Computer crashes may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to new research by University College London computer scientists Peter Bentley and Christos Sakellariou. They've created a crash-proof computer by introducing chaos and randomness:
OUT of chaos, comes order. A computer that mimics the apparent randomness found in nature can instantly recover from crashes by repairing corrupted data.
Dubbed a "systemic" computer, the self-repairing machine now operating at University College London (UCL) could keep mission-critical systems working. For instance, it could allow drones to reprogram themselves to cope with combat damage, or help create more realistic models of the human brain.
Everyday computers are ill suited to modelling natural processes such as how neurons work or how bees swarm. This is because they plod along sequentially, executing one instruction at a time. "Nature isn't like that," says UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley. "Its processes are distributed, decentralised and probabilistic. And they are fault tolerant, able to heal themselves. A computer should be able to do that."
Paul Marks of The NewScientist explains how: Link
Comments (2)
Most would only ask once.
My notes would include the date, topic, and whatever key words, phrases, names, dates, figures, and side comments I thought might be useful. Most fellow students were somewhat appalled that they would write several pages of almost verbatim lines from the lectures and I would sketch out a couple of pages of cryptic entries. Whatever it took to jog my memory or remind me to look up later ended up in my notes. Rarely any more than that.
The bottom line is find out what works for you.
Now lecturers are using Powerpoint presentation, I guess you don't even need to decide what is important.