No, because the cable you lower to Earth to complete the circuit would also have a potential generated across it. This would cancel out the potential generated by the lift to the orbital section.
To achieve anything with this idea you would need some way to bring the two ends of the conductor together without passing through the magentic field again - a wormhole is the only way I can think of, and if we could generate those we would not need a space elevator!
The problem with a whole bunch of identical tiny circuits is of course that they're all identical - there's no way to differentiate between them. There will have to be some way of distinguishing and interacting with these units.
Is this not the same as neural networks, where tiny identical circuits with the ablitiy to store their current state are joined by fixed connections (which could be nano wires). This could be a highly efficient way of building neural networks by having each node physically manifested as a circuit.
The problem lies in initialising the state of the array
That is nearly an identical problem to hardware neural networks, to solve this a method of training is required (though getting a neural net to function exactly the same as a digital computer is not easy).
Nice ideas from you anyway - they may work, i will have to think about them.
Since there's no resistivity, that means that calculations will be almost instantaneous, right? And it will have very low power consumption, no waste heat, and be incredibly small?
I am afraid that most of the power in modern integrated circuits is capacitive not resistive, and though ballistic conductivity would reduce the dynamic heat disapated by signals and eliminate the static heat in the wires the overall difference would not be that great as most of the power is used to switch transistors from one state to another.
So this sort of thing could easily mean that we could have tiny computers that run for a long time on a single battery and are ninety billion times better than anything we currently have, right? I am afraid not, though it may take a while longer to fry an egg on a processor implementing this technology:-)
Having said that any reduction in static (read useless) heat generation would increase the processor speed as you would be able to increase voltage and hence MOSFET switching speed with the same overall heat generation of a processor no using this technology.
PS: Moderators what are you on, the parent post may be inaccurate but it is NOT a troll.
Never the less, the transmeta processors are a good way to achieve binary compatibility using more advanced architectural concepts (VLIW). There lack of performance is a by product of the design decisions, if you want a low power synchronous design you have to reduce the speed [1]. The only suprise is that they achieved the performance they did vs. the difference in power consumption. Remember they are not just executing the bloated and inefficient [2] x86 instruction set but also effectively recompiling it as well. Personally I do not believe their ideas will dissappear just yet, though if the world economy goes into full recession Transmeta may not survive.
[1] I suppose you could increase the parallelism, but there is only so much you can get from the instruction scheme.
[2] If you do not believe it is inefficient then explain insructions such as XLAT (D7) and CMC (F5). (Yes i am sad enough to be able to assemble x86 code from memory:-)
I have to be pedantic and say that a crowd can not be hypocritical as it is not a singular entity. A group my have differing opinions, especially when they lack a clearly defined objective and accept any and all for members.
You only have two choices: either prevent all money from flowing out of the US (isolationism), or force better laws in China
Or prevent Nike (et al) importing products produced with slave labour into your country - essentially create a law saying any products imported must be made by workers in similar minimum conditions to that endured by your own workforce.
This is still free trade as it does not restrict any imports of goods which could/are produced in you country, only goods which could not be produced in your country due to trade law govening workers rights.
In my opinion that is the only way to prevent profiteering and provide an incentive for companies to improve conditions in 'underdeveloped' countries for their workers SO they would be allowed to export to richer countries.
So they are not putting a gun to the workers heads, but putting the gun of starvation to the heads of the workers entire family. And YOU say 'they are free to up and walk out if they want to'. I for one would not walk out if it lead to my family starving.
As for these people being 'too lazy to revolt' - they are working 20 hour shifts, they are not to lazy, they are to exhausted trying to feed their families.
Ignoring the fact I do not see where he states argument C in his post, the fact that incorrect religion exist does not deny that a (theoretical) correct religion exists.
To analagolise..
A = Microsoft makes bad software
B = people buy it
C = good software exists
(go through your logic)
As we can see the fact people buy bad software does not deny the existance of good software - your logic is flawed. (Though this does prove people are ill informed and illogical - but we knew that anyway).
(Hmm.. must tread carefully here, to avoid any misunderstandings)
That is racism. Every arab is NOT a potential terrorist.
Your argument is not entirely accurate here, though it may be true that every Arab is not a fundamentalist, the actions of the masses are frequently determined by those in power. In WWII not every Nazi soldier was a Jew hating thug, though their leaders were.
In any case, it's irrelevant anyway. It's like saying for every Nazi we kill, we just create more Nazis. That might or might not be true, but it's irrelevant. You have to keep killing them until there aren't any left, because they are the aggressors. They have set the rules, which is that we either kill them, or they kill us. I personally am not going to die just so they can be happy that they have found a scapegoat for their own problems.
Both your counter arguments and the arguments you counter are over simplified. This is a case of 'them and us' style psychology. If someone is killed two reactions are common the 'good riddance' reaction and the 'oh no it may be me next' reaction. The former leads to apathy and may even gain allies for the aggressor while the latter frequently causes people to band together against said aggressor.
This is something I have seen in both 'sides' after 2001/09/11. Many 'western' countries have bound together with the 'oh no it may be me next' reaction while others (Iraq) have experienced the 'good riddance' reaction.
Now the 'western' nations are becoming the aggressors it is a matter of what is thought about not only the aggressor nations but the despots they propose to destroy - things could still go either way, but it may be better now than later when there could be no chance of a 'good riddance' reaction in favor of the 'western' countries.
Speaking as a researcher in Computer Architecture I find the idea software patents based on the system employed in the USA to be inherently bad.
{
Summary - US style software patents should not be implemented because..
@They patent ideas not methods resulting in overly broad patents which cut off research in the area.
@The software industry moves too fast for a 20 year patent.
@Contesting a bad patent is too expensive for all but the biggest corporations.
@Applying patents would put european companies at a competitive disadvantage.
@Copyright law is sufficient to protect most software.
}
This is mainly due to the overly broad specification of patents in an area which is little understood by the general public. In the USA software patents do not work in the same way as other patents. If I where to patent some worthy invention, for example a drug to cure cancer, I would have to describe its chemical structure and how it achieved its aim. This would not prevent other companies researching a method to achieve the same ends using a different chemical structure. However software patents only tend to describe what is done and not the method of achieving it. To continue my analogy this would be the equivalent of a pharmaceutical company simply patenting "a cure for cancer" instead of the method, thus excluding all other companies for the duration of the patent and effectively halting all research in the area, even if other companies could produce a much better chemical to achieve the same result.
Even contesting such a patent would require enormous financial resources. Researchers, universities and most companies could not afford such an outlay, even if success was guaranteed. Many software patents actively retard innovation instead of promoting it by rewarding the inventors, protecting their creation while opening the design to the public.
If we look at what happens when a patent expires we see many generic versions of the product becoming available. This could not happen with a US style software patent as nothing about the method by which the result is achieved is contained within the patent. Maybe this effect could be reduced by requiring an example (in computer programming code) to be submitted and stored with the patent to allow researchers in the field to understand (and possibly improve upon) the method involved.
Furthermore, considering the speed of advancement in Computer Science having a 20 year patent for a software invention would be unnecessarily long. I would recommend a much shorter period for such a patent for example 5 years (as most software products go through 2 or more generations in this time).
Implementing software patents within the EU could put many european software producers out of business due to frivolous patents granted in the USA. To allow such patents without a means of redress were they could be contested at little or no cost to the either party, would allow corporations within the USA to use their existing overly broad and non-innovative patents against european companies, effectively destroying any competition.
Finally, copyright law as currently implemented should be sufficient to protect most software as it would allow for a different method to achieve a similar result. Copyrights do stopping simple copying or minor modifications by companies, therefore research is allowed to continue while outright piracy is prevented.
>> FORTRAN was, pretty much, the first high level language for computer programming.
Err.. I think LISP (LISt Processor or Lots of Irritating Silly Prentices to its users:-) ) predates it by about 6 years. If there were any more between them I don't know about them.
Also I thing BASIC was based on FORTRAN - of course BASIC deserves a slow painful death where FORTRAN deserves to continue in the area it was designed for and where it is still unrivaled.
Yep - you have a point.
If I was him I'd have made a "good" trojan then commanded the zombies to upload and run it. At which point the good trojan would kill the zombie or inform the user they have been infected.
Of course doing anything like that would probably be illegal, but then (to troll) so would reverse engineering the source (DCMA).
[I'm lucky I'm not a yank - the DCMA would ruin my hobby of reverse engineering virii and similar rogues].
in short - yes
though only as Serbia & Macedionia (sp?) most of the rest of the Yugoslav federation split off years ago.
-----------------------------------------
Re:High Warp Restriction?
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
"I'm sure that Paramount will want to milk all us fans for every last cent, and will sell only two-episode discs, so that you wind up having to buy 90 DVDs to get the whole series, rather than 7 box sets."
My cynical nature makes me assume that we will get boxed sets (about 2 years after the first DVD releases) in the hope we end up buying both the dual episode DVD's and the Boxed sets.
On my really cynical days I would say that they would fail to release a few episodes per series on anything other than boxed sets which due to the staggered release would force early buyers to end up with duplicate episodes. Though most probably they will just release boxed sets with the typical "Interviews with actors/directors/staff" or "New unreleased footage" ala Star Wars.
Firstly, if you read my mail you would not me lamenting currenly using Solaris - thus implying that I couldn't use my browser. Which wouldn't have had that problem.
Besides my browser works more as a parser for the OS generic text display module, though the current version does not support these 'obscure' CSS2 tags, it would take about 5 minutes to add the functionaltiy.
Back to coding the compiler, when finished I may add the entire collection of CSS2 specs - shouldn't take long proveded the TDM supports the modes.
[Strangely your sig seems to display correctly now - maybe the < problem was an OGC (other guy's code) fault somewhere down the line?]
I'd have mark you as troll for just having blinking text. I drives me mad, even if your comment was farily interesting.
(Who ever added the blink tag should have included a disable feature as I do in the browser I wrote - but here I'm running Solarus, so I've just got to put annoying flashing text)
Slashdot Mirror
No, because the cable you lower to Earth to complete the circuit would also have a potential generated across it. This would cancel out the potential generated by the lift to the orbital section.
To achieve anything with this idea you would need some way to bring the two ends of the conductor together without passing through the magentic field again - a wormhole is the only way I can think of, and if we could generate those we would not need a space elevator!
C 2003/2/17
I do not know about 1984, but the Nazi party used that policy to dispose of dissentors - and we know they were not a nice bunch.
I think you should be pointing to this link this
The problem with a whole bunch of identical tiny circuits is of course that they're all identical - there's no way to differentiate between them. There will have to be some way of distinguishing and interacting with these units.
Is this not the same as neural networks, where tiny identical circuits with the ablitiy to store their current state are joined by fixed connections (which could be nano wires). This could be a highly efficient way of building neural networks by having each node physically manifested as a circuit.
The problem lies in initialising the state of the array
That is nearly an identical problem to hardware neural networks, to solve this a method of training is required (though getting a neural net to function exactly the same as a digital computer is not easy).
Nice ideas from you anyway - they may work, i will have to think about them.
Since there's no resistivity, that means that calculations will be almost instantaneous, right? And it will have very low power consumption, no waste heat, and be incredibly small?
:-)
I am afraid that most of the power in modern integrated circuits is capacitive not resistive, and though ballistic conductivity would reduce the dynamic heat disapated by signals and eliminate the static heat in the wires the overall difference would not be that great as most of the power is used to switch transistors from one state to another.
So this sort of thing could easily mean that we could have tiny computers that run for a long time on a single battery and are ninety billion times better than anything we currently have, right?
I am afraid not, though it may take a while longer to fry an egg on a processor implementing this technology
Having said that any reduction in static (read useless) heat generation would increase the processor speed as you would be able to increase voltage and hence MOSFET switching speed with the same overall heat generation of a processor no using this technology.
PS: Moderators what are you on, the parent post may be inaccurate but it is NOT a troll.
Never the less, the transmeta processors are a good way to achieve binary compatibility using more advanced architectural concepts (VLIW). There lack of performance is a by product of the design decisions, if you want a low power synchronous design you have to reduce the speed [1]. The only suprise is that they achieved the performance they did vs. the difference in power consumption. Remember they are not just executing the bloated and inefficient [2] x86 instruction set but also effectively recompiling it as well. Personally I do not believe their ideas will dissappear just yet, though if the world economy goes into full recession Transmeta may not survive.
:-)
[1] I suppose you could increase the parallelism, but there is only so much you can get from the instruction scheme.
[2] If you do not believe it is inefficient then explain insructions such as XLAT (D7) and CMC (F5). (Yes i am sad enough to be able to assemble x86 code from memory
I have to be pedantic and say that a crowd can not be hypocritical as it is not a singular entity. A group my have differing opinions, especially when they lack a clearly defined objective and accept any and all for members.
You only have two choices: either prevent all money from flowing out of the US (isolationism), or force better laws in China
Or prevent Nike (et al) importing products produced with slave labour into your country - essentially create a law saying any products imported must be made by workers in similar minimum conditions to that endured by your own workforce.
This is still free trade as it does not restrict any imports of goods which could/are produced in you country, only goods which could not be produced in your country due to trade law govening workers rights.
In my opinion that is the only way to prevent profiteering and provide an incentive for companies to improve conditions in 'underdeveloped' countries for their workers SO they would be allowed to export to richer countries.
So they are not putting a gun to the workers heads, but putting the gun of starvation to the heads of the workers entire family. And YOU say 'they are free to up and walk out if they want to'. I for one would not walk out if it lead to my family starving.
As for these people being 'too lazy to revolt' - they are working 20 hour shifts, they are not to lazy, they are to exhausted trying to feed their families.
Ignoring the fact I do not see where he states argument C in his post, the fact that incorrect religion exist does not deny that a (theoretical) correct religion exists.
To analagolise..
A = Microsoft makes bad software
B = people buy it
C = good software exists
(go through your logic)
As we can see the fact people buy bad software does not deny the existance of good software - your logic is flawed. (Though this does prove people are ill informed and illogical - but we knew that anyway).
(Hmm.. must tread carefully here, to avoid any misunderstandings)
That is racism. Every arab is NOT a potential terrorist.
Your argument is not entirely accurate here, though it may be true that every Arab is not a fundamentalist, the actions of the masses are frequently determined by those in power. In WWII not every Nazi soldier was a Jew hating thug, though their leaders were.
In any case, it's irrelevant anyway. It's like saying for every Nazi we kill, we just create more Nazis. That might or might not be true, but it's irrelevant. You have to keep killing them until there aren't any left, because they are the aggressors. They have set the rules, which is that we either kill them, or they kill us. I personally am not going to die just so they can be happy that they have found a scapegoat for their own problems.
Both your counter arguments and the arguments you counter are over simplified. This is a case of 'them and us' style psychology. If someone is killed two reactions are common the 'good riddance' reaction and the 'oh no it may be me next' reaction. The former leads to apathy and may even gain allies for the aggressor while the latter frequently causes people to band together against said aggressor.
This is something I have seen in both 'sides' after 2001/09/11. Many 'western' countries have bound together with the 'oh no it may be me next' reaction while others (Iraq) have experienced the 'good riddance' reaction.
Now the 'western' nations are becoming the aggressors it is a matter of what is thought about not only the aggressor nations but the despots they propose to destroy - things could still go either way, but it may be better now than later when there could be no chance of a 'good riddance' reaction in favor of the 'western' countries.
Ah, the old one are always the err ... ones we have already heared.
Then watch you get imprisoned for creating a "circumvention device" under the DMCA.
It doesn't really fit into the series about exploration and discovery.
That statement is ASKING for a silly comment.
I agree.
How about StormOS or to keep with the flow of the current naming scheme: OStorm.
At least it seems some one with a clue as answered from Lego instead of sending in the lawers.
-mG
Speaking as a researcher in Computer Architecture I find the idea software patents based on the system employed in the USA to be inherently bad. { Summary - US style software patents should not be implemented because.. @They patent ideas not methods resulting in overly broad patents which cut off research in the area. @The software industry moves too fast for a 20 year patent. @Contesting a bad patent is too expensive for all but the biggest corporations. @Applying patents would put european companies at a competitive disadvantage. @Copyright law is sufficient to protect most software. } This is mainly due to the overly broad specification of patents in an area which is little understood by the general public. In the USA software patents do not work in the same way as other patents. If I where to patent some worthy invention, for example a drug to cure cancer, I would have to describe its chemical structure and how it achieved its aim. This would not prevent other companies researching a method to achieve the same ends using a different chemical structure. However software patents only tend to describe what is done and not the method of achieving it. To continue my analogy this would be the equivalent of a pharmaceutical company simply patenting "a cure for cancer" instead of the method, thus excluding all other companies for the duration of the patent and effectively halting all research in the area, even if other companies could produce a much better chemical to achieve the same result. Even contesting such a patent would require enormous financial resources. Researchers, universities and most companies could not afford such an outlay, even if success was guaranteed. Many software patents actively retard innovation instead of promoting it by rewarding the inventors, protecting their creation while opening the design to the public. If we look at what happens when a patent expires we see many generic versions of the product becoming available. This could not happen with a US style software patent as nothing about the method by which the result is achieved is contained within the patent. Maybe this effect could be reduced by requiring an example (in computer programming code) to be submitted and stored with the patent to allow researchers in the field to understand (and possibly improve upon) the method involved. Furthermore, considering the speed of advancement in Computer Science having a 20 year patent for a software invention would be unnecessarily long. I would recommend a much shorter period for such a patent for example 5 years (as most software products go through 2 or more generations in this time). Implementing software patents within the EU could put many european software producers out of business due to frivolous patents granted in the USA. To allow such patents without a means of redress were they could be contested at little or no cost to the either party, would allow corporations within the USA to use their existing overly broad and non-innovative patents against european companies, effectively destroying any competition. Finally, copyright law as currently implemented should be sufficient to protect most software as it would allow for a different method to achieve a similar result. Copyrights do stopping simple copying or minor modifications by companies, therefore research is allowed to continue while outright piracy is prevented.
That your still using DOS. Arrgh run for the hills :-)
-----------------------------------------
Err.. I think LISP (LISt Processor or Lots of Irritating Silly Prentices to its users :-) ) predates it by about 6 years. If there were any more between them I don't know about them.
Also I thing BASIC was based on FORTRAN - of course BASIC deserves a slow painful death where FORTRAN deserves to continue in the area it was designed for and where it is still unrivaled.
-----------------------------------------
Yep - you have a point.
If I was him I'd have made a "good" trojan then commanded the zombies to upload and run it. At which point the good trojan would kill the zombie or inform the user they have been infected.
Of course doing anything like that would probably be illegal, but then (to troll) so would reverse engineering the source (DCMA).
[I'm lucky I'm not a yank - the DCMA would ruin my hobby of reverse engineering virii and similar rogues].
-----------------------------------------
in short - yes
though only as Serbia & Macedionia (sp?) most of the rest of the Yugoslav federation split off years ago.
-----------------------------------------
My cynical nature makes me assume that we will get boxed sets (about 2 years after the first DVD releases) in the hope we end up buying both the dual episode DVD's and the Boxed sets.
On my really cynical days I would say that they would fail to release a few episodes per series on anything other than boxed sets which due to the staggered release would force early buyers to end up with duplicate episodes. Though most probably they will just release boxed sets with the typical "Interviews with actors/directors/staff" or "New unreleased footage" ala Star Wars.
-----------------------------------------
We will not see his like any time soon
-----------------------------------------
Besides my browser works more as a parser for the OS generic text display module, though the current version does not support these 'obscure' CSS2 tags, it would take about 5 minutes to add the functionaltiy.
Back to coding the compiler, when finished I may add the entire collection of CSS2 specs - shouldn't take long proveded the TDM supports the modes.
[Strangely your sig seems to display correctly now - maybe the < problem was an OGC (other guy's code) fault somewhere down the line?]
(Who ever added the blink tag should have included a disable feature as I do in the browser I wrote - but here I'm running Solarus, so I've just got to put annoying flashing text)
I think I would define a cyborg as more having the electromechanical parts attached in a non (easily) removable way.
Digital watches would not make a person a cyborg - though a pacemaker would.
The question is wether a prosthetic limb would, as such a device is removeable. Comments?