You can't, but someone else can. My wife updated the firmware for her new dance game, killing my ability to run my Cell code under Linux.

Memory is an arrangement of matter.

You might want to read Seth LLoyd's, "Programming The Universe."

Crap. I discovered that my wife had updated the firmware for her dance game. Now I have to ensure my CBE simulation codes get ported to OpenCL.

Thanks Sony, ya bunch of tossers!

This is not so much about privacy as it's about reenforcing the bureaucracy of secrecy and control of the state/nation. I.e. you only want the right type of people running the system. Which is true for good or bad governments, but then this particular decree tills a little funny, doesn't it?

The military side of this is a little more delicate as it is a practical concern not to toss moral in the wrong direction. It can muck up a lot of investments; militarily and otherwise, no?

One of the most interesting comments that I've seen in regards to the wikileaks publications was along the lines: "Now western governments are concerned with privacy?!?"

Personally, I see this whole thing as an educational reminder of the true nature of our species as a whole. I mean, really, step back. This is not about Americans, it's about humans.

In the end I suspect the Buddhist's are right in believing that true compassion for one another will be our route to a better (human) world.

Who cares, I've gone OpenCL and a GPU, the Cell/CBE is dead.

I think the problem is that everyone assumes that time is essential to processes within the universe. There's nothing that I've ever read or studied that suggests reasonably that this assumed correlation is actually real.

Consider that if time is real, and not fundamental to processes (i.e. the correlation is not causal) then it is entirely possible to travel back in time and kill your grandfather without self destructing. This is because in the stream of processing your existence, all the important stuff has already occurred in the process dimension.

But looking around this idea it seems more likely to me that time is an illusion as far a real dimension is concerned. It strikes me more as an analog to temperature; i.e. it's a statistical like reference. Do we really experience the passing of time or do we really just have a sense of passing of process?

How do we measure time? By change in processes. You can pull in relativity and still see that the effects on time are purely due to the real effects on the spacial dimensions. The relative dimensional changes in space lead to changes in the processes used to measure time.

I'm not sure if this is true, but if it were it eliminates the absurdity of the grandfather paradox.

Odd, I wouldn't have thought that my argument was so subtle as to be missed. Anyhow, I don't question the "standing on the shoulders of giants," what so ever. It's even easy to argue that such things exist within our own bodies; e.g. do any of us consciously know what all aspects of our immune system is doing at any moment?

My point is that effectively reducing the need for attention around something that potentially should have an aware eye present essentially MAY dumb SOME people down, not all, SOME (that's why I phrased it as "adds to the noise"). Net effect, could be null across the population, but that's statistical isn't it? Expecting to be able to put batteries in any old way when not all devices correct for that can cause serious problems; i.e. excess heat, burns, fires, explosions ... etc.

Well, considering that the two are different in the level of intervention necessary, what's your point? Really we should be comparing turning on my computer to replacing batteries. Sure, I don't pay much attention to turning on or waking my computer, but then there's little risk in it. Our new battery polarity mechanism provides a similar reduced risk. At least until we try doing the same thing in a device that doesn't have it. Now what? High energy density battery gets put in backwards, smokes a diode, causes a short, explodes.

BTW, there is a reason that I stated this as, "adding to the noise, " in my original post.

My point is that it's another process that allows us not to pay attention to what we are doing. That lack of attention may dumb us down as we tend to be creatures of habit and laziness.

The flip side could be argued that it frees up time and energy to use towards more engaging activities, but I suspect that leads more to a scenario similar to that of "the rich get richer." I.e. someone popping batteries in their tv remote to go on and watch some "reality" tv isn't as likely to be benefitting from this.

Also, your example differs in that the task doers' are likely paying attention to their tasks with some intent on accomplishing them well.

"solves a real problem ..." I wouldn't have gone out of my way to call this a real problem. I can see it as a risk mitigator in medical devices and emergency equipment, but beyond that it just adds to the noise that dumbs down the public.

And it won't be long before the "number of cores == speed" myth starts to show it's ugly head. Communications overhead eventually has a major impact on how much computing a processor/core can achieve; i.e. memory, I/O, inter-core. In more classical parallel implementations this is strongly felt around 8 processors/cores. However, today we have the benefit of shrinking high speed packet networks to the system and chip level, so I'm not sure where the knee in the performance curve is. If we're lucky the MHz myth/limit will help linearize performance/# of cores.

Very true. This technology may find it's way into making some of the things that are being done in computational photography practical and viable economically in real devices; e.g. single shot HDR photos, enabling depth of field changes in post processing, changing focus in post processing ... etc.

Not to mention that personal electronics are becoming more and more prolific, so expecting pilots and passengers not to use them is begging for trouble.

The smart thing to do is to use this in concert with RADAR as each side improves the reliability of the other's information (Kalman filtering anyone?).

Timing over a packet network is not trivial for voice or video...