61–80 of 123
The pattern will break down once you get past 8192, which is 2^13. That means that the pattern continues for an impressive 52 significant figures (well, it actually breaks down on the 52nd digit, which will be a 3 instead of a 2). The reason it works is that 9998 = 10^4 - 2. You can expand as 1 / (10^n - 2) = 1/10^n *…
The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of…
. . in real life mistakes are likely to be irrevocable. Computer simulation, however, makes it economically practical to make mistakes on purpose. If you are astute, therefore, you can leam much more than they cost. Further¬ more, if you are at all discreet, no one but you need ever know you made a mistake.
Again, to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking. Learn to write your native…
Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, began by thinking about the highly conscious and deliberate step-by-step calculations performed by human “computers” like the women decoding German ciphers at Bletchley Park. His first great insight was that the same processes could be instantiated in an entirely…
We must take our sensory experiences seriously but not literally. This is one place where the concept of a sensory desktop is helpful. We take the icons on a graphical desktop seriously; we won’t, for instance, carelessly drag an icon to the trash, for fear of losing a valuable file. But we don’t take the colors…
In the physical world, the only way to learn tomorrow’s weather in detail is to wait twenty-four hours and see, even if nothing is random at all. The universe is computing tomorrow’s weather as rapidly and as efficiently as possible; any smaller model is inaccurate, and the smallest error is amplified into large…
The account of the origin of life that I shall give is necessarily speculative; by definition, nobody was around to see what happened. There are a number of rival theories, but they all have certain features in common. The simplified account I shall give is probably not too far from the truth. We do not know what…
...Carlsen is demonstrating one of his most feared qualities, namely his “nettlesomeness,” to use a term coined for this purpose by Ken Regan. Using computer analysis, you can measure which players do the most to cause their opponents to make mistakes. Carlsen has the highest nettlesomeness score by this metric…
If the cloud is a vast array of personal computer processors, then why not add your own laptop or desktop computer to it? It in a certain way it already is. Whenever you are online, whenever you click on a link, or create a link, your processor is participating in the yet larger cloud, the cloud of all computer chips…
All of humanity's tool extensions are divisible into two main groups: the craft and the industrial tools. I define the craft tools as all those tools which could be invented by one man starting all alone, naked in the wilderness, using only his own experience and his own integral facilities. Under these isolated…
All tools are externalizations of originally integral functions. But in developing each tool man also extends the limits of its usefulness, since he can make bigger cups hold liquids too hot or chemically destructive for his hands. Tools do not introduce new principles but they greatly extend the range of conditions…
Getting ready for the assumed inexorable Armageddon, each applied science and all of the great scientific specialization capabilities only toward weaponry, thus developing the ability to destroy themselves totally with no comprehensively organized oppositional thinking capability and initiative powerful enough to…
Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some imaginary door, while pretending there is no…
In the third chapter, "High Finance, or the Point of Vanishing Interest", Parkinson writes about a finance committee meeting with a three-item agenda. The first is the signing of a £10 [4] million contract to build a reactor, the second a proposal to build a £350 bicycle shed for the clerical staff, and the third…
What we know about the past—and who has access to such knowledge—has changed dramatically with each such change. The changes run far deeper than the mere proliferation of data points. As written records of large estates held in monasteries in France achieved legal and social dominance, the role of women as the tellers…
Like bilinguals, expert computer programmers successfully manage two or more separate lexicons, grammars and divergent concepts, avoiding inadvertent transfer between the two. Numerous studies of novice programmers indicate that they struggle to do achieve this division; transfer from natural language creates bugs…
The question of the physical embodiment of this memory remains. For this, various authorrs have suggested a variety of solutions. It has beeen proposed to assume that the thresholds—orr, more broadly stated, the stimulation criteria—^f or various nerve cells change with time as functions of the previous history of…
To build software that is deemed intelligent, it’s helpful to begin with a definition of intelligence. Intelligence can be simply defined as a set of properties of the mind. These properties include the ability to plan, solve problems, and in general, reason. A simpler definition could be that intelligence is the…
At the highest level, the major hardware components of most boards can be classifi ed into fi ve major categories: Central processing unit (CPU). The master processor. Memory. Where the system’s software is stored. Input device(s). Input slave processors and relative electrical components. Output device(s). Output…