🚀 go-pugleaf

In message <5lq9qj$m35$1@pheidippides.axion.bt.co.uk> Paul McIlroy wrote:

>If you were asked to develop a computer like HAL from 2001, Holly from
>Red Dwarf or Deep Thought from the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Universe,
>and to complete it within 10 years could you do it ?

A qualified maybe..... If someone were generous enough to fund the
construction of a suitable highly parallel machine (note.... _not_ a
`computer' as such) from transistor level up.....

>Would you be first
>across the finishing line, or would someone else beat you?

See above.  My money's on one of the big multinationals casually
appropriating all the painstaking research of the past few decades,
exploiting the scaling factor (they can afford to build expensive custom
hardware when nobody else can) and proclaiming to the world media that
they invented the whole thing.  Must admit that the words blue and deep
spring to mind here.....

>Where would you start?

By finishing writing my PhD thesis!

>And where would you end up?

Probably being ripped off by one of the aforementioned large
corporations.  Sorry about being so cynical - have just been reading
`The Dilbert Principle' so you can blame my state of mind on Scott
Adams.

Chris Holgate - Former Neural Systems Engineering Research Student,
soon-to-be lowly ASIC designer in the grand corporate scheme of things
and currently thesis writer par excellence (I hope).

-- 
------------------> http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~paradox/ <------------------

Turn left off the T1 superhighway just after infocentral and you'll find a
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IBM AT lies in bits. Inscribed on the rusting case are the immortal words
.. If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure