At what point can a person be classified as a different species? Is this somewhat arbitrary, like when the US officially declared someone to be the 300,000,000th American (the real 300,000,000th American should be highly offended by the way)? If saying that short "dim-witted" people indicate a separate species, we already have plenty of this new species running around - regardless of 'social class'.
I think this guys logic is pretty flawed though. For thousands of years, there have been the 'haves' and 'have nots'... and class structures have always been in place. If his hypothesis were true, we'd have a group of 7 ft tall frail men and 6 ft tall women (with firm breasts I might add, yes - he actually predicts this to be widespread by 3000AD) running around today, all descendants of the royalty of the past.
I'm sure Sun has thought about it, but there has to be some security concerns with housing your data center in an easily transportable cargo container. Their example of using the containers for a growing company like YouTube instantly reduced my "who would ever want this other than the military" skepticism.
Talk about industrial espionage and theft opportunities though: "Hey buddy, what's that on the back of your truck?"
"It's YouTube, I just picked it up out of a parking lot down the street"
"Cool, I was just looking around for a container of MySpace myself"
Think there's any chance Google would start installing solar panels on their data centers? This would be a HUGE gesture of enviro-friendly computing, even if it did cost them a bundle. It would certainly get other data centers and large power consumers (like yahoo and microsoft) to consider following suit. Based on estimates posted at Wikipedia, they consume 20MW of power for their 450,000+ servers (which actually seems really low - only 50W per server?).
Assuming it's more like 80MW of power they consume (equivalent to ~60K homes), I wonder if there'd even be enough high quality solar panels to offset a majority of this power consumption? I guess it makes more sense for them to start building wind farms near their out-of-the-way GooglePlexes. Some 5MW wind turbines are being tested today - hmmm... let's see, 16 wind turbines vs. 150,000 solar panels...
Troll? Come on gang. I'm a new slashdot user, and have been fascinated by slashdot the past 48 hours. Every article I've read has been on-point (except for the "book report" on Ajax, which I declined to comment on), but all of a sudden I read an article that is more 'marketing-speak' than news or a technology synopsis, and I get flagged as a troll when I comment as such?
I realize a lot of folks here are pro *nix and open source software (as am I usually), but that doesn't mean we can't be critical. Should I only contribute if I have something nice to say, or only contribute a negative comment if it's about non-*nix software? Or is it something else that got me flagged as a troll (I don't even know what being flagged a 'troll' means, so maybe I'm overreacting).
"this release probably makes it the best free image editor in the world"
"With this release KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite while Openoffice.org only handles 22%. See the KOffice homepage for more information."
Does anyone smell a marketing rat trying to push new software? Rather interesting post on the heals of post on the GIMP graphics subsystem.
It's rather amazing that after years GIMP hasn't been improved to a point where it is a serious contender for graphic designers and photo editors. I love using open source products where I can, but GIMP has always seemed subpar. Maybe I'm underestimating the difficulty of creating such tools, or am just too used to Photoshop. I can't wait to check it out!
Impossible seems like a pretty strong word to use here. You're saying that a computer with 2 hard drives (and 2 hard drive controllers) couldn't share a single CPU? You might also need to add 2 sets of memory banks, but given the cheap price this doesn't seem unreasonable.
I realize many people would probably rather just have a KVM and two computers... but what do you do if you're a developer with a laptop? I'd pay quite a premium for a computer that could run 2 O/S's simulataneously... even if it was technically 2 computers in one enclosure.
I don't see what's so impressive about Vista's bootloader, unless you're simply comparing it to prior MS versions. What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?
With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?
Even if privacy rights were severely eroded, most people are just too lazy to do anything about it. Heck, there could be a line on this year's ballot asking 'Do you want to give up all your rights and have the United States become a fascist dictatorship led by a computer simulation of Hitler?', and everyone would be complaining to no end... but we'd still probably only have a 35% voter turnout.
AMD is only in the race if they can continue to innovate like they did with the AMD64 dual cores, while also increasing production. Seriously, can anyone get their top processors? I've read that even reviewers have been unable to get their top FX64 chips.
Even if AMD goes back to their old copy-Intel ways, the value they have brought to the average is immeasurable. Intel would still be stuck on their old single core processor, instead of making plans for 80 core chips that top out at 1 TeraFlop in 5 years. AMD pushed them to get there. AMD needs to focus on creating something far better, and they need to do so quickly... 5 years isn't that far away in chip manufacturing terms.
How about Toyota's Camry being labeled the Ford Taurus killer? Although Ford really dug their own grave there...
Or bratz being the next barbie killer?
I'm sure there are tons of others.
Just as friendster, six degrees, MSN spaces, and others have all fallen, so will MySpace. Has anyone recognized how many fake 'friends', bots, and advertising have invaded MySpace? All of a sudden you sign up and have 1000 friend requests from people you don't know, just to find out that they're all advertisers selling web dating services and strip shows.
Anything that's "cool" can't stay cool for long. Can anyone name a fad that remained popular with teenagers for over a year?
What's crazy is that the U.S. government is spending Billions funding research that after years creates 3 atoms of something that we'll never be able to use. I know, the intent is to keep our nuclear physicists employed so they can check out our stockpile every once in a while... but seriously, why not put them to better use? Get them to find an alternative to middle eastern oil maybe? Oh yeah, then we'd have nobody to bomb.
An unlimited supply of coolant, and an unlimited supply of contaminable water. Most of the world's fish supply would be inedible for ages in case of a meltdown. This isn't like an oil spill where the oil floats and it's at least theoretically containable... how do you contain something that would diffuse evenly?
I wouldn't even trust the French or Germans if they built such a reactor - and they at least know what they're doing (technically speaking that is)!
I'm rather surprised they didn't mention the impact to battery design. If batteries could be designed at the atomic and molecular level, I imagine you could greatly improve their life.
Slashdot Mirror
At what point can a person be classified as a different species? Is this somewhat arbitrary, like when the US officially declared someone to be the 300,000,000th American (the real 300,000,000th American should be highly offended by the way)? If saying that short "dim-witted" people indicate a separate species, we already have plenty of this new species running around - regardless of 'social class'.
... and class structures have always been in place. If his hypothesis were true, we'd have a group of 7 ft tall frail men and 6 ft tall women (with firm breasts I might add, yes - he actually predicts this to be widespread by 3000AD) running around today, all descendants of the royalty of the past.
I think this guys logic is pretty flawed though. For thousands of years, there have been the 'haves' and 'have nots'
I'm sure Sun has thought about it, but there has to be some security concerns with housing your data center in an easily transportable cargo container. Their example of using the containers for a growing company like YouTube instantly reduced my "who would ever want this other than the military" skepticism.
Talk about industrial espionage and theft opportunities though:
"Hey buddy, what's that on the back of your truck?"
"It's YouTube, I just picked it up out of a parking lot down the street"
"Cool, I was just looking around for a container of MySpace myself"
Think there's any chance Google would start installing solar panels on their data centers? This would be a HUGE gesture of enviro-friendly computing, even if it did cost them a bundle. It would certainly get other data centers and large power consumers (like yahoo and microsoft) to consider following suit. Based on estimates posted at Wikipedia, they consume 20MW of power for their 450,000+ servers (which actually seems really low - only 50W per server?).
... let's see, 16 wind turbines vs. 150,000 solar panels ...
Assuming it's more like 80MW of power they consume (equivalent to ~60K homes), I wonder if there'd even be enough high quality solar panels to offset a majority of this power consumption? I guess it makes more sense for them to start building wind farms near their out-of-the-way GooglePlexes. Some 5MW wind turbines are being tested today - hmmm
BTW: here's a link to a more detailed article on the subject: SF Gate - Google sets sight on solar
Troll? Come on gang. I'm a new slashdot user, and have been fascinated by slashdot the past 48 hours. Every article I've read has been on-point (except for the "book report" on Ajax, which I declined to comment on), but all of a sudden I read an article that is more 'marketing-speak' than news or a technology synopsis, and I get flagged as a troll when I comment as such?
I realize a lot of folks here are pro *nix and open source software (as am I usually), but that doesn't mean we can't be critical. Should I only contribute if I have something nice to say, or only contribute a negative comment if it's about non-*nix software? Or is it something else that got me flagged as a troll (I don't even know what being flagged a 'troll' means, so maybe I'm overreacting).
Sal
"this release probably makes it the best free image editor in the world"
"With this release KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite while Openoffice.org only handles 22%. See the KOffice homepage for more information."
Does anyone smell a marketing rat trying to push new software? Rather interesting post on the heals of post on the GIMP graphics subsystem.
It's rather amazing that after years GIMP hasn't been improved to a point where it is a serious contender for graphic designers and photo editors. I love using open source products where I can, but GIMP has always seemed subpar. Maybe I'm underestimating the difficulty of creating such tools, or am just too used to Photoshop. I can't wait to check it out!
Impossible seems like a pretty strong word to use here. You're saying that a computer with 2 hard drives (and 2 hard drive controllers) couldn't share a single CPU? You might also need to add 2 sets of memory banks, but given the cheap price this doesn't seem unreasonable.
... but what do you do if you're a developer with a laptop? I'd pay quite a premium for a computer that could run 2 O/S's simulataneously ... even if it was technically 2 computers in one enclosure.
I realize many people would probably rather just have a KVM and two computers
I don't see what's so impressive about Vista's bootloader, unless you're simply comparing it to prior MS versions. What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?
With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?
Congratulations! You've won a year's supply of clogged arteries and a reformatted hard drive.
Even if privacy rights were severely eroded, most people are just too lazy to do anything about it. Heck, there could be a line on this year's ballot asking 'Do you want to give up all your rights and have the United States become a fascist dictatorship led by a computer simulation of Hitler?', and everyone would be complaining to no end ... but we'd still probably only have a 35% voter turnout.
AMD is only in the race if they can continue to innovate like they did with the AMD64 dual cores, while also increasing production. Seriously, can anyone get their top processors? I've read that even reviewers have been unable to get their top FX64 chips. ... 5 years isn't that far away in chip manufacturing terms.
Even if AMD goes back to their old copy-Intel ways, the value they have brought to the average is immeasurable. Intel would still be stuck on their old single core processor, instead of making plans for 80 core chips that top out at 1 TeraFlop in 5 years. AMD pushed them to get there. AMD needs to focus on creating something far better, and they need to do so quickly
How about Toyota's Camry being labeled the Ford Taurus killer? Although Ford really dug their own grave there ...
Or bratz being the next barbie killer?
I'm sure there are tons of others.
OK, good point. I'll definitely concede with this one.
Just as friendster, six degrees, MSN spaces, and others have all fallen, so will MySpace. Has anyone recognized how many fake 'friends', bots, and advertising have invaded MySpace? All of a sudden you sign up and have 1000 friend requests from people you don't know, just to find out that they're all advertisers selling web dating services and strip shows. Anything that's "cool" can't stay cool for long. Can anyone name a fad that remained popular with teenagers for over a year?
What's crazy is that the U.S. government is spending Billions funding research that after years creates 3 atoms of something that we'll never be able to use. I know, the intent is to keep our nuclear physicists employed so they can check out our stockpile every once in a while ... but seriously, why not put them to better use? Get them to find an alternative to middle eastern oil maybe? Oh yeah, then we'd have nobody to bomb.
An unlimited supply of coolant, and an unlimited supply of contaminable water. Most of the world's fish supply would be inedible for ages in case of a meltdown. This isn't like an oil spill where the oil floats and it's at least theoretically containable ... how do you contain something that would diffuse evenly?
I wouldn't even trust the French or Germans if they built such a reactor - and they at least know what they're doing (technically speaking that is)!
I'm rather surprised they didn't mention the impact to battery design. If batteries could be designed at the atomic and molecular level, I imagine you could greatly improve their life.