
And just as we now expect a hypothesis to be subjected to the discipline of being stated in mathematical equations, in the future we will expect all hypothesis to be exercised in a simulation. There will also be the craft of taking things known only in simulation and testing them in other simulations—sort of a simulation of a simulation.
"Science is the way we surprise God," said Kelly. "That's what we're here for." Our moral obligation is to generate possibilities, to discover the infinite ways, however complex and high-dimension, to play the infinite game. It will take all possible species of intelligence in order for the universe to understand itself. Science, in this way, is holy. It is a divine trip.
Posted by Jon Rubin at April 5, 2006 02:35 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ubiquit.us/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/108