> It looks like the computer with the instrcution "kill the user",
I love that idea! >> Your computer is not the Universal Machine Bruno. > > > What? Of course it is. the infinite tape is the environment. It is not part > of the machine. Turing discover the universal number, that is, if phi_i is > an enumaration of the computable function by a Turing machine, there is a > (finite) number u such that phi_u (x, y) = phi_x(y), provided that u has > enough memory given. A universal machine is a universal finite code only. I > insist on this because Turing made a pedagogical error in placing the > infinite tape as part as the definition of (any) Turing machine. So, if I understand correctly, we could assume a finite circular tape and still get the main theoretical CS results? > So I beg you to recognize the universality of my computer, even if senile > :) Ok, sorry abou that! :) > > >> It might need more >> memory or a faster processor! > > > It surely needs that. But it needs mainly that the developpers do not change > the program specification so that you have to buy a new computer. The > application Firefox is quite clear about this for example: it literally told > me that I need a new processor, that is, a new computer ... I agree. This is a complicated issue that touches many things, somewhat related to the cultural sicknesses of our time: growth obsession and consumerism leading to things like planned obsolescence and the theatre of innovation. On one hand I would say that we are now living in computational dystopia. There is a war on general-purpose computing, and this war is being fought by marketeers, business people and politicians against the collective of computer users. I think Cory Doctorow has interesting things to say about this: http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html I eagerly followed (and somewhat participated) in the open source / free software efforts of the 90s, but that battle was lost. The smartphone era sidestepped the (hard won) openness of regular desktops, and the other punch was delivered by companies like Google, that moved a lot of computations to the server (that is not under user control). They can even run mostly free software on the server side and still deny you any control. The platforms themselves are tragedies. Over-engineered, unnecessarily complex babel towers of abstraction, that result more from committees, political compromise and a preference for mindless "productivity" over deep thinking and taste. Suppose a kid wants to open a computer and start coding a simple game, for example. This should be the simplest thing, but the amount of friction (both intentional and incidental) that is now placed on this activity compared to the situation in the 80s is almost tragic. The "deep thinking" schools of practical computation are gone and defeated. I could cite the Lisp tradition and the Lisp-machine dream, as well as Alan Key's Smalltalk (his presentations on YouTube are worth watching). These are two very different approaches with some things in common: a desire to make computer systems both understandable and programmable all the way down. Unfortunately, there is much more money to be made in transforming computers into locked-down, highly monitored media consumption devices. Telmo. > > > >> >> (it's a curve of probability of dying x age) >> >>> >>>> >>>> Do you guys think this idea has any merit? >>> >>> >>> >>> A lot. But today, we cannot still explain why the weirdness is not >>> bigger, >>> even here and now, >> >> >> Maybe it is big and we are used to it? > > > Like the infinities in quantum field theory? In science we are supposed to > not accept such thing unless we find some explanation of how to get rid of > the weirdness. > > But computationalism seems to go toward Feyman's explanation of quantum > physics. the weirdest "path" are eliminated by the phase randomization, as > we get already something close to the "phase" and the "randomization", but > it is a hell of a difficulty to get their correct relations. > > Bruno > > > > > >> >>> but we can't be sure that we can renormalize all >>> infinities in arithmetic (seen from inside), so the inflation of >>> possibilities is a persistent threat of the universal machine sanity. >>> >>> >>> >>>> >>>> Regarding the season, my wishes for you all: live long and prosper! >>> >>> >>> >>> Merry After-Christmas and Happy New Year! >>> >>> Bruno >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>> Telmo. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups >>>> "Everything List" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>> an >>>> email to [email protected]. >>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >>> >>> >>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to [email protected]. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
