Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Cool, but not a CA and not parallel (Score 2) 46

This is an awsome project, but the researchers make some claims that are not true. First, this is not a CA, as molecules affect other molecules in a big radius not just their neighbours.

So isn't that just a highly connected CA? What about a CA where each cell is connected to all the rest - it might behave very differently to a more grid-like CA, but it still counts as one.

Second, a computer is not massively parallel just because it's realized on a CA.

The image in that link looks like a non-parallel computer in a CA. So, yes, you can throw away the advantages of parallelism if you like; what's your point? They are claiming that their setup could be parallel, not that it must be.

Comment Re:The science community does the same thing. (Score 1) 226

There has never even been a single argument for ID that wasn't circular. "Irreducibly complex" is a red herring invented by ID to mean "we don't understand it, which is proof we can never understand it" which is provably false, as our understanding continually expands.

Well, I would generally agree. You could maybe test if you could 'reduce' protein-protein interaction networks (or gene networks) by graph edit operations. There was a talk about that today at work, and it seems like you can replace subgraphs in a network with smaller subgraphs and still have the same logical result. If you can generate a series of functional networks that increase in complexity through time, then that's proof against ID

Then again, this kind of research is simply called "genetics" or bioinformatics...

Comment Re:You don't (Score 1) 659

Where were my 'appropriate resources'? All I got at school was to sit in a room full of retarded monkies, teachers who didn't teach, and threats of being suspended should I ever complain.

Did your 'retarded' peers know how to spell the plural of monkey?

Comment Re:Some Anecdotes That Don't Make the News (Score 2) 659

...I think the greatest work of the last five years of his life has been editing TVTropes -- a site that he became obsessed with after he discovered he could spend all day watching television with no consequence...

This is the _real_ culprit! Beware of this site - it's horribly addictive :)

My opinion is to let him excel at school and take a more normal path than complete removal and its unavoidable isolation.

More seriously, yes ; totally agree. If you are going to 'cure' cancer (or its equivalent) at 25, you don't need to graduate at 15. Perhaps only pure mathematicians do their greatest work when they are young (like Srinivasa Ramanujan, or Évariste Galois) and even then, there are notable exceptions (Carl Friedrich Gauss or Leonhard Euler) who produce work throughout their lives.

Comment Re:Social Skills (Score 1) 659

One thing I've seen with several "prodigies" when they are fete'd by the press is how socially awkward they appear.

Being an intellectual high achiever doesn't obviate the need for development of social and communication skills.

I think many people would look awkward in front of the press, unless they are already quite outgoing, or used to it. However, yes school is useful for more than just learning

The kid needs to get punted outdoors with Bear Grylls for a few months.

Can't he learn to drink his own piss indoors, comfortably surrounded by books?

Comment Re:Just let him be a kid instead of placing him (Score 1) 659

How many podigy's do we know who have contributed to the society? I would think none ... The reason is they don't have the structured education to fall back on... Yes even if it's mediocre structure.

John von Neumann? Although I'm not sure whether his life history will satisfy the homeschoolers in this thread:

Although he attended school at the grade level appropriate to his age, his father hired private tutors to give him advanced instruction in those areas in which he had displayed an aptitude. Recognized as a mathematical prodigy, he began to study advanced calculus under Gábor Szeg at the age of 15.

So, normal 'restrictive' school, plus tutors.

Comment Re:How about (Score 2) 659

Maybe one day he'll grow up and realize that even he has very real limitations.

Well, I don't mean to be too flippant, but he is 13. He can quite literally grow up. He's a child prodigy, not a victim of a Disney-movie style body swap freaky friday kind of thing.

Comment Re:many people think this is madness (Score 1) 195

I've been having fun recently reading the wikipedia talk pages on disputed topics. One of these was about whether parapsychology should be a subclass of psychology or fruitloopery. Sorry, that last word should have been "fringe science".

However, I kind of take the point that the study of nonsense like ghosts can still be scientific, in a way. Well, for a while at least. Certainly a subject like cryptozoology that at least gets some results is surely a science.

(oh, and you could tone down the language just a little - I mean, I don't mind swearing, but fucking hell!)

Comment Re:Come on Slashdot! (Score 1) 195

Is this pseudoscientific tripe what this website has been reduced to? I'm speaking as a molecular biologist here; please bring some sort of journalistic integrity back to this site! This is fucking ridiculous.

Speaking as a molecular biologist? Wot.

If you were a zoologist - perhaps even a cryptozoologist - this might make sense. Yes it is very doubtful that some human (-like?) species is still alive - but then again, there was Homo floresiensis which may have been alive as little as 12,000 years ago. It's not impossible that some tiny population has hung on in the very large wild areas of Siberia.

Comment Re:Applications? Cooking utensils? (Score 1) 74

In that case wouldn't quasicrystals be useful for a number of friction reducing applications?... On a smaller scale, if paper had a very subtle quasicrystal "grain" embossed or watermarked on it, you would have jam free printer paper!

Or toilet tissue:

http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/penrose.htm

Oh, and the main problem I found with Vietnamese notes was the exchange rate, like trying to pay for a 20,000 taxi fare with a 200,000 - quite different!

Comment Re:Physical fractals? (Score 1) 74

You're missing the fractional dimensionality clause and the part about being self-similar at different scales... your description applies to pretty much any lattice not just fractals.

You're right about self-similarity, but I wonder whether quasicrystals don't have some statistical properties that are constant across scales... Actually, I've just googled it:

Self-similarity of Quasi-periodic lattice (Sun Jirong, 1996) : http://cpl.iphy.ac.cn/qikan/manage/wenzhang/0090419.pdf

Quite a mathematical paper. Oh, and this also looks interesting (nice pictures, also):

Wallpaper patterns with self-similar and graph-directed fractal lattice units (Deniz et al, 2011) : http://www.mi.sanu.ac.rs/vismath/ozdemirsept2011/Wallpaper.pdf

Slashdot Top Deals

Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.

Working...