Begin Rant
How much memory do the people posting have here? I'm not talking about RAM here, I'm talking about the brain.
Not less than half of the top posts declared that 64bit architecture would not be useful in one way or another. 'The apps have to be 64 bit. The OS has to be 64 bit. The chipsets have to support 64 bit. blah blah blah!!'
Do any of you laugh at the guy that said we would never need more than 640k of RAM? Do you not remember 16bit processors? Do you not remember 40MB hard drives?
They will build the hardware that runs fast, we will make the software that uses the speed. We will expand the software to fill the available bit width.
I worked at Bell Labs in 1996 on a research contract and played chess with these guys during lunch. It was like playing against machines. They knew what I was going to do before I did. I got beat by one guy in 2 minutes. It was sad. Seriously.
I guess I just don't get it. They only new tld that i feel is absolutely necessary is.xxx or.sex because it allows the filtering of porn for the corp and home world. Everything else just seems like adding to the already chaotic system.
People complain up and down about domain naming and squatting and copyright infringement and other effluvia, and then in the next breath say that they want more tlds to add to the barrel of monkeys.
The answer to the inevitable question of "why not new tlds?" is that the current system does not handle registration and arbitration well now, so it can only get worse with more options.
Who the fsck is going to remember a domain name when there are 7693 tlds?
the SAS institute is beta testing SAS for linux. There are tons of clinical products available for SAS currently and I'm sure that some of the *nix versions of them would work on linux too.
SAS is an analytical package that the FDA uses (maybe exclusively, but i'm not sure) it is also used in the pharma industry for different phases of testing and analysis.
I don't want to get off on a rant here, but i seem to remember the people at NASA (God luv em) discussing what a technical feat it was just to remote control the Mars Rover. They were just trying to keep it from getting stuck in a ditch or on a rock. How the hell does the guy who wrote that article think they are going to navigate a HELICOPTER?!!?!?
They talked about the AI helicopter being tested by Carnegie Mellon, but then they discussed the "Large raindrops of methane, almost a centimetre across, drift slowly from the red haze. Geysers spout pale plumes of ethane high into the sky." Add this to the facts that the gravity is one seventh that of Earth, and no one knows what the surface looks like, and NASA has some serious planning to do.
I'm a big proponent of space exploration, but ideas like this are just too sci-fi.
I am a Tech trainer (mostly M$ stuff) in NJ. One of the companies I teach at was going to offer Linux classes put together by LinuxCare, but when they asked LinuxCare for the curriculum two months before the classes were supposed to start, they said "We're still putting it together." I think the idea for the company is good, but the implementation is not.
Did anyone notice how a Linuxcare *partner* can make a big announcement like this without raising the ire of the SEC? I like the business sense of companies like this.
I also like the *idea* behind Linuxcare because it allows for the big companies like Dell and Compaq to offer different distros and still have the same tech support. For Dell to be able to sell Linux in a corporate environment, they need solid tech support.
Back in the day... When I worked at Bell Labs and went to Rutgers University, I knew a guy by the name of Dr. Dan Shanefield (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mjohnm/shanefield.htm l). He has patents on a bunch of the chips used in telecom equipment back in the late 70s and early 80s. He taught a course in 'Electronic Ceramics' that many EEs and CerEs took. He explained the lag in chip use in satelite applications is because newer chips tend to be made of plastics and composites. This makes them cheaper for consumer use and does not affect their properties for normal use, but the radiation and temp gradients of space will destroy chips like that. The older 486 chips are ceramic-metal composites and can withstand some serious temp gradients.
The other factor is that the chips (and sometimes the whole solid state component) are coated with a thin layer of diamond. This increases its resistance to radiation, and EMP (electro magnetic pulse) in particular. A great deal of the NASA engineering specs are based on mil-spec so they must be able to withstand attack by EM weapons. Military satellites are supposed to be able to operate after a radiation burst as powerful as a nuclear explosion.
IMHO, I'm just glad to see that NASA is using off the shelf (inexpensive) components rather than custom designed stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Not less than half of the top posts declared that 64bit architecture would not be useful in one way or another. 'The apps have to be 64 bit. The OS has to be 64 bit. The chipsets have to support 64 bit. blah blah blah!!'
Do any of you laugh at the guy that said we would never need more than 640k of RAM? Do you not remember 16bit processors? Do you not remember 40MB hard drives?
They will build the hardware that runs fast, we will make the software that uses the speed. We will expand the software to fill the available bit width.
I worked at Bell Labs in 1996 on a research contract and played chess with these guys during lunch. It was like playing against machines. They knew what I was going to do before I did. I got beat by one guy in 2 minutes. It was sad. Seriously.
I guess I just don't get it. They only new tld that i feel is absolutely necessary is .xxx or .sex because it allows the filtering of porn for the corp and home world. Everything else just seems like adding to the already chaotic system.
People complain up and down about domain naming and squatting and copyright infringement and other effluvia, and then in the next breath say that they want more tlds to add to the barrel of monkeys.
The answer to the inevitable question of "why not new tlds?" is that the current system does not handle registration and arbitration well now, so it can only get worse with more options.
Who the fsck is going to remember a domain name when there are 7693 tlds?
the SAS institute is beta testing SAS for linux. There are tons of clinical products available for SAS currently and I'm sure that some of the *nix versions of them would work on linux too. SAS is an analytical package that the FDA uses (maybe exclusively, but i'm not sure) it is also used in the pharma industry for different phases of testing and analysis.
I don't want to get off on a rant here, but i seem to remember the people at NASA (God luv em) discussing what a technical feat it was just to remote control the Mars Rover. They were just trying to keep it from getting stuck in a ditch or on a rock. How the hell does the guy who wrote that article think they are going to navigate a HELICOPTER?!!?!?
They talked about the AI helicopter being tested by Carnegie Mellon, but then they discussed the "Large
raindrops of methane, almost a centimetre across, drift slowly from the red haze. Geysers spout pale plumes of ethane high into the sky." Add this to the facts that the gravity is one seventh that of Earth, and no one knows what the surface looks like, and NASA has some serious planning to do.
I'm a big proponent of space exploration, but ideas like this are just too sci-fi.
I am a Tech trainer (mostly M$ stuff) in NJ. One of the companies I teach at was going to offer Linux classes put together by LinuxCare, but when they asked LinuxCare for the curriculum two months before the classes were supposed to start, they said "We're still putting it together." I think the idea for the company is good, but the implementation is not.
Did anyone notice how a Linuxcare *partner* can make a big announcement like this without raising the ire of the SEC? I like the business sense of companies like this.
I also like the *idea* behind Linuxcare because it allows for the big companies like Dell and Compaq to offer different distros and still have the same tech support. For Dell to be able to sell Linux in a corporate environment, they need solid tech support.
Back in the day... When I worked at Bell Labs and went to Rutgers University, I knew a guy by the name of Dr. Dan Shanefield (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mjohnm/shanefield.htm l). He has patents on a bunch of the chips used in telecom equipment back in the late 70s and early 80s. He taught a course in 'Electronic Ceramics' that many EEs and CerEs took. He explained the lag in chip use in satelite applications is because newer chips tend to be made of plastics and composites. This makes them cheaper for consumer use and does not affect their properties for normal use, but the radiation and temp gradients of space will destroy chips like that. The older 486 chips are ceramic-metal composites and can withstand some serious temp gradients.
The other factor is that the chips (and sometimes the whole solid state component) are coated with a thin layer of diamond. This increases its resistance to radiation, and EMP (electro magnetic pulse) in particular. A great deal of the NASA engineering specs are based on mil-spec so they must be able to withstand attack by EM weapons. Military satellites are supposed to be able to operate after a radiation burst as powerful as a nuclear explosion.
IMHO, I'm just glad to see that NASA is using off the shelf (inexpensive) components rather than custom designed stuff.