United Devices isn't planning to pay for compute (they have 'rewards' like frequent flyer miles) as far as I know. Nobody pays providers (people who run compute engines) directly yet; a few are planning to pay, and Parabon (disclaimer: my employer) is already running a sweepstakes, giving away $100/day + $1000/month to providers.
United Devices isn't planning to pay for compute (they have 'rewards' like frequent flyer miles) as far as I know. Nobody pays providers (people who run compute engines) directly yet; a few are planning to pay, and Parabon (disclaimer: my employer) is already running a sweepstakes, giving away $100/day + $1000/month to providers.
Pardon? I'm not sure what you're referring to; especially regarding 'huge buffer downloads'. If you can clarify, I'll try to track it down and see if you've found a bug. If so, thanks!
As to email addresses; no, we most definitely do <i>not</i> sell them.
A major contender that didn't make it into this story is Parabon Computation. We're general-purpose (you can run anything on our system) and commercial -- we'll be publically available to anybody who wants to run a job, and we'll pay people to run an engine (or allow them to donate time or payment to good causes). Our server and engine are robust, scalable, safe (security was a major design consideration), and ready for the big time -- we're doing an open beta test now (http://www.parabon.com). We even have clients running already -- biological computation, even very cool photorealistic rendering (http://www.parabon.com/challenges.jsp). We're poised to do some really cool things -- and we're much further along than most of those mentioned in the article, who are generally either non-profit or just in the initial financing and design stages now.
Should at least have an NDA prepared; that shouldn't be too hard even without lawyers. But he might want to seek out actual legal advice before he goes approaching anyone with the idea... he should also realize that even if VCs *like* it, he loses a lot by letter them fund it...
Um, nothing about this research has to do with superluminal transport of information in a useful manner. Although EPR nonlocality (the phenomenon this research takes advantage of, IIRC) does give you 'instantaneous' action-at-a-distance, it does so in such a way that information *cannot* be transmitted; the 'receiving end' can't even tell when the action has 'occurred' until the 'senders' *tell* them.
This should be a great vehicle to help drum up public enthusiasm for the laudable goal of a manned mission to Mars. An eager populace is what got us to the moon so quickly, and the ensuing ambivilence is what's kept us from going back. Either mass demand or promise of commercial return are the only ways we're ever going to get to Mars (although the latter will be what *keeps* us there!), and it's great to see our modern heros doing their best to help!
Okay, what of Alias|Wavefront? I've heard no rumblings about a Maya (or Composer, etc) port to Linux. This is the 'killer app' for a significant market segment... and it's *owned* by SGI. We know it's portable -- I mean, it runs on IRIX, HPUX (that was the port that the commerce department required when SGI bought Alias and Wavefront, IIRC), and NT. I've heard rumours of a Houdini port... I can't believe SGI would ignore this apparent hole in their corporate strategy -- I mean, it's looking more and more like they're moving from 'Linux as a Visual Workstation server solution' to 'Linux as a total desktop solution'. And smeggin' tanj, Maya is just *cool*.
Why the hell do they want to recreate the creation of the universe anyway?
They're not trying to create a new big bang; there's not even a prevailing theory on 'why' the big bang happened in the first place, or what took place in the first (miniscule) fraction of a second. However, a lot of theories, both cosmological models and GUTs (Grand Unified Theories) depend on what happened in the high-energy conditions that existed only in that first second, during which -- for instance -- our basic forces congealed out of the morass. So, recreate the high-energy conditions, and you can investigate the theories experimentally.
That said, recreating big bang conditions isn't even the primary aim of most accelerators; the high-energy conditions required to isolate particles simply happen to be the exception rather than the rule in the universe today, while the big bang was one circumstance in which they were the rule.
Progress towards understanding telomeres and eventual production of artificial telomerase may help cure some causes of aging. However, most (or at least much) aging occurs not because of cells which normally divide ceasing their division, but because of cells which *don't* normally divide (brain cells, and IIRC bone marrow, for example) wearing out, completely independent of telomeres. So, immortality certainly won't be eliminated in one fell swoop -- but this is good progress towards extending the average lifespan by perhaps a few decades.
To *cure* aging, we'll probably have to find a way to repair or replace cells which wear out, on a case-by-case basis. This could be anything from low-level repair via nanotech, to body-swapping (brain included) every half-century.
Certainly estimates keep getting revised; that's what science is about. It's not a sign of bad research, but rather an indicator of a healthy field. Nobody (well, no good scientist) will claim to have definitively found *the* answer to a question; we can only approach that as sets of independent experiments converge on a consistent result. Even when this happens, better theories and better techniques can always bring the old results into question.
Unfortunately, occasionally certain experiments get publicised too much, and out of context; the common person will see these occasional conflicting results and point to them, saying "they obviously don't know what they're talking about!". In fact, it's a much more continuous process than this. Cosmology in particular has dozens of different theories, experimental techniques, statistical techniques for *analyzing* the results of the experiments, et cetera. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of papers are published on various aspects of cosmology (of which the Hubble Constant is merely a touchstone, a good way of comparing diverse experiments) every year, you simply don't see most of them.
It's good to see this come out finally, after the years (literally!) of hype. Dynamic optimization is great technology, and I suspect where a great deal of compiler research will head in the future; it could eventually give Java an actual speed *advantage* over C/C++ (or even hand-tuned ASM), since the fact that it's only semi-compiled means higher-level information is still available at runtime from which to optimize... which is IMHO good in terms of software engineering as well, because it means it'll become even less neccessary (and less possible) to hand-optimize the smeg out of code at the price of maintainability.
Reading between the lines here, though, it sounds like HotSpot's analysis phase is currently the bottleneck. They keep saying that it's good for server-side application rather than client-side; I suspect that despite their claims that 'server applications are more VM-intensive', this is actually due to the fact that it takes a while during any given session to analyze the code far enough to realize the speedup (less of a problem for servers, for which sessions are typically very long). Of course, there are good ways around this besides just improving the analysis -- specifically, saving analysis info across sessions (ship your app with a baseline analysis, which will then be modified gradually by the user's VM based on their usage patterns).
This is *not* cold fusion, by any of the several definitions; this is *thermo*nuclear fusion. That is, getting atoms (well, nuclei) to collide by heating them up a lot. The whole 'cold fusion' fiasco ala Pons and Fleishman (sp?) has cooled down a lot (no pun intended), but it still isn't mainstream science. In fact, the continuing research into the effect they described is no longer even classified generally as fusion, and most don't see any possibility of large-scale energy production using that effect. However, there still *is* the possibility of real non-thermonuclear (ie, 'cold') fusion... see my other post.
I was dissappointed that the article doesn't mention that there is also promising research into other methods of fusion; namely at least one method that doesn't require extremely high temperatures that neccessitate the huge, inefficient reactor in the first place. I can't recall where the research is being done, but there's at least one non-thermo approach that uses electrons concentrated in the center of a spherical chamber (they are continuously fired into the center in a way that's kind of the opposite of what happens inside a television); the electrons create a huge potential well and attract the (ionic) fuel, which then doesn't actually collide with the electrons but rather with other fuel particles also pulled into the center... at very high speeds. Doesn't require high temperatures to attain the neccessary particle speeds... those suckers have to ram into one another *hard*, but heating them up isn't the only way to do that. The original research was done in the sixties, I believe, but it never became efficient because there was no way to keep the concentration of electrons in the center without losing most of them. Thermonuclear (brute-force) methods took over in the seventies... but recently I hear research into this alternate method is starting up again, and looks quite promising! So, anybody have a link for this research?
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United Devices isn't planning to pay for compute (they have 'rewards' like frequent flyer miles) as far as I know. Nobody pays providers (people who run compute engines) directly yet; a few are planning to pay, and Parabon (disclaimer: my employer) is already running a sweepstakes, giving away $100/day + $1000/month to providers.
-spcUnited Devices isn't planning to pay for compute (they have 'rewards' like frequent flyer miles) as far as I know. Nobody pays providers (people who run compute engines) directly yet; a few are planning to pay, and Parabon (disclaimer: my employer) is already running a sweepstakes, giving away $100/day + $1000/month to providers.
-spcPardon? I'm not sure what you're referring to; especially regarding 'huge buffer downloads'. If you can clarify, I'll try to track it down and see if you've found a bug. If so, thanks!
As to email addresses; no, we most definitely do <i>not</i> sell them.
A major contender that didn't make it into this story is Parabon Computation. We're general-purpose (you can run anything on our system) and commercial -- we'll be publically available to anybody who wants to run a job, and we'll pay people to run an engine (or allow them to donate time or payment to good causes). Our server and engine are robust, scalable, safe (security was a major design consideration), and ready for the big time -- we're doing an open beta test now (http://www.parabon.com). We even have clients running already -- biological computation, even very cool photorealistic rendering (http://www.parabon.com/challenges.jsp). We're poised to do some really cool things -- and we're much further along than most of those mentioned in the article, who are generally either non-profit or just in the initial financing and design stages now.
-spc
Should at least have an NDA prepared; that shouldn't be too hard even without lawyers. But he might want to seek out actual legal advice before he goes approaching anyone with the idea... he should also realize that even if VCs *like* it, he loses a lot by letter them fund it...
-spc
Um, nothing about this research has to do with superluminal transport of information in a useful manner. Although EPR nonlocality (the phenomenon this research takes advantage of, IIRC) does give you 'instantaneous' action-at-a-distance, it does so in such a way that information *cannot* be transmitted; the 'receiving end' can't even tell when the action has 'occurred' until the 'senders' *tell* them.
-spc
This should be a great vehicle to help drum up public enthusiasm for the laudable goal of a manned mission to Mars. An eager populace is what got us to the moon so quickly, and the ensuing ambivilence is what's kept us from going back. Either mass demand or promise of commercial return are the only ways we're ever going to get to Mars (although the latter will be what *keeps* us there!), and it's great to see our modern heros doing their best to help!
-spc
Okay, what of Alias|Wavefront? I've heard no rumblings about a Maya (or Composer, etc) port to Linux. This is the 'killer app' for a significant market segment... and it's *owned* by SGI. We know it's portable -- I mean, it runs on IRIX, HPUX (that was the port that the commerce department required when SGI bought Alias and Wavefront, IIRC), and NT. I've heard rumours of a Houdini port... I can't believe SGI would ignore this apparent hole in their corporate strategy -- I mean, it's looking more and more like they're moving from 'Linux as a Visual Workstation server solution' to 'Linux as a total desktop solution'. And smeggin' tanj, Maya is just *cool*.
-spc
Why the hell do they want to recreate the creation of the universe anyway?
They're not trying to create a new big bang; there's not even a prevailing theory on 'why' the big bang happened in the first place, or what took place in the first (miniscule) fraction of a second. However, a lot of theories, both cosmological models and GUTs (Grand Unified Theories) depend on what happened in the high-energy conditions that existed only in that first second, during which -- for instance -- our basic forces congealed out of the morass. So, recreate the high-energy conditions, and you can investigate the theories experimentally.
That said, recreating big bang conditions isn't even the primary aim of most accelerators; the high-energy conditions required to isolate particles simply happen to be the exception rather than the rule in the universe today, while the big bang was one circumstance in which they were the rule.
-spc
Progress towards understanding telomeres and eventual production of artificial telomerase may help cure some causes of aging. However, most (or at least much) aging occurs not because of cells which normally divide ceasing their division, but because of cells which *don't* normally divide (brain cells, and IIRC bone marrow, for example) wearing out, completely independent of telomeres. So, immortality certainly won't be eliminated in one fell swoop -- but this is good progress towards extending the average lifespan by perhaps a few decades.
To *cure* aging, we'll probably have to find a way to repair or replace cells which wear out, on a case-by-case basis. This could be anything from low-level repair via nanotech, to body-swapping (brain included) every half-century.
-spc
Certainly estimates keep getting revised; that's what science is about. It's not a sign of bad research, but rather an indicator of a healthy field. Nobody (well, no good scientist) will claim to have definitively found *the* answer to a question; we can only approach that as sets of independent experiments converge on a consistent result. Even when this happens, better theories and better techniques can always bring the old results into question.
Unfortunately, occasionally certain experiments get publicised too much, and out of context; the common person will see these occasional conflicting results and point to them, saying "they obviously don't know what they're talking about!". In fact, it's a much more continuous process than this. Cosmology in particular has dozens of different theories, experimental techniques, statistical techniques for *analyzing* the results of the experiments, et cetera. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of papers are published on various aspects of cosmology (of which the Hubble Constant is merely a touchstone, a good way of comparing diverse experiments) every year, you simply don't see most of them.
-spc
It's good to see this come out finally, after the years (literally!) of hype. Dynamic optimization is great technology, and I suspect where a great deal of compiler research will head in the future; it could eventually give Java an actual speed *advantage* over C/C++ (or even hand-tuned ASM), since the fact that it's only semi-compiled means higher-level information is still available at runtime from which to optimize... which is IMHO good in terms of software engineering as well, because it means it'll become even less neccessary (and less possible) to hand-optimize the smeg out of code at the price of maintainability.
Reading between the lines here, though, it sounds like HotSpot's analysis phase is currently the bottleneck. They keep saying that it's good for server-side application rather than client-side; I suspect that despite their claims that 'server applications are more VM-intensive', this is actually due to the fact that it takes a while during any given session to analyze the code far enough to realize the speedup (less of a problem for servers, for which sessions are typically very long). Of course, there are good ways around this besides just improving the analysis -- specifically, saving analysis info across sessions (ship your app with a baseline analysis, which will then be modified gradually by the user's VM based on their usage patterns).
-spc
This is *not* cold fusion, by any of the several definitions; this is *thermo*nuclear fusion. That is, getting atoms (well, nuclei) to collide by heating them up a lot. The whole 'cold fusion' fiasco ala Pons and Fleishman (sp?) has cooled down a lot (no pun intended), but it still isn't mainstream science. In fact, the continuing research into the effect they described is no longer even classified generally as fusion, and most don't see any possibility of large-scale energy production using that effect. However, there still *is* the possibility of real non-thermonuclear (ie, 'cold') fusion... see my other post.
-spc
I was dissappointed that the article doesn't mention that there is also promising research into other methods of fusion; namely at least one method that doesn't require extremely high temperatures that neccessitate the huge, inefficient reactor in the first place. I can't recall where the research is being done, but there's at least one non-thermo approach that uses electrons concentrated in the center of a spherical chamber (they are continuously fired into the center in a way that's kind of the opposite of what happens inside a television); the electrons create a huge potential well and attract the (ionic) fuel, which then doesn't actually collide with the electrons but rather with other fuel particles also pulled into the center... at very high speeds. Doesn't require high temperatures to attain the neccessary particle speeds... those suckers have to ram into one another *hard*, but heating them up isn't the only way to do that. The original research was done in the sixties, I believe, but it never became efficient because there was no way to keep the concentration of electrons in the center without losing most of them. Thermonuclear (brute-force) methods took over in the seventies... but recently I hear research into this alternate method is starting up again, and looks quite promising! So, anybody have a link for this research?
-spc