If they don't have supercomputers to simulate nuclear experiments, they will do real ones. Which do you prefer? Myself, I prefer to sell a supercomputer than to see an atmospheric nuclear test
Which makes me wonder... Do you trust your hardware? OK, I'll write my assembler in machine code, then write my compiler using my assembler, and so on. But what if they bugged my hardware? This is harder to solve, because chip production is not exactly something you can do in your backyard. It could be a chip in your modem, or your ethernet card, or maybe even the BIOS. You can never be sure. I'm not saying that we should be paranoid, just that we can never be sure. If you have some very sensitive information, don't keep it on a computer. Also, any other digital device. Tape or microfilm is probably safer. Don't even wordprocess it.
In the last two days slashdot pages have been very very slow to load. Is that just me, or is Slashdot slashdotted? I am ~17 hops away according to traceroute. Slashdot is almost always slow for me, but it's been unbearable lately (>30 second wait to load the page, and I'm on cable modem!). But, to go on the topic: Blame Canada really expressed what many Americans think about Canada, but it really didn't diss on Canada, but on the USA. I don't see how Canadians can be *that* offended. Besides, it's all marketing. Americans find it funny when people speak about Canada like this so that is how it's done. It sells.
Well, it *is* not 13 billion light years distant. It probably doesn't exist by now. The light we see was emitted 13 billion years ago. For 13 billion years it has probably moved a little bit:-) Besides, who said that the universe expands at the speed of light?
Means that 13 billion years ago this quasar and the sun were at the same point. But there was only one time that we were at one point and it must be the Big Bang. Everything was at the same point back then.
The shuttle boosters can't get it that high, besides even if they did it would be dangerous because of radiation. The shuttle does deploy satellites for geosynchronous orbit, but what happens is that they release them in low-earth orbit and the satellite then has thrusters on it which lift it to geostationary (22000 miles). The manoeuver that lets you change height of orbit requires very little energy (delta v) compared to getting from earth into orbit in the first place, so those boosters on the satellite need not be too big.
You are right that radiation is dangerous, but only if you are outside the Van Allen belts, which extend from something like 6000 to 36000 kilometers altitude. Low Earth orbit is at about 300-500 kilometers, where most radiation has already been absorbed in the upper atmosphere. Still, astronauts on the space shuttle would get about a year's worth of normal exposure (down here on Earth) if a large solar flare happened. This is not too much, but they probably wear lead underwear 'cause they don't want funny-looking children afterwards. Some parts of the body are much more sensitive than others to radiation. In low earth orbit, 4mm thick of aluminum shielding is enough (shuttle is thicker) and you would get about 100 rad/year. Appollo had 7 g/cm^2 aluminum equivalent shielding, which would not have been enough for astronauts to survive a large flare.
If nothing else works, is it possible to capture the data from the spot where the monitor has already decoded it? I mean, if the monitor is going to decrypt, there will be some Intel chip in it that would do it. Just hook up on its output and you're set. OK, this will probably be hard to do in practice, but we should not underestimate the abilities of the creative hacker. Like another poster said, if you can see it, you can copy it. And if it's digital, you can make a perfect copy. Also, if the screen area being encrypted is say 640x480x24bit then it's about 1MB of data. Even though the movie refreshes 24frames/second, the screen refreshes at 75 (or more) Hz, so you need to decrypt like 75 Megs/second. If your decrypt key is large, this will require a lot of processing power. Of course depending on the algorithm used.
They still use the Hennessey & Patterson book for the computer architecture class I took a year ago. Frankly, I didn't even buy the book when I was taking it. We had to design a MIPS processor in that class. Pretty cool.
Doesn't Crusoe have 128 bit (VLIW) instructions? Means the registers are 128 bit each. I think they combine several x86 instructions in one crusoe 128 bit "instruction" (when they emulate x86 that is). The Transmeta CEO said something like that on that webcast Stanford EE380 lecture. URL is http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/ main.html if you want a streaming version of the webcast.
That stuff about sorting? I did all this sophomore year in college. We used Cormen Leiserson and Rivest book called Intro to Algorithms. It's pretty practical, but has a lot of theory too. It's got all algorithms you will ever need (why, yes, bubble sort too!).
I have the exact same experience. When I have programmed all day and at the end of the day I am trying to solve some higher level algorithmic problem, I just can't, even though I churn out simple code very fast. The next morning when I start work the answer to the problem is just there staring at me and I wonder how I couldn't come up with it last evening. That is why, I always try to get enough sleep -- the next morning is just fun when I finally know how to prove it or do it or whatever the problem is.
Where I used to live, geckos do change color, but over a very small range and very slowly. I've seen them green, brown and transparent (when it is dark and then you turn on the light, you can see all its guts). But I think their color changes depending on the background and they can't do it at will. Also, geckos have sharp fingernails which help them climb (at least some of them do, I think).
Actually if you electrically stimulate a muscle to its maximum possible contraction, the bone it is attached to *will* snap like twig. It's been done. I'm not sure if muscle tears happen because of extreme contraction. The reason is probably overuse. Also, muscles are extremely strongly attached to the bones, judging from the fact that they can brak a bone and still stay attached to the bone. For example your biceps is like a lever, in which one lever arm is more than 5 times shorter than the other. Thus if you are holding 10 pounds forward (using biceps muscle), the force on the bone-muscle connection is about 50 pounds. So they are even stronger than you would imagine.
If you took two shots from two distinct points which have the same position with respest to each other as human eyes, you will be able to preserve the depth information in the picture. There would be one picture for each eye to look at. This type of photography has been around probably since the 19th century. However, the image is not 3D in that you can't move a bit to one side and see what is behind a person for example. For this you need at least 3 cameras and some smart software I think.
using three video cameras from different angles (they should not be collinear). There is software that can generate a full 3D scene, which you can move through. The French Canal+ did it a lot during the Atlanta Olympics to show how athletes moved, etc. I am not sure if it can be done in real time (they had delay before showing the 3D) with high image quality though. But I assume the software for it would be fairly standard, even though computationally intensive, once you have established the exact positions of the cameras.
If you are on student visa it is easy to get deported if someone reports you to the police that is. For example you are 21 years old and get drunk and someone hates you and calls the police. This can be sufficient for you to get deported. Notice I say *can* not *is*. Or you speed in your car (just a fine usually, but...)
I've been educated in 3 countries and must say that at school and high school the level in the US is much lower than other countries. I got a lot of AP when I came to US for college even though I didn't take any special or advanced classes in high school. Still in the university I am at, there are some pretty smart people around. Actually I think the education in the US college is pretty good, because they have a lot of resources (of course since my parents pay 30+ K dollars:-( )
Well yeah, but people can land a spacecraft in realtime, while robots can't as we have seen with MPL.
Re:What can the shuttle do?
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 1
If you don't trust me, ask your question in sci.space.tech newsgroup, where it has been asked many times before and some people from NASA actually reply personally along the lines I did in my previous post. The two problems are boosting the shuttle higher than LEO and then reentry in the atmosphere at a shallow angle (so that it can land as airplane) coming from the moon
Re:What can the shuttle do?
on
On to Mars
·
· Score: 1
It is very unfeasible to use the shuttle to go to the Moon. First, the shuttle has wings and other equipment that enables it to land as an airplane. This will all be dead weight that you have to boost to the moon. I don't think the current boosters the shuttle has can even boost it to Lunar transfer orbit. Also, reentry to Earth coming from the Moon is just impossible for the shuttle because the speed would be too high and it would just burn up or at least will need to waste a lot of fuel braking, which it will need to carry around all the way there. I guess they could make a smaller craft and boost it with the shuttle boosters and then it would come back as an Appolo capsule on Earth reentry.
The Russians still have balls, but not too much money. They are not afraid to risk cosmonaut lives. USA - as long as there is a safety rope we will do it. Russia - as long as there is enough vodka we will do it.
Slashdot Mirror
If they don't have supercomputers to simulate nuclear experiments, they will do real ones. Which do you prefer? Myself, I prefer to sell a supercomputer than to see an atmospheric nuclear test
"plan" is the plan subsection of the user info you get when you call finger on a user. It's mainly a UNIX thing, I think.
Which makes me wonder... Do you trust your hardware? OK, I'll write my assembler in machine code, then write my compiler using my assembler, and so on. But what if they bugged my hardware? This is harder to solve, because chip production is not exactly something you can do in your backyard. It could be a chip in your modem, or your ethernet card, or maybe even the BIOS. You can never be sure. I'm not saying that we should be paranoid, just that we can never be sure. If you have some very sensitive information, don't keep it on a computer. Also, any other digital device. Tape or microfilm is probably safer. Don't even wordprocess it.
How do you know that they don't have the compiler bugged? Thompson-style hack, right? Open source won't help in this case.
In the last two days slashdot pages have been very very slow to load. Is that just me, or is Slashdot slashdotted? I am ~17 hops away according to traceroute. Slashdot is almost always slow for me, but it's been unbearable lately (>30 second wait to load the page, and I'm on cable modem!). But, to go on the topic: Blame Canada really expressed what many Americans think about Canada, but it really didn't diss on Canada, but on the USA. I don't see how Canadians can be *that* offended. Besides, it's all marketing. Americans find it funny when people speak about Canada like this so that is how it's done. It sells.
Well, it *is* not 13 billion light years distant. It probably doesn't exist by now. The light we see was emitted 13 billion years ago. For 13 billion years it has probably moved a little bit :-) Besides, who said that the universe expands at the speed of light?
Means that 13 billion years ago this quasar and the sun were at the same point. But there was only one time that we were at one point and it must be the Big Bang. Everything was at the same point back then.
The shuttle boosters can't get it that high, besides even if they did it would be dangerous because of radiation. The shuttle does deploy satellites for geosynchronous orbit, but what happens is that they release them in low-earth orbit and the satellite then has thrusters on it which lift it to geostationary (22000 miles). The manoeuver that lets you change height of orbit requires very little energy (delta v) compared to getting from earth into orbit in the first place, so those boosters on the satellite need not be too big.
You are right that radiation is dangerous, but only if you are outside the Van Allen belts, which extend from something like 6000 to 36000 kilometers altitude. Low Earth orbit is at about 300-500 kilometers, where most radiation has already been absorbed in the upper atmosphere. Still, astronauts on the space shuttle would get about a year's worth of normal exposure (down here on Earth) if a large solar flare happened. This is not too much, but they probably wear lead underwear 'cause they don't want funny-looking children afterwards. Some parts of the body are much more sensitive than others to radiation. In low earth orbit, 4mm thick of aluminum shielding is enough (shuttle is thicker) and you would get about 100 rad/year. Appollo had 7 g/cm^2 aluminum equivalent shielding, which would not have been enough for astronauts to survive a large flare.
If nothing else works, is it possible to capture the data from the spot where the monitor has already decoded it? I mean, if the monitor is going to decrypt, there will be some Intel chip in it that would do it. Just hook up on its output and you're set. OK, this will probably be hard to do in practice, but we should not underestimate the abilities of the creative hacker. Like another poster said, if you can see it, you can copy it. And if it's digital, you can make a perfect copy. Also, if the screen area being encrypted is say 640x480x24bit then it's about 1MB of data. Even though the movie refreshes 24frames/second, the screen refreshes at 75 (or more) Hz, so you need to decrypt like 75 Megs/second. If your decrypt key is large, this will require a lot of processing power. Of course depending on the algorithm used.
They still use the Hennessey & Patterson book for the computer architecture class I took a year ago. Frankly, I didn't even buy the book when I was taking it. We had to design a MIPS processor in that class. Pretty cool.
Doesn't Crusoe have 128 bit (VLIW) instructions? Means the registers are 128 bit each. I think they combine several x86 instructions in one crusoe 128 bit "instruction" (when they emulate x86 that is). The Transmeta CEO said something like that on that webcast Stanford EE380 lecture. URL is http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/ main.html if you want a streaming version of the webcast.
That stuff about sorting? I did all this sophomore year in college. We used Cormen Leiserson and Rivest book called Intro to Algorithms. It's pretty practical, but has a lot of theory too. It's got all algorithms you will ever need (why, yes, bubble sort too!).
I have the exact same experience. When I have programmed all day and at the end of the day I am trying to solve some higher level algorithmic problem, I just can't, even though I churn out simple code very fast. The next morning when I start work the answer to the problem is just there staring at me and I wonder how I couldn't come up with it last evening. That is why, I always try to get enough sleep -- the next morning is just fun when I finally know how to prove it or do it or whatever the problem is.
Where I used to live, geckos do change color, but over a very small range and very slowly. I've seen them green, brown and transparent (when it is dark and then you turn on the light, you can see all its guts). But I think their color changes depending on the background and they can't do it at will. Also, geckos have sharp fingernails which help them climb (at least some of them do, I think).
Actually if you electrically stimulate a muscle to its maximum possible contraction, the bone it is attached to *will* snap like twig. It's been done. I'm not sure if muscle tears happen because of extreme contraction. The reason is probably overuse. Also, muscles are extremely strongly attached to the bones, judging from the fact that they can brak a bone and still stay attached to the bone. For example your biceps is like a lever, in which one lever arm is more than 5 times shorter than the other. Thus if you are holding 10 pounds forward (using biceps muscle), the force on the bone-muscle connection is about 50 pounds. So they are even stronger than you would imagine.
Marsokhod was the name of the Russian rover on board the Russian Mars 96 mission, which, er, landed in the Pacific shortly after takeoff.
If you took two shots from two distinct points which have the same position with respest to each other as human eyes, you will be able to preserve the depth information in the picture. There would be one picture for each eye to look at. This type of photography has been around probably since the 19th century. However, the image is not 3D in that you can't move a bit to one side and see what is behind a person for example. For this you need at least 3 cameras and some smart software I think.
using three video cameras from different angles (they should not be collinear). There is software that can generate a full 3D scene, which you can move through. The French Canal+ did it a lot during the Atlanta Olympics to show how athletes moved, etc. I am not sure if it can be done in real time (they had delay before showing the 3D) with high image quality though. But I assume the software for it would be fairly standard, even though computationally intensive, once you have established the exact positions of the cameras.
If you are on student visa it is easy to get deported if someone reports you to the police that is. For example you are 21 years old and get drunk and someone hates you and calls the police. This can be sufficient for you to get deported. Notice I say *can* not *is*. Or you speed in your car (just a fine usually, but...)
I've been educated in 3 countries and must say that at school and high school the level in the US is much lower than other countries. I got a lot of AP when I came to US for college even though I didn't take any special or advanced classes in high school. Still in the university I am at, there are some pretty smart people around. Actually I think the education in the US college is pretty good, because they have a lot of resources (of course since my parents pay 30+ K dollars :-( )
Well yeah, but people can land a spacecraft in realtime, while robots can't as we have seen with MPL.
If you don't trust me, ask your question in sci.space.tech newsgroup, where it has been asked many times before and some people from NASA actually reply personally along the lines I did in my previous post. The two problems are boosting the shuttle higher than LEO and then reentry in the atmosphere at a shallow angle (so that it can land as airplane) coming from the moon
It is very unfeasible to use the shuttle to go to the Moon. First, the shuttle has wings and other equipment that enables it to land as an airplane. This will all be dead weight that you have to boost to the moon. I don't think the current boosters the shuttle has can even boost it to Lunar transfer orbit. Also, reentry to Earth coming from the Moon is just impossible for the shuttle because the speed would be too high and it would just burn up or at least will need to waste a lot of fuel braking, which it will need to carry around all the way there. I guess they could make a smaller craft and boost it with the shuttle boosters and then it would come back as an Appolo capsule on Earth reentry.
The Russians still have balls, but not too much money. They are not afraid to risk cosmonaut lives. USA - as long as there is a safety rope we will do it. Russia - as long as there is enough vodka we will do it.