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Hungry penguins have inspired a novel way of making sure computer code in smart cars does not crash. Tools based on the way the birds co-operatively hunt for fish are being developed to test different ways of organising in-car software. The tools look for safe ways to organise code in the same way that penguins seek food sources in the open ocean. Experts said such testing systems would be vital as cars get more connected.
Engineers have often turned to nature for good solutions to tricky problems, said Prof Yiannis Papadopoulos, a computer scientist at the University of Hull who, together with Dr Youcef Gheraibia from Algeria, developed the penguin-inspired testing system. The way ants pass messages among nest-mates has helped telecoms firms keep telephone networks running, and many robots get around using methods of locomotion based on the ways animals move.
Penguins were another candidate, said Prof Papadopoulos, because millions of years of evolution has helped them develop very efficient hunting strategies. This was useful behaviour to copy, he said, because it showed that penguins had solved a tricky optimisation problem - how to ensure as many penguins as possible get enough to eat. [...] "There must be something special about their hunting strategy," he said, adding that an inefficient strategy would mean many birds starved.
Tux was not involved.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 31 2017, @09:31PM
In a sense, you can. The math sense.
If the probability of anything doesn't decrease faster than the inverse of time, then mathematically, it will happen at some point over an infinite duration.
You might realize, after spending 20000000 years watching porn, playing video games and reading Confucius a few thousand times, that maybe you could dedicate some time to knowing something about those odd plants around you.
Unless you're shipped to outer space without any plants nor study material and spend eternity avoiding all planets with plants (qualifies as decreasing faster than time).
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 31 2017, @09:39PM
It's infinitely many monkeys, but not monkeys with infinite lifetime. Although infinite life time won't help either if the typewriter rusts away before the monkey gets interested again.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:07PM
Isn't an infinite number of monkeys, and their equally infinite amount of typewriters, equivalent to a single eternal monkey with an infinitely-working typewriter, for the purpose of assessing the probability of something being typed?
It's a good thing that the original posting was so uninformative, considering how far off-topic we've drifted.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 01 2017, @04:26AM
No, it isn't, because the monkeys, and thus their typing-probabilities, are not time-independent. Fore example, what does sound more credible, a single monkey getting bored after 1000 minutes, or 1000 monkeys getting bored after 1 minute?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 01 2017, @05:03PM
If you put a monkey in a featureless room for eternity, with only a typewriter... He's gonna type.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 01 2017, @06:37PM
Are you sure he's not rather going to examine the typewriter, ruining it in the process?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 01 2017, @07:01PM
A few posts ago in this giant digression, I did specify an infinitely working typewriter.
Because even an infinite amount of monkeys with an equally infinite number of typewriters would not be able to type the whole works of the Bard on a single one, if you don't provide them with paper or ink.
/thread at this point. Beaten that eternal monkey to death enough.