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By Erich Vieth on March 03rd, 2010
Hanging cloth simulation
This elegant hanging cloth simulation caught my attention.
Tag: "computer"
By Erich Vieth on April 24th, 2009
Computer souls
[A kitchen table conversation between a parent and a child]
Daddy, if my computer burned up in a fire, would it still compute?
No, Mary. Programs don’t simply run by themselves. They depend upon extremely complicated hardware and software. If your computer burns up in a fire, there would be no hardware and no software with which to run your favorite programs.
But I’ve used my computer for a long time. I’ve grown emotionally attached to it. It makes me sad that it won’t actually compute if it were to be destroyed. Doesn’t my computer have a soul that continues running my programs somewhere else after my computer burns up on Earth?
I’m sorry, Mary. There is no computer heaven and there is no computer soul. There is no evidence of either of these.
But we can’t prove that it won’t keep computing after it burns up in a fire, right?
No. Sorry, Mary. Without hardware and software, no computing will happen. The ashes of your burned up computer would lack any systematic structure. They certainly lack the complex organization required to run programs. It is impossible for any computation to occur without the hardware and the software intact. Your claim that a computer would keep computing even though it is completely destroyed is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary proof. We have no such proof whatever.
But Lisa Jenkins says that burned up computers do keep computing. She says that you only need to have faith and that no one can disprove that burned up computers live on in a parallel world. She says destroyed computers keep working, but not in a physical way. She goes to a special building on Sunday where thousands of people all believe that computers keep computing even after they are completely destroyed.
No, Mary. The same thing happens to computers as happens to your own body. As you know, when your body dies, your entire body rots, including your brain. As you know, when your brain is rotted, you don’t have any more thoughts because there is no intact functional neural structure anymore, and therefore no basis for any continuing thoughts.
Oh, daddy! It’s not the same! Yes, I know that when my body dies, it will be impossible for me to think anymore. My computer is different, though. I just can’t believe that my amazing computer would stop computing just because it gets completely destroyed! Don’t try to compare my beautiful computer to a human brain!
It’s not a matter of what you want to believe, my child. It’s a matter of what actually happens in the real world. You can continue using your computer for now and loving the way it works, but it would be unhealthy to believe that it would keep computing even if it was destroyed. As a parent, it’s my job to level with you regarding difficult topics like this. I’m so sorry.
By Erich Vieth on December 30th, 2008
How is high-speed high-volume inter-connectivity affecting our brains?
What happens to our brains when we sit at our computers for long periods of time interacting with the cyber world? This question was considered in an article called “Meet Your iBrain,” appearing in the October/November 2008 issue of scientific American Mind.
The authors cite a 2005 Kaiser family foundation study that found that “young [...]
By Erich Vieth on March 06th, 2008
A list of popular fake comments by spammers
Those guys who send out spam by the bucket-load are really busy these days. In the past month alone they have tried to sneak more than 9,000 of their fake comments onto this site. These “comments” are attached to links to various sites selling drugs, loans, pornography and you name it. The spammers hope that those [...]
By Erich Vieth on January 17th, 2008
A skeptic visits a chiropractor for acupuncture treatment
I have long been suspicious of chiropractors. Why? One reason is that the practice has a wobbly foundation. In 1895, D.D. Palmer declared that “95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrate, the remainder by luck stations of other joints.” His conclusion is that most diseases could be cured by adjusting vertebrae that interfere [...]
By Erich Vieth on September 13th, 2007
We need a National “Back Up Your Hard Drive Day” for the fools among us.
You might think I’m being facetious, but I’m dead serious. Let’s select one day per year to remind people to regularly back up their computer data. I am utterly completely and bewilderedly tired of hearing people tell me “I lost all my data, songs and photos because my computer hard drive died.”
No, fool. You didn’t lose [...]
By Erich Vieth on March 17th, 2007
You can’t find important information on your computer and it’s driving you crazy? A solution: Windows Desktop Search
I’ve been in this position many times. I know important information is somewhere on my computer, or is it? And if it’s on my computer, is it in the form of a wordprocessing file or is it something I received or sent on an e-mail? What’s the best way to find it? Do I go [...]
By Erich Vieth on February 28th, 2007
I just bought a $5 million hard drive at Best Buy
What I actually did was to pay $199 for a Western Digital “MyBook” 500 Gb external hard drive. While comparing hard drive prices, however, I stopped a moment to consider how incredibly far hard drive prices have fallen over the years. I concluded that I was getting a windfall no matter what modern hard drive [...]
By Erich Vieth on April 12th, 2006
Oil Tetris
The U.S. consumes 400 million gallons of gasoline every day. That amounts to almost 5,000 gallons every second. More than half of that oil is imported.
Everything we do is affected by oil. In addition to keeping us warm and transporting us, we eat oil. Not literally, but the average American meal travels an about 1500 miles to get from farm to plate.
If there were an interruption in the oil supply, we would look to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That much-cited U.S. reserve, however, holds only a 60-day supply of oil. It is official U.S. policy, then, that We the People shall always remain only small one incident from a major oil crisis.
