Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Toast, Cube, Light
Larry Ellison, watch your back. meforpc writes: "More on LTSP (Linux terminal server project): Riverdale (www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux) decided to make a 'poster child' to get the word out on their project; to do this Bryan Grimshaw made a Linux machine inside of a toaster oven. The idea behind the toaster is to show the ease of setting up a Linux terminal/server network. It's really cool and looks great. (I want one)."
"Oooh, that's one hot system! If you sell it, I hope the buyer doesn't get burned. Might this sort of thing have a Dark Side? Nice rack -- Smmmmmokin'!" Sigh. I've stopped now. The worst pun you can come up with will be rewarded with an official Slashdot groan of derision :)
Soon all will be optical. BdosError writes: "Scientists in Japan seem to have developed an optical transistor, as explained in this article, which I snipped from the Rapidly Changing Face of Computing newsletter. This could go nicely with the optical switching technology mentioned earlier, as it would eliminate the need to convert the electrical signals to/from optical. Plus, it would be a huge benefit for building fast systems which generate less heat in general.
Let's have no comments about the possibilities for a Beowulf cluster."
Well ... no more comments. But actually, why not? This sounds like a good thing for clustered research computers, no?
Of course, we'll see what hits shelves ... TheZalm writes: "The article about Gamecube being in danger is a misrepresentation of the facts. Hiroshi Yamauchi said only that he would reconsider his launch plan, and possibly place a small delay on the launch. See this article at IGN."
Of course, that's what Sega repeatedly said about the Dreamcast, too. The gamecube sounds cool, so I hope it arrives, but it's obviously coming into a hotly contested market.
Commemorating the banal and the momentous. fizban writes: "According to this AP news story, CNN plans to spend the next few years digitizing its entire video archive and making it available to the public over the internet. Excellent! Just think of the multimedia reports the kids of tomorrow will be able to make for their class projects..."
The article skirts the issue of licensing and payment; hopefully CNN will see fit to make at least some of its content free, but I'd be surprised it that's more than a sampling.
The progress may be mind-numbingly slow, but thanks to things like Project Gutenberg, ibiblio and the Internet Moving Image Archive, more and more free content is arriving for us to read, watch and use. ("And, he groused, "it would be nice if all images made with our tax dollars would be available online as well.")
However, the rate of technological advance is no longer affecting our culture as much as it did. Sure, technology is moving forward, but it does not affect society. Our quality of life is no different from someone in the 1950's. The law of diminishing returns is coming into play. If you have a job, car, health insurance and go on holiday twice a year, what more improvements can your lifestyle get? Very few.
Combined with this, there is the effect of globalisation and multiculturalism, which should really be called monoculturalism. This means that society is becoming less varied, and people are becoming more and more similar. Therefore stories have a more global appeal - the latest hollywood blockbuster or remake appeals to someone in Shanghai just as much as someone in LA.
So, before long every type of film will have been made, and all films will be derivatives (derivation being a very postmodern concept, and beloved of recent films). But extensive archiving will allow people to see this, and watch cheap archive footage just as fresh and relevant in 2020 as it is today.
We have to make sure we don't kill the active film industry by suffocating it and overshadowing it with the better films of yesteryear.
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Euroderf lives in northern Britain. He truly hasn't seen any advance since the 50s!
At a guess, it refers to stories that update or follow up on other stories recently posted. So any story people would be waiting for more info on (like the GameCube yoink rumor) can be wrapped up with a nice ending (hah).
High maintenance item. You just wouldn't believe how much bread they burn through.
I just hope the GameCube will be priced so it is afforable in Canada. Since most companies decide on a US price and then decide the Canadian price of the product based on the exchange rate, some stuff is rediculously expensive over here. If they can get a $230 (Canadian dollar) price tag on it, along with the choice of modem or ethernet adapter, then I reckon it will sell like hot-cakes - the important thing is to price it much less than the Playstation 2.
What Nintendo generally has going for them are a bunch of family orientated titles with enough playability and attraction to please most people. It is always surprising how enjoyable some Nintendo games are, inspite of their lack of blood.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
What's funny about this comment is that the Linux server toaster was built by a high school class that's learning about Linux. RTFA next time, troll!
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
So, they already got a bunch of the clips 'digatized' and I guess they are just moving that kind of service onto the web.
People are trying, but AFAIK it's all going to be (sigh) proprietary, pay-per-use access. A large company, UMI, owns the rights to a bunch of microfilm reels of newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor, going back to the 1880s in some cases. The goal over the next few years is to get these pieces of microfilm scanned, do OCR on the readable portions, hand-correct certain bits, and put all the OCRed text+images into a Bloody Huge Database. Preview at http://www.infolearning.com:8090/promo/histNews/sl d001.html in case anyone is really interested. That is only a fraction of what they've got in their 'base; we've been shipping them ~10G of processed data every week.
Of course, they're going to be charging a nominal leg for this service, and marketing it to universities and other large institutions instead of individual subscribers. Public libraries maybe if the libraries have decent funding.
(All the heavy lifting here is being done by several hundred workers in India and Mexico, natch.)
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
The first slashback, if I recall, was a couple of follow ups to stories posted previously on slashdot. timothy coined the term to refer to the follow up, and the word and format became popular very quickly - it was a great way to let /.'ers know how things turned out on some of the more interesting stories. It caught on and became a regular item with its own icon. Cool idea, and it's use has broadened slightly to include not only direct follow ups to stories, but more information or different directions from the subjects of other stories (lots of optical info lately, here's another blurb about optical stuff).
Note that optical logic gates are not completely new. Check out section 5.9.3.3, "The NOLM [Non-Linear Optical Loop Mirror] as a Logic Gate", in IBM's redbook "Understanding Optical Communications".
Also note that they have not created optical logic gates in this article, but optical transistors. However, if they are truly analagous to electrical transistors, then they can be put together to make logic gates. I have no knowledge of which technology is more appropriate (if either) for making large scale optical "integrated circuits".
Incidentally, I definitely recommend that (free as in beer) book to anyone looking for a overview of optics and optical networking for the technical non-optical-engineer. It's a couple of years and old, and so a couple of years out of date, but still accurate in most ways.
-Puk
connected to and controlled by linux. Now *that* would be cool. set a cron job to 'cat toast /dev/toaster' every morning at breakfast. :)
NO CARRIER
simple enough if placed in a loop. All that remains is a method of refreshing the signal. To this end, I thought of taking a gas laser, pumped to just a few photons below the point it will lase, and use it as the terminator of the loop. In this way, it gets a refresh on each loop
Good idea. A material that slows down light (such as this one; thanks ultrabot2k1), used as a delay line, gives you optical DRAM. Just make sure you don't try to take your idea into outer space.
Or you could just make optical SRAM by using these optical transistors (a D latch/flipflop is two NOTs and a mux).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Duh, Them kids should stay out of riverdale!
--Moose
This really doesn't seem like the coolest computer case I've ever seen, but it does bring a whole new meaning to "frying your processor".
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
If you have a job, car, health insurance and go on holiday twice a year, what more improvements can your lifestyle get? How about just the car, the insurance and the holidays?
For example, if you have a figure skater performing to a bit of music, someone will want a license fee. Or a news story with a movie clip in it. Same thing.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Heh? What is "electricity propagation" and how is it different the electron mobility in a field, which I thought was electricity, er, current flow, whatever... i've been outta college for 10 years...
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Well, I think it boils down to two things, how fast it takes for a voltage to get from one side of a conductor to another, this is what I referred to as propagation. This is what is important in computers and other high frequency electronics.
I'm not buying that. Point me to a reference that says "electriciy propogation" doesn't have to do with electron mobility, and the electron mobility is a "few inches per hour".
Somethings smells fishy.
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I'm sorry, but that is just not correct. Electricity propagation velocity is very close to the speed of light in the atmosphere. If you are talking about electron flow, that is much slower, on the order of a few inches per hour. I think it is safe to assume we are talking about propagation velocity here.
Do some research, it's an interesting subject. The reason light holds promise is because we can modulate a lot more data into it, not because it propagates much faster.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You all havw a right to spend your resources any way you want, but a Linux server in a toaster isn't a good way to do it in my opinion.
If you want to promote Linux, take the time and instead of praising your geekly glory by making a photogenic linux toaster that will get you linked on slashdot and will slashdot your linux toaster anyway, go teach some kids some linux.
Teaching is unglamorous, dull and frustrating work, nowhere near as entertaining as making a Linux toaster.
But a lot more useful way to pass your free time.
Goat sex free since 2001
Bryan Grimshaw made a Linux machine inside of a toaster oven.
Shit with the demise of Slackware, Stormix, Easel, Corel Linux... The similarity is astonishing. Linux is toast.. or to be politically correct its only worth running on toasters take your pick.
wanna root me? (powered by OpenBSD!)
360 degrees of Karma
Actually it is possible to slow down light. Granted, this we're still a few years away from seeing any usable applications for this technology, but it's still a pretty cool concept.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
Wow, so you can run a computer outside of it's case... big fscking deal. Now if this did something like setting my toast time and temp, I'd be impressed. Especially if I could do it from my WAP phone. Sounds to me like a waste of a perfectly good pizza warmer.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
Sorry, SGI already has a computer in a toaster-like shell. The O2.