Re: How to make money fast (in science fiction)

On Mar 30, 1:35 pm, Phillip Thorne <petho...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, darkm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

> I suggest software.  With superhuman intelligence, he should be able
> to write provably correct, bug-free software -- he'd be a sort of
> super-Knuth.  He could apply his talents to some unsolved problems,
> like reliable image and voice recognition, natural language
> processing, translation, spam and virus detection, and robust
> operating systems.

Sure, on the other hand he could go for the big money and write games.
Or just write the graphics engines that run games. Assuming he's super
intelligent, there are lots of ways that graphics/physics engines can
be streamlined to operate faster and be easier to interface with. If
he could write directly in machine code, with perfect algorithms, and
flawless execution he could produce noticeable gains in performance.

Ever wonder why computers are something on the order of thousands of
times more cycles per second and have thousands of times more RAM but
still don't work much faster than they did in 1995? Software bloat.
Applications become more complicated but programmers don't. The newer
programming languages and development environments become more
complicated allowing the programmer to produce more capable software
but at the cost of massively bloated code underneath. If this super
intelligent guy could write directly in machine code with perfect
algorithms and able to manage all the complexity that something like
this would entail, then he could write his own paycheck. Assuming that
he kept it a secret how he does it.

Operating systems is a dead end though. Microsoft products are some of
the worst around, there are other better ones available but MS is
still on top due to entrenched market share.

Though if you could write a better operating system that also runs
Windows software natively and seamlessly for the user, you'd sell a
billion units. And you'd also get sued by Microsoft.