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According to a small study done by my grandfather, the answer is "not fast enough". The only real choice is to drastically reduce our energy needs.

While building hundreds of nuclear plants may extend this age of massive consumption somewhat, we're still heading for nasty fall.

They would panic, of course !

Maybe if Microsoft completely ditched x86, but most people would continue to use Windows on x86 if it were available.

So they took the Z80 processor and extended it.

Ok... Z80 was Zilog's extension of Intel's 8080. (which was in turn an extension of the 8008, an 8-bit version of the 4004, the first single-chip microprocessor) x86 was based on the 8080/8085, which Intel already had all the internal designs for, as opposed to the z80. You don't need to make it sound like Intel was just stealing other people's ideas.

Blah, blah, blah. See here for more accurate x86 history: http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/jbayko/cpu3.html#Sec3P art7

Both of my ISPs do this. It's not a problem. I either use their SMTPs for outgoing mail, or tunnel to my own SMTP via openvpn/ssh, or use SMTP-AUTH on a different port.

All traffic on both of these ISPs, on port 25 gets blocked before it hits the real world.

S

They don't, however, they run the 32-bit instructions of their precursor instruction sets at native speed with no performace pentalty. Their 64-bit "modes" are extensions of the "32-bit" modes of their predecessors. AMD realised this was the way to go and did exactly that with AMD64.

Note that the exception to the above is Alpha. It was designed to replace the VAX (and to a lesser extent 32-bit MIPS). It does not run MIPS or VAX code, but it does have a 32-bit "mode" to make porting legacy software easier.

itanic doesn't have this. There aren't "32-bit" itanic instructions. It used to have a pentium emulator in hardware, but it was apallingly slow. IIRC benchmarking was forbidden, but some results leaked out onto a German website a while back. It was running Petium code at about 10-20% of the speed of a similarly clocked Pentium III.

Once again, the big iron people lead the way and the PeeCee world catches up 10 years later.

They don't, however, they run the 32-bit instructions of their precursor instruction sets at native speed with no performace pentalty. Their 64-bit "modes" are extensions of the "32-bit" modes of their predecessors. AMD realised this was the way to go and did exactly that with AMD64.

Note that the exception to the above is Alpha. It was designed to replace the VAX (and to a lesser extent 32-bit MIPS). It does not run MIPS or VAX code, but it does have a 32-bit "mode" to make porting legacy software easier.

itanic doesn't have this. There aren't "32-bit" itanic instructions. It used to have a pentium emulator in hardware, but it was apallingly slow. IIRC benchmarking was forbidden, but some results leaked out onto a German website a while back. It was running Petium code at about 10-20% of the speed of a similarly clocked Pentium III.

Once again, the big iron people lead the way and the PeeCee world catches up 10 years later.

They don't, however, they run the 32-bit instructions of their precursor instruction sets at native speed with no performace pentalty. Their 64-bit "modes" are extensions of the "32-bit" modes of their predecessors. AMD realised this was the way to go and did exactly that with AMD64.

Note that the exception to the above is Alpha. It was designed to replace the VAX (and to a lesser extent 32-bit MIPS). It does not run MIPS or VAX code, but it does have a 32-bit "mode" to make porting legacy software easier.

itanic doesn't have this. There aren't "32-bit" itanic instructions. It used to have a pentium emulator in hardware, but it was apallingly slow. IIRC benchmarking was forbidden, but some results leaked out onto a German website a while back. It was running Petium code at about 10-20% of the speed of a similarly clocked Pentium III.

Once again, the big iron people lead the way and the PeeCee world catches up 10 years later.

They don't, however, they run the 32-bit instructions of their precursor instruction sets at native speed with no performace pentalty. Their 64-bit "modes" are extensions of the "32-bit" modes of their predecessors. AMD realised this was the way to go and did exactly that with AMD64.

Note that the exception to the above is Alpha. It was designed to replace the VAX (and to a lesser extent 32-bit MIPS). It does not run MIPS or VAX code, but it does have a 32-bit "mode" to make porting legacy software easier.

itanic doesn't have this. There aren't "32-bit" itanic instructions. It used to have a pentium emulator in hardware, but it was apallingly slow. IIRC benchmarking was forbidden, but some results leaked out onto a German website a while back. It was running Petium code at about 10-20% of the speed of a similarly clocked Pentium III.

Once again, the big iron people lead the way and the PeeCee world catches up 10 years later.

Luckily for intel, some companies were run by PHBs that didn't have a clue about processor design. In this way, intel managed to kill off development of Alpha (the fastest 64-bit processor in the world), MIPS and PA-RISC. What a way to nail your competition.

Some people were more forward-thinking and that's why POWER (and PowerPC), UltraSPARC (and SPARC64) and AMD64 survived or came about.

intel managed to completely and utterly fail to produce something that people wanted. It's expensive, hot, difficult to program, doesn't have an established software base (or operating system), and has lackluster performance on everything except the SPEC floating-point benchmarks. Thus it has found a niche amongst scientists and engineers with more money that sense and very good air-conditioning.

Over the years, intel and HP have tried very hard to silence the academic and professional itanic dissenters. Alas the PR and FUD machinery couldn't cope (as with all dictatorships) and the empire has crumbled.

It was really funny (and somewhat sad) when a couple of years back the IT press was talking about "the transition to 64-bit computing" when most people, except intel (actually, including intel, just not with itanic) had done it back in the '90s (DEC, SUN, SGI, Cray (maybe the 80's or 70's), HP).

Rather than being a radical new architecture, itanic was actually based on theoretical supercomputer designs of the 1970s that were overtaken by developments in RISC processors in the 1980s by IBM, Sun, SGI, DEC, Fujitsu and NEC.

However, those with the $$$$$$ get to write history, and as I mentioned above, the FUD machine managed to silence many credible critics. Perhaps this will be forgotten. In this case, the market has spoken.

What really bothers me, is that back in 1988 intel produced an absolutely brilliant processor called the 80860 and it died a death. It was genuinely ahead of its time, Unfortunately, poor marketting and MS-DOS sent it to an early grave.

Luckily for intel, some companies were run by PHBs that didn't have a clue about processor design. In this way, intel managed to kill off development of Alpha (the fastest 64-bit processor in the world), MIPS and PA-RISC. What a way to nail your competition.

Some people were more forward-thinking and that's why POWER (and PowerPC), UltraSPARC (and SPARC64) and AMD64 survived or came about.

intel managed to completely and utterly fail to produce something that people wanted. It's expensive, hot, difficult to program, doesn't have an established software base (or operating system), and has lackluster performance on everything except the SPEC floating-point benchmarks. Thus it has found a niche amongst scientists and engineers with more money that sense and very good air-conditioning.

Over the years, intel and HP have tried very hard to silence the academic and professional itanic dissenters. Alas the PR and FUD machinery couldn't cope (as with all dictatorships) and the empire has crumbled.

It was really funny (and somewhat sad) when a couple of years back the IT press was talking about "the transition to 64-bit computing" when most people, except intel (actually, including intel, just not with itanic) had done it back in the '90s (DEC, SUN, SGI, Cray (maybe the 80's or 70's), HP).

Rather than being a radical new architecture, itanic was actually based on theoretical supercomputer designs of the 1970s that were overtaken by developments in RISC processors in the 1980s by IBM, Sun, SGI, DEC, Fujitsu and NEC.

However, those with the $$$$$$ get to write history, and as I mentioned above, the FUD machine managed to silence many credible critics. Perhaps this will be forgotten. In this case, the market has spoken.

What really bothers me, is that back in 1988 intel produced an absolutely brilliant processor called the 80860 and it died a death. It was genuinely ahead of its time, Unfortunately, poor marketting and MS-DOS sent it to an early grave.

To the low-end consumer, yes, it is pretty irrlelevant. But to the rest of us, how we got to where we are today is relevant, and especially when we look to the future, and when consumer-grade isn't enough. That is why we need to be aware of our CPU history and need to be aware of the options available to us when a 4-way Dell or HP 32-bit Xeon just doesn't cut the mustard - and why.

Playable version here.

There is an (unsupported) MS-Windows version as well, and I imagine that getting it to go under OS X would be a "./configure; make install".

The IP address from which you have visited the Network Solutions Registrar WHOIS database is contained within a list of IP addresses that may have failed to abide by Network Solutions' WHOIS policy. Failure to abide by this policy can adversely impact our systems and servers, preventing the processing of other WHOIS requests. To see the Network Solutions WHOIS Policy, click on or copy and paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index. jhtml If you feel that you have received this message in error, please contact us at: whoisquery@networksolutions.com

I think a fusion reaction is going to be rather too fast for that, but that's how the original fission reactors worked, pushing rods into the pile to absorb excess neutrons. And in the Manhattan Project, they did some hair-raising (or losing) experiments with two masses of plutonium, slowly pushing them towards each other just to see if the chain reaction proceeded as predicted. "Tickling the dragon's tail", it was called. One scientist, Louis Slotin, got a lethal dose of radiation when the hemispheres accidentally touched.

As much as I like Linus and love what he's done for this world, this just had to be done wiht the picture that was used in the article...

Balkie Torvalds

Some people think that just because they are given the blank check (no caps set) they should be able to take as much as they wanted. .... Take as much as you want, but when other people can't get their fair share, you're taking too much.

You should. If a product or service is advertised or sold as "unlimited," then it should be unlimited. Telcos aren't advertising usage limits, in fact, they are usually advertising "no limits... unlimited." That means "no limits... unlimited," not "your limit is 1 standard deviation from average" or "2 GB per month." Any attempts to limit the use of an unlimited service is false advertising and a breach of contract.

If the telcos want to impose limits to make their business models better, then they need to stop advertising that their service is "unlimited."

As an aside, Bell's Sympatico tried to place usage limits of 2 GB per month (I think) on their DSL services two or three years ago, but they had to remove it because their major competitor Roger's never matched them, and customers started leaving. I believe that both companies have stopped advertising "unlimited" as their major product differentiator though.

All the ISPs are going to start filtering outbound port 25. If you want to run your own mail server you'll have to route it through their mail server, or use non-standard port number to route thru a 3rd party mail server.

My current ISPs (work and home) already do this. I still, however use my own mail services, by: SMTPS (authenticated, and port is not blocked), VPN or SSH tunnel. I realize, however, that 2 of those three are WAY above the heads of most end users.

Unfortunately, these don't SOLVE the problem, because as someone else said, if these viruses/worms/whatever-we're-calling-them-this-wee k can read address book info, the probably can also read SMTP settings, and I want to send mail (-:

Fortunately, I haven't used any form of Outlook (other than testing) since 1999.

S

Reminds me of propeller clocks (also here, here, here...)
...or the similar mechanically scanned displays.
Spacewriter sells some very cool full-color displays. Their iBall 3D display is also sold at AudioVisualizers - check their site out for more animated demos.
There's also the Virtual Game System (Google cache) which was amazing; unfortunately the site is down so you'll have to settle for text and no pictures.

Not exactly damning but many people have made the conclusions this guy has... other's point to Dave Cutler's history with VMS. Whatever the case, MS's "NT (New Technology) Technology" initiative always gave me a laugh, no such thing as a redundant monopoly I always say... always.

If you're talking about the link between NT and VMS, this or this would be a much better read. If not, then... what the hell are you talking about?

The show ran for three seasons.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/lfsociety/epgs.htm

When ever you send plain text over an untrusted network have no expectation of privacy.

Targeted ads work, the people at google are merely capitalizing on the fact that most people are too lazy to ensure they're own privacy. The gouvernement isn't there to protect you, you have to protect yourself.

Support cryptography.

more of the same

I live in Canada, so I can "pirate" music to my hearts content without any legal reprocussions thanks to some recent legislation. However I still find this quite appauling, $3 USD per neutered/DRMed track is sick.

While they're instituting that, how much is the artist getting pray tell?

You guys really need to change your laws, because they do not seem to reflect what is right.

more of the same

I might point out that the telephone was invented in Canada!

By my calculations, at the current rate they'll take over 500 years to produce a collision. They need about a hundred times as many people on board to get anywhere.

The sum I did is

sqrt(-l(0.5)*2*2^128)/(1.325*10^9*86400*365)
51 9.78646399116343804161

N=2^128 is the space they're looking for a collision in. The expected number of collisions found after k items have been produced is very close to k^2/2N, so the probability zero have been found is exp(-k^2/2N) by the Poisson distribution. Assume exp(-k^2/2N) = 0.5 and solve for k, then divide by their declared rate of 1.325 gigaMD5s a second.

I don't know whether this inclines me to give the whole thing up or to climb on board. The latter is probably more fun.

Incidentally, the algorithm they're using to do the search efficiently is pretty cool. Paul C van Oorschot and Michael J Wiener, Parallel Collision Search with Cryptanalytic Applications (pdf)

However, increasingly, the absence of a bandwidth limit is becoming an important marketing tool on the competitive Canadian DSL market (even though Bell runs everything from behind the scenes).

In Toronto

Sympatico

Golden

and

Echo Online

all currently advertise no bandwidth limits on residential DSL.

Given the above why is this not more likely? So the AE wrote the code for this one project and burned the PROMs.

"The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."

"My Coffee was too hot"

"I'm too fat"

"You watch my kids for me..."

These are just three stories, and yes, all extreme cases of what we're talking about here. Finding a scapegoat. It's a disease that is rampant, and further perpetuated by the media's constant abuse of their power of exposure.

I agree with you, it's senseless to look no further than the assumed 'influence' when it comes to cases like this, but unfortunately that is the surface stance that most individuals seem to jump on whenever things like this arise. Our actions somehow are no longer products of our decisions, but of our stated influences?

It was supposed to replace X86. Itanic will go same route. Repositioned and slowly fade into the sunset.

"From the time of Windows NT 4.0's release (1996?) until June, 2003, an attacker could exploit the help system to run their own code"

Actually despite the long standing joke, this *was* a feature that was unfortunately added with little fore thought

Oh, and not to totally karma whore, but from his main page there's a link to his ultra-portable 10" f5. Click and drool.

Check out this telescope. It weighs a total of 52 pounds (40 was the target) instead of the article's 70 pounder, and has an f5 aperature instead of f8 so it lets in more light. Very similar construction, but this one was made 6 years ago.

In Windows, you have to be logged in as a user with administrative rights to the computer, but there's no simple way to assume and release privileges for the purpose of installing an application.

Actually, there has been a way to execute programs as another user since Windows 2000 at least. Just shift-right-click on an executable and select "Run as", then enter the relevant login info. If you want "su" like functionality, just start a command shell as "Administrator".

A lot of people bag MS Windows on technical grounds, but most of the problems are at the application layer, in my opinion. The actual NT kernel took a lot of ideas (not to mention people) from DEC/VMS. I'm talking about things like ACLs and fine-grained, separately assignable user privileges. Unix just gives you root, non-root and group permissions on files.

So most users (outside the most restrictive of corporate environments) use their Windows environments from a login with full administrative privileges. This is the equivalent of running one's Unix environment while logged in as "root," a practice regarded as reckless and incompetent.

Yeah. I'ts not due to an inherent limitation in the operating system, though.

I guess they underestimated the amount of people that would leave because they got an extra charge one month. Consumers like flat rate pricing, Sympatico has competitors, competition drives down prices.

You have to wonder why they implemented caps in the first place. I think it had more to do with the desire to make more money than with bandwidth costs.

One of the things I like about the Bell's sympatico service is that, not only is it clearly stated (section 5) that there are no bandwidth limits, they even provide you with a page where you can check you consumption, which to me is such an obvious service to provide I'm surprised that not everyone offers it.

Of course, it was completely laughable -- there's no way you could reliably send and receive that much data and the lag would make it impossible to play simultaneously..

You challenge me to find an architecuture that has a non-power-of-2 word size? You haven't been around very long, have you?

Quick scan of google: PDP-10 emulator. The PDP-11 also had some interesting word size limitations: PDP-11 addresses were 16 bits, limiting program space to 64K, though an MMU could be used to expand total address space (18-bits and 22-bits in different PDP-11 versions). I see that an early design by Seymour Cray was 60-bit. You probably also know that the Itanium has a variable instruction bundle size.

Here is a link on porting gcc, including a warning on the word size. Not the best evidence, but it will have to do.

You challenge me to find an architecuture that has a non-power-of-2 word size? You haven't been around very long, have you?

Quick scan of google: PDP-10 emulator. The PDP-11 also had some interesting word size limitations: PDP-11 addresses were 16 bits, limiting program space to 64K, though an MMU could be used to expand total address space (18-bits and 22-bits in different PDP-11 versions). I see that an early design by Seymour Cray was 60-bit. You probably also know that the Itanium has a variable instruction bundle size.

Here is a link on porting gcc, including a warning on the word size. Not the best evidence, but it will have to do.

Well at least he's not called " englebert humperdinck ".
Seriously , it is a name.

Ahh, but it is a made up one check here.

Englebert Humperdinck's real name is "Arnold Dorsey"

I think he made the right choice to change it!! :-)

Looks like the headline-grabbers like Pataki and Bloomberg, amongst others, now have little to say about their quick denouncements of Canada for the whole power mess. Interesting that this is the same reaction pattern for the current Canadian internet pharmacy spat, where FDA commissioners are now publicly alleging Canadian drugs to be unsafe. Is 'mouth off first and ask questions later' now an official US political strategy?

I hate to break it on you, but sometimes just bringing two oranges halves close enough together is indeed sufficient to make juice!

Moron!

For those interested in AI game programming without the insane complexities of chess, Nine Men's Morris is fun. Also a frequently researched topic in AI.

Play here.

If you assume that "hits" are always the bulk of sales, the RIAA Award database says that ther were 53 "gold" singles awarded in 1968, which I guess to be a representative near-peak sales year for singles. Since "gold" was 500,000 units, it says that top sellers were at least 25M units that year. If you guess that is 1/4 to 1/2 total unit sales, then likely there were 50-100M single sales a year around 1968 in the US, which was probably around 1/2 unit per person per year. So, by that measure, the current ~8m/month = 96M units over twice as many people is maybe 1/4 unit per person per year.

I am possibly off by factors of two or four, I'd guess, but maybe not by a factor of 10 I wouldn't think. On-line sales could reach equivalent to peak 45rpm single sales per-capita in not-very long.

I will observe that the kind of contracts artists got in the days of singles really, really sucked, and there was little money to be made until album sales kicked in. A healthy singles market is not necessarily healthy for artists, but it does have historic precedent.

-dB

I can't keep up with demand for Scots Tablet, though ...

Actually Space War was released in 1962.

It is complete hypocrisy for the OSS crowd to support this sort of extortion and at the same time condemn the SCO lawsuit.

No, there is a difference. Eolas has an actual patent, and is enforcing it according to the rules ; they got a verdict in court that says MS is infringing, and are stating their terms to bring MS into compliance.

SCO, as far as anyone can tell, is making crap up based on no sound legal theory anyone has heard of (one day it's contract dispute, next day it's copyright infringement, and apparently they think "know-how"is a form of intellectual property) and expecting people to fork over money for a license (or, alternately, buy their stock).

Jay (=

Attended stop #1 of the roadshow (Toronto). Interesting. Little visible linux representation, but not a happy place regardless. Writeup @ my site (I can't be bothered re-writing what I put there)...

Do people think the system(s) needs work? Yes. Do they think is not worth anything? Based on a wilingness to allocate more tax money towards them, it would be hard to conclude that they are worth nothing. Who is willing to invest in something worthless?

PS, Health is a provincial responsibility. There are 13 systems, not one national one.

I was just telling a friend at the office about this little tidbit. Our local DSL provider in Toronto (Bell Canada) has just removed their download caps after adding them over a year ago.

Of course, it seems more and more that we Canadians are protected from the corrupted empire that is the RIAA... that and given the timeframe that Bell did this on make me sure that it's unrelated... but still.

I say... between my uncapped downloads, the free and easy pot laws and the open season on downloading, Canada is still the hippest place I've ever been... thank goodness I live here. :)

Some ISPs do offer this.

Sympatico offers a Lite version of DSL, a regular version, and an ultra High Speed version.

Only available in Canada however :P

I love Science!