The Lifecycle of Software Objects

The Lifecycle of Software Objects PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781596063174
Category : Artificial intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried." The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

The Lifecycle of Software Objects PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781596063174
Category : Artificial intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried." The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

Stories of Your Life and Others

Stories of Your Life and Others PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1931520895
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival

Exhalation

Exhalation PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 110194790X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory. Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Site Reliability Engineering

Site Reliability Engineering PDF Author: Niall Richard Murphy
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491951176
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Zendegi

Zendegi PDF Author: Greg Egan
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0575086211
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Nasim is a young computer scientist, hoping to work on the Human Connectome Project: a plan to map every neural connection in the human brain. But funding for the project is cancelled, and Nasim ends up devoting her career to Zendegi, a computerised virtual world used by millions of people. Fifteen years later, a revived Connectome Project has published a map of the brain. Zendegi is facing fierce competition from its rivals, and Nasim decides to exploit the map to fill the virtual world with better Proxies: the bit-players that bring its crowd scenes to life. As controversy rages over the nature and rights of the Proxies, a friend with terminal cancer begs Nasim to make a Proxy of him, so some part of him will survive to help raise his orphaned son. But Zendegi is about to become a battlefield ...

S

S PDF Author: R. A. Becker
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9780534033132
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
The latest edition of this manual provides documentation for users of the statistical software system S.

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
This curious time-travel novella is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate-or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah. A Baghdad merchant discovers an alchemical device that can send a traveler back in time 20 years. Despite the alchemist's warning that "what is made cannot be unmade," and three illustrative tales about others' attempts to alter the past, the merchant is determined to return to an earlier time to save his long-dead wife

The Leprechauns of Software Engineering

The Leprechauns of Software Engineering PDF Author: Laurent Bossavit
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 2954745509
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
The software profession has a problem, widely recognized but which nobody seems willing to do anything about; a variant of the well known ""telephone game,"" where some trivial rumor is repeated from one person to the next until it has become distorted beyond recognition and blown up out of all proportion. Unfortunately, the objects of this telephone game are generally considered cornerstone truths of the discipline, to the point that their acceptance now seems to hinder further progress. This book takes a look at some of those ""ground truths"" the claimed 10x variation in productivity between developers; the ""software crisis""; the cost-of-change curve; the ""cone of uncertainty""; and more. It assesses the real weight of the evidence behind these ideas - and confronts the scary prospect of moving the state of the art forward in a discipline that has had the ground kicked from under it.

Tower of Babylon

Tower of Babylon PDF Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101974427
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Together with a crew of other miners and cart-pullers, Hillalum is recruited to climb the Tower of Babylon and unearth what lies beyond the vault of heaven. During his journey, Hillalum discovers entire civilizations of tower-dwellers on the tower—there are those who live inside the mists of clouds, those who raise their vegetables above the sun, and those who have spent their lives under the oppressive weight of an endless, white stratum at the top of the universe. “Tower of Babylon” is a rare gem—a winner of the prestigious Nebula award, the first story Ted Chiang ever published, and the brilliant opening piece to Chiang’s much-lauded first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, which is soon to be a major motion picture starring Amy Adams. An ebook short.

Touch of Class

Touch of Class PDF Author: Bertrand Meyer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540921443
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 926

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Book Description
This text combines a practical, hands-on approach to programming with the introduction of sound theoretical support focused on teaching the construction of high-quality software. A major feature of the book is the use of Design by Contract.