The Difference Engine

[Daniil]

Always wondered how Russian's keyboards work, can you show the whole keyboard?? We don't have the same layout on the keys(The one provided is a little bit hard to see from the angle of the camera) I noticed your ~ is to the left of "1" where we have §, and our ~is to the left of enter, and right of "å"

Yes, sure, friend. I'll photo a white keyboard, there you can see layout better. I'll post photo a bit later (white keyboard is out there).

[Daniil]

As I promised, here is a picture of russian keyboard.

[Shadow.97]

As I promised, here is a picture of russian keyboard.

Is the Russian keyboard layout easy to use?? And i wouldn't be able to write on that keyboard because of the Enter key being misshaped in my eyes, mine is much bigger and reaches from shift to backspace. I think we have our totally own scandinavian layout but i am not sure. And i have German at school, and they have this key "ß" So i made a custom layout and added it to CTRL shift S, (sharp s=ß) Have you been in need of doing something like that for any common key in Russian?

[humbert]

@Shadow - I agree that using a keyboard with a narrow, rectangular enter key isn't easy. My favorite is one that has both an oversized enter key and a wide backspace key. Sadly these are extremely hard to get, and when you see one you should grab it immediately. I found such a keyboard on a site dedicated to disabled people. It had oversized letters which I don't really need, but the keyboard pattern was there. I paid almost $50 for each one (ouch!).

As for characters you don't normally use, I like either the extended character set (Alt 128-255) or the Iso Latin-1 character set (Alt 0128-0255). For example, the German sharp S is Alt-0223 (ß). Even if the characters you want aren't on these 2 sets, you're not out of luck. Use the little Unicode registry mod I posted and you can enter any character using Alt + it's unicode number. You can also type this same letter as Alt +0DF (you must use the plus sign). The only problem with this is that some proggies (including Firefox) confuse Alt and one of the letters as one of its commands. If you run into that problem, you can type this into Notepad then cut and paste.

I'll repost the registry mod for whoever wants it.

[Daniil]

@Shadow
Yes, comrad, it's easy. It's like russian classic typewriter, with only a few differences. And no, we don't need any layout customisations. Also, small Enter key is only on this model of keyboard, on my kb it's big "classic" enter, also there is very many variations of enter. I had see a even a vertical enters (like num enter, but on place of normal enter).

[Daniil]

OK, that's time to enhance topic about unusual computers.
Today we'll talk about interesting computer modelling.


As you can know, many PC's used for modelling different things, starting with simple 3D-modelling for an indi-games and to very difficult modelling of physical and economical processes like space flights, nuclear weapons and predicting of stock exchange course. As an IT-specialist, system administrator and a programer, fascinated by big and powerfull computer systems (and also as a man, fascinated by beauty, difficulty and complexity of our world and our life) I like different modelling on computers very much, and use it if I need.

Also I'm interested in an evolution secrets. A way of life evolution is even today mostly unlearned, and scientists and enthusiasts from different countries tries to investigate it.

And - I had found very interesting software, which is modelling (a bit) a way of primitive evolution.
That is GenePool.
What is it? It's a program, which is modelling an evolution of a simple life. In a program, in fact, is a virtual "pool", where is different simple organisms (so called Swimbots), with randomly generated genetical code. (Genetical code model is very simple, as I can understand.) This virtual organisms has a 2 scripted instincts - eating and mating. They eating green dots of "food", and prefer to mate with organisms of the same or close color. Their movings follows the rules of a physics of a liquid patterns.
You can download this prog (it's free), start it and watch, how evolute swimbots in your gene-pool. In about of 30 minutes on modern PC (about a 45 min on my dual Irwindale-Xeon 3GHz) you can see a well-differenting populations of a new species.
Ofcourse, you can save states of your genetic experiments, and even to share it to friends with the save-files.
Try it, it's interesting. 

[Shadow.97]

OK, that's time to enhance topic about unusual computers.
Today we'll talk about interesting computer modelling.


As you can know, many PC's used for modelling different things, starting with simple 3D-modelling for an indi-games and to very difficult modelling of physical and economical processes like space flights, nuclear weapons and predicting of stock exchange course. As an IT-specialist, system administrator and a programer, fascinated by big and powerfull computer systems (and also as a man, fascinated by beauty, difficulty and complexity of our world and our life) I like different modelling on computers very much, and use it if I need.

Also I'm interested in an evolution secrets. A way of life evolution is even today mostly unlearned, and scientists and enthusiasts from different countries tries to investigate it.

And - I had found very interesting software, which is modelling (a bit) a way of primitive evolution.
That is GenePool.
What is it? It's a program, which is modelling an evolution of a simple life. In a program, in fact, is a virtual "pool", where is different simple organisms (so called Swimbots), with randomly generated genetical code. (Genetical code model is very simple, as I can understand.) This virtual organisms has a 2 scripted instincts - eating and mating. They eating green dots of "food", and prefer to mate with organisms of the same or close color. Their movings follows the rules of a physics of a liquid patterns.
You can download this prog (it's free), start it and watch, how evolute swimbots in your gene-pool. In about of 30 minutes on modern PC (about a 45 min on my dual Irwindale-Xeon 3GHz) you can see a well-differenting populations of a new species.
Ofcourse, you can save states of your genetic experiments, and even to share it to friends with the save-files.
Try it, it's interesting. 

I think you would like Spore( a game ) you take part of evolution.
Anyways, I think I will test the program. (but not today)

[Daniil]

I saw a "Spore", but it's not what I like. Spore is... Well, for kids. "Try to build a little monster and care it like a tamagochi." Nice and eye-candy, but very far from real evolution.
GenePool isn't like that. Swimbots looks choppy, and here is no gameplay at all, in fact. But... Swimboats really evoluting, without your actions.
Also, GenePool author by this program tries to make a basement for an idea, that "sexual attractiveness" is more poverfull criteria of natural selection, then the "best fitness". I can't agree with that. IMHO, "sexual attractivness" is our own, humans, perception of "best fitness", and it goes mostly from our brain, than from instinct (I mean, it's typical only for humans).

[humbert]

@Daniil - this might be a gross oversimplification, but as far as I know the engine that drives evolution is what Darwin called "natural selection", i.e., only the strong survive and pass those genes on to their offspring. You do not have to look at dinosaur fossils to see it in action - a perfect example is those species of bacteria that are now resistant to antibiotics that killed trillions of their comrades who could not adapt.

As for the other stuff you said, let me ask you - do you believe everything can be explained and understood by converting it into a stream of ones and zeros? There are many things out there that I can't see how to do such a thing. I suppose my favorite example is dealing with women. As you probably know, with them 1+1 does not always = 2.  You're a smart guy, give me your opinion.

[Daniil]

@humbert
I meant exactly the same - swimbot's "sexual attractiveness", based on similarity of bytes, coded it's colour, is just a stupid rule, given by a programmer, and because of that it isn't correct "evolution model".

As for your second question - well... In my (humble) opinion, theoretically we can mathematically modelling anything around us. But practically we shurely coudn't do this. And your example is very good. We almost can't model processes based on top neural activity, i.e., psychology, or economics (which is == psychology, in fact), because of exteremly wide amount of source data (in fact, for psychology modelling we must digitalised whole life expirience of selected human). I think, even a quantum computers woudn't be able to modelling this.