Slashback: Zoning, Linking, Fooling

Tonight Slashback brings you updates (below) on the video card ATi isn't really putting out, home-brewed electronic multi-room temperature control, NPR's linking policy, and more. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Fantasy Hardware League Regarding our post on the allegedly upcoming Radeon 8500 MAXX, reader eyelove yu writes: "This pic is fake, as many people have suspected. HardOCP.com (on front page) quoted Rubeena Hussein of ATi as saying,'"We have no current intentions of making this or similar boards.'"

Soon we will be able to assemble an entire system created in Photoshop. Yay.

Or you could roll down the windows ... vt@home writes: "As a followup to the earlier story, here is a system that not only allows to monitor the temperature throughout the house and draw nice charts, but also does already have computer controlled vents and even allows to control the A/C unit. Basically, this is a do-it-yourself zoning system, for under $500. Of course, the source is GPLd ;)"

Next week, the sidewalks will practically be free for public use. juanfe writes: "It's not like they really had any power to enforce their previous one, but NPR modified their Terms of Use on June 27. Now, linkers do not have to submit a form asking for permission, but NPR "reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link". More commentary from others.

Nothing like hundreds of angry bloggers threatening to withhold membership contributions to their local station."

Raising a stink to the power of 10. Snarfangel writes "After seeing Yet Another Slashdot Article extolling the virtues of meretricious metrification ("Isn't it Time for Metric Time?"), I decided to fight back the only way I know how -- by subjecting an innocent website to the Slashdot effect: This site goes into great detail about the importance of being Ernst (or at least Max Karl Ernst Ludwig) Planck, especially his system of units that only depend the fundamental constants of the universe -- the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the Planck constant, and the charge of the electron. With appropriate scaling, you get a unified measurement system that is not only more logical than Le Systeme International d'Unites, but is also much better for calculating physics problems in your head.

After all, if we are going to go to all the effort to change our measurement system, why not use that same effort and get the system *right* the first time?"

On a different note, Colin LeMahieu writes "I noticed your post on metric time. I stumbled across this while looking for various computer timing related articles and found it pretty interesting. This might not be as popular as metric time, but it seems to make more sense. The whole system is based on time as a fraction of a day; it even has the scientific measurment on how to re-produce the time, as with any scientific measurement."

Comments

Of course

[gusnz]

We always knew that the existing measurement system was thicker than two short Plancks :).

Re:Of course

[tedDancin]

So from now on, I'm working from 4_00 till F_00?? With lunch at A_00?

I like the look of this - especially the conversion between hex seconds, minutes etc being just a matter of shifting the decimal point. Does this mean we have Smarch as a month? (:

Re:Of course

[anewman]

Lousy Smarch! The last thing we need to do is change the way we've measured time for thousands of years. Even if it will eliminate time zones and the like, and although the points are pretty valid, it just is unrealistic.

Re:Of course

[Abreu]

Thousands of years?

Havent I told you millions of times not to exagerate?

Nvidia still rules then!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing I just spent $180 on their G4 4200 128MB last week! What's with the wide type? - Angry Coward

It was photoshop.....or was it?

[prestomation]

Are you sure they used Photoshop to create that ATI image? Maybe it was the GIMP. ;)

Re:It was photoshop.....or was it?

[pjwhite]

According to a tag within the file, it was Adobe Photoshop 7.0 that was used.

Re:It was photoshop.....or was it?

[Patrick13]

yah... with the new vaporware tool, I find that photoshop 7 allows me to create corporate FUD in half the time it used to take.

Re:It was photoshop.....or was it?

[ceejayoz]

Affiliate link? lol... nice try.

Re:It was photoshop.....or was it?

[DynamicBits]

I am assuming you saw the picture at HardOCP.. The one with the [H] watermark added in.. See what I'm getting at? That could just mean that they used Photoshop to add the watermark. Although, chances are the person who created the fake did use Photoshop also.

Look at the pic of the Radeon "MAXX"

[Cutriss]

Specifically, look at the screws on the heatsinks of each GPU. They're at exactly the same orientation on both. Someone copied the one on the left, shrunk it a bit for proportion, and copied it onto the card after rearranging the PCB a bit. Notice also the distortion in the upper surface of the heatsink, where it doesn't mesh very well with the voltage regulator behind/above it.

Re:Look at the pic of the Radeon "MAXX"

[Fjord]

I agree that the picture was faked, but I think it's important to note that just because the picture was faked doesn't mean it wasn't a leak. Companies put together draft pictures like this all the time for their sales efforts.

Of course, I tend to believe ATI when they say it's all a hoax.

Re:Start with changing time slices

[Papa Legba]

That's all well and good until our managers start making us catalogue were we spent our time , at all times, by the tick....

fundamental constants

[s20451]

What if fundamental constants of the universe turn out not to be constant?

My car gets 50 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

Re:fundamental constants

[jbuhler]

> My car gets 50 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

That would be roughly 0.0025 miles/gallon. What do you drive, a Sherman tank?

Re:fundamental constants

[s20451]

It's a simpsons quote. I'm assuming they didn't check the actual value.

Re:fundamental constants

[whiteranger99x]

The way i see it, change is the only constant in the universe. ;)

Re:fundamental constants

[maxume]

It seems more consistant to quote that as 400 gallons per mile, at least to me. but then again, who the fuck careS?

Re:fundamental constants

[t]

I figured that out too after reading the Simpsons Math page. I decided that the value could be semi valid for the type of car that Grandpa Simpson could have had when he was teenager.

t.

Re:fundamental constants

[Anonymous Coward]

ah ha Ha.... but how _much_ change? :)

Re:fundamental constants

[SEWilco]

Well, I charge all the change that you have. I see it as a positive charge.

Re:fundamental constants

[Pastry]

For me, it's either royal cubits or nothing!

Re:fundamental constants

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Let me tell you, it's a bitch to parallel park...

Re:fundamental constants

[MrResistor]

My car gets 50 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it

That's nothin! Mine gets 285 leagues to the oxhaft! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, sonny!

Dual ATI board

[JPriest]

A dual GPU graphics board would be slow. Even dual CPU systems only gain from having a second processor when there are very large portions of data to be crunched. Single CPU systems are more efficient and doing high numbers of small tasks, such as rendering real time graphics.

Re:Dual ATI board

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand how it works. The way it would work (based on ATi's MAXX technology) is one chip would draw one frame, and the other chip the next frame, and so on. The reason they scrapped the technology was (if I heard correctly) that it wouldn't work correctly on NT Kernel based OS'es, due to some kind of limitation on hardware communication or something. It's similar to 3dfx's SLI technology they used on their Voodoo2 and Voodoo5 lines of cards, which effectively doubled the power just by adding another chip.

Re:Dual ATI board

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks

Re:Dual ATI board

[SuiteSisterMary]

3dFX's SLI technology had two Voodoo2 cards working in tandem, one rendering even scanlines, the other rendering odd scanlines. Hence, Scan Line Interleave.

The tech used in the Voodoo3, 4 and 5, who's name escapes me, would break the screen up into X number of sections and hand each section to a different chip. In theory, you could scale this up to however far you'd like. As I recall, though, the 6500 card, with four chips, (TMI or TDI or somesuch, it was called) required a wallwart and a wall socket.

Re:Dual ATI board

[Erpo]

I'm not sure how ati's maxx technology was supposed to work, but having spent a lot of time drooling over 3dfx cards in my gaming days I think I can shed some light on the subject.

The voodoo 2s (like the original voodoo graphics) used a pass-though cable to add 3d support to an existing machine. A cable would come out of the 2d card and go directly into the voodoo 2. A cable would then connect the voodoo 2 to the display device. The voodoo 2 was the first 3dfx card to support SLI, scan line interleave, where one card would render the even scan lines and the other would render the odd ones. The speed was about equal to a voodoo 3 2000, and resolution was limited to a max of 1024x768. This configuration was only obtainable by adding another voodoo 2 pci card of the same brand and memory configuration and connecting them with a special cable.

The voodoo 3 was not capable of doing SLI. Although SLI was a very popular option with gamers, the voodoo 3 did not have support for it, largely because it was more of an improved banshee (technology-wise) than a voodoo 2. 3dfx chose to use the 'voodoo' name in order to associate it with the successful voodoo line rather than the banshee card which was, for lack of a better word, an utter failure.

The voodoo 4 could not do SLI either. While it used 3dfx's VSA 100 chip which was capable of doing SLI, the defining characteristic of the voodoo 4 card was that it had only one gpu.

SLI was brought back with the voodoo 5. Instead of returning to the multiple-card-voodoo-2 method of doing SLI, 3dfx chose to put all of the chips on the same board. The voodoo 5 5500 had two VSA 100s, whereas the voodoo 5 6000 had four.

That's the deal with 3dfx.

Regarding MAXX technology conflicting with NT kernel based OSs, I don't think it would just becase it supported SLI. One of my friends is using a voodoo 5 5500 card with windows 2000 right now, and he hasn't had any problems. However, that doesn't rule out problems with other parts of the MAXX architecture.

Re:Dual ATI board

[rcamans]

Dual CPU systems only gain if you have several windows apps open at the same time. Unfortunately, "several" meant "3 to 4" in WinNT 3.51, and has dropped for later releases of NT. Too much overhead, too much code, too much bloat. So even an ordinary user could easily see slowdowns on a single CPU system if he was just doing email, browsing the web, doing a doc, and viewing anything on the web that required an extra app open, like Adobe acrobat, shockwave, etc. Heaven forbid if he actually wanted to listen to music at the same time! The slowdowns in that situation would be seen whenever he switched from app to app - the task switch time is much longer on a single CPU system because the CPU is full of tasks, and actually has to do a task switch, context swap, or memory swap. You would also hear dropouts in the audio, or see dropped frames in a video playback. On a dual cpu system, "several" meant "13" in WinNT 3.51, and has decreased since that release, but less than 13 still gives a lot of head room. I do not know where you heard that single cpu systems are more efficient, but I know better because I design both single and dual cpu motherboards, and have done the benchmarks. A single cpu system has 70% of its resources used up just supporting WinNT, so it has only 30% left available for apps. A dual cpu system has only 30% of each cpu's resources used up, so it has 70% x 2 available. do the math. 140% / 30% = 4. 3 x 4 = 12, so you can see where the 13 came from above, although I actually measured 13, not just calculated it. CPU task switching, context swapping, and memory swapping are big slowdowns on the system. More memory can help some, but dual cpus can help a lot on stuff that more memory cannot, like task switching, and context swapping.

I always wondered about units of measurement...

[gusnz]

...and why this hasn't already happened.

The meter, for instance, was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the north pole and the south pole. Although now the Earth has been measured more accurately so it's off by a bit, and it's now defined by the length light travels in a vacuum in a very short time.

But really, why are we basing measurements on all these arbitrary values anyway? Like the Imperial system originated from the dimensions of some king's thumb or similar, pretty much every measurement ever devised and in common everyday use is derived from non-universal values, which have no practical upshot -- if we want to measure the Earth, we're going to include some decimal places anyway.

Personally I think this, if adopted, would make scientific calculations a bit easier. It's annoying to have to remember several different conversion constants for gravity, charge, gas constant (8.314 or similar?), and so on. And perhaps without all the continual conversions, relationships between different physical principles might become more readily apparent...?

But I guess the downside is that some calculations are always going to have funny conversion constants, especially in the non-Physics world (Avogadro's number in chemisty perhaps for instance?). So even though the metric system isn't perfect, it's the standard so we might as well use it (although this could be the web developer in me speaking). It would be too much change for too little benefit to rescale the entire number system -- convincing the general populace would be just about impossible, especially considering how much trouble some countries are still having adjusting to the metric system ;).

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[algae]

The meter, for instance, was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the north pole and the south pole.

Wrongo.

1 gram of H20 has a volume of 1 milliliter
1 milliliter = 1 cm^3
H2O freezes at 0C and boils at 100C

That's the basis for metric measurements. Apart from original choice of using H2O as a substance to base the constants on, it doesn't seem particularly arbitrary to me.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[bcrowell]

But really, why are we basing measurements on all these arbitrary values anyway?
The standards are chosen so that they're easy to reproduce accurately. If you're doing ultra-high-precision work, using the Planck system wouldn't even be an option, because G, in particular, is known with very poor accuracy. BTW, c now has a defined value in the metric system, but they waited to do it until technology made it a better standard than the previous one. There's also talk of defining the kilogram in terms of a certain number of atoms of a certain isotope, but right now atom-counting is a less accurate standard than the famous platinum-iridium cylinders in Paris.

Many physicists do use natural units (systems of units where certain constants equal 1) very often for certain types of calculations. If you're doing relativistic stuff, it's much easier to work with a system where c=1. If you're one of the hardy souls working on quantum gravity, then you do indeed use the Planck system, simply because it makes all the equations simpler. But there isn't any advantage to the Planck system unless you're doing research in quantum gravity.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[LinuxCumShot]

nice try but even wronger...

history of the meter

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[os2fan]

Back in the seventies, I played around with a system where the principle fundemental constants were powers of 10, eg

light speed = 1,000,000,000 ft/s
elect const = 0.000 000 001 'F' / ft
magnt const = 0.000 000 001 'H' / ft
gravitation = 0.000 000 001 lb s^2 / ft^3

Such a system is easy to set up, and produces practical sized units. The nifty thing about this is that one could convert pounds and coulombs with a foot ruler, since the size of the foot, pound, and charge unit directly is in proportion to time. So a mars-ruler laid up against an earth-ruler converts pounds etc. The replacement for Volts, Ohms Watts, and Amperes are not changed from planet to planet. The only trouble is that the thing's hard to set up for practical use.

On the other hand, I did try to look for a 'better' system. I did manage to get eight constants working in a google-system. In essence, the process of dimensional analysis is to let things like L, M, T and I have numeric values, being powers of 10^100. The set I used after much study is L=1E1100, M=1E73300, T=1E100, Q=1E32200. So a kilowatt is 1E75203. One can then work with a wide range of units, eg tonne = E73303 becomes coherent.

You can do the same thing with the fine structure constant, and an assortment of natural constants as well. Instead of powers of 10, you use powers of 137.0359895, or its square root. The relevant units are:

L 1K1100 = 137.036 bohr radii
M 1K73300 = 137.036^2 electron mass
T 1K100 so that c = 1K137.036^3
Q 1K32200 = 137.036 electron charge
t 1 th so that m_e c^2 / k = 137^4

These units refers to one boron-sized molecule at atmospheric pressue, ~ 10 K. Most of the numbers come out as they should: avagadro's number in this system is 10.3 (ie 137.036/1868).

It still does won't be used in science because of the way scientists works. Something like "cgs units" or "atomic units" is of their name.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[tunah]

some calculations are always going to have funny conversion constants, especially in the non-Physics world (Avogadro's number in chemisty perhaps for instance?).

Er... Avogadro's number is just defined in terms of grams (12g of carbon=1 mole, 1 mole=[Avogadro's number] atoms). If we switched units we would automatically get a new value, possibly a nice clean one. Or we could just change 1 mol=10^21 atoms.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[spasm]

well, at least the metric system is internally consistent (unlike that other thing): 1 cm cubed of water weighs 1 gram and it takes 1 joule of energy to raise its temerature by 1 degree celcius. nice, huh.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[dsb3]

> If we want to measure the Earth, we're going to include some decimal places anyway.

Not me. I reckon it's 1.00000 earthins (diameter), or 1.00000 earthons (circumference).

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[alienmole]

convincing the general populace would be just about impossible, especially considering how much trouble some countries are still having adjusting to the metric system ;)

Yeah, but think of the potential for the geek & nerd subculture to further distance themselves from the real world by using units that no-one else has even heard of!

I've previously played with fractions of the speed of light, as a way to liven up my bike riding (which I do mainly as a marginally non-boring form of exercise). This makes 12mph sound a lot more exciting: it works out to 17.9 nano-c, i.e. 17.9 billionths of the speed of light. Most electronic bike speedometers let you calibrate them to any units you like, so for a while I had my speedometer set to show my speed in these units. If you do this, it helps to already be familiar with kilometers, since 1 nano-c is fairly close to 1 kph (actually about 1.079 kph).

I gave this up when I realized that it was going to take me forever to cover the four light years to Alpha Centauri...

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[glitch!]

1 cm cubed of water weighs 1 gram and it takes 1 joule of energy to raise its temerature by 1 degree celcius.

Actually, 1 cc of water weighs about 1/100 of a newton, and one calorie will raise the cc of water by 1 degree celcius (about 4.2 joules).

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[forkboy]

It would just be a matter of figuring out how much 12g is in Planck mass. The definition of the mole is the number of atoms contained in precisely 12g of the most commonly occuring isotope of Carbon. (That number being about 6.022x10^23 atoms) As you can see, it wasn't picked arbitrarily, there really is a basis for that number.

It would be easier said than done trying to find another element that had an integer for the atomic mass of it's most common isotope as well as containing 6.022x10^23 atoms, hence the definition of the mole would change.

Not that there ever WILL be a change to this system of measurement, but if in some alternate dimension there was, I'm betting that they'd just use the Planck-mass that is the equivalent of 12g of carbon.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[SEE]

The reason that carbon-12 has an integral number of atomic mass units is that the AMU is defined in terms of the isotope Carbon-12, instead of being the mass of any actual subatomic particle. Protons are 1.0072766 AMU, neutrons are 1.0086654 AMU.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[Alsee]

[meter] now defined by the length light travels in a vacuum in a very short time.

Yep. Any distance less than 1,860,000 miles (3*10^9 meters) is one meter.

-

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[OddHackGEA]

The meter, for instance, was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the north pole and the south pole.

Actually, that was the distance between the North Pole and the Equator (measured along the meridian of Paris) -- i.e., one-fourth of the Earth's circumference. (40000 km ~ 25000 mi)

Another proposal around the same time for the basic unit of length was the length of a one-second pendulum -- which is fairly close to a meter.

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[spasm]

"Actually, 1 cc of water weighs about 1/100 of a newton, and one calorie will raise the cc of water by 1 degree celcius (about 4.2 joules)."

newtons are a measure of force - m.kg.s^-2. or are you getting technical about weight vs mass? but I stand corrected about the 4.2 joules bit. that'll teach me to post on the basis of 15 year old memories of high school physics. : )

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[mmol_6453]

No...It'll only take you forever if you go the speed of light. :)

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[alienmole]

Actually, it'll appear to take forever from your point of view, but from my point of view with my bicycle speedometer reading 1 billion nano-c, the trip would appear instantaneous (zero time). But no matter which way you look at it, my fundamental problem is that I can't seem to pedal fast enough...

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[glitch!]

newtons are a measure of force - m.kg.s^-2. or are you getting technical about weight vs mass?

Yes and yes. Weight is a force (newtons), mass is an amount (grams). I'm sure you already know that...

Pentium V is coming out!

[tuxrules]

I saw a picture of one on the web... honest! It looked just like a Pentium IV except there was no I!

Just more proof that Slashdot doesn't really check their sources. :-)

Re:Pentium V is coming out!

[RajivSLK]

"Just more proof that Slashdot doesn't really check their sources. :-)"

Who told that they were supposed?

I thought it was implied that Slashdot editors don't check their sources.

P.S.

If you are not sure about the validity of a topic simply read the comments (somebody will figure it out for you) ...

And how about luminance system based on Polaris?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter how constant you think something is, it'll be disproven in 50 years anyway. Full (metric) speed ahead!

Three little words... [Mod Parent Up Please]

[toupsie]

Proof of concept..

Yes, this is a possible. Just because you can doesn't mean you will. Anyone that attempts this "hack" will be busted ASAFP. This would require prior control over either the target computer (internal DNS cache or DNS setting) or the control over its DNS server. Either attack would be extremely difficult.

The first would require a previous hack into the Mac OS X machine. If you can do that, why go to the trouble of altering the DNS cache or DNS setting? With Mac OS X's BSD roots, its not too tuff to modify the system with root access. Pointless.

The second attack option would require you to break into a public DNS server, modify the tables, slip out and hope that your non-targets (huge numbers of Windows users) don't start complaining to the DNS admin about problems. This attack is a possibility but most likely will be noticed quickly.

This is not to excuse Apple but I think its nice that I can read in clear text with ettercap what is going on with my Mac OS X system when it contacts the "Reality Distortion Field" of the Internet. If I want to wear a tinfoil hat and put Tapioca pudding in a locked jar, I can always turn automatic Software Updates off and download the updates straight from the Apple web site.

However, it would be nice if Apple used some sort of the handshake to ensure the safety of the update. There is a myriad of options to choose from...all with benefits and deficits.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the sad part is that you're here to point that out

Useful Slashdot Constants

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of Good Articles: 0
Number of Trolls: infinity
Number of Spelling Mistakes/Article: 2
Number of First Posts: 1
Number of Wasted Work Hours per Day: 8
Number of Linux Zealots: 2418
Number of Mac OS X Lovers: 10
Number of Microsoft Believers: 1
Number of Bible Commandments Worth Following: 3

Being able to pay with your Microsoft Passport: priceless

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[borgboy]

Number of Microsoft Believers: 1

Hey thanks for remembering me!

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[Anonymous Coward]

He actually meant ZicoKnows.

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of attempted First Posts: 15

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[mageben]

Number of Bible Commandments Worth Following: 3

In your opinion exactly which 3 would those be?

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[Happy go Lucky]

Number of Bible Commandments Worth Following: 3

In your opinion exactly which 3 would those be?

Well, it's like Moses said when he came down from the mountain: "Guys, I've got some good news and some bad news. I talked him down to ten, but adultery's still one of them."

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr. Anonymous Coward:

We are the attorneys for MasterCard International ("MasterCard").

Since at least as early 1997, MasterCard has aired a series of television and print advertisements that feature the names and/or images of a series of goods or services purchased by one or more individuals and which, with either voice-overs and/or other visual displays, convey to the viewer the price of each of these items (the MasterCard Priceless Advertisements"). At the end of each of the MasterCard Priceless advertisements a phrase identifying some priceless intangible that cannot be purchased (such as "a day where all you have to do is breathe") is followed by the word and/or voice over: "priceless". MasterCard is the owner of U.S. service mark registration for the mark "PRICELESS" (Reg. No. 2,370,508) (the "Priceless Mark"). As a result of MasterCard's extensive advertising, the Priceless Mark has become associated exclusively with MasterCard's financial services products. Indeed, MasterCard's has applied for protection of the Priceless Mark in numerous countries throughout the world. Furthermore, MasterCard owns multiple U.S. copyright registrations for the Priceless Advertisements.

It has come to our attention that you are hosting a Web site available at the URL slashdot.org that distributes offensive and obscene content using the format of the MasterCard Priceless Advertisements as well as the Priceless Mark. This material (the "Infringing Material") blatantly copies the sequential display of a series of items belonging to one or more individuals, showing the "price" of each item, and at the end, infringes, with impunity, the Priceless Mark. Specifically, the URL allows the viewer to select from 32 different pages, each containing 10-15 photos, which the viewer may enlarge. The photos include images of nudity, oral sex, and sexual intercourse that are obscene. All the photos include the sequential display of a series of items belonging to one or more individuals, showing the "price" of each item, and concludes with the Priceless Mark. Representative samples of the offensive content in the URL are appended to this letter.

Please be advised that in publishing and hosting the Infringing Material, you have infringed MasterCard's rights under the federal and state trademark and unfair competition laws, under the federal and state anti-dilution laws, and under the Copyright Act. The Infringing Material dilutes and tarnishes MasterCard's famous marks and holds our client out as sponsoring this obscene material by using the format of the MasterCard Priceless Advertisements and prominently displaying MasterCard's Priceless Mark.

Accordingly, we demand that you confirm immediately and no later than Monday July 15, 2002 that you will remove the Infringing Material from the Web site slashdot.org and that there will be no further publication of the Infringing Material or any other material which infringes masterCard's rights as set forth above.

This letter does not constitute an exhaustive statement of MasterCard's legal position nor is it a waiver of any of their rights and/or remedies in this or any other matter.

Very truly yours,

xxxxx

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[borgboy]

Well, then the constant is off by one.

Re:Useful Slashdot Constants

[mge]

Gratuitous Religious Reference: todays cartoon (which is not on the web) in the smh.com.au has text that reads thus:

"thou shalt keep thy dirty hands off children"?
Duh, do you really think that needs to be spelt out ?

Why are the fonts so ugly

[treat]

The fonts on the slashdot main page are extremely ugly, using Mozilla 1.0 on a Debian system. The fonts on the other slashdot pages, and on other websites, are not nearly so ugly (beyond how ugly all Unix fonts (except OS X) are). NONE of the options under the edit/preferences/appearance/fonts have any impact. Yes I am reloading the page each time. The letters are drawn screwed up, like a font that has been sized too small, except I need fonts about 20 pixels high before they actually look OK.

Re:Why are the fonts so ugly

[dev_sda]

why don't you change your fonts in mozilla? geez.

We should create a measurement system based on newbies.

noob - the time it takes a newbie to read the manual after opening the box.

Man, that guy was outta there in a milli-noob.

Re:Why are the fonts so ugly

[treat]

why don't you change your fonts in mozilla? geez.

Surely when I said none of the options under the fonts menu influenced the problem, you understood that I was including the options to change the fonts.

Re:Why are the fonts so ugly

[dev_sda]

then download and install some new fonts. There are some fonts around made specifically for mozilla. Try doing a little web searching.

Personally, the defecto helvetica fonts work great for me. Just switch everything except monospace to helvetica, set the font size to 15, set monospace to fixed and font size to 12, set minimum font size to 11.

Surely I think lots of people don't play with settings enough for their own good.

Fake graphics and dual GPU cards

[yakfacts]

This time, the fake GPU card would have fooled me. There are a couple things that look wrong, but it was a good enough job that I would have been fooled had I not known it was a fake.

There was a fake post here in 2000 where somebody took an Adaptec 2940 card and tweaked it a bit, then claimed it was a Russian-surplus vector-based supercomputer-on-PCI card. Ignoring the fact that the fake graphic was obvious (you could still see the Adaptec logo and QC stickers on the card), I could not believe people would fall for a "cray on a chip" from Russian surplus. While Russia is a fine country with a great history, they are not known for their high-tech electronics. This is the same country that was still uses tube computers and radios in the mid-1990s, and used to buy new pinball machines just so they could pull the 68000 CPUs. If the Russians had any infrastructure to develop such a bleeding-edge device, the certainly would not be selling it. I posted my feelings then and got flamed for it.

But I could fall for the ATI card. ATI has a history of Dual-GPU cards. I strongly disagree with the poster who said "dual is not as good"; depending on how it is done, it can be much better. Don't use Windows NT as your baseline for multiprocessor applications. Design an application (in this case, a driver) that expects to see certain CPUs in certain places and hardware that automagically divides the load. There are good ways to do this if you ALWAYS know what sort of hardware resources you will have. Systems that don't (standard Windoze or Linux applications) will suffer greatly as they try to adapt on-the-fly.

Re:Fake graphics and dual GPU cards

[toybuilder]

Do you have a link/biblio-reference to the info about the Russians buying the pinball machines?

One of my favorite Russian-CS-is-screwed is the story about the metric chips... This Byte article alludes to the original story... In short, the Russians stole western-technology and produced knock-off copies using "the metric inch" -- except when their poor-quality copied failed, they couldn't use real (stolen?) chips to repair their machines.

Re:Fake graphics and dual GPU cards

[japhmi]

I seem to remember a few years ago when a company had a 3-processor graphics board. They just took their regular GPU, and made each one just do one color of RGB... not sure how good it worked, but since nobody has done it since, I'm guessing making better single-GPU boards has been determined to be better in the long run.

Re:Fake graphics and dual GPU cards

[yakfacts]

Sorry, this was back in 1989 or so. I don't remember where I read it, but if I find it I'll post it here.

Think it out before entering paranoid frenzy

[mellon]

I haven't seen the bugtraq posting, but I've read the posting on Macslash, and nowhere does it make the claim that this attack has been proven to work. Instead, the claim is made that because Software Update uses port 80, the attack must be possible.

This is untrue. Yes, you can definitely spoof the DNS, if the circumstances are right, and the resolver doesn't support DNSSEC. I don't know if Apple's resolver supports DNSSEC. But practically every software update anybody ever downloads is downloaded in the clear over an unauthenticated connection to an FTP server or an HTTP server. This is not in itself a security hole.

The hole exists _only_ if there is no client-side authentication of what's been downloaded. The authentication needn't be done in-band - it's quite possible that the update client knows an Apple Software Update public key. The client should be doing an MD5 checksum across the entire binary and checking that against a published signature. Does the Apple Software Update client do that? I don't know. As far as I can tell, neither does the person who published this "exploit."

Until we know the answer to this question, saying that this is an exploit is kind of absurd, particularly because I don't know of _anybody_ who downloads software over HTTP+SSL. If Apple are bad guys because they don't use HTTP+SSL, so is everybody else, from Redhat to NetBSD to the ISC to HP.

Re:Think it out before entering paranoid frenzy

[stripes]

I haven't seen the bugtraq posting, but I've read the posting on Macslash, and nowhere does it make the claim that this attack has been proven to work. Instead, the claim is made that because Software Update uses port 80, the attack must be possible.
[...]
The hole exists _only_ if there is no client-side authentication of what's been downloaded.

The authentication is either non-existent, or very weak. You can get fake update packages that are really backdoors and the updater will install them if you trick it into taking them. This guy used ARP spoofing which requires you to be on the same physical network. Maybe fairly safely outside the building via 802.11, but still on the same network. Or at least already have cracked another machine on that network.

So yeah, I would say Apple needs to get it's act together and start signing it's stuff, and make the updater support signed packages. If they store the keys in the normal keychain that could even let 3rd parties using Apple's normal installer (assuming you check in the install app, not update!) do "more secure" updates. Of corse the better OSX apps are just "drag into place", and don't use an installer...

[Mod Parent Down Please!]

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of rubbish. No one will read this reply as I post as AC, but spoofing DNS or a web site is trivial. *Anyone*, anywhere *in the path* between a Mac box and either a root DNS server or any apple website (or akamai'd copy) can fsck-up your Mac.

Even outside the path, it's possible to 'poison' many DNS resolvers (including maybe the one on your Mac), but even without that approach, every router, proxy, transparent cache or other link can be subverted and made to feed you trojan content.

Having your web connection subverted happens to you almost every click - I'm certain your ISP has a transparent cache, which just served you this article. How do you know it didn't serve you a bogus page with some Internet Exploder 'sploit embeded in it? Maybe the whole internet came from one PC on the other end of that phone line - did you go out and check it all yourself?

The simplest way around this is for Apple to sign their software packages, using their private key, and for you to check that signature (or your Mac to do it for you when it installs) against the public key distributed on every genuine Mac install CD (or verified by 'out-of-band' means).

This works fin for every other sensible packaging scheme (rpm uses gpg/pgp, for example), and even Mickey$oft have got the hang of it.

You could use 'ssl' (https) to access the Apple site as an alternative, but simply signing packages works best, because then it doesn't matter how you obtain them - ftp, http, cdrom, floppy, email, kazaa, ed2k. If the signature doesn't match, don't install it.

The issue then, is of Apples' disdain for simple, proven and widely used security measures, not one of having to have /.ers re-invent the wheel yet again.

don't you mean decimal time?

[jamesh]

doesn't the word metric come from meter? or is it the other way around?
surely the correct term is 'decimal' and not 'metric' time.

Re:don't you mean decimal time?

[alienmole]

doesn't the word metric come from meter? or is it the other way around?

Neither, really, although it's true that the "metric system" is based on the meter as one of the fundamental units of measure. But both words ultimately derive from the Greek word "metron", meaning "measure". That's why the little dials that measure your electricity usage, for example, are also called "meters", and why software developers use the term "metrics" to refer to measurable aspects of their systems.

surely the correct term is 'decimal' and not 'metric' time.

"Metric time" is presumably meant to imply that the system of time in question would properly belong to the metric system of units. But you'd be correct in assuming there's nothing intrinsic about "metric time" that relates it to the "metric system", other than that both systems rely heavily on powers of 10.

Finally, useful units!

[ke4roh]

My favorite argument for the U.S. measurement system was the utility of the units - measurements of practical lengths based on things we have handy (like feet), practical volumes (like gallons (think "buckets")), and so on.

Take a look at the Planck units - oddly enough, they work out to be particularly meaningful (equivalencies here are approximate see the write-up for specifics):

• new meter ("finger") = 1.616 cm
• pace = 100 new meters = 5.3 feet
• new mile = 1000 paces = U.S. mile
• gallon = (U.S. gallon + British gallon) / 2
• new gram = 3/4 oz (mass)
• new minute = .9 minutes

and so on. Now the U.S. can skip over metric and go straight to Planck units. Brilliant!

186,000 miles per second - it's not just a good idea, it's the law!

Re:Finally, useful units!

[Kris_J]

Don't forget:

• Galactic Standard Week = 1 hour

Re:Finally, useful units!

[rjamestaylor]

• new minute = .9 minutes

As if. I'm rushed as it is!...on the other hand, it would mean 10% less (actual) time between posts on slashdot...

I figured out how they made the Dual GPU image...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Yep. They did a damn credible job, though. It's pretty obvious that they were quite observant of what details would give it away. As a hardcore Photoshop user, I give this fake pic an A-. I think I found the images they merged together to make the fake pic.

Check out this one:

http://www.hothardware.com/reviews/images/r8500r 75 00/r7500close.jpg

and this one:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q4/011016/ im ages/radeon8500_boardshot.jpg

And here is the final image:

http://www.hardocp.com/images/news/10262426625GV 83 Ci5cT_1_1_l.jpg

What they basically did was they took the ass end of the 8500 card and stuck it on the end of the 7500 board. It's interesting that they did this because they had to invent part of the circuit board themselves in order to place the processors. (I imagine the [H] on the final image was meant to cover up an obvious error.)

They did a relatively credible job, but they did make one crappy mistake. When ATI took the 'product photos', they did them at slightly different angles. The 'artist' who faked the dual GPU image did a respectable job of masking the perspective problem. But they would have done much better to cast a few lines to the point of convergence, then use the Photoshop 'distort' feature to line them up a little more accurately. That's why the processor to the right looks like it's not pushed in all the way.

I'm impressed with the amount of work they had to do in order to cook up this image. It was considerably tougher than 'copy/paste'.

"Metric" just means "a measurement standard"

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

In fact, "metric measurement" is redundant, unless you're measuring systems of measurement.

The words "meter" and "metric" are both derived from Greek by way of Latin and French.

Deep Linking solution

[peterdaly]

It is possible, if you don't want deep linking, to just redirect to the homepage if the "referrer" isn't a site of yours.

It's not rocket science. I have seen people protect linked javascript code that way, why not "deep" pages? That way they don't have to write a usage policy to cover their wishes, it is a technical solution.

-Pete

Re:Deep Linking solution

[rjamestaylor]

• I have seen people protect linked javascript code that way

I assume you're referring to .js files (in kind, not necessarily with the exact extension). But that won't protect the .js files unless you also have a way of preventing my browser from cacheing the page on client machines. If you know of a way to do this (for every browser, including LWP, wget, etc) let me know.

Re:Deep Linking solution

[stripes]

If you know of a way to do this (for every browser, including LWP, wget, etc) let me know.

Trivial, just do it in the web server, not JavaScript or anything the client deals with. The downside is it tends to make it impossable for people to bookmark your pages (normally no referer...some old browesrs sent whatever page they were on before the bookmark).

I wrote this into a CGI script once, but the right place is an apache module, or whatever the equivolent for your web server is. Probbably take less hten a day. In fact since I havn't been keeping up, it might already be in Apache!

Re:Deep Linking solution

[Anonymous Coward]

But the thing is, it does add an overhead, and is only available to webmasters with access to make changes at that level. And it does require browser awareness, or at least sensitivity if you don't want to be locking out visitors. Check the spec, it's optional.

And why should it require a technical solution when all it takes is people who put the links in high traffic places showing a bit of respect in the first place?

Webpages shouldn't be abusing the referrer field of HTTP, it's a dirty hack and using it to police content only compromises it's legitimate function.

Re:Deep Linking solution

[Phroggy]

I think mod_rewrite can do it, but I've heard mod_rewrite described as a black art...

Re:Deep Linking solution

[rjamestaylor]

I think you missed my point. Once my browser gets the file it caches it locally. I can retrieve the file from my cache. Can you stop that?

Re:Deep Linking solution

[stripes]

I think you missed my point. Once my browser gets the file it caches it locally. I can retrieve the file from my cache. Can you stop that?

Once you come through the front page to see the item, I'm pretty happy, even if you decide to later look at a cached version, or a print out. I'm less happy if you give the deep link to all your friends and they skip the front page.

Or at least that is the opinions I got from some people that wanted to prevent deep linking a few years ago. For my personal content so long as you link to one of my HTML pages that's fine (my JPGs, not so much). They should all have up links. More over they are all gone since I left UUNET, but that's another story.

Mostly I don't so much care if people deep link to my stuff, or well designed commercial works. It's how the web was designed. Framing another site's stuff though, that is a rip off.

It's still not out of the realm of possibility

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Dual processor graphics cards are nothing new.

All in all that was a pretty good photoshopping, though.

What made me wonder was the part about how they hadn't figured out the way in which the VIVO daughterboard would connect. If it's already in silicon, it's a little too late now :)

Nice .sig

[A nonymous Coward]

but it would have been nicer if you'd converted it for this post.

Meh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing the web. Passing level after level. I'm unstopable.

Though I must admit the end of level boss is hard...

Re:I figured out how they made the Dual GPU image.

[sirsnork]

The [H] on the image is the HardOCP watermark thing that they place on any images on their site. So it wasn't there before they got it.. Other than that.. good post :-)

Re:"Timing" of screws

[CharlieG]

That would be called "Timing" of the screws. In a lot of old finely made mechanical items (watches, guns) the screws ARE timed - the slots ALL line up exactly the same way. it was a craftsmanship thing

That said, with todays CNC milling machines that have what is called "Rigid tapping", or if the threads are "thread milled", it happens all the time, the tap goes in the same way each time, so if the screws are all made the same, all the screw heads come out the same. Looks strange, but it does happen

here is the link...

[edrugtrader]

here is the link to the picture of the fake radeon

FAKE!

We...?

[rant-mode-on]

• "After all, if *we* are going to go to all the effort to change our measurement system, why not use that same effort and get the system *right* the first time?"

Most of the world doesn't need to change to the metric system, most of the world already uses it. You're playing catch-up.

Re:We...?

[3vi1]

If you comprehend what he's saying, metric users need to change too, so you would *also* be changing to the right system for the *first* time.

-J

Arbitrary Units

[Lord Bitman]

I'm all for starting with universal constants, but the fact remains that no matter what you start with, the units you use will remain arbitrary. Unless we want to divide time by exactly a "Planck interval of time", we're going to be scaling it. So maybe a Planck unit of time is a universal constant , but if we still use "Planck Minutes", "Planck Hours", etc, it is still arbitrary. The problem is "to the power of ten" is _not_ a universal standard. In fact our entire base-ten system is just as arbitrary as our day/24 system.
So a day isnt a universal constant. So what? Saying that we divide it by 24 is no more or less arbitrary than saying that a Planck minute is 10% shorter than a 'regular' minute. Why not multiply the Planck unit by 11 instead of 10? Wouldnt that just about clear up the 10%? [yes, I know, ~11.111, so sue me. The point is that the two are just as arbitrary]
I wasnt going to say anything, but then I took a glance at the Hex-Clock page, which actually suggested that 16 divisions were somehow less arbitrary than 24 divisions. Is there somebody out there who actually believes this?
I, personally, like the idea of using universal constants as the basis for some time scales. But to suggest that this somehow makes the way we talk about time non-arbitrary, that seems far-fetched.

Re:Arbitrary Units

[os2fan]

On the other extreme, you could go for a base-120 system like this.

second = 20 thirds (day = 120^3 thirds)
metre = 40.8 inches (so g = 1 in/th/th)
kilogram = 68 ounces (so 1 cu in water = 1 oz)
kelvin = 17424 seconds, so 100dC = 121*120^s sec

In this system

1 ozf = 1 oz in/th^2
1 'cal' = 1 oz in^2 / th^2

g = 1 in/th/th = 9.80392156 m/s
d = 1 oz/cu in = 998.784 kg/m3
j = 1 erg/oz t = 4186.8512 J/kg K

The thermal, gravitational and absolute systems coinside, and the units are much better than the CGS: 1 W = 14.14944 power units. 1 KW = 0.9826 * 120^2 power units.

Re:Arbitrary Units

[SEE]

Sure. Adopting either replacement system (metric or "new metric" Planck) is changing the measurement system to match our base-10 number system. At least Planck-based "new metric" units do the job more consistently than SI units.

And even if we went with powers-of-two on the grounds that it's less arbitrary since the universe has lot of polarity/duality to it, scaling the units to something useful for humans is arbitrary, too.

Re:Pentium Pentium is coming out!

[jamesh]

i wonder if it will really be called the pentium V... we had:
8086/8088/80186 (they were just sorting out names here)
80286
80386
486
then not 586 but Pentium
Pentium Pro (ignore this one)
Pentium 2
Pentium 3
Pentium 4
Based on the limited sample size, Intel appears to have an aversion to the number 5, my guess is the new processor will be called the 'pentium pentium', with the subsequent processor called the 'pentium pentium 2', all the way up until the 5th incantation of the 'pentium pentium' where the processor will be named the 'pentium pentium pentium', and so on (and yes, i do think they will still be making x86 based processors then)

Looks real

[itwerx]

The upper left and lower right screws actually do NOT quite match. And what about the fan power connector? That looks pretty durn real. The silk-screening around it looks pretty clean too.
-shrug-
I'm no photoshop guru (I prefer Gimp :).

Re:Looks real

[pknoll]

Nah, the perspective is off. The second chip is too small for how far away it is. Since the distance is maybe a centimeter, it shouldn't appear as scaled down in size as it does.

Fake Card Story May have Affected ATI Share Price

[frank249]

I wonder why someone went to all the trouble to fake the photo and leak phony specs? It could have been part of a plan to manipulate ATI's stock price. Look at the hourly stock price chart for ATI today. ATI (ATY on TSE) opened this morning at $10.70cdn and by 10:30 am was down slightly to $10.60. The story came out on slashdot at 10:30 and within an hour had risen to its daily high of $11.08 but then closed down .23 at $10.52. Not a big spike but someone could have made money on this.

Re:Haha

[Anonvmous Coward]

"The sad part is that you fools actually believed it was a real card!"

I can't find your post in the other article where you pointed that out. Can you point me towards it?

*thinks he won't get a response because the AC that posted that response didn't know either.*

Re:I figured out how they made the Dual GPU image.

[NanoGator]

Geez dude, how'd you find those images? Heh.

A little masochistic, dontcha think?

(Interesting read, though. :))

Google Image Search is your friend...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Masochistic? Masochistic is when you try to set up RedHat to do the day to day stuff that Windows makes easy. Heh

All I did was type in 'ATI Radeon 8500' at Google's image search and flipped through the pages a bit. When I saw something that looked like a product shot, I grabbed it. The main clue that I had the right card was the cable running from the GPU fan to the card. It only took me about 10 minutes to do.

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[Dalcius]

What's so difficult about making Red Hat do Windows tasks?

Try RH 7.1+ with Ximian GNOME as your desktop.
AbiWord
Gnumeric Spreadsheet
OpenOffice
Evolution
Red Carpet
GnuCash

I can open DOC, XLS, PPT, read email like in Outlook, update most any area of software on my computer, and manage my finances. I saw a nice pluging for Mozilla that you can buy for $30 or so to allow you to view nearly any movie format and tons and tons of other things in your browser (too tired to search for it).

Given the state my computer is in, my entire family could use it (or install it), and I'm the only one you could safely call 'computer literate' among my semi-close relatives, save perhaps my uncle.

I'm just jumping on this because I see a *lot* of Linux advocates and a lot more MS advocates that think Linux is too hard to use. However, recent versions of Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE seem to be to the contrary.

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"What's so difficult about making Red Hat do Windows tasks?"

Because I've spent the last couple of days at work trying to get Redhat up to that point and have only been semi-successful. I'm annoyed with it because I'm trying to use it right now and it's hard because it does have a steep learning curve. You wouldn't BELIEVE what I'm going to have to do to get sound to work on it.

Sadly, I haven't been able to find a 'So you are a Windows guy moving into Linux' tut yet. Even the install phase was a bitch without reading up more on how Linux works. *Sigh*

That was mainly frustration leaking out, not an intelligent opinion. I wrote that just after leaving work. So you'll understand when I say 'I really dont want to argue about it.' However, if you know of a good "Windows to Linux" article somewhere, I'd hugely appreciate it.

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[Dalcius]

Personally, I'm using:
Red Hat Linux 7.1 with XFS support and Ximian GNOME

My only problem was downloading drivers for my NIC card, and I will admit, that was a b*tch. However, the card was new, and it's supported in newer versions.

You're having sound problems, hmm? I remember the first time I installed 6.2, I had to run sndconfig manually to get my sound card initialized. Maybe try this?

Also, IRC, mailing lists, forums, etc., are *very* helpful. I can't stress this enough! Find a related IRC chat or forum or such and ask for help. This applies to anything Linux. Often when asking for help about a certain program or project, you'll wind up talking to one of the developers in person. People do OSS (Open Source Software) because they love to do it, and it really does show.

Please feel free to email me with more information, I'd be happy to help. =)

Links you might be interested in:
linuxnewbie.com
linuxdoc.org
rpmfind.net

Try google for something similar to "Windows to Red Hat Linux transition guide." I'm sure there is a good one out there.

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you use sound for, besides games? CDs play without your sound card. Not that you'd want to listen to music through crappy PC speakers anyway. Certainly not crappy compressed music.

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Thanks man, it's appreciated. :)

I may get back to you on that.

Anon

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[great_flaming_foo]

Sadly, I haven't been able to find a 'So you are a Windows guy moving into Linux' tut yet

there is a whole lot of stuff like that at The Linux Documentation Project. Like this one, which might just be relavent.

Re:Google Image Search is your friend...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Thanks man!

*Finding this to be an interesting read.*

Re:I figured out how they made the Dual GPU image.

[Anonvmous Coward]

"The [H] on the image is the HardOCP watermark thing that they place on any images on their site."

Doh!! I shoulda noticed that! hehe. *wasn't paying attention.

If you're curious how I found those images: All I did was go to Google's image search and typed in 'ATI Radeon 8500'. Before long, I ran across product pics.

That was a fun little project, took about 10 minutes. :)

FAKE 8500 Maxx !!

[Phantom_24]

Just a quick tipoff for the fake pic of the Maxx.

A. Notice that the screws on both heatsinks are in the EXACT same position.

B. Note that the fans are in the EXACT same position on BOTH fans !

C. Note that the light and shadows displayed on both fans are exactly the same (minus one or two blurred out tiny reflections), even though each fan is in a different position on the card and different distances from the light source/camera !!

Just my 2 cents !!

P.S. notice the dark blurry line running from the bottom of the card to the top of the card to the left of the farthest heatsink....tsk tsk tsk....is that the BEST you fakes can do ?!

If I install a GPL'ed zoning system...

[tlambert]

Do I have to let everyone come sit in my living room when it's hot outside?

-- Terry

Re:If I install a GPL'ed zoning system...

[Mycroft_VIII]

This got modded as a troll?!?! sheesh it was a joke, lighten up a bit. No wonder open source people somtimes all get tarred with the Zealot lable. If your gonna take somthing so serious that that you can't laught it or yourself from time to time then you need to just leave it for a while and regain your sense of perspective. +3 funny would be more apropriate. Mycroft

Vinge's Second-based TIme

[DoctorFrog]

In "A Deepness in the Sky" Vernor Vinge uses seconds throughout the novel. If he wants to refer to a little over a quarter hour it's one kilosecond, a megasecond comes to about eleven and a half days, an Earth year is about 31.5 megaseconds... I found it actually quite easy to convert in my head by the end of the novel.

Re:Vinge's Second-based TIme

[Froobly]

I was just going to say this! Too bad I was about 10 ksecs too late...

Re:Vinge's Second-based TIme

[Chelloveck]

I really liked this system too, especially for a space-faring culture which has no need for marking time as integer fractions of the rotation of an arbitrary blue-green planet. Seems to me that it'll make a whole lot of sense to use something like this when we get permanent off-planet colonies. (Especially Martian colonies, where a day is close enough to an Earth day for the residents to live by the Martian light/dark cycle, but just enough off to bollox calendars between there and mother Earth.)

Of course, my favorite part about this system is Vinge's description of when the calendar began...

Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth's moon. But if you looked at it still more closely... the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind's first computer operating systems.

"Beginning of the epoch" indeed!

Re:Pentium Pentium is coming out!

[ComputerSlicer23]

Actually, they have an aversion to not owning the trademark on the name of the processors. AMD was selling "486"'s, so Intel tried to trademark (or use some legal to prohibit AMD or Cyrix from naming their product lines the same) "586". They pretty much got laughed as if I remember correctly, and had to come up with a trademarkable name. Hence the term "Pentium", notice how nobody else makes Pentiums, but everybody made 486's. That's why. If I remember right they tried to trademark MMX, and lost in court over that too.

I'm not sure how they came up with the name 8086, probably from the 4004 to the 8080 to 8086, but the 8086 was named. It was a 16 bit bus. The 8088 was actually newer but had an 8 bit bus so it was named 8086. The 80186, it a 16bit bus and the next generation of the 16 bit bus. The Pentium Pro was is commonly refered to as the as 686 (probably because Intel developed it under that name). The Pentium Pro, P2, and P3 all used the same basic core. The P4 is a new core. A P5 IMHO should be dubed "Decium", as it is the 10th chip in the line x86 line.

Kirby

Re:"Timing" of screws

[Speed Racer]

Which is why he said, and I quote, "if the screws are all made the same"

Re:Pentium Pentium is coming out!

[AnimeFreak]

The 8088 was a different processor from the 8086 and 80186.

disadvantages of using "fundamental" system

[heby]

somehow it just doesn't sound all that cool if i brag that my new car can go 1.85*10^(-7)c - that is, if i had a new car...

28 hour day

[Entropy_ah]

On the subject of time measurements, here is a link to avocacy of the 28 hour day. I for one am all for it!

Re:28 hour day

[OzPeter]

Whoever came up with this scheme has never worked a rotating nightshift in their life. Otherwise they wouldn't have set up a full rotation every 168 hours.

Why the metric system rules

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why nobody has mentioned this but it is the core of the utility of the metric system.

By definition 1g of water = 1 mililitre of water = 1 cubic centimetre of water.

The metric system links mass, volume and distance in a consistent, intuitive way that makes conversion of units and calculations simple. In contrast, the imperial system is founded units with zero consistency.

Consistency is the vital element of any system of measurement. The fact that the metric system is a well defined decimal based system with units that are related is what makes it great.

As far as the arbitrary nature of unit systems is concerned you don't get much more well defined than the density of water (at least on our planet). Sure the plank unit would be less arbitrary, but is it consistent or intuitive ?

hmmmmm

Re:Why the metric system rules

[benzapp]

Yes, one square meter is one metric ton... but this consistency ends with WATER. It links mass, volume, and weight for a single substance. Make that heavy water, or liquid hydrogen, and suddenly one square meter of liquid hydrogen weighs a lot less than one metric ton.

Of course, we all know how temperature plays an important role in volume.

Re:Why the metric system rules

[h4mmer5tein]

I think you mean cubic meter, not square.

Although if you can show how a 2d object can have mass and volume I'd love to see it :)

Re:Pentium Pentium is coming out!

[jamesh]

as the 80186 was a different processor to the 8088 and 8086, repeat for 8086 vs the other two.

but really, the 8088 was just an 8086 with an external 8 bit data path (like the 386SX to the 386DX), and the 80186 was just an 8086 with some extra on-chip io.

It all depends on where you want to draw the line, that's where I chose to draw it. :p

Not too many physicists on the street

[LuYu]

While a system that would depend on "the fundamental constants of the universe" is a great idea, I do not think most people on the street care to do physics problems in their head.

Rather, they will be concerned with something that regulates their behavior as greatly as the rotation of the Earth. Not fixing the time to the cycle of a day would confuse most people. Imagine having to go to work at a different time every day of the year.

This second time system also has a problem. While it looks very interesting, it is base 16. The entire argument was proposed over finding a base 10 system of time. Adding a base 16 time system to the metric system would be a step toward returning the metric system to something like the English Imperial System. Such a system would only be good for computers since it works no nicely with binary numbers. But if that is to be done with time, why not recreate the entire metric system for computers and base it on 16 and not 10?

However, when arbitrarily choosing a time system to replace the current one, the choice should probably be something made for people. Base 10 works well for those of use without physics degrees or wetware interfaces, and it fits into the original scheme of the metric system.

Re:Not too many physicists on the street

[ejungle]

Agreed, straight base-10 fractions of the day would be much easier for the populace to stomach. We don't all work with ICs and program in assembly. Even as a programmer, it's difficult thinking in base-16 when I have to do it.

I just can't envisage everyone making use of it. Personally, I think people would respond better to .575 for 12:45, than they would .8C0. I know I do, I just spent a few minutes brushing up on my hex just to make sure that .8C0 was indeed 12:45.

Break it up or move the decimal however you like, whether it be 5.75 for 5_75 or whatever. Coming from a metric country at least, base-10 is a hell of a lot more palletable.

Metric History

[os2fan]

The metric system was designed using the leading metrological thinking of the day, with decimals applied. It was not the only system around, there were more logical ones available. The two systems I show in parallel.

ANGLE
m circle -> 400 degrees -> 100 min -> 100 s
g circle -> 360 degrees -> 60 min -> 60 s

LENGTH.
The nautical and itenery length are the same, based on a minute arc on some circle of the earth.

m minute = kilometre = 1000 metres
g minute = mile = 1000 fathoms -> 6 feet -> 12 in & c An ell of 20 inches makes 1 mph = 1 ell/s

The km is too short, this from selecting the smallest value and underestimating it. The mile of 6080 ft Imperial, is closer to the mean.

AREA
For the sale of land, a unit of area is named. Normally square measure is used.

m are = 100 sq metres. 1 sq km = 10,000 are
g acre = 1000 sq fathoms. 1 sq mile = 1,000 acres.

The unit suggested here is a comma-unit: ie 12,345 sq fathoms = 12.345 acres.

VOLUME
Cubic measure is used to express volume measured by linear extent.

m stere = 1 cu m
g acre-foot = 1000 tuns = 36000 cu ft
tun = 36 cu ft

CAPACITY
For volume measured by bulk comparison (eg pouring), a more accurate system is used.

m litre = 0.001 cu m
g tun = 240 gallons, etc

WEIGHT (Mass)
For this, the basic weight is intended to be a capacity of water, under some conditions. In practice, a prototype is manufactured to fall in the range.

m 1 litre = 1 kg [This had a name "grave"]
g 1 tun = 2400 lb of 16 oz etc... = 0.972 lb

FINE WEIGHTS
This is a combination of the apothecaries, troy and other small measures. The pound is divided into 15 troy oz, and then according to the troy and apothecaries ounces respectively.

Standards were originally defined in terms of the jewellers weights, as jewellers often crafted the system. A grain is 1/480 of the matching ounce. The avoirdepoise oz is 437.5 troy grains, but 480 grains avoirdepoise.

The weights ran in France in the first stage of conversion is the 'system usualle', feet and pounds defined on round metric. The fine-weight usage was converted to metric. By the time that they came to drop the transitional system, the idea of dual weights had largely disappeared, and the fineweight was extended up to myriagrams, quintals, and tonnes.

MONEY
The value of a weight of silver or gold. Bullion-money has since gone out of fashion, but the franc was originally 0.1 grams of silver. cf pound, ounce, talent, mina, shekel, dram [weights that became money] vs mark, dram [money that became weight]

Converting money is the first step of introducing decimal, etc. In australia, currency decimalisation (1966) preceded metrification (1975).

Metric added some ambitious reforms that never took root, and were mercifully tapped on the head.

TIME
Division of the day, decimally. Unfortunately, the time units were already constant in Europe.

CALANDER
Grouping of days into weeks and years. This was a very localised affair. Attack on the calendar was seen, and is seen as, an attack on the core principles of society. Making a system dependant on the calender is now recognised as a folly.

Or you could roll down the windows ...

[drinkypoo]

My friend Charlie did something like this at darkwater.com, a geekhouse in Santa Cruz. Or at least, that's what used to be at that domain, I haven't looked recently.

IIRC it was heat-only ... this is santa cruz we're talking about, not the gobi, or texas. (Of course, since texas is underwater right now, that's sort of silly sounding.) Anyway if any thermostat wanted heat, they all got heat, and any thermostat that wanted heat opened its own vent. More to the point, there's no server in this system, just some simple gates and some digital thermostats, and a little tiny bit of custom logic. Really, you can do the whole thing with relays, you don't even need ICs. You could probably steal every single part you needed from pick and pull if you looted some cars of their environmental systems and various relays.

Remember, the paranormal hamster says, "Hardware solutions to software problems."

It's not arbitrary at all.

[Inoshiro]

".. and it's now defined by the length light travels in a vacuum in a very short time.

But really, why are we basing measurements on all these arbitrary values anyway?"

A metre is how far light moves in 1/299,792,458th of a second. This is because light travels at the speed of 299,792,458 metres a second. See?

Off Topic? HTH is that Off Topic?

[NanoGator]

I have a feeling that the parent post here got modded down because he didn't sing the praises of Linux. Never mind that the focus of this guy's post was about the faked Dual GPU picture that was mentioned in this article. No no, he said RedHat was 'masochistic'.

So what? If he found it hard to use, he's to get modded down for it? Yah, clever way to respond. Too bad whoever modded 'em down didn't have the balls to tell him why. Boy you really taught him a lesson: "Linux zealots are easy to tweak."

All this over an opinion.

The wires on the front processor look pretty bad

[ahecht]

The wires on the front processor look pretty bad too. Too transparent.

Re:The wires on the front processor look pretty ba

[DrSkwid]

yeah, they have no shadow or specular lighting

Re:Pentium Pentium is coming out!

[lburdet]

techically, i would have to disagree... i am no latin scholar, but, as far as i recall:
'pent' means five, as in pentagon (five corners/sides?) and -ium is a common noun-forming suffix.
so we've basically been calling the 586&up 'the five', 'the five 2', 'the five 3', etc.

since very often when going from latin to english, -(t)ium and -(t)ia are dropped, and replaced by -ce (spatium, palatium, elegentia, etc.) ... i say the new processor should be called PENCE.
the fact that it sounds like a dirty word when repeated many times fast makes it an even better choice of a name for such a viril processor ;-)...

Bah, that's nothing

[Chuu]

Even if that card did exist, it would have quite a hard time keeping up with the first GeForce cards to incorporate some of 3DFX's inherited technology. Take a look at the GeForce5 6000, which on beta silicon posts 50,104 3DMarks, although I doubt that kind of performance would be possible without a sufficiently powerful CPU . . .

Re:Bah, that's nothing

[Chuu]

Oops, munged up that link. here is the correct one.

Re:fundamental constants and space crash...

[Ocelot Wreak]

Maybe if we had used a more scientific physics-based system of measurement, the Mars Explorer wouldn't have "missed" its insertion orbit by a few hogsheads, and instead hit Mars at about 10^7 rods per avogadros!

I trust Hard OCP as far as I can throw them

[Anonymous Coward]

This is from the man who broke the story http://www.3dchipset.com/news.shtml#newsitem102625 2365,22916, As for my opinion about Hard OCP check the Subject. and sorry i can never remember the url codes

Water

[PMuse]

With reference to water at Earth surface conditions,

1 centimeter^3 = 1 milliliter = 1 gram = 1 degree celsius = 1 calorie

Physics is nice, but life at the surface of this planet involves one heck of a lot of practical problems involving water.

Furthermore, a measurement system based on fundamental constants is not all that helpful for solving problems at the human scale. As a portion of all math problems solved by all humans everywhere, those involving c, G, etc. are a pretty small subset. Viva Newtonian mechanics!

Now, a system that reconciled pi and e with integer values would be helpful. Unfortunately, no such system can exist. "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof but this margin is too small to contain it".

(7361 ,tamreF ed erreiP)

Re:Water

[Tower]

>1 centimeter^3 = 1 milliliter = 1 gram = 1 degree celsius = 1 calorie

The '=' for the degree celsius and calorie are somewhat tenuous... it would be more along the lines of:
1 calorie => 1 ml water = (delta)1 degree celcius.

Good thing we all knew what you meant anyway ;-)

The metric system is a tool of the devil!

[intermodal]

My car gets 40 rods to the hog's head, and thats the way i like it!

No law against linking

[g_bit]

Dear NPR,

Your terms of use state "We reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link.". Unfortunately, you have no right to withdraw or grant permission to link to your website, as there is no law stating that permission is required to link to another entity's website.

Furthermore, it states "By using the NPR Web sites, you agree to be bound by these terms of use.". This statement also has no power because a user of the website is not aware of the terms of use upon entering the website. Even if users were made to be aware of your terms of service before entering your site, the legal weight of the terms is still quite dubious.

Thank you,

A User

Tubes are good (kinda)

[pclminion]

I don't know about "consumer" electronics in Russia, but one of the reasons they used tube technology in their military equipment was because it wasn't as susceptible to electromagnetic pulse damage during a nuclear strike. An EMP will destroy any unshielded semiconductor device. But if you are using tubes, and you know the strike is coming, you can just power your systems off. Since a vacuum tube only "conducts" when running at high voltage, this prevents the EMP from propagating throughout the entire circuit, thereby improving the chances of surviving the EMP.

At least this is what I have heard from a Russian physicist.

Re:Tubes are good (kinda)

[yakfacts]

That's true, but it is also because they could not design radiation-hardened chips. Other countries did.

Also, the sophistication of a vacuum-tube computer is limited by the size, heat, power consumption and failure rate of the components.

You can't do a supercomputer in tubes. Not with present tube technology.

Re:Off Topic? HTH is that Off Topic?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"No no, he said RedHat was 'masochistic'."

Heh ironically, the next day Slashdot runs a story that emphasizes the point that got me modded down. That's classic!

Intel can't call the 886 processor "P5"

[yerricde]

I saw a picture of [a Pentium V processor] on the web

For one thing, it's "Pentium 4" not "Pentium IV".

For another, Pentium 5 would be abbreviated as "P5", which is one of the generic terms used to refer to 586-generation processors such as the original Pentium, AMD's K5, and whatever Cyrix had out at the time.

Athlon and Pentium 4 are 786 processors. Pentium 5 and the Hammer series will probably be considered 886's unless Intel tries to squeeze another chip out of its Pentium 4 core (the PIII was just a PII with SSE and a couple slight optimizations to the P6 core).