I'm glad you're proud. Your police department beat up people who were excercising their civil rights. 'Cruel and Unusual punishment', you know? You can't brutalize someone for their political views. You can arrest them, but you can't cut off their food and water.
Freedom of speech is directly applicable to this situation: the entire point is to prevent the government from suppressing protestors. It's not so people can post the DeCSS source code. The first amendment was specifically put in because until then, governments could censor anything they wanted if they viewed it as a threat to their power. Sadly, this still goes on today all the time, but it would be much worse here if the first amendment wasn't there.
I know someone who was at Philadephia. I don't know what has happened to him. He has dropped out of high school to protest across the country full time. He's certainly willing to be a martyr for his cause. I don't agree with most of his views, but I demand that he has the right to express them.
'...Some of them were extremists and deserved it...'
What? You're saying some of them deserved to be beaten up by police? Some of them deserved to have their food and water cut off in jail?
No one deserves police brutality. While some of them were almost certainly breaking the law (hell, I know someone who was there protesting, and he's probably broke the law a dozen different ways by now), they don't deserve to be beaten by guys in riot gear. If someone is breaking the law they get arrested and they go to jail. This country prohibits (or says it does) police brutality and cruel/unusual punishments. No one, no matter what they did, who they are, or what their views are, can be beaten (what happened in Philadelphia was nearly torture, if you look into it you'd find out) by the state.
DEA shmEA! at least they have to do it actively. the NSA knows all...big brother is watching you:) No Such Agency is the largest, best funded, and most secretive intelligence agency in the world. it's been like that since 1952, when Harry Truman signed a document that brought it into existence. they monitor essentially all communications, in the USA as well as in the rest of the world. Echelon does it, 24/7, and automatically. All that, and you get a free mixer too! I know this sounds paranoid, but it's true. So buy a bingo-machine and start making those one-time pads...
it's Eve, short for eavesdropper. I believe claude would just be another part of the exchange...I thought Applied Cryptography was on the required reading list? (i'm almost through the preface...)
Also, the filters are not at a 45 degree angle, it's 90 degree angle. the problem with 45 degrees is that even if a photon comes through that is at 45 degrees to the filter, it has a 50% chance of 'twisting' and coming out the filter. so you have to have a 90 degree difference, otherwise there is a chance of getting two differing one time pads, which is what Alice and Bob generate. There are no 'bad luck' misses.
And it's 'photon' (I know this is all nerdy nitpicking, but I couldn't resist)
I didn't read the whole thing (yet), cause it is simply gargantuan, but it seems like they know what they're talking about. Lots of good ideas in there.
The one problem there has always been with this sort of thing is that you can't predict stuff that there are no trends to suggest. For instance, they don't expect any truly revolutionary devices to be invented, although as everyone knows one of the things war does is show just how important a given device or technique could be: no one was afraid of U-boats before 1914, and no one really thought about guerilla warfare that much until the USA lost in Vietnam. There were probably people who suggested that these things could be important, but it took a war to really prove it. We get guerilla warfare in every conflict, but it never really swung the tide except in Vietnam (because that was all North Vietnam really had).
In one of the papers, a Lt. General says that he does not expect that there will be a Space Corps. or an Information Corps. I'm not sure about this assertation.
Perhaps there will be no Information Corps in the sense that it won't be on the same level as the Air Force or Navy, but it'll certainly exist. The only thing which may prevent it is if countermeasures (like crypto) become strong enough that it can't provide a big advantage. But information warfare already exists, has always existed, and will continue to exist. It's just another way of talking about espionage and certain sabotage.
Not to mention propaganda: against a country like the USA, I would make sure that the American public got plenty of footage of blood soaked villages and starving children. One of the reasons Vietnam was so unpopular was that there was so much press coverage, and that translated into less enthusiasm. Less enthusiasm for a war means fewer volunteers (and draftees) and fewer resources committed to the war. People didn't really think about what was going on over there until the press started to draw attention to it.
And the Space Corps...that's up for grabs. It all depends on how much technology progresses in that time. If we're still stuck in Earth-orbit, than it will just be a part of the USAF. Research colonies will probably be unaffected, so even if there are researchers on the moon or Mars, it will probably stay with the Air Force. If there are actual colonies then it may be Army/National Guard. And if, and this is a big if, we have large successful colonies on other planets which are essentially small countries, and spacecraft routinely make trips between them and Earth, it may become Navy (the spacecraft are traditionally Navy in most science fiction). Instead of Navy, however, there may be the United States Space Force (or Corps). I don't think we'll get that far in 25 years though.
So basically, they've got good ideas and good predictions, provided that no new, unexpected technology shows up. If something big should happen, it's a toss up.
refers to the fact that Coca-Cola actually contained cocaine...umm, wait, that doesn't actually logically lead to anything. okay, anyway...
If CocaCola(tm) has a trademark on Coke that is valid in Switzerland (i'm not too clear on international trademark law), then I think they should get the domain. If not, too bad for them.
if you read the one about the MD scanner, you'll notice a bit of background info..
apparently, many stereos have one-button CD-ripping capability to facilitate piracy, and if you go to a CD-rental place, a common line is 'would you like some MiniDiscs with that?'
ahh, it must be nice to live in a country without a damn RIAA. now, if we could only get CD-players that could also do mp3s, i could burn a CD with 650 of music...
Two is an even number, two is not the sum of two primes, Q.E.D. It isn't a proof, but it does disprove it, which make the challenge meaningless.
Unless you feel like calling 1 a prime, which I don't. Is this so glaringly wrong that no one else mentioned it? If so, explain the flaw, I beseech you. =)
Schools are not supposed to make you educated. They are supposed to make you intelligent. Many great minds have said 'Don't teach me how to plug numbers into a formula, teach me how to think.'
Think of it this way: can you really give a good example of needing, say, all your computer science knowledge but not having any reference material? I can't. It's better to know the basic ideas behind, for example, microprocessor architecture, than it is to know a map of the 10 most commonly used chips. If you can look it up, you don't need to learn it.
The first time this happened to me was in math class: I realized that if I could do it with a calculator, than I might as well not bother. The only problems that really mattered were the ones that I didn't know what to do with. Most of the other kids in my classes didn't understand why a given formula worked, they just took it for granted that it worked and gave you a number/s that the teacher would say is right.
In my algebra class they just told us the quadratic formula. In my mind, it would have been better to have the class figure out the quadratic formula, instead. Understanding how ax^2+bx+c=0 translates onto a coordinate system is infinitely more useful than knowing the formula itself. Of course, most people will end up knowing it anyway. But if all else fails and you forget it, you can always discover it again.
If we assume that by the time most students get out of college or high school, small computers will be everpresent, then we can dispense with number-plugging, and for that matter all fact-memorizing. Given that the internet is the world's biggest reference point (and will only become larger), it is useless to test anyone's knowledge of information that is easily available there. Who, What, Where, When, and How are not important. The only important one is Why.
No question about, dedicated fiber is what is gonna be holding up most of the 'net within a decade or so.
I bet that we'll get a multi-terabaud line going to every major city (and maybe 100-1000 gigabaud to minor cities and towns). From there, you run slower lines (still somewhere in the 1-10 gbps range) to every home, pretty much replacing the phone lines. Within the home things get tricky.
Only rich people and computer techies will have fiber optic cables running through their house: it's much cheaper to have a wireless LAN, unless you don't mind cables all over the place (as opposed to building them into the walls). You just hook up your home cable to a master computer in your basement (or closet or whatever) and everything in your house hooks up to that. Current trends suggest we'll be able to get 20 mbps or so over the airwaves, maybe even more at short range like in a single home.
You could get all the communications you usually get over that one cable: TV, radio, an internet connection, phone, email, maybe even things like delivery (don't want to wait for your copy of Quake IV to arrive? Just download it right from the site you bought it from, it can't take more than a second). Everything would perhaps be done by your CSP (communications service provider) or maybe ISP (informations service provider).
Now, the reason I don't see the world going fully wireless (IE, only have that big fiber optic backbone between cities, and for everything else use airwaves) is that you don't get the speed (about a factor of 1000), reliability (In a big city especially, I bet all the metal frames holding up skyscrapers could make for nasty static), and privacy (it's pretty hard to tap fiber without someone noticing, especially if they're on the lookout, which might be an automatic feature of the CSP) of cable. Not that people will be handing in their wireless phones, of course. More likely, they'll scrap their normal phones completely. Like I said, most of the stuff on the personal level (everything that you actually come into contact with) will be wireless, unless you spring for a home fiber optic network. You'd use your digital phone (slash PDA slash mini-computer slash anything) in your house, on the way to work, and when you got there it'd tap into the company wireless network. It'd be nice if we could get a wireless standard (instead of more than one wireless standard) that would work anywhere, so that you could take your phone across the world and still check your mail.
It looks like computers will have no trouble using that bandwidth (with an IBM 75 gig HDD, it'd actually take several seconds to fill it up with mp3s), although it's anyone's guess if they can actually take advantage of the data (will we still have programs that take up 100-200 mb? In that case, I'd have room for about 250-300 of them, with space to spare for files). Then again, what with my 38" 200 PPI 16:9 aspect ratio LCD, I might need all that space for the new graphics in the latest game (or the latest version of windows). I sure hope my computer comes with a chip to run all this stuff though...
In case you don't remember (or never learned of them), perfect rectangles have a ratio of about 1-1.6: I've heard that in a survey (I don't know who did this survey) this was the favorite type of rectangle. You find them a lot in classical Greek architecture, probably because Greek architects liked the shape like everyone else.
One property of a perfect rectangle is that if you divide it into two pieces, one of which is a square with a side length equal to the shorter side (so if the lengths were 100 cm and 160 cm, you'd get a square with a side of 100 cm), the other piece is also a perfect rectangle (ie, the ratio of 1-1.6 is about that of.6-1, and if you calculate the ratio better it becomes more accurate).
I like this would be a bit wider than typical 4:3 monitors, (more like 4.8:3) but not as wide as 16:9 (more like 14.4:9). You could obviously pull off 1440x900 if it was big enough.
Then again, 16:9 is pretty sweet, and if we get an affordable, 16:9 38" 200 PPI LCD (even if there isn't a computer in the world that could take advantage of it), I won't be complaining =)
WASHINGTON-Today, 20,000,000,000 voters voted over the internet in a surprise nomination for president, the Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
"Well, I'm honored, really, to get so many votes, but I wasn't actually born here, so I can't do it," a happy but reluctant Torvalds says.
"This is the highest voter turnout we've ever seen!" Says Sen. H. R. Flappergaster. "The voter turnout for Mr. Torvalds was over 10000%. I have never seen anything like it."
Some of the other candidates attacked the results, saying that the votes were 'faked.' They sited the fact that '20 billion is over three times the population of the Earth.' The Committee to Elect Linus Torvalds did not respond, except to say "neener neener neener."
Iridium (or rather, Motorola) is planning on deorbiting the satellites, rather then just leaving millions of dollars worth of stuff up there. I read it on Ars, but they didn't seem to site a source (besides the guy who sent in the story) so it might not be true. But they're obviously not gonna to play finders-keepers with the things. If they don't find a buyer (I don't know what they would be good for, maybe some sort of wireless internet or something, or just use them to tie into another network), then they'll certainly take them down and sell them for something else (i bet a lot of the equipment in them is useful in and of itself).
...would create such uproar over the method of getting these statistics.
Personally, I'm more bothered by the amount of free time these Irish poll-takers have. What's next?
News Flash: Northern Ireland study shows that the average child will, between birth and the age of five, flind over 2.5 tons of food. "These kids are like Pedro Martinez!" says one researcher, "They were getting creamed carrots in their parents' faces at over 50 yards!"
In my opinion, the newspaper (and, by extension, magazine) experience is totally different from, for instance, the Slashdot experience. By which to say, the way you read a newspaper is totally different from the way you read Slashdot.
I live in the Boston Metropolitan area, so I get the Boston Globe, which is a pretty good paper. I don't read it consistently, but I do read it, for different reasons than I read Slashdot. Slashdot is good at what it does: provide extremely up-to-date information about most of technology. The reason Slashdot is better at this than the Boston Globe is because technology is so fast-paced that by the time a printed medium is out on the streets, it's old news.
However, Slashdot is highly specialized. It doesn't need to appeal to a large audience, because it is on the web and it has the whole world as an audience. It can therefore afford to appeal to a small group: generally, technically literate, educated people with an interest in technology. The Boston Globe has to appeal to essentially everyone in the Boston Metro area, and the majority of its audience is not the same audience that Slashdot has.
This is both a Good Thing and a Bad Thing:
It's a Bad Thing because the Globe cannot compete with Slashdot when it comes to technology. This is obvious. They can't devote as much resources to it (and, since they charge money for the paper, they can't use a reader-submission system to get news), and it takes too much time to get it into print.
It's a Good Thing because they can concentrate on other topics. Also, they can print stories which are too specific for Slashdot. Case in point: I saw an article in the Globe about how every school, police, and fire station in Massachusetts was going to be wired to the internet, either through T1 or DSL. I thought this was pretty cool (it's great if you're planning on having kids in the area in the near future). I submitted said story to Slashdot, where it was rejected, I assume because it pertained only to Massachusetts residents and not to the wider audience as a whole. On another note, there was recently an article about the architects being hired lately to work on Boston's skyline. Currently, not Slashdot material, and not even something I'm normally interested in. But it caught my eye, so I read it, and I'm better off having read it because it was very interesting.
Besides that, the Globe can concentrate on topics like art, business (sometimes covered on Slashdot, but usually only companies in the technology industries...Transmeta, or RedHat, for instance), and sports (not something I'm personally interested in, besides being an obligatory Red Sox fan).
But besides these reasons, I still read printed media for one major reason: It's a lot more comfortable. Even if you have a laptop and a wireless LAN, you can not comfortably read Slashdot sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, or curled up in a chair. And you certainly can't read it in your favorite coffee shop (unless it's one that has internet access, and you still need a laptop, which is none too comfortable to use). Until we get 'smart' paper or something equally useful, I'll stick to my paper.
(By 'equally useful' I don't mean e-books or something. I mean something light, flexible, and easy to read and use. Otherwise, it doesn't match up to my criteria)
Of course, I could suggest things to the Boston Globe to make it more appealing to me, personally. They could hire more technology writers (Cringely seems more fit to print than to post) and possibly make technology a daily section (it's currently weekly). Even if they couldn't give up to the minute news, I bet the articles they wrote would be more insightful, especially on a local level. But I can't expect them to cater to me. They have hundreds of thousands of people to please. They could care less if I don't read their paper (I'm not the only one in the household, and we certainly wouldn't be cancelling our subscription).
So basically, yes, I will read newspapers until they stop printing them.
2048x1530 is the highest your graphics card can handle. Even at that high a resolution, it'll appear blocky on a 38" screen. We currently don't have a practical solution that will do something higher than that. (Yes, there are better cards, but they are prohibitively expensive).
Furthermore, the refresh rate is dependent on more than the graphics card. It also depends on the monitor, among other things.
Is a 36 inch, 200 ppi display. Of course, we wouldn't have any chance of taking advantage of that resolution at that size.
The problem with really big displays is that the computer can't send enough signals to the screen to get a decent refresh at a high resolution. It'd probably be possible to get 2048x1530 or something ludicrously high like that, but you'd have to accept visible rescanning rates. In other words, completely useless for typical applications.
I think that we should be concentrating on increasing the bandwidth that we can send to the monitor. Why not run a fiber-optic cable from your computer to your monitor? Put that SCSI interface to work providing you with the bandwidth you need, to your monitor, not your CD-ROM!
Besides that, we could use a different system for screens...field-emission might work. Something that could get the information from your cable to the screen faster. IIRC, field-emission can be based on Carbon-60, a superconductor. That'd probably translate into at least a small increase in speed.
But there's one more problem. If you have a 36" 200 PPI screen, it doesn't matter if it can handle super high resolution. You need the hardware to handle it. Depending on what you're doing, it might take huge amounts of processing power to display pictures on that screen. Of course, some things (like DVD movies, which don't need processing to display) would be easy to display and would therefore look great and be big (although other's have pointed out that this resolution is even higher than HDTV, maybe burn your movie onto FMD..?).
But who can say what tomorrow will bring? (ha, that look like a signature, but it isn't!) I've no idea what MIT will announce tomorrow, maybe someone in a secret collaboration between Sony, IBM, and DaimlerChrysler that will produce 12' 200 PPI screens that automatically drive around on a truck chassis next to you so you can always check slashdot.
keep in mind: this is ROM. you write it and then you can't change it ever again. you'd probably want your own burner to do it (you don't want to entrust someone else with your data) and we don't know how big and expensive FMD burners are. These reasons might make it too expensive to use FMDs for backups in some enviroments (except for stuff that will never change). If one person changes one file on their computer, the backup is innaccurate and you'll need another one. I think a solution that can be erased and rewritten to (like tape drives or RAIDs) would be better.
Of course, if you were going to backup 'secret LANL project #10385: Operation Blow up half the planet' and you weren't planning on changing it (why would you want to change it? the USA doesn't need one of those plans anyway, it's just for historic reasons that you keep it on file...) it might make sense to use one of these things...but don't forget: you can't build a secret electromagnet in the archive door to wipe the disk if someone takes it out:)
The famous 640k quote wasn't at the fore front of my mind, and of course I'm sure we can fill 140 gb...but not with my current desktop. It just can't handle that much information (unless it was a few trillion pages of text). If moore's law holds true we'll probably see rigs that can really take advantage of 140 gbs of multimedia, or whatever.
The first time I saw this, I submitted it, only to find out it had already been posted. Oh well. And now it's posted again. Oh well. At least this time I can write a response to it.
140 gigabytes is overkill, at least for most applications. Sure, it'll be a boon to those in the mass-backups business (screw tape drives, just get one of these puppies and a dozen disks...), but to anyone else, it doesn't seem too useful. I certainly don't want to watch any movie that could fill one of those things, and if I ever get that many mp3s it won't matter if I can store them on portable media: I won't be able to listen to a fraction of them before I get back from wherever I went, even if it was a road trip to Alaska.
Two applications for this stuff:
One, it will make for some damn interesting programs, if anyone manages to fill one up. Think of a 140 Gb RPG...it'd take you years to finish! Or, they could make it relatively short, but simply stunning in it's detail. The problem with this is A: you need one hell of a rig to take advantage of the (say) photo-realistic graphics and stereo quality sound, and B) you have to have the FMD-ROM to play the game! This doesn't seem like much, but it's really nice to be able to run a program without the disk (especially if the program is to be used by many people). Of course, if we get 14 Tb hard drives, that wouldn't be a problem, you could still do a complete install. Of course, we'd need the processor power to deal with all that data...
The other possible application: keep the technique, but shrink it. These things are basically the size of current CDs. I know they have a 'smart card' sized version with a smaller capacity (but also smaller size). This is perfect. I really can't see any good reason to have that much read-only space, unless you feel like carrying around a couple databases in your pocket. But something smaller than a credit card, holding 'only' 10 Gb or so...now that'd be useful! Or even a version the size of a 3.5" floppy disk...make an FMD-ROM drive that'd fit in one of my 3.5" bays! I don't care if it won't hold as much data, because it already holds way too much! With the current trend toward PDAs and ever smaller, thinner laptops, a medium that would match and exceed DVDs in performance and capacity, and yet be smaller than a floppy disk, would be perfect.
Combined with a few other key advances (like nanometer-scale transistors to make ever smaller and more powerful chips, Crusoe-like engineering to make them more efficient, field-emission monitors and such to vastly increase output quality, new data transfer methods like firewire to make it easy to get huge amounts of information from one medium to the next) we could conceivably see, in a few years, a machine that would replace nearly everything you currently carry around: it could do phone calls, act as a fully functional laptop, HDTV, game system (with performance exceeding that of a PSX2), and you could carry around all the information you'd ever need in your wallet. Couple that with wireless networking, and a migration towards less paper (with such things as 'smart' paper being looked into) and you might be able to go down to your favorite cafe for work.
Tap into a wireless service provider (at least 20 mbps over the airwaves, probably more), access your company's network, and start telecommuting from anywhere that has cell phone access.
Wow, you don't really notice tangents until they come up and smack you. That's enough rambling for now.
How come when you say it, it gets a 5, and when I say it, it gets a 0? =)
Oh well, no point in whining (I've done enough by now, and I'm not eager to lose a few more points for being troll or something). But I pretty much agree with what this post says. So in other words: Yeah, what he said.
'PC experience started with Apple II and visicalc'
That, in itself, makes him an atypical user: he has a lot of experience and began using computers quite a while ago. He owns two computers (not to mention that his 10 year old son has his own computer), he owns a scanner, CD-RW, and a zip drive. The computers are all networked. This doesn't sound hard-core techy to most slashdot readers, but it is a cut above the typical user. The fact that he installed linux himself makes him atypical: nowadays OS installation isn't hard, but it isn't something that the typical user does.
Still, it obviously means that Linux is getting to be more of a mainstream OS. Just today I saw it mentioned in Foxtrot, which, while it is nerdier than some strips, is still not User Friendly.
Of course, I'm not saying that this guy is a linux-pro, and I'm not saying that the typical computer user (which is a pretty blurry term: how do you define it? someone who uses computers? how often do they have to use them to qualify?) is a clueless newbie: often, the typical user is a newbie for a week or two, but then gets into the competent-but-not-knowledgeable category: they can drive the car expertly, but they still have no clue what goes on underneath the hood.
It seems like Linux is still testing the waters of the mainstream. But, according to me at least, that penguin still needs some swim lessons.
And if I remember correctly, one of those posts got moderated down to 0. But I'm not bitter (grumble grumble lousy moderators grumble grumble).
Why not, third time's the charm:
Linux needs to have the best GUI in the industry. Period. There needs to be a GUI out there so easy to use that anyone, indiscriminate of prior computer experience (including no experience at all, considering that that is the largest market in the world) should be able to sit down and use it. Look for an average what-the-heck-is-this-thing time of under 30 seconds.
I know this looks like a tall order, but I don't think it is really. All the open-source community needs to do is concentrate on a few key points.
First of all, there has to be easy-to-understand controls. For an existing example, look at the Windows Start button. Pretty simple, easy to understand, and obvious. You click on it to start using the computer. This is where Windows far outdoes Linux: Windows is made for an end-user, and as such is simple to work with. This approach limits its usefulness, since it is made to allow the user to learn how to use the system quickly (and simultaneously prevent the user from screwing anything serious up). This can be frustrating for people who know what they're doing, because they have to slog through the newbie-babble to get to the features they really want to use.
However, with Linux's inherent flexibility, it is possible to create a useful, easy-to-use interface that can step aside to reveal powerful (but intimidating) complexity. Just a few pointers: extensive documentation (not just online), intuitive buttons, 'balloons' (pop up descriptions of whatever the mouse is over) or something similar (easily switched off, however), starting up directly into the GUI (bypassing a command-line interface unless the user specifies it), and an easy, quick way to make new user names.
Other important stuff: The OS has to be pre-installed, of course. It has to have a suite of basic applications (word-processing, spreadsheets, email, etc) that adhere to the same guidelines as the GUI does. It also has to have pretty much total product support: everything has to be supported. Not to mention: an included browser, a small variety of included themes, wallpapers, screensavers, et al, and a talking paper clip (just kidding).
I want optical computer chips! motherboards with fiber optic channels instead of wires!
Photons move faster than electrons (unless you use a superconductor, which is way more expensive than using light). So if you replace the electrons flying around inside your chip with photons flying around, you get a faster chip. I'm guessing it would use less power too (heck, just hook it up to your roof: light comes in, you control the flow and put it directly into your system, instead of converting it to electricity, and then back).
Optical computers are going to be the final limit to how fast we can get stuff unless some radically new designs are made in the near future. We're already rubbing up against the physical limit for transistors...now we'll rub up against the physical limit for the speed of particles flying around inside the chip.
Instead of Moore's law, we'll have another law: The speed of a chip is directly proportional to it's size. I suspect we'll eventually find the best architecture for any one given task. Once you get to the limits of size and speed, plus you've found the best architecture for the task at hand, the only way to make your system faster is to make it bigger (or write better software...)
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I'm glad you're proud. Your police department beat up people who were excercising their civil rights. 'Cruel and Unusual punishment', you know? You can't brutalize someone for their political views. You can arrest them, but you can't cut off their food and water.
Freedom of speech is directly applicable to this situation: the entire point is to prevent the government from suppressing protestors. It's not so people can post the DeCSS source code. The first amendment was specifically put in because until then, governments could censor anything they wanted if they viewed it as a threat to their power. Sadly, this still goes on today all the time, but it would be much worse here if the first amendment wasn't there.
I know someone who was at Philadephia. I don't know what has happened to him. He has dropped out of high school to protest across the country full time. He's certainly willing to be a martyr for his cause. I don't agree with most of his views, but I demand that he has the right to express them.
'...Some of them were extremists and deserved it...'
What? You're saying some of them deserved to be beaten up by police? Some of them deserved to have their food and water cut off in jail?
No one deserves police brutality. While some of them were almost certainly breaking the law (hell, I know someone who was there protesting, and he's probably broke the law a dozen different ways by now), they don't deserve to be beaten by guys in riot gear. If someone is breaking the law they get arrested and they go to jail. This country prohibits (or says it does) police brutality and cruel/unusual punishments. No one, no matter what they did, who they are, or what their views are, can be beaten (what happened in Philadelphia was nearly torture, if you look into it you'd find out) by the state.
DEA shmEA! at least they have to do it actively. the NSA knows all...big brother is watching you :) No Such Agency is the largest, best funded, and most secretive intelligence agency in the world. it's been like that since 1952, when Harry Truman signed a document that brought it into existence. they monitor essentially all communications, in the USA as well as in the rest of the world. Echelon does it, 24/7, and automatically. All that, and you get a free mixer too! I know this sounds paranoid, but it's true. So buy a bingo-machine and start making those one-time pads...
it's Eve, short for eavesdropper. I believe claude would just be another part of the exchange...I thought Applied Cryptography was on the required reading list? (i'm almost through the preface...)
Also, the filters are not at a 45 degree angle, it's 90 degree angle. the problem with 45 degrees is that even if a photon comes through that is at 45 degrees to the filter, it has a 50% chance of 'twisting' and coming out the filter. so you have to have a 90 degree difference, otherwise there is a chance of getting two differing one time pads, which is what Alice and Bob generate. There are no 'bad luck' misses.
And it's 'photon' (I know this is all nerdy nitpicking, but I couldn't resist)
I didn't read the whole thing (yet), cause it is simply gargantuan, but it seems like they know what they're talking about. Lots of good ideas in there.
The one problem there has always been with this sort of thing is that you can't predict stuff that there are no trends to suggest. For instance, they don't expect any truly revolutionary devices to be invented, although as everyone knows one of the things war does is show just how important a given device or technique could be: no one was afraid of U-boats before 1914, and no one really thought about guerilla warfare that much until the USA lost in Vietnam. There were probably people who suggested that these things could be important, but it took a war to really prove it. We get guerilla warfare in every conflict, but it never really swung the tide except in Vietnam (because that was all North Vietnam really had).
In one of the papers, a Lt. General says that he does not expect that there will be a Space Corps. or an Information Corps. I'm not sure about this assertation.
Perhaps there will be no Information Corps in the sense that it won't be on the same level as the Air Force or Navy, but it'll certainly exist. The only thing which may prevent it is if countermeasures (like crypto) become strong enough that it can't provide a big advantage. But information warfare already exists, has always existed, and will continue to exist. It's just another way of talking about espionage and certain sabotage.
Not to mention propaganda: against a country like the USA, I would make sure that the American public got plenty of footage of blood soaked villages and starving children. One of the reasons Vietnam was so unpopular was that there was so much press coverage, and that translated into less enthusiasm. Less enthusiasm for a war means fewer volunteers (and draftees) and fewer resources committed to the war. People didn't really think about what was going on over there until the press started to draw attention to it.
And the Space Corps...that's up for grabs. It all depends on how much technology progresses in that time. If we're still stuck in Earth-orbit, than it will just be a part of the USAF. Research colonies will probably be unaffected, so even if there are researchers on the moon or Mars, it will probably stay with the Air Force. If there are actual colonies then it may be Army/National Guard. And if, and this is a big if, we have large successful colonies on other planets which are essentially small countries, and spacecraft routinely make trips between them and Earth, it may become Navy (the spacecraft are traditionally Navy in most science fiction). Instead of Navy, however, there may be the United States Space Force (or Corps). I don't think we'll get that far in 25 years though.
So basically, they've got good ideas and good predictions, provided that no new, unexpected technology shows up. If something big should happen, it's a toss up.
Fudge isn't doing this sort of open gaming license. also, Fudge isn't saying 'this is the basic rule set, you add on to it'
they're saying 'this is the rule set, you can do whatever you want with it'
given how simple fudge is, it really doesn't mean much..you can just make up your own system instead.
refers to the fact that Coca-Cola actually contained cocaine...umm, wait, that doesn't actually logically lead to anything. okay, anyway...
If CocaCola(tm) has a trademark on Coke that is valid in Switzerland (i'm not too clear on international trademark law), then I think they should get the domain. If not, too bad for them.
if you read the one about the MD scanner, you'll notice a bit of background info..
apparently, many stereos have one-button CD-ripping capability to facilitate piracy, and if you go to a CD-rental place, a common line is 'would you like some MiniDiscs with that?'
ahh, it must be nice to live in a country without a damn RIAA. now, if we could only get CD-players that could also do mp3s, i could burn a CD with 650 of music...
In a word: two.
Two is an even number, two is not the sum of two primes, Q.E.D. It isn't a proof, but it does disprove it, which make the challenge meaningless.
Unless you feel like calling 1 a prime, which I don't. Is this so glaringly wrong that no one else mentioned it? If so, explain the flaw, I beseech you. =)
Who cares? I mean, really?
Schools are not supposed to make you educated. They are supposed to make you intelligent. Many great minds have said 'Don't teach me how to plug numbers into a formula, teach me how to think.'
Think of it this way: can you really give a good example of needing, say, all your computer science knowledge but not having any reference material? I can't. It's better to know the basic ideas behind, for example, microprocessor architecture, than it is to know a map of the 10 most commonly used chips. If you can look it up, you don't need to learn it.
The first time this happened to me was in math class: I realized that if I could do it with a calculator, than I might as well not bother. The only problems that really mattered were the ones that I didn't know what to do with. Most of the other kids in my classes didn't understand why a given formula worked, they just took it for granted that it worked and gave you a number/s that the teacher would say is right.
In my algebra class they just told us the quadratic formula. In my mind, it would have been better to have the class figure out the quadratic formula, instead. Understanding how ax^2+bx+c=0 translates onto a coordinate system is infinitely more useful than knowing the formula itself. Of course, most people will end up knowing it anyway. But if all else fails and you forget it, you can always discover it again.
If we assume that by the time most students get out of college or high school, small computers will be everpresent, then we can dispense with number-plugging, and for that matter all fact-memorizing. Given that the internet is the world's biggest reference point (and will only become larger), it is useless to test anyone's knowledge of information that is easily available there. Who, What, Where, When, and How are not important. The only important one is Why.
No question about, dedicated fiber is what is gonna be holding up most of the 'net within a decade or so.
I bet that we'll get a multi-terabaud line going to every major city (and maybe 100-1000 gigabaud to minor cities and towns). From there, you run slower lines (still somewhere in the 1-10 gbps range) to every home, pretty much replacing the phone lines. Within the home things get tricky.
Only rich people and computer techies will have fiber optic cables running through their house: it's much cheaper to have a wireless LAN, unless you don't mind cables all over the place (as opposed to building them into the walls). You just hook up your home cable to a master computer in your basement (or closet or whatever) and everything in your house hooks up to that. Current trends suggest we'll be able to get 20 mbps or so over the airwaves, maybe even more at short range like in a single home.
You could get all the communications you usually get over that one cable: TV, radio, an internet connection, phone, email, maybe even things like delivery (don't want to wait for your copy of Quake IV to arrive? Just download it right from the site you bought it from, it can't take more than a second). Everything would perhaps be done by your CSP (communications service provider) or maybe ISP (informations service provider).
Now, the reason I don't see the world going fully wireless (IE, only have that big fiber optic backbone between cities, and for everything else use airwaves) is that you don't get the speed (about a factor of 1000), reliability (In a big city especially, I bet all the metal frames holding up skyscrapers could make for nasty static), and privacy (it's pretty hard to tap fiber without someone noticing, especially if they're on the lookout, which might be an automatic feature of the CSP) of cable. Not that people will be handing in their wireless phones, of course. More likely, they'll scrap their normal phones completely. Like I said, most of the stuff on the personal level (everything that you actually come into contact with) will be wireless, unless you spring for a home fiber optic network. You'd use your digital phone (slash PDA slash mini-computer slash anything) in your house, on the way to work, and when you got there it'd tap into the company wireless network. It'd be nice if we could get a wireless standard (instead of more than one wireless standard) that would work anywhere, so that you could take your phone across the world and still check your mail.
It looks like computers will have no trouble using that bandwidth (with an IBM 75 gig HDD, it'd actually take several seconds to fill it up with mp3s), although it's anyone's guess if they can actually take advantage of the data (will we still have programs that take up 100-200 mb? In that case, I'd have room for about 250-300 of them, with space to spare for files). Then again, what with my 38" 200 PPI 16:9 aspect ratio LCD, I might need all that space for the new graphics in the latest game (or the latest version of windows). I sure hope my computer comes with a chip to run all this stuff though...
I want 'perfect rectangle' aspect ratio!
.6-1, and if you calculate the ratio better it becomes more accurate).
In case you don't remember (or never learned of them), perfect rectangles have a ratio of about 1-1.6: I've heard that in a survey (I don't know who did this survey) this was the favorite type of rectangle. You find them a lot in classical Greek architecture, probably because Greek architects liked the shape like everyone else.
One property of a perfect rectangle is that if you divide it into two pieces, one of which is a square with a side length equal to the shorter side (so if the lengths were 100 cm and 160 cm, you'd get a square with a side of 100 cm), the other piece is also a perfect rectangle (ie, the ratio of 1-1.6 is about that of
I like this would be a bit wider than typical 4:3 monitors, (more like 4.8:3) but not as wide as 16:9 (more like 14.4:9). You could obviously pull off 1440x900 if it was big enough.
Then again, 16:9 is pretty sweet, and if we get an affordable, 16:9 38" 200 PPI LCD (even if there isn't a computer in the world that could take advantage of it), I won't be complaining =)
"So Bob, what version of the Genome is your daughter at?"
"1.05...we had her grown in vitro pretty early...we're planning to go all out for our next kid, though..."
"You mean you're gonna try the 2.2 beta? Isn't that unstable?"
"We're gonna wait till they iron out the multiple-personality bug, and then...well, you saw the feature list, right?"
"Ohhhh, yeah. That thing is amazing!"
Hehe, I can't wait!
Linus Torvalds nominated for President!
WASHINGTON-Today, 20,000,000,000 voters voted over the internet in a surprise nomination for president, the Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
"Well, I'm honored, really, to get so many votes, but I wasn't actually born here, so I can't do it," a happy but reluctant Torvalds says.
"This is the highest voter turnout we've ever seen!" Says Sen. H. R. Flappergaster. "The voter turnout for Mr. Torvalds was over 10000%. I have never seen anything like it."
Some of the other candidates attacked the results, saying that the votes were 'faked.' They sited the fact that '20 billion is over three times the population of the Earth.' The Committee to Elect Linus Torvalds did not respond, except to say "neener neener neener."
Iridium (or rather, Motorola) is planning on deorbiting the satellites, rather then just leaving millions of dollars worth of stuff up there. I read it on Ars, but they didn't seem to site a source (besides the guy who sent in the story) so it might not be true. But they're obviously not gonna to play finders-keepers with the things. If they don't find a buyer (I don't know what they would be good for, maybe some sort of wireless internet or something, or just use them to tie into another network), then they'll certainly take them down and sell them for something else (i bet a lot of the equipment in them is useful in and of itself).
Sorry guys, no free satellites...
...would create such uproar over the method of getting these statistics.
Personally, I'm more bothered by the amount of free time these Irish poll-takers have. What's next?
News Flash: Northern Ireland study shows that the average child will, between birth and the age of five, flind over 2.5 tons of food. "These kids are like Pedro Martinez!" says one researcher, "They were getting creamed carrots in their parents' faces at over 50 yards!"
In my opinion, the newspaper (and, by extension, magazine) experience is totally different from, for instance, the Slashdot experience. By which to say, the way you read a newspaper is totally different from the way you read Slashdot.
I live in the Boston Metropolitan area, so I get the Boston Globe, which is a pretty good paper. I don't read it consistently, but I do read it, for different reasons than I read Slashdot. Slashdot is good at what it does: provide extremely up-to-date information about most of technology. The reason Slashdot is better at this than the Boston Globe is because technology is so fast-paced that by the time a printed medium is out on the streets, it's old news.
However, Slashdot is highly specialized. It doesn't need to appeal to a large audience, because it is on the web and it has the whole world as an audience. It can therefore afford to appeal to a small group: generally, technically literate, educated people with an interest in technology. The Boston Globe has to appeal to essentially everyone in the Boston Metro area, and the majority of its audience is not the same audience that Slashdot has.
This is both a Good Thing and a Bad Thing:
It's a Bad Thing because the Globe cannot compete with Slashdot when it comes to technology. This is obvious. They can't devote as much resources to it (and, since they charge money for the paper, they can't use a reader-submission system to get news), and it takes too much time to get it into print.
It's a Good Thing because they can concentrate on other topics. Also, they can print stories which are too specific for Slashdot. Case in point: I saw an article in the Globe about how every school, police, and fire station in Massachusetts was going to be wired to the internet, either through T1 or DSL. I thought this was pretty cool (it's great if you're planning on having kids in the area in the near future). I submitted said story to Slashdot, where it was rejected, I assume because it pertained only to Massachusetts residents and not to the wider audience as a whole. On another note, there was recently an article about the architects being hired lately to work on Boston's skyline. Currently, not Slashdot material, and not even something I'm normally interested in. But it caught my eye, so I read it, and I'm better off having read it because it was very interesting.
Besides that, the Globe can concentrate on topics like art, business (sometimes covered on Slashdot, but usually only companies in the technology industries...Transmeta, or RedHat, for instance), and sports (not something I'm personally interested in, besides being an obligatory Red Sox fan).
But besides these reasons, I still read printed media for one major reason: It's a lot more comfortable. Even if you have a laptop and a wireless LAN, you can not comfortably read Slashdot sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, or curled up in a chair. And you certainly can't read it in your favorite coffee shop (unless it's one that has internet access, and you still need a laptop, which is none too comfortable to use). Until we get 'smart' paper or something equally useful, I'll stick to my paper.
(By 'equally useful' I don't mean e-books or something. I mean something light, flexible, and easy to read and use. Otherwise, it doesn't match up to my criteria)
Of course, I could suggest things to the Boston Globe to make it more appealing to me, personally. They could hire more technology writers (Cringely seems more fit to print than to post) and possibly make technology a daily section (it's currently weekly). Even if they couldn't give up to the minute news, I bet the articles they wrote would be more insightful, especially on a local level. But I can't expect them to cater to me. They have hundreds of thousands of people to please. They could care less if I don't read their paper (I'm not the only one in the household, and we certainly wouldn't be cancelling our subscription).
So basically, yes, I will read newspapers until they stop printing them.
Wait, you misunderstood me.
2048x1530 is the highest your graphics card can handle. Even at that high a resolution, it'll appear blocky on a 38" screen. We currently don't have a practical solution that will do something higher than that. (Yes, there are better cards, but they are prohibitively expensive).
Furthermore, the refresh rate is dependent on more than the graphics card. It also depends on the monitor, among other things.
Is a 36 inch, 200 ppi display. Of course, we wouldn't have any chance of taking advantage of that resolution at that size.
The problem with really big displays is that the computer can't send enough signals to the screen to get a decent refresh at a high resolution. It'd probably be possible to get 2048x1530 or something ludicrously high like that, but you'd have to accept visible rescanning rates. In other words, completely useless for typical applications.
I think that we should be concentrating on increasing the bandwidth that we can send to the monitor. Why not run a fiber-optic cable from your computer to your monitor? Put that SCSI interface to work providing you with the bandwidth you need, to your monitor, not your CD-ROM!
Besides that, we could use a different system for screens...field-emission might work. Something that could get the information from your cable to the screen faster. IIRC, field-emission can be based on Carbon-60, a superconductor. That'd probably translate into at least a small increase in speed.
But there's one more problem. If you have a 36" 200 PPI screen, it doesn't matter if it can handle super high resolution. You need the hardware to handle it. Depending on what you're doing, it might take huge amounts of processing power to display pictures on that screen. Of course, some things (like DVD movies, which don't need processing to display) would be easy to display and would therefore look great and be big (although other's have pointed out that this resolution is even higher than HDTV, maybe burn your movie onto FMD..?).
But who can say what tomorrow will bring? (ha, that look like a signature, but it isn't!) I've no idea what MIT will announce tomorrow, maybe someone in a secret collaboration between Sony, IBM, and DaimlerChrysler that will produce 12' 200 PPI screens that automatically drive around on a truck chassis next to you so you can always check slashdot.
But I doubt it.
but for stuff like major backups, it'd be great.
:)
keep in mind: this is ROM. you write it and then you can't change it ever again. you'd probably want your own burner to do it (you don't want to entrust someone else with your data) and we don't know how big and expensive FMD burners are. These reasons might make it too expensive to use FMDs for backups in some enviroments (except for stuff that will never change). If one person changes one file on their computer, the backup is innaccurate and you'll need another one. I think a solution that can be erased and rewritten to (like tape drives or RAIDs) would be better.
Of course, if you were going to backup 'secret LANL project #10385: Operation Blow up half the planet' and you weren't planning on changing it (why would you want to change it? the USA doesn't need one of those plans anyway, it's just for historic reasons that you keep it on file...) it might make sense to use one of these things...but don't forget: you can't build a secret electromagnet in the archive door to wipe the disk if someone takes it out
The famous 640k quote wasn't at the fore front of my mind, and of course I'm sure we can fill 140 gb...but not with my current desktop. It just can't handle that much information (unless it was a few trillion pages of text). If moore's law holds true we'll probably see rigs that can really take advantage of 140 gbs of multimedia, or whatever.
The first time I saw this, I submitted it, only to find out it had already been posted. Oh well. And now it's posted again. Oh well. At least this time I can write a response to it.
140 gigabytes is overkill, at least for most applications. Sure, it'll be a boon to those in the mass-backups business (screw tape drives, just get one of these puppies and a dozen disks...), but to anyone else, it doesn't seem too useful. I certainly don't want to watch any movie that could fill one of those things, and if I ever get that many mp3s it won't matter if I can store them on portable media: I won't be able to listen to a fraction of them before I get back from wherever I went, even if it was a road trip to Alaska.
Two applications for this stuff:
One, it will make for some damn interesting programs, if anyone manages to fill one up. Think of a 140 Gb RPG...it'd take you years to finish! Or, they could make it relatively short, but simply stunning in it's detail. The problem with this is A: you need one hell of a rig to take advantage of the (say) photo-realistic graphics and stereo quality sound, and B) you have to have the FMD-ROM to play the game! This doesn't seem like much, but it's really nice to be able to run a program without the disk (especially if the program is to be used by many people). Of course, if we get 14 Tb hard drives, that wouldn't be a problem, you could still do a complete install. Of course, we'd need the processor power to deal with all that data...
The other possible application: keep the technique, but shrink it. These things are basically the size of current CDs. I know they have a 'smart card' sized version with a smaller capacity (but also smaller size). This is perfect. I really can't see any good reason to have that much read-only space, unless you feel like carrying around a couple databases in your pocket. But something smaller than a credit card, holding 'only' 10 Gb or so...now that'd be useful! Or even a version the size of a 3.5" floppy disk...make an FMD-ROM drive that'd fit in one of my 3.5" bays! I don't care if it won't hold as much data, because it already holds way too much! With the current trend toward PDAs and ever smaller, thinner laptops, a medium that would match and exceed DVDs in performance and capacity, and yet be smaller than a floppy disk, would be perfect.
Combined with a few other key advances (like nanometer-scale transistors to make ever smaller and more powerful chips, Crusoe-like engineering to make them more efficient, field-emission monitors and such to vastly increase output quality, new data transfer methods like firewire to make it easy to get huge amounts of information from one medium to the next) we could conceivably see, in a few years, a machine that would replace nearly everything you currently carry around: it could do phone calls, act as a fully functional laptop, HDTV, game system (with performance exceeding that of a PSX2), and you could carry around all the information you'd ever need in your wallet. Couple that with wireless networking, and a migration towards less paper (with such things as 'smart' paper being looked into) and you might be able to go down to your favorite cafe for work.
Tap into a wireless service provider (at least 20 mbps over the airwaves, probably more), access your company's network, and start telecommuting from anywhere that has cell phone access.
Wow, you don't really notice tangents until they come up and smack you. That's enough rambling for now.
How come when you say it, it gets a 5, and when I say it, it gets a 0? =)
Oh well, no point in whining (I've done enough by now, and I'm not eager to lose a few more points for being troll or something). But I pretty much agree with what this post says. So in other words: Yeah, what he said.
'PC experience started with Apple II and visicalc'
That, in itself, makes him an atypical user: he has a lot of experience and began using computers quite a while ago. He owns two computers (not to mention that his 10 year old son has his own computer), he owns a scanner, CD-RW, and a zip drive. The computers are all networked. This doesn't sound hard-core techy to most slashdot readers, but it is a cut above the typical user. The fact that he installed linux himself makes him atypical: nowadays OS installation isn't hard, but it isn't something that the typical user does.
Still, it obviously means that Linux is getting to be more of a mainstream OS. Just today I saw it mentioned in Foxtrot, which, while it is nerdier than some strips, is still not User Friendly.
Of course, I'm not saying that this guy is a linux-pro, and I'm not saying that the typical computer user (which is a pretty blurry term: how do you define it? someone who uses computers? how often do they have to use them to qualify?) is a clueless newbie: often, the typical user is a newbie for a week or two, but then gets into the competent-but-not-knowledgeable category: they can drive the car expertly, but they still have no clue what goes on underneath the hood.
It seems like Linux is still testing the waters of the mainstream. But, according to me at least, that penguin still needs some swim lessons.
And if I remember correctly, one of those posts got moderated down to 0. But I'm not bitter (grumble grumble lousy moderators grumble grumble).
Why not, third time's the charm:
Linux needs to have the best GUI in the industry. Period. There needs to be a GUI out there so easy to use that anyone, indiscriminate of prior computer experience (including no experience at all, considering that that is the largest market in the world) should be able to sit down and use it. Look for an average what-the-heck-is-this-thing time of under 30 seconds.
I know this looks like a tall order, but I don't think it is really. All the open-source community needs to do is concentrate on a few key points.
First of all, there has to be easy-to-understand controls. For an existing example, look at the Windows Start button. Pretty simple, easy to understand, and obvious. You click on it to start using the computer. This is where Windows far outdoes Linux: Windows is made for an end-user, and as such is simple to work with. This approach limits its usefulness, since it is made to allow the user to learn how to use the system quickly (and simultaneously prevent the user from screwing anything serious up). This can be frustrating for people who know what they're doing, because they have to slog through the newbie-babble to get to the features they really want to use.
However, with Linux's inherent flexibility, it is possible to create a useful, easy-to-use interface that can step aside to reveal powerful (but intimidating) complexity. Just a few pointers: extensive documentation (not just online), intuitive buttons, 'balloons' (pop up descriptions of whatever the mouse is over) or something similar (easily switched off, however), starting up directly into the GUI (bypassing a command-line interface unless the user specifies it), and an easy, quick way to make new user names.
Other important stuff: The OS has to be pre-installed, of course. It has to have a suite of basic applications (word-processing, spreadsheets, email, etc) that adhere to the same guidelines as the GUI does. It also has to have pretty much total product support: everything has to be supported. Not to mention: an included browser, a small variety of included themes, wallpapers, screensavers, et al, and a talking paper clip (just kidding).
I want optical computer chips! motherboards with fiber optic channels instead of wires!
Photons move faster than electrons (unless you use a superconductor, which is way more expensive than using light). So if you replace the electrons flying around inside your chip with photons flying around, you get a faster chip. I'm guessing it would use less power too (heck, just hook it up to your roof: light comes in, you control the flow and put it directly into your system, instead of converting it to electricity, and then back).
Optical computers are going to be the final limit to how fast we can get stuff unless some radically new designs are made in the near future. We're already rubbing up against the physical limit for transistors...now we'll rub up against the physical limit for the speed of particles flying around inside the chip.
Instead of Moore's law, we'll have another law: The speed of a chip is directly proportional to it's size. I suspect we'll eventually find the best architecture for any one given task. Once you get to the limits of size and speed, plus you've found the best architecture for the task at hand, the only way to make your system faster is to make it bigger (or write better software...)