Re: [FRIAM] singularity
I wouldn't be surprised if software development was actually exponential, however it is harder to measure improvement, and the improvement is not a smooth as hardware improvement. I guess that we would like to have a general measure of the growth of software complexity, but I don't know if there is anything like that, nor how easy would it be to develop... moreover to check... where could we get the data of e.g. number of lines of code, or source code size in Kb, of software for the last 20 years or so??? A rough and naive way would be to check e.g. the size in KB of the installation files of a certain software, e.g. Linux, Windows, MS Office, Corel Draw, AutoCAD... (with Linux it's quite difficult, because a minimal version of it can fit in a couple of floppies, all the rest are add-ons...) Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ “Tendencies tend to change...” FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] computer models of the mind
Dear Robert,Similarly, who says I can't have a mind without a body? Won't it carry on existing in the mind of the Intelligent Designer?You could say so, just as a Linux OS could be sitting in a CD... but it wouldn't function, so for practical purposes, it is as good as non-existant. Thus, a mind needs a body and an environment to be able to be perceived by an observer.Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ “Tendencies tend to change...” FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] singularity
Crude quantitative measures are no good. For instance, the intro of OO techniques can increase functionality with sometimes a decrease in the number of lines of code. An example close to home for me was the change from EcoLab 3 to EcoLab 4. The number of lines halved, but functionality was increased maybe tenfold (**subjective measure warning**). Then maybe a measure could be the length of the manuals +documentation, which reflect the functionality of a particular program? (Well, Francis just switched to MacOS X from MacOS 9, and the one thing he complained was that there was no manual... he didn't like the amount of help files) If this would be reasonable, I don't see that these have increased too much, since the size of books hasn't increased noticeably... in Unix/Linux you could measure it better with the size of man and how- to pages Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ “Tendencies tend to change...” FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] singularity
Like weighing Stroustrup versus Kernighan Richie ?? I think the C++ book weighs 4 times as much as the C book, but I'm sure C++ is more than 4 times as powerful... Cheers On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 01:36:00PM +0200, Carlos Gershenson wrote: Crude quantitative measures are no good. For instance, the intro of OO techniques can increase functionality with sometimes a decrease in the number of lines of code. An example close to home for me was the change from EcoLab 3 to EcoLab 4. The number of lines halved, but functionality was increased maybe tenfold (**subjective measure warning**). Then maybe a measure could be the length of the manuals +documentation, which reflect the functionality of a particular program? (Well, Francis just switched to MacOS X from MacOS 9, and the one thing he complained was that there was no manual... he didn't like the amount of help files) If this would be reasonable, I don't see that these have increased too much, since the size of books hasn't increased noticeably... in Unix/Linux you could measure it better with the size of man and how- to pages Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ ?Tendencies tend to change...? FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Laws of the Game
My wife found an excellent book that appears to have a number of interesting connections to MOTH, NetLogo implementations, and emergent properties of stochastic systems: Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance by Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler. The original German ISBN: 0-394-41806-9, now 0-06-090971-4. It's vintage 1981 but the principles are remarkably current. I've got one or ten questions related to this I'd like to ask at the FRIAM meeting tomorrow. Of course you haven't had time to read this, so I'll bring it along because it's very well illustrated. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
