Sip

Please bare with me with the short background. It's regarding Prof. Andranik Mirzaian (Prineceton) who's talk I attended today at UCLA. Don't know if you have heard of Linear Programming but it is an EXTREMELY powerful method of solving problems involving the optimization of linear equations ... basically you are tyring to minimize or maximize a linear function subject to a lot of linear constraints: Like: code:Maximize: x1 + x2Such that: x1 < 5 and 2*x1 - x2 > 3 (the x's are the variables that you want to assign values to) Something like the above, but imagine with thousands of variables and thousands of inequalities. The method is used a lot for many things, such as "resource allocation" problems (how to best assign different resources to different tasks while minimizing costs) in economics. Dantzig proposed and solved the problem in 1945 using the "simplex" method... and since then, this field has grown tremendously. Professor Leonid Khachiyan who is at Rutgers now, proposed a much more powerful method called the ellipsoid method to solve this problem in 1979 ... and there have been like a gazillion people working on this with VERY good results. However, eventhough countless brilliant people have put a lot of time and effort on Linear Programming, there were some theoretical things that no one had been able to solve since Dantzig's days (around World War 2). Prof. Andranik Mirzaian, who is an associate prof at Princeton, showed during his talk, how he solved this problem and I can tell you, it is AWESOME! He definitely solved it in a very clever and neat way (in my opinion) and best of all, he was able to prove that his method answers those theoretical questions that have been open for about 55 years! Pretty cool I have to say! I don't know how famous he will get, but you may see his name some day in textbooks like Khachiyan who is world famous. This will depend on how great his method works in practice ... but theoretically, it's definitely a great piece of work!!! [ November 08, 2002, 01:07 AM: Message edited by: Sip ]

I see. Yes that makes sense ... "predesination" or whether we have active control over our lives is quite an interesting question by itself (I don't really know the answer of course!) ... to us it seems like we are making decisions over time ... to us the change in time matters ... but for a "GOD", for whom time is just another creation, our destiny becomes quite meaningless. If God is "above" time, then God can certainly see all things at all time ... that includes all actions we have made and will ever make. So the fact that we think we are doing something at some time is irrelevant in the eyes of God.

I think we should all get together and go have some pie one day.

That's pretty cool about quantum computers sen_vahan! I keep hearing the term but I don't really know how they work. As far as opticals, here's what I know: They are working on fully optical chips. Those are quite a ways in the future (maybe 20 years at least). However, optical interconnect is a reality. As you may know, the components (transitors) on the chip are all interconnnected by "wires". There are fairly mature technologies that replace these connections between the differnt parts of the chip with ultra-small optical links. I think there are prototypes of such systems that seem to be very promising. The problem now is to make them cost effective (it's hard considering how awesome and cheap CMOS chips are right now!!!) In the immediate future, there are several things that may replace the "standard" CMOS (complementary metal oxide) type of chips that we have been using. Note that most of these technologies ARE improving at exponential rates. As far as I understand with "quantum" computers for example, there may be MUCH larger jumps than just exponential which is pretty scarry!!!!

Before some of the posts in this thread get deleted, I just wanted to jump in the fun and say how much I have enjoyed all this "PIE" talk The cool thing is that at least I am learning a whole bunch of stuff from this thread. I'd never even heard the term IE used without the "Microsoft" prefix (except for the bickering parts )

Oh by the way, in the 10nm process that intel is working on, the insulator on the chip is 5 atoms thick!!!!! Don't ask me how they get those atoms to stay there.

Oh yah ... having 10Ghz PCs on the market means probably 100Ghz ones are on the drawing boards and 200Ghz ones not too far away. Ok, there is no doubt that there has to be a physical limit. Unfortunately, I am not that far down in the design/development process to be able to give you an authoritative answer. But as I said, at least in the next decade, all signs indicate that Moore's law is not going to be a problem. The problem is that even with a 1Ghz processor, your PC is idle more than 99% of the time (that's an optimistic guess .. usually, resource utilization is much lower than that!). So there is really not going to be a need to push processors too much anymore. They are advancing much too fast for everything else to keep up (i.e. applications, peripherals, I/O devices, memories, disks, etc). Having a 200Ghz CPU, although possible, is going to be useless if everytime you need data from DRAM you hit a 6ns pentalty! Just imagine, only 6ns to fetch something from memory and already your CPU wasted 1.2 Trillion cycles just sitting and waiting!!!! Obviously that is not the power efficient thing to do ... power is the KEY Factor in the design process now. You don't want a 200Ghz cpu that is going to eat up more power than your toaster So I think you will see much more sophisticated low power designs starting to show up. There of course will always be a small market for ultra-high performance stuff, but the mainstream is not going that way in my opinion (games maybe). But how many MegaFlops do you need to check your email and surf the web?

Wow good guess! Here's something to keep some of you soccer enthusiasts busy for a while

Oh by the way, the 3.5 Ghz processors that you see, can actually be clocked maybe up to 7 Ghz! The problem is (1) heat and (2) manufacturing imperfections that will hinder the performance being that high. So as intel slowly matures each manufacturing process (the different steppings of each chip), the clock frequencies keep going higher and higher. So it's not too uncommon for people to buy a 2Ghz chip and run it at 3Ghz with some fancy cooling devices successfully (overclocking). The other thing that amazed me is that there are actually two ALUs (arithmatic logic units) inside each pentium 4 that run at twice the speed of the chip!!! So if you have a 3.5Ghz Pentium 4, those ALUs add/subtract integer numbers at 7Ghz!!! that's 7 Billion addition/subtractions per second, done in parallel, meaning potentially 14 BILLION addition/subtractions per second on ONE P4 chip. The problem they have is that in most "systems", memories can not deliver data nearly that fast to keep those data hungry processors satisfied! So those ALUs sit idle (at least one of them) most of the time. [ November 05, 2002, 10:05 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

Very simple! Just follow Moore's law ... double performance every 18 months. All indications from intel is that at least in the next decade, that will not be a problem. They are even working on a 10 nm manufacturing process for the chips ... right now, the best chips are somewhere around 180nm (0.18 micron)... that is the "feature" size ... basically the dimension of each transistor. So by around 2009, you should expect to see 10-15GHz desktop pc processors readily available on the market. Disks also seem to follow Moore's law so we may see close to terabyte disks. Dave Tennenhouse, the head of intel research was actually giving a talk today at UCLA... he has the feeling that disks (mechanical) are going to slowly disappear and be replaced by solid state devices (memories). And I don't think he is that far off ... we have a lot more computing devices without physical disks than we have ever had before. The other thing is, we now have somewhere between a few to tens of processors per person (in the west). That number will soon grow to thousands of processors per person so that is going to be a HUGE change. It's called ubiquitous computing and it's definitely here

Oh I totally forgot about the "inside" connection After seeing some of those ladies in real life, I think it is easy to realize that GOD IS GOOD. Veeeeery GOOD.

[ November 05, 2002, 08:59 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

Aren't all playboy models, P0RN stars, sex-addicts, rocks stars, and Britney Spears all going to hell too? Well, SIGN ME UP!!!! --- Wow! Since when is **** (P0RN) a bad word? [ November 05, 2002, 08:58 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

quote:Originally posted by Rouben Malayan:I think when humans will depend on the muchines too much- thats going to be the beginning of the end... Oh but what an awesome end it will be Just think how much you are dependent on machines and computers now. Do you think we have started the end? I don't think so. But the world would collapse without computers and machines. We are VERY dependent on them yet it's not been the horrible thing that some invisioned! It's only going to get better and better and better. Don't let technophobes get to you ... a single mind is great. But a BILLION inter-connected minds is something TRULLY unimaginable (for our puny single minds) ... how do you think we are able to advance so rapidly and so much? It's because each individual mind can become an expert in a very specific domain ... and all the minds together can create something like the space shuttle (the most advanced "object" ever created by humans) ... and we are getting better and better and better.

What really confuses me with the "God model" (when "good/bad" is concerned) is that well, if God is the almighty being that created everything including time, and space, and the universe, and us, and etc ... then why would God need to "find out" if we are good or bad? Wouldn't God already know everything since time is really not a factor for God? Seems to me like God should already know everything I will ever do so it doesn't really matter what I "decide" to do. God already knows it! It does become pretty strange when you take "time" out of the equation, dosn't it?!

Anyone know if this thing is still available on the C-Span website? ... I searched there but it doesn't look like they have it ... Domino, did you watch it live online?

There seems to be some sort of internet glitch ... can't get to that page (or the server) neither from Earthlink nor from UCLA's network

quote:Originally posted by ara baliozian:Some of my readers disagree with me and that is as it should be. I would be astonished, perhaps even shocked, if they all agreed with me because then it would mean that I have sunk to their level of moronism. I fully agree!

A friend just showed this to me! I couldn't believe it ... 149 to 0 Full Story

Ok the above is quite a bit of science fiction I admit. But as a side note, a couple of things that I believe will most likely become reality in the not too distant future (my life-time): Biological interfaces: i.e. human/machine interfaces that are much more tightly coupled to the brain than external devices like keyboard, mouse, monitor. We have already seen these things in action! They HAVE created and successfully tested video sensors that can help blind people to see in certain instances by communicating with the optic nerve. Much much much more sophisticated computers: Just imagine what happened in the last 10 years. Can you possibly guess what is going to happen in the next 50 years? CMOS chip technology has experienced and will experience EXPONENTIAL growth. That is just too amazing of a gain to take lightly. I was at intel labs in Oregon and they are already working on 10nm transistors (currently we use roughly 180nm ones). But that's just CMOS ... there is huge talk of optical and even quantum computers which I wouldn't be surprised to see one day.

Thoth, the only reason I brought the Borg up was due to their ultra-high level of "inter-connection". The only disturbing thing about the borg in my opinion is that "individuality" is lost. I think that even in a borg scenario, complete individuality can still be maintained, while the "collective" functions as a whole! The main key is privacy and "personal space". If each individual is allowed to have their personal space, their individual thoughts and then have an interface to the rest of the collective to "contribute" then the system will work. The beauty of this "virtual" existance is that all that you said can still exist. "Physical Pain" can be simulated through a "punishment function" of some sort that directly stimulates the pain centers. Similarly, "reward functions" of different sorts can be used to simulate the pleasure zones of each individual entity in the collective. Thus, it is possible to reward positive actions and punish negative (or lack of) actions/contributions. This is of course a WHOLE topic of discussion, but I am definitely not one to dismiss the Borg-type existance as completely undesirable. I can actually see a lot of value in that type of a collective existance. But you are definitely right ... whether good or bad, WE ARE HEADED in that direction! It just so happens that our connections currently are though some rediculous copper lines and still rely on our body sensors (eyes, ears, fingers for typing). But we are connected as a huge global collective! (it's hard for people to accept it but I can see it VERY clearly)

I can't help but to think, is God good?

Have you seen Star Trek the next generation? Have you seen how the Borg operarte? Sure that is Science Fiction but I think that's where we are headed eventually. Just imagine ... you can fit the "brain" of all humans into a cube (I imagine it to be less than a square meter in size)... all fully interconnected ... with a BIG difference ... each has it's own individuality inside the cube. Existence of humans moved from the physical level into the virtual level !!! Theyn we shoot this cube into space and continue our existance virtually, much like in the movie Matrix (except none of that crappy sci-fi about the computer controlling things ...) No, there will be real heirarchies, real "people" in control, real democracy, things will go on much like in real life. You will learn, you will socialize, you will contribute to knowledge, and you will die and be replaced by your offsprings who will be better than you. All within this 1-cubic meter cube I can't wait for that day. No MORE physical suffering!!!!

Aha! But then I may have to remind everyone about your (x-x) is not 0 proof ... I didn't want to say anything in the genocide thread because that would probably ruin your reputation

I would like to add the new one: xhoozel In case of my brother, if he doesn't shave every day, on pretty much the third day we have to literally "xhoozel" him like a "vochxhar" ... Gee I hope he doesn't see this