The challenge of the Traveling Salesman Problem is the combinations. The amoeba is trying all solutions at once, and the light is telling it where not to go. The real question is, "Given the preconditions, and the behavior of an amoeba, could it not create an approximate solution?" Clearly not.

Our railroads are already already at capacity - and in the upper-plains states they have been filled up by coal and oil trains on top of the agricultural loads.

For various reasons trucking is both faster and cheaper for a lot of load-types.

I think Stephenson does a great job creating interesting characters and worlds, and also does a good a job with setting up stories. What he struggles with is ending them - apart from the time he spent explaining the nuts and bolts of elementary crypto-theory what really jarred me was the way Cryptonomicon ended. Which was "abruptly" and "poorly".

I really enjoyed Snow Crash - which is something of guilty-pleasure pulp cyber-punk. I really really liked The Diamond Age - I think it his best book in some ways.

After Cryptonomicon I haven't been able to bring myself to start the Baroque Cycle even though they've been on my bookshelves for nearly a decade now. :(

Ah - here's a better summary....

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

There are a lot of people who want to believe or not believe in certain outcomes, but this location in the Pacific has more verifiable nuggets of info that point more strongly in this direction than anywhere else.

I hope further experimentation (expeditions) yield a result that either confirms or invalidates the theory convincingly - just like in science! ;-)

I couldn't find the article in my search just now, but did recently read an account of a girl who claims to have listened to Earhart calling for help on her father's radio - and that she thought she heard Earhart say "New York City" repeatedly - which doesn't make sense. But apparently there was a wreck of a merchant ship named Norwhich City on that atol?

I hope they get the money for their next expedition.

Do you think they need to embrace Open Source to survive? Will they?

You raved about Python in the past. Is it still your preferred language/platform for slinging code?

Sorry, but numerous, disjointed visions of what passes for good user-interface design, along with different standards for reliability doesn't sound like something I'm interested in at all. Especially if every user-interface panel requires me to push the "I'M A CHARGIN' MA LAZER" button before pressing "OK".

I'm getting sick of people generating web-hits by relating anything and everything to Anonymous.

You need some Santorum-flavored coffee creamer.

They shipped the level editor with Marathon 3.

I need to pick this game up again. I was stuck on the Colony Ship For Sale level...

As fun and immersive as the Marathon games are, the multi-player play was even better. "King of the Hill" lead to sooooo much carnage.

"When is stone not stone?" I really loved that game - except for the level where I missed a secret door in a place I thought I had checked. I had to buy the hint-guide to find it, and when I saw where the door was I almost put my head through the desk. I mapped those levels out by hand.

Just saw this while taking a break from Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls, which I was playing on my PS3.

Gameplay video looked impressive. But it sure looked like a modern "Dungeon Master" to me.

I hope they find two pristine horns faster than I did.

That might be one of the best editorial asides I've ever seen on slashdot. I was going to say it is tragic so few will understand why that aside was so great. But perhaps it's more tragic yet that so many will. ;-)

Life is an algorithm.