well, actually, there was an article about building pentiums on slashdot several weeks back that had mentioned intel's distributed computing system... something along the lines of the spare cycles of all of their computers worldwide being used to test paths on a processor. I would imagine that this would not be extremely hard or expensive to set up for any large corporation or university. at the very least, it would be cheaper than buying that much computing power.
the point that katz (worry not, i'm not a big fan of him either) is trying to make here is that this merger is allowing the new AOL/Time-Warner to control all aspects of the media today for a large number of people...
the people who use AOL are mostly newbies... those newbies are not going to go out of their way and read slashdot religiously for hours a day or regularly read several different news services... they're going to log onto AOL and read the news page or flip on their tv and watch CNN.
if the AOL/Time-Warner merger works out, that means that a significant fraction of the (american) internet population (sorry, don't know any exact figures) is seeing the same news as the significant portion of the non-connected population that watches just CNN or other Time-Warner media.
in and of itself, this is not a bad thing... but both of these companies, despite CNN's supposed journalistic integrity, have a reputation for being heavy-handed and interested only in the bottom line. the merger with AOL is adding even more to Time-Warner's already significant political clout... imagine what the media blitz would be like if Ted Turner decided to flex his bank account and run for office.
question: how exactly is improvement measured here? ebert keeps making reference to whatever type of projection being by 80% or 500% or whatever... is the number simply a ratio of resolution? because i would be perfectly happy if the current resolution was kept, but the media was digital, keeping the movie cleaner.
when i saw episode one the day it came out, the projection at the theater i went to (one of the best new jersey theaters) was great... but when i saw it again a few weeks ago when my college was playing it (obviously a used reel), it was downright grainy... if the movie was digital, degradation wouldn't be a problem, and i think that improving resolution isn't so important. quality would be great if you could just get rid of imperfections in film by going digital.
Remember that retailing isn't in the hands of Carmack or id... I'm not sure who offhand, but the actual selling of Quake is done by a third party. id is a company of a couple dozen people that simply make the game...
That is often the situation for cross-platform games... but that may not be the case here. It may be that Carmack is referring to buying the Windows version, and running the map files (.bsp's) on the Linux demo. It has often been true of id games that the difference between demo and retail version is simply that the map files and usually one text file are present. From the wording of the.plan file, it seems that this also might be true between platforms!
And by the way, the reason I know this is not because I pirate software (ok! ok! Doom II for Mac waay back when - I'm sorry), but because there is a workaround for playing more maps under Quake III Test which involves making it think it's the retail version. And it's very simple - just change one directory name and add a one-sentence text file. Then add map files as you please. Of course, it is illegal... but I just can't wait.
It is very easy to pirate id games. They know that any effort they make to prevent will be broken, and they make plenty of money despite pirates (the RIAA could learn a thing or two from them). But, please, now that I've told you this, don't go do this! Though I personally plan to play this game mostly on Windows, I think I'm going to buy it for Linux and run on Windows just to support the Linux market... but of course I could be entirely wrong and Carmack could just be referring to hybrid CD's, in which case I'll still be buying the box marked "Linux".
The main problem with experimentation in superstring theory is that the energies that would be involved in experiments that prove the existence of string are many orders of magnitude past the energies expent in modern-day particle accelerators.
This has been one of the main criticisms of string theory, i.e. that the proponents of string theory put themselves in a very convenient place by saying that the existence of strings cannot be proven because of their very definition of being of such high energy. Further problems are mostly in the fact that we do not know the equations that describe these strings. No quantitative data are available for the verification or disproving of the theory.
But the quantitative conclusions of string theory are in agreement with experiments, though this is not at all conclusive. And string theory is a conceptually simple and elegant theory. It takes a mess of many subatomic particles (19 I think) and reduces them to different variations of a single thing. All of physics has always favored the simpler explanation of why things work in the universe, for example, the fact that there are only three kinds of forces in the universe (electroweak, strong, and gravitational).
One must remember that string theory is just that: a theory. It is not even close to being as accepted as quantum theory or relativity. It is a work in progress, and may simply be a dead end as much of scientific ends up being... however, should it hold up, it has the potential to radically redefine our view of the universe.
Oh, and btw, much of this is simply paraphrase of Brian Greene's excellent book The Elegant Universe. I know a lot of people have mentioned this, but it is the ideal book for armchair physicists... those with even passing interest in the subject should pick up a copy. And worry not if you know nothing of other prerequisite material such as quantum physics. The sections in this book explaining quantum theory and relativity are in and of themselves impetus enough to buy the book... the extra three hundred pages on string theory are just a wonderful bonus.
I don't know about that... isn't the idea behind console systems that it is supposed to stand still for a few years at a time? Console systems provide a platform that's ahead of its time when it comes out but lasts for a few years The reason there are gaming systems like the Dreamcast is (1) they are cheaper than computers (at least for that kind of raw graphical power), (2) the end user never has to worry about configuration, hardware conflicts, etc. since there is only one possible configuration (or with N64, two depending on whether or not you have the memory card), and (3) they're designed specifically for gaming.
Granted, no company can rest on its laurels for long. All console companies are constantly in development of the next best system, but that system will be released a few years after the last.
But older systems are still great... witness Final Fantasy VIII for Playstation, a game released a few months ago for a three or four year old platform. Graphically, the game is groundbreaking, and in terms of gameplay and plot, the game is amazing. A three year old computer is a Pentium 150 or so, which can barely run today's groundbreaking games... at least not w/o expensive upgrades such as a fast 3d card.
Though I do not doubt that someday the venerable Nintendo will be replaced, that does not mean that their current system is no longer a viable platform... but this round may be the last for them since they have historically been too late to market with their system... but that's an entirely different topic...
Dude, forget sleeves... who needs clothes anymore? Just spray this stuff on one set of clothes and then plug yourself into your computer every morning and decide whether you want to wear a three piece suit or khaki shorts and a hawaiian t-shirt.
Hmm... still leaves the problems of body odor, though, but enough deodorant usually solves that dilemma. It's still not quite the perfect replacement for wardrobe-challenged individuals such as I, but it'll do fine until the next best thing.
As the article points out, the key to using nanotechnology effectively is self-replication. It is too difficult to manufacture the millions of nanobots that would be required to complete any one task. Essentially, nanotechnology should work by humans designing and making a single (or a few) nanobots which are designed to replicate under certain conditions. From there, the nanobot works as a Von Neumann machine, replicating itself from raw materials provided and continually working on the task it's been made to complete, whether it be microsurgery or buckyball construction or whatever. However, there is the problem of limiting replication... one must consider the possible military applications of this technology.
There are ways of limiting replication, however. In the cells of animals (and maybe plants - I'm not too sure about that, though), there are telomeres, short dna fragments that do not replicate when the dna cell does, halving in size with each cell division, eventually inhibiting division when it reaches a certain size. This idea could be applied to nanobots, easily limiting replication to a certain limit (say one hundred or so - 2^100 nanobots should be able to accomplish most any task). However, this must be implemented by the creators of the nanobots - which raises the question of whether or not implementation of this is possible.
As most any programmer knows, programming embedded systems is often quite difficult due to the limited ram in most of those devices. Creating a nanobot that is both able to replicate and able to complete the task it is designed for would require quite complex programming, likely beyond that which can be accomplished through the use of straightforward electrical circuits. Some sort of processor with instructions for that processor would be required. Creating a processor that small with a flash rom for machine code and ram for variables could prove to be impossible. An entirely new method for control of these nanobots would have to be developed if we are to effectively use them.
However, this method is many, many years off. The only feasible use for nanotechnology at this point is for converting some simple matter into other simple matter. Perhaps mining certain rare metals from ore could be done in the next ten or twenty years. Medical nanobots and weaponry are far, far off in the future. (though you can never underestimate human ingenuity - it has only been forty or fifty years since computers were first made and now they run most everything)
Slashdot Mirror
someone moderate this down... that is absolutely fucking disgusting
well, actually, there was an article about building pentiums on slashdot several weeks back that had mentioned intel's distributed computing system... something along the lines of the spare cycles of all of their computers worldwide being used to test paths on a processor. I would imagine that this would not be extremely hard or expensive to set up for any large corporation or university. at the very least, it would be cheaper than buying that much computing power.
the point that katz (worry not, i'm not a big fan of him either) is trying to make here is that this merger is allowing the new AOL/Time-Warner to control all aspects of the media today for a large number of people...
the people who use AOL are mostly newbies... those newbies are not going to go out of their way and read slashdot religiously for hours a day or regularly read several different news services... they're going to log onto AOL and read the news page or flip on their tv and watch CNN.
if the AOL/Time-Warner merger works out, that means that a significant fraction of the (american) internet population (sorry, don't know any exact figures) is seeing the same news as the significant portion of the non-connected population that watches just CNN or other Time-Warner media.
in and of itself, this is not a bad thing... but both of these companies, despite CNN's supposed journalistic integrity, have a reputation for being heavy-handed and interested only in the bottom line. the merger with AOL is adding even more to Time-Warner's already significant political clout... imagine what the media blitz would be like if Ted Turner decided to flex his bank account and run for office.
the entire deal just stinks of evil...
aaah... the slashdot effect. what a beautiful thing.
question: how exactly is improvement measured here? ebert keeps making reference to whatever type of projection being by 80% or 500% or whatever... is the number simply a ratio of resolution? because i would be perfectly happy if the current resolution was kept, but the media was digital, keeping the movie cleaner.
when i saw episode one the day it came out, the projection at the theater i went to (one of the best new jersey theaters) was great... but when i saw it again a few weeks ago when my college was playing it (obviously a used reel), it was downright grainy... if the movie was digital, degradation wouldn't be a problem, and i think that improving resolution isn't so important. quality would be great if you could just get rid of imperfections in film by going digital.
Remember that retailing isn't in the hands of Carmack or id... I'm not sure who offhand, but the actual selling of Quake is done by a third party. id is a company of a couple dozen people that simply make the game...
That is often the situation for cross-platform games... but that may not be the case here. It may be that Carmack is referring to buying the Windows version, and running the map files (.bsp's) on the Linux demo. It has often been true of id games that the difference between demo and retail version is simply that the map files and usually one text file are present. From the wording of the .plan file, it seems that this also might be true between platforms!
And by the way, the reason I know this is not because I pirate software (ok! ok! Doom II for Mac waay back when - I'm sorry), but because there is a workaround for playing more maps under Quake III Test which involves making it think it's the retail version. And it's very simple - just change one directory name and add a one-sentence text file. Then add map files as you please. Of course, it is illegal... but I just can't wait.
It is very easy to pirate id games. They know that any effort they make to prevent will be broken, and they make plenty of money despite pirates (the RIAA could learn a thing or two from them). But, please, now that I've told you this, don't go do this! Though I personally plan to play this game mostly on Windows, I think I'm going to buy it for Linux and run on Windows just to support the Linux market... but of course I could be entirely wrong and Carmack could just be referring to hybrid CD's, in which case I'll still be buying the box marked "Linux".
The main problem with experimentation in superstring theory is that the energies that would be involved in experiments that prove the existence of string are many orders of magnitude past the energies expent in modern-day particle accelerators.
This has been one of the main criticisms of string theory, i.e. that the proponents of string theory put themselves in a very convenient place by saying that the existence of strings cannot be proven because of their very definition of being of such high energy. Further problems are mostly in the fact that we do not know the equations that describe these strings. No quantitative data are available for the verification or disproving of the theory.
But the quantitative conclusions of string theory are in agreement with experiments, though this is not at all conclusive. And string theory is a conceptually simple and elegant theory. It takes a mess of many subatomic particles (19 I think) and reduces them to different variations of a single thing. All of physics has always favored the simpler explanation of why things work in the universe, for example, the fact that there are only three kinds of forces in the universe (electroweak, strong, and gravitational).
One must remember that string theory is just that: a theory. It is not even close to being as accepted as quantum theory or relativity. It is a work in progress, and may simply be a dead end as much of scientific ends up being... however, should it hold up, it has the potential to radically redefine our view of the universe.
Oh, and btw, much of this is simply paraphrase of Brian Greene's excellent book The Elegant Universe. I know a lot of people have mentioned this, but it is the ideal book for armchair physicists... those with even passing interest in the subject should pick up a copy. And worry not if you know nothing of other prerequisite material such as quantum physics. The sections in this book explaining quantum theory and relativity are in and of themselves impetus enough to buy the book... the extra three hundred pages on string theory are just a wonderful bonus.
I don't know about that... isn't the idea behind console systems that it is supposed to stand still for a few years at a time? Console systems provide a platform that's ahead of its time when it comes out but lasts for a few years The reason there are gaming systems like the Dreamcast is (1) they are cheaper than computers (at least for that kind of raw graphical power), (2) the end user never has to worry about configuration, hardware conflicts, etc. since there is only one possible configuration (or with N64, two depending on whether or not you have the memory card), and (3) they're designed specifically for gaming.
Granted, no company can rest on its laurels for long. All console companies are constantly in development of the next best system, but that system will be released a few years after the last.
But older systems are still great... witness Final Fantasy VIII for Playstation, a game released a few months ago for a three or four year old platform. Graphically, the game is groundbreaking, and in terms of gameplay and plot, the game is amazing. A three year old computer is a Pentium 150 or so, which can barely run today's groundbreaking games... at least not w/o expensive upgrades such as a fast 3d card.
Though I do not doubt that someday the venerable Nintendo will be replaced, that does not mean that their current system is no longer a viable platform... but this round may be the last for them since they have historically been too late to market with their system... but that's an entirely different topic...
Dude, forget sleeves... who needs clothes anymore? Just spray this stuff on one set of clothes and then plug yourself into your computer every morning and decide whether you want to wear a three piece suit or khaki shorts and a hawaiian t-shirt.
Hmm... still leaves the problems of body odor, though, but enough deodorant usually solves that dilemma. It's still not quite the perfect replacement for wardrobe-challenged individuals such as I, but it'll do fine until the next best thing.
As the article points out, the key to using nanotechnology effectively is self-replication. It is too difficult to manufacture the millions of nanobots that would be required to complete any one task. Essentially, nanotechnology should work by humans designing and making a single (or a few) nanobots which are designed to replicate under certain conditions. From there, the nanobot works as a Von Neumann machine, replicating itself from raw materials provided and continually working on the task it's been made to complete, whether it be microsurgery or buckyball construction or whatever. However, there is the problem of limiting replication... one must consider the possible military applications of this technology.
There are ways of limiting replication, however. In the cells of animals (and maybe plants - I'm not too sure about that, though), there are telomeres, short dna fragments that do not replicate when the dna cell does, halving in size with each cell division, eventually inhibiting division when it reaches a certain size. This idea could be applied to nanobots, easily limiting replication to a certain limit (say one hundred or so - 2^100 nanobots should be able to accomplish most any task). However, this must be implemented by the creators of the nanobots - which raises the question of whether or not implementation of this is possible.
As most any programmer knows, programming embedded systems is often quite difficult due to the limited ram in most of those devices. Creating a nanobot that is both able to replicate and able to complete the task it is designed for would require quite complex programming, likely beyond that which can be accomplished through the use of straightforward electrical circuits. Some sort of processor with instructions for that processor would be required. Creating a processor that small with a flash rom for machine code and ram for variables could prove to be impossible. An entirely new method for control of these nanobots would have to be developed if we are to effectively use them.
However, this method is many, many years off. The only feasible use for nanotechnology at this point is for converting some simple matter into other simple matter. Perhaps mining certain rare metals from ore could be done in the next ten or twenty years. Medical nanobots and weaponry are far, far off in the future. (though you can never underestimate human ingenuity - it has only been forty or fifty years since computers were first made and now they run most everything)