Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II • Hacker News Board

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#121

Post by anamax » Wed, Nov 03, 2010, 9:32 PM UTC

frobozz wrote: post #116

anamax wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> one person driving a car with four seats is an insult to the nature.) > The obvious alternative is not to have several different cars, but to live closer to where you work, shop and play. Reread the complaint - driving less doesn't solve it. > but to live closer to where you work, shop and play. Those are three (or more) places. You may not be able to live close to all of them. For example, I work in Sunnyvale, my…

> Reread the complaint - driving less doesn't solve it. By "live closer", I mean "within 4 miles", so that you can walk. That does solve it (unless I've completely misunderstood) > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time. Looking at a map, were I you, I'd live in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/…

> > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey

> Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time.

You've got it backwards. We chose those jobs because we like to make money. Driving makes it possible for us to earn much more money than we would if we didn't drive.

> Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino, so that one of you could walk to work, and you wouldn't have to do too much urban driving to get to Monterey.

There's no "urban" driving between Sunnyvale/SC/Cupertino and Monterey. Urban is inside SF, Oakland/Berkeley.

> Unless I'm going somewhere obscure and far away, or travelling on Sunday, a train can normally get me to within 2 miles of where I want to be, within about half an hour of when I want to be there.

Middle of the day CalTrain schedules aren't every half hour and CalTrain isn't within 2 miles of everywhere I want to go on the Penninsula.

But, let's assume all that AND that CalTrain doesn't take any time to get between destinations. The half-hour schedule gap and 2 miles is an hour travel time.

Only one of our typical weekday trips are anywhere near that.

> That's plenty accurate enough, and certainly as accurate as urban driving.

No, it's not. It's significantly worse than what I've got now. Then again, the only urban driving that we do is inside SF, which is a small minority of our driving as we live in San Jose.

For some of the SJ to SF trips, Caltrain works for us. However, it doesn't a large fraction of the time.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#122

Post by borism » Wed, Nov 03, 2010, 10:28 PM UTC

grammaton wrote: post #96

Maybe I missed something here, but...when did Gary Kasparov suddenly become qualified to comment on technological and computing progress? No mention of the internet, for instance, which kind of tends to undermine the ability to take his comments seriously. For that matter, what makes the Apple II so revolutionary compared to it's predecessors and successors? No mention of that.

umm, I dunno, maybe since the time he beat friggin supercomputer at chess?

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#123

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Nov 04, 2010, 12:09 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #92

nitrogen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consuming less (I mean at the consumer level, not raw resources) is hardly a way to promote the progress of our civilization. Finding a way to sustainably consume ever more will yield much greater outcomes in technology and happiness.

When the consumption rate is increasing exponentially, I don't know how you can even imagine that we'll ever be able to sustainably consume more. Unless you're talking about StarTrek where food can materialize at the push of a button, or after a "warp maximum; engage" they can arrive at an inhabitable planet in one minute. In the meantime, this planet doesn't grow any larger and its resources are limited.

I'll provide an example of what I'm thinking, as it may be that we disagree less than it appears.

I believe that one of our goals as a species should be ubiquitous travel, so that any person can afford to travel anywhere within a reasonable amount of time. The current approach of burning highly refined fossil fuels to power airplanes is obviously unsustainable, but that doesn't mean we stop flying. What we should be doing (and this is a very long-term view) is developing alternative energy storage mechanisms dense enough to power airplanes. One approach that seems reasonable to me is using nuclear power to store energy as biofuel, then switching to solar/wind/hydro power once it is possible to do so. Hypothetically we could design fuels and engines that result in zero harmful waste entering the atmosphere, and direct any byproducts from combustion into the next batch of fuel.

I will concede that Star Trek's unlimited energy universe is a bit like playing Sim City with the money cheat, though.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#124

Post by jonnathanson » Thu, Nov 04, 2010, 12:24 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #59

InclinedPlane wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubiquitous cell phones are definitely a revolutionary development. This becomes obvious when you read or watch fiction of any sort. How many story lines would be completely disrupted by the presence of a cell phone? As it turns out, a great many, even for stories being written today, as many writers haven't fully absorbed the way things have changed.

Haha yes, even Star Trek, they can travel at warp speed but the away team can't send an MMS back to the ship, the captain has to beam down personally and see for himself...

The ironic thing about Star Trek (and part of what makes it so kitschy-great) is that you don't suspend disbelief about the future tech on the show; you suspend disbelief about the lack of present-day tech on the show. GPS, for starters, to say nothing of SMS, MMS, etc.

It's best not to think too hard about why a society capable of telling you from orbit precisely how many lifeforms inhabit a planet is incapable of telling you exactly where their captain is when his badge is removed.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#125

Post by S_A_P » Thu, Nov 04, 2010, 2:50 AM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #79

fhars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got your chronology wrong, the cell phone was introduced 1973 (that's why the OpenMoko device was called Neo 1973), predating the Apple ][ by four years.

The cell phone was not invented in 1973, that thing Michael Douglas carries around in Wall Street is called a brick.

Actually motorola unveiled the cell phone in 1973 and the brick phone design was pretty much unchanged from the beginning until the 80s when miniaturization began in earnest.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#126

Post by grammaton » Thu, Nov 04, 2010, 2:23 PM UTC

borism wrote: post #122

grammaton wrote: post #96

Maybe I missed something here, but...when did Gary Kasparov suddenly become qualified to comment on technological and computing progress? No mention of the internet, for instance, which kind of tends to undermine the ability to take his comments seriously. For that matter, what makes the Apple II so revolutionary compared to it's predecessors and successors? No mention of that.

umm, I dunno, maybe since the time he beat friggin supercomputer at chess?

He beat it by being a better chess player. When he can explain how the supercomputer works and talk knowledgeably about the algorithms underlying the game software and it's design, then he would be an expert on technology.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#127

Post by itsnotvalid » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 3:09 AM UTC

anamax wrote: post #121

frobozz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reread the complaint - driving less doesn't solve it. By "live closer", I mean "within 4 miles", so that you can walk. That does solve it (unless I've completely misunderstood) > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time. Looking at a map, were I you, I'd live in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/…

> > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey > Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time. You've got it backwards. We chose those jobs because we like to make money. Driving makes it possible for us to earn much more money than we would if we didn't drive. > Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino, so that one of you could walk to work…

I am seeing that urban transportation doesn't work because people don't use them, so they fail to make money and in the long run getting worse and worse.

I am guessing, if the gas price triples the same thing may not happen just as it is right now.

Re: Garry Kasparov: The Last Revolutionary Technology Was The Apple II

#128

Post by anamax » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 4:05 PM UTC

itsnotvalid wrote: post #127

anamax wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey > Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time. You've got it backwards. We chose those jobs because we like to make money. Driving makes it possible for us to earn much more money than we would if we didn't drive. > Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino, so that one of you could walk to work…

I am seeing that urban transportation doesn't work because people don't use them, so they fail to make money and in the long run getting worse and worse. I am guessing, if the gas price triples the same thing may not happen just as it is right now.

> am seeing that urban transportation doesn't work because people don't use them

The regions under discussion aren't urban so urban transportation simply isn't relevant.

Urban transportation requires a lot of density or a lot of folks going between common end-points. The latter is fairly rare and is very different from a lot of people going past a given point.