KitKat1405241488

Ah, this thread reminds me of..... Star Trek! I think that with the character of Data they illustrate very nicely one of the biggest differences between human and machine. Even though Data is a billion times more 'intelligent' than the rest of the crew, he still can't quite grasp things like humour, sarcasm, and emotion (this of course changes when the writers see fit to introduce the 'emotion chip', but let us neglect this for the moment). The very fact that Data is so similar to humans in many respects makes the differences all the more obvious. Now, we haven't quite reached that level of technology. Indeed, anyone who has attempted to build a robot or program a complex code knows that it is incredibly hard to get it to perform tasks that we consider simple, or common sense. On the flip side though, they can perform enormous feats of logic that no human could ever achieve. I love reading Asimov, he's such a brilliant man. Keep in mind that his emphasis is usually on the social effects of technological change. By painting a vision of what the future consequences of building machines so similar to ourselves would be, we must ask ourselves: Should it be done? What would we gain or lose by such an act? I'm hoping to do my thesis project on AI, so I'm sure I'll have more to say on this issue later. I'll leave it here for now though, since I must stop procrastinating and get back to studying =)

Keep in mind that copyright and trademark are different things. A copyright applies to any original work by you (the author) giving you exclusive rights to control any type of reproduction of that work, whether it be a piece of code, an essay, a picture, whatever. I know that in Canada registered copyrights apply for the lifetime of the owner plus 70 additional years by the legal estate. A trademark is for a word or a symbol (providing it is non-generic), which gives the owner exclusive rights to use this word or symbol. In order to trade mark something, I'm pretty sure you have to register it.

Heh, you can tell the approximate age of each poster by what they consider to be 'old school' games. For me, the earliest games I can remember playing were on the good ol' Commodore 64. Now that was a quality system. So many awesome games. My little brother learned the basics of reading before he went to Kindergarten because he wanted to be able to type 'load' and 'save' so he could play those games. Just a few favourites: Impossible Mission, Space Taxi, Wizard, and some other games that I don't even remember the names of anymore.

Mmm...I really like the classical/metal combination a lot. One of my favourites is Apocalyptica. They are all classically trained cello players, and they play metal songs (among other things) on their cellos, they're probably most famous for their Metallica covers. I also really like their cover of 'Refuse/Resist' by Sepultura. As well, their original compositions are fantastic. If you haven't checked them out yet, I highly recommend them.

Not counting a silly question game I made using Prolog for a school assignment, I've made one 'real' game. I'm an RPG girl, so that's the type of game I like to make. My brother and I made this awesome RPG using RPG Maker for the playstation. Actually, the game wasn't that awesome, it was pretty terrible.....but it had its moments of brilliance. I think that RPG Maker is a nice little program to start out with for someone with no prior programming experience. For the RPG we're currently working on, we plan on using RPG Maker 2K3 for PC, since its more versatile and will allow for easier test playing among our team. The programming stage won't be for a while though. We want to have the entire storyline as well as most of the dialogue and sidequests planned out in advance before we start into the technical stuff. That was what was most lacking in our previous RPG, and we're determined not to repeat that mistake.

Nice article, qwijibow! Very interesting to read, and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who's keeping up-to-date on the transistor scene =) I'd be interested to see if they will actually use this new transistor in commercial devices though because Gallium Arsenide is MUCH more expensive than Silicon and also more toxic. Someone pointed out in the comments at the bottom of that article that this transistor is a BJT (bipolar junction transistor) while computers use MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors), and I think this is a very valid point to note. For anyone who's unfamiliar with what this means, I'll give a really short explanation. For those of you who know this already, you can skip this next part. Basically a MOSFET has 3 main components: the source, the drain and the gate. When a voltage is applied at the gate, it creates a channel for electrons to flow from the source to the drain. The gate is separated from the rest of the device by an insulating layer of oxide. So, by using a small voltage we can essentially turn the transistor 'on' and 'off'. BJT's are current controlled devices, which make them much more tricky to deal with. So anyways, what's the biggest problem with MOSFETs right now? Well, the oxide is so thin that current is leaking through and escaping through the gate. Even when the transistor is turned off, there is still leakage current. This reduces their reliability and drastically increases the amount of power they consume. What is the solution? Well, at the moment it seems that using a different oxide material would do the trick (all transistors use silicon dioxide traditionally, because it's very easy to grow on top of silicon, and very compatible in many important ways). Intel thinks they may have found one that works and are predicting a teraherz MOSFET by 2007. You can check out the press release here. Whew, that was way longer than I thought. Sometimes I get carried away when talking about semiconductor devices cause they're just so COOL! If anyone else has any news, or wants any of the above clarified or explained better, please let me know =)

I'd have to go with FFVI. What it's lacking in graphics, it more than makes up for in quality of gameplay. VII is pretty good as well, but VI will always have a special place in my heart for being the first RPG that I really got into, which hooked me on the genre ever since. X and X-2 have fabulous graphics, but I find them restricting to play. I feel like I'm walking my characters from movie to movie, rather than actually engaging in the story.

From what I know, MSN is blocking a number of file extensions to try to stop the spread of messenger viruses that have been causing trouble recently. Any files with the following extensions will be blocked: .ade .adp .app .asp .bas .bat .cer .chm .cmd .com .cpl .crt .csh .exe .fxp .hlp .hta .inf .ins .isp .its .js .jse .ksh .lnk .mad .maf .mag .mam .maq .mar .mas .mat .mau .mav .maw .mda .mdb .mde .mdt .mdw .mdz .msc .msi .msp .mst .ops .pcd .pif .prf .prg .pst .reg .scf .scr .sct .shb .shs .tmp .url .vb .vbe .vbs .vsd .vsmacros .vss .vst .vsw .ws .wsc .wsf .wsh However, I think you can still send files with these extensions if you put them in a zip file. If your friend was trying to send other types of files though, then I have no idea what's wrong. The best place to go to find out what's going on with MSN messenger is Mess.be. That's where I get all my information about messenger, and they're quite reliable as well as being extremely fast to post updates and new information.

Heh, I find it very interesting that a debate about the existence of aliens has been posed as a Christianity vs Aliens debate. First off, let me say that I am a sincere Christian, and believe the Bible to be absolutely true. However, I don't see the Bible as discounting the existence of aliens. Regardless, I think that the chance of us ever encountering aliens, if they actually exist, is very small. I know that most of you don't accept the Bible as any sort of authority, so let me give my science-based reasons.I was watching the Discovery Channel last week (yup, I love Discovery Channel) and there's this huge 'alien craze' right now since there's a message being sent out shortly to a solar system that scientists believe has a good chance of being similar to our own. However, on the particular show that I was watching, they argued that the possiblilty of us encountering aliens is much smaller than most people think. The reason for this is that the existence of animal life on earth will only make up about 10% of the earth's lifetime (from the beginning of the earth to when our sun burns out), and if evolution follows similar timescales on other planets, aliens would have to be in a similar timeframe for us to encounter each other. This greatly reduces the probability of us ever encountering aliens at all in the lifetime of our entire species. They argued this much more articulately on the show, but I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. Yay for Discovery Channel! I wish I could get my degree by watching it =)

Don't give up on silicon yet! It's true that limits are being reached with silicon transistors. Basically, speed in transistors can be improved by decreasing the size of the transistor. With dimensions approaching atomic layer thicknesses, there are some significant challenges to scaling any smaller. However, so much of our technology and fabrication processes are centred around silicon that it would require a monumental investment to switch to a different material. As a result, there is quite a bit of research being done into finding clever solutions to solve these problems, and it's paying off. Eventually though, you're right, we will hit a maximum limit for conventional transistors. At that time, there better be a new technology ready to step up, or else the industry will face a major crisis. I haven't read too much about DNA computing, but from what I know, it's still in the very early stages of research. I agree with JoeyG that quantum computing may be one of the next likely candidates. As well, optical computers look like a good alternative because photons travel much faster than electrons, hence this would dramatically increase the speed of the computer.

Hey everyone!I just thought I'd jump in on this topic to introduce myself as well. I ended up here because I'm planning on learning anything and everything about making webpages and such this summer, and this seemed like a good place to be able to read and learn from the collective wisdom of those much more knowledgable in these matters than I. Also, I was quite impressed with the quality of discussion and standards that are upheld here. So, I'm hoping this will be a good community to be a part of (although signing up for a forum right now in the middle of my exams was probably a very ill-advised strategy on my part....)