Detailed troll, whiny astroturfer, or seriously uninformed slashdotter? You decide!
First, a little point of pedantry: "copyright" isn't named such because you have a "right" (note the quotes) to your "copy", it is so named because only the owner of the copyright has a right to make/sell/distribute (or not) copies of the work. "Copyrights" are "the right to copy"; not "a right to a copy". When you buy a CD, you don't buy the copyrights, you buy a copy.
Second, copyrights, although owned by the original author, are not for the original author's benefit. The copyright is a bribe. The public has decided that it likes new things; new ideas, new stories, new songs. And it has decided that, in exchange for access to this new idea, the person who articulated it can, for a limited time, and with limits for education, criticism, and parody, restrict who has the right to make (and therefore sell) copies of the work. You know, to encourage people to create these new things.
No, DRM isn't evil, but it does subvert the intent of the law (to provide new works to the public) and replace it with the capitalistic, lucrecratic belief that profit is the only ends we work towards. It undermines the public's security in the copyright-contract by weakening the restrictions placed on the copyright holders ability to limit access. Neither of these is good. And it's often used to destroy the doctrine of first sale, which is what allows me to sell my copy of a book on eBay when I don't want it anymore; once the copyright holder has sold that copy to me, it's MINE, and I can sell it to anyone else I want, at any price I want, and there is nothing the copyright owner gets to say about it. I can't do that with a song I bought on iTunes. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for what DRM does wrong.
That said, yes, the best bet is to change (or clarify) the law. It may be obvious to everyone now that it's okay to have the radio playing in your hotdog shop, but the first hotdog shop to try it got sued by the radio station. That case was only narrowly decided in the shop's favor; it could have gone the other way. We are at another, similar point now as we were then, with new technologies clashing in different interpretations of old social norms (with the constant clink-clink of coins counting out the beat that drives us forward). Sitting in the basement burning tracks doesn't help! Get out there; vote; talk to politicians and your voting friends and family. If you don't, the law will be written by the corporations, and they do not have your best interests at heart.
The voyagers and pioneers (and plenty of other american (and european)) probes used (and are STILL using; those things do last a long time) decay reactors.
What I don't get is... why? Why make it part of OO.o? I'm sure a free and open collection of clipart/stock images/etc. would be welcome to lots of people on the internet. The templates I get, but the rest of it is useful to people other than OO.o users, and would be better as it's own website and project than as another chunk of bloat to download.
Then the FSB can run as fast as the chip; no need to slow the signal down to send it across that old slow electrical bus. You're not "losing" a multiplier, you're losing a DIVISION.
No, this isn't optical switching. Laser light still comes in, gets converted to electrons, calculations are performed, and then more laser light is generated and sent out.
What this does is make it much simpiler (and CHEAPER) to make the laser light, to the point where it's worth while to have a fiberoptic connection between, say, your CPU and and your vRAM, or between your IDE controller and your RAM, rather than the terribly capacitive and inductive (and therefore SLOW) motherboard trace.
Your conjecture is completely unfalsifiable, and therefore, completely unscientific.
Also, seeing as how it would be impossible to study this sort of stuff without building something as big as this collider, and how it'd be impossible for that to happen without anyone else knowing about it, your conspiracy theory about the government already knowing the answer is also unfounded.
Give the research bots a break, they're still learning! Surely, the first few times you played, perhaps not for real money, perhaps as an uncle was teaching you, your teacher showed their cards when they didn't have to. More feedback->faster learning. No, it's not good for regular play, but it is good when you first start playing.
When it's REAL MONEY on the line, any advantage can be significant enough to warant taking advantage of it.
That said, uses (and abuses and detection) of out-of-band communication isn't what this research is about; those are concerns for someone else's research project. It's a problem that has plagued poker (and euchre and bridge and a thousand other partial-information games) since the game was invented. That's not a technological problem or a decision making problem, it's a social problem, and A.I. hasn't quite yet advanced to the point where we can worry about it trying to cheat at cards. (Although I welcome the day that we do have to worry about that.)
Err, neither? Apple would want iTunes to look like iTunes, not like how you want your apps to be skinned, and they'll port all their own lower-level UI stuff, not use KDE's or Gnome's. You do know there are Linux users who don't run either, right?
Vi/Emacs has an important difference: files written in one can be read in the other. (Although it pisses me off when I'm reading through someone else's C code and their damn Emacs settings are there at the bottom, GRRR.) Similarly, Opera and Firefox both (in theory) read the same HTML and CSS as eachother, and every time they (and the other webbrowsers) come closer to presenting external data in identical ways is a day for celebration. People can use whichever program they want, because the data works in whichever you use.
KDE and Gnome do the same things, but often in different ways, so now we have two versions of huge swaths of otherwise identical programs, proliferating middleware to run Gnome apps on top of KDE and vice versa (and I don't use KDE or Gnome so:P)... thankfully it's getting better. But no one uses Gnome (or KDE) because they want it: they use it because the want to use the programs that depend on it. It's all upside-down compared to which text editor or web browser you use.
Package management is more like KDE/Gnome than vi/Emacs.
You may now switch argument tactics to "How can you trust science if it keeps changing its answers! Religion has been giving the same answer for thousands of years!"
I got a 13" MacBook in July, and I had them cram as much RAM in that sucker as they could (2GB, btw). Why? One, the 13"-ers share system memory with graphics memory (a pain, but the smaller form factor was more important to me). Two, in two years 1/2GB will be a JOKE, and upgrading a laptop is generally a pain; increasing the RAM is the best investment to get the system to be "good enough" for as long as possible.
I don't buy new systems often, so I like them to actually last a while. My last laptop was a used Jornada 820 I bought six years ago, desktop was a cobbled together P3-1.1GHz (can't beat $0 though). The last new system I bought was a PentiumMMX (remember those? Shoved between the Pro and the II?) that I got in '97. A little extra RAM helps keeps the legs on an old system well after most people give up on them, trust me.
So yeah, consumer-level systems (or their users) will want >4GB RAM very soon. In three years, you'll be shocked to find someone doesn't have at least that much... which means you'll be shocked that my ancient MacBook I'll be using has "only" 2GB.
Close. In CMOS logic (which is used in all popular consumer CPUs), each logic gate has two sides, the so called "pull up network" (PUN) made of P-type transistors and the "pull down network" (PDN) made of N-type transistors (it's where the C in CMOS comes from: composite, meaning both P and N type). When the inputs to the gate should make it go high, the PUN's transistors are active--i.e. conductive--the PDN's are inactive--i.e. nonconductive--and current flows from the high-voltage rail, through the PUN, and charges the output.
When the inputs to the gate should make it go low, the opposite is true, the PUN is inactive and nonconductive, the PDN is active and conductive, and current drains back out of the output, through the PDN, and out the low-voltage rail.
The problem is that, as the inputs are transitioning between high and low voltages, BOTH transistor networks are (partially) conductive. This allows current to flow directly from the high-voltage rail to the low-voltage rail, with minimal resistance.
This is where most of the energy expended in a modern CPU is lost from. The static loses (charging and discharging the outputs) are laughably small compared to this dynamic loss.
Functionally? Maybe. But considering the 20% yields, would you rather lose 1/8th of the chip, or the whole thing? Also, I imagine managing the cache for that on the fly would be a significantly larger headache then dividing it up in this more consistant way; associative lookup can take up a lot of realestate real quick.
Between this and the cortical pre-conscious response story earlier today, I look forward to getting my Wired Reflexes I cyber implant.
Still waiting on the datajack, though.
Genetic programming techniques are already being used to design computer hardware. Simulated aneeling(sp?), for example, is used to find near-minimal-length trace layouts.
I have heard those bits of trivia before... must have been in Discover magazine's big Einstein issue last year; I think in reference to a book that should be in publication now.
"Best known" for his role in Starwars? How about "Only known"? Hamill isn't an actor who does some voices on the side, he's a voice actor who happened to get picked up to fill a live-action part the director wanted a no-name in.
He said just as much when he guest hosted the Muppet Show: "I do voices".
But politically, p2p means citize^K^K^K^K^K^K consumers-to-consumer, rather than the government-approved (and taxable, and lobbied for, and campaging donation funded) business-to-consumer.
It's probably safe to assume that electromagnetic waves are the fastest way to communicate across interstellar distances. (Since, as far as we know, nothing is faster.)
It's probably safe to assume that any aliens would be able to figure out which frequency bands travel best through the interstellar medium (that's where we're talking and where we're sending.)
As for recognition, we know what natural signals look like. Anything else is easily identifiable as unnatural (for a brief moment, we thought pulsars were unnatural). Now, if you want to get into a philisophical debate about the universality of number systems, knock yourself out, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say 2+2=4 all across the galaxy, and that concepts as complex as the sequence of prime numbers will be readily understood by any intelligent life.
IF there's another intelligence is out there sending signals, what we're doing probably is our best bet of finding them.
Slashdot Mirror
First, a little point of pedantry: "copyright" isn't named such because you have a "right" (note the quotes) to your "copy", it is so named because only the owner of the copyright has a right to make/sell/distribute (or not) copies of the work. "Copyrights" are "the right to copy"; not "a right to a copy". When you buy a CD, you don't buy the copyrights, you buy a copy.
Second, copyrights, although owned by the original author, are not for the original author's benefit. The copyright is a bribe. The public has decided that it likes new things; new ideas, new stories, new songs. And it has decided that, in exchange for access to this new idea, the person who articulated it can, for a limited time, and with limits for education, criticism, and parody, restrict who has the right to make (and therefore sell) copies of the work. You know, to encourage people to create these new things.
No, DRM isn't evil, but it does subvert the intent of the law (to provide new works to the public) and replace it with the capitalistic, lucrecratic belief that profit is the only ends we work towards. It undermines the public's security in the copyright-contract by weakening the restrictions placed on the copyright holders ability to limit access. Neither of these is good. And it's often used to destroy the doctrine of first sale, which is what allows me to sell my copy of a book on eBay when I don't want it anymore; once the copyright holder has sold that copy to me, it's MINE, and I can sell it to anyone else I want, at any price I want, and there is nothing the copyright owner gets to say about it. I can't do that with a song I bought on iTunes. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for what DRM does wrong.
That said, yes, the best bet is to change (or clarify) the law. It may be obvious to everyone now that it's okay to have the radio playing in your hotdog shop, but the first hotdog shop to try it got sued by the radio station. That case was only narrowly decided in the shop's favor; it could have gone the other way. We are at another, similar point now as we were then, with new technologies clashing in different interpretations of old social norms (with the constant clink-clink of coins counting out the beat that drives us forward). Sitting in the basement burning tracks doesn't help! Get out there; vote; talk to politicians and your voting friends and family. If you don't, the law will be written by the corporations, and they do not have your best interests at heart.
The voyagers and pioneers (and plenty of other american (and european)) probes used (and are STILL using; those things do last a long time) decay reactors.
What I don't get is... why? Why make it part of OO.o? I'm sure a free and open collection of clipart/stock images/etc. would be welcome to lots of people on the internet. The templates I get, but the rest of it is useful to people other than OO.o users, and would be better as it's own website and project than as another chunk of bloat to download.
Then the FSB can run as fast as the chip; no need to slow the signal down to send it across that old slow electrical bus. You're not "losing" a multiplier, you're losing a DIVISION.
What this does is make it much simpiler (and CHEAPER) to make the laser light, to the point where it's worth while to have a fiberoptic connection between, say, your CPU and and your vRAM, or between your IDE controller and your RAM, rather than the terribly capacitive and inductive (and therefore SLOW) motherboard trace.
Also, seeing as how it would be impossible to study this sort of stuff without building something as big as this collider, and how it'd be impossible for that to happen without anyone else knowing about it, your conspiracy theory about the government already knowing the answer is also unfounded.
Only 10% voted? Mabye because most astronomers just don't care as much as the summer-starved media is hyping this?
Give the research bots a break, they're still learning! Surely, the first few times you played, perhaps not for real money, perhaps as an uncle was teaching you, your teacher showed their cards when they didn't have to. More feedback->faster learning. No, it's not good for regular play, but it is good when you first start playing.
You are not as unpredictable as you think.
That said, uses (and abuses and detection) of out-of-band communication isn't what this research is about; those are concerns for someone else's research project. It's a problem that has plagued poker (and euchre and bridge and a thousand other partial-information games) since the game was invented. That's not a technological problem or a decision making problem, it's a social problem, and A.I. hasn't quite yet advanced to the point where we can worry about it trying to cheat at cards. (Although I welcome the day that we do have to worry about that.)
Err, neither? Apple would want iTunes to look like iTunes, not like how you want your apps to be skinned, and they'll port all their own lower-level UI stuff, not use KDE's or Gnome's. You do know there are Linux users who don't run either, right?
KDE and Gnome do the same things, but often in different ways, so now we have two versions of huge swaths of otherwise identical programs, proliferating middleware to run Gnome apps on top of KDE and vice versa (and I don't use KDE or Gnome so :P)... thankfully it's getting better. But no one uses Gnome (or KDE) because they want it: they use it because the want to use the programs that depend on it. It's all upside-down compared to which text editor or web browser you use.
Package management is more like KDE/Gnome than vi/Emacs.
Au contraire, my friend.
Works on:
And next year, even better.
And next century, better still.
You may now switch argument tactics to "How can you trust science if it keeps changing its answers! Religion has been giving the same answer for thousands of years!"
I don't buy new systems often, so I like them to actually last a while. My last laptop was a used Jornada 820 I bought six years ago, desktop was a cobbled together P3-1.1GHz (can't beat $0 though). The last new system I bought was a PentiumMMX (remember those? Shoved between the Pro and the II?) that I got in '97. A little extra RAM helps keeps the legs on an old system well after most people give up on them, trust me.
So yeah, consumer-level systems (or their users) will want >4GB RAM very soon. In three years, you'll be shocked to find someone doesn't have at least that much... which means you'll be shocked that my ancient MacBook I'll be using has "only" 2GB.
When the inputs to the gate should make it go low, the opposite is true, the PUN is inactive and nonconductive, the PDN is active and conductive, and current drains back out of the output, through the PDN, and out the low-voltage rail.
The problem is that, as the inputs are transitioning between high and low voltages, BOTH transistor networks are (partially) conductive. This allows current to flow directly from the high-voltage rail to the low-voltage rail, with minimal resistance.
This is where most of the energy expended in a modern CPU is lost from. The static loses (charging and discharging the outputs) are laughably small compared to this dynamic loss.
There you go.
Functionally? Maybe. But considering the 20% yields, would you rather lose 1/8th of the chip, or the whole thing? Also, I imagine managing the cache for that on the fly would be a significantly larger headache then dividing it up in this more consistant way; associative lookup can take up a lot of realestate real quick.
Between this and the cortical pre-conscious response story earlier today, I look forward to getting my Wired Reflexes I cyber implant. Still waiting on the datajack, though.
Genetic programming techniques are already being used to design computer hardware. Simulated aneeling(sp?), for example, is used to find near-minimal-length trace layouts.
I have heard those bits of trivia before... must have been in Discover magazine's big Einstein issue last year; I think in reference to a book that should be in publication now.
He said just as much when he guest hosted the Muppet Show: "I do voices".
Techinically, you're right, of course.
But politically, p2p means citize^K^K^K^K^K^K consumers-to-consumer, rather than the government-approved (and taxable, and lobbied for, and campaging donation funded) business-to-consumer.
It's probably safe to assume that electromagnetic waves are the fastest way to communicate across interstellar distances. (Since, as far as we know, nothing is faster.) It's probably safe to assume that any aliens would be able to figure out which frequency bands travel best through the interstellar medium (that's where we're talking and where we're sending.) As for recognition, we know what natural signals look like. Anything else is easily identifiable as unnatural (for a brief moment, we thought pulsars were unnatural). Now, if you want to get into a philisophical debate about the universality of number systems, knock yourself out, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say 2+2=4 all across the galaxy, and that concepts as complex as the sequence of prime numbers will be readily understood by any intelligent life. IF there's another intelligence is out there sending signals, what we're doing probably is our best bet of finding them.
I agree; I think the colaboration features will be the big draw of this app. Which makes one wonder why we haven't seen a GoogleWiki.