> Now if this is such promising stuff here then why has it been collecting dust for the past three years?
Because he has to wait for another research institute with equipment to spare to be able to be modified to run some more experiments. That's what the funding request is for.
Eric Lerner's work has had only a couple of arguments presented against it and has not been fully tested yet. That's what his research is supposed to do. That is what the scientific community is supposed to do: Theorise, test, theorise, test, theorise, test...
We're waiting for this to be tested, then we all get to know whether he's right or not, any posturing on either side is wrong, and any posturers are anti-scientific.
I beleive the mechanism proposed is that of conducting coils around the ion and electron beams. These two currents passing through coils causes electrons in the coils to rotate around them, thus moving from one end of the coils to the other, providing an EMF.
Magnetic deceleration coils fail. Alpha beam disintegrates target, and parts of your home beyond it. There is probably a way to do this on purpose to create a beam weapon. However, as soon as too many alphas start escaping, the device will lose power and stop working.
Magnetic deceleration is not used in the current research apparatus. It currently uses inertial deceleration (60cm concrete wall). This is not going to be a problem.
Fuel metering fails. Too much fuel causes a meltdown. Should not create long lived decay products, so the mess can be cleaned up. Igniting too much fuel near or even in the fuel supply should *not* create an H-bomb, because all the material to be fused must be confined. The heat from igniting fuel will simply scatter any other fuel nearby. The necessity of ionizing the fuel first prevents cramming enough fuel into the plasma to create a bomb.
Too much fuel causes a both a huge electrical impedance needing more input energy, a greater volume of fuel to heat before ignition needing more input energy, and a greater mass to form a plasmoid needing more input energy to form stronger magnetic field. That's a lot more input energy needed, it is not going to be a problem either.
Shielding fails, and device leaks beta, alpha, or neutrons. There should be gieger counters nearby to turn it off in such an event. Leaking alpha particles can result in a voltage difference between your home and the reactor, which could be hazardous. This can be measured and also trigger a shutdown.
A legitimate concern. Shielding is extremely unlikely to fail, but such a failure would be devastating.
Fuel is contaminated with fusable reactants that produce many high speed neutrons. Again, need gieger counters with auto-shutoff. Just like you have CO alarms for your gas furnace.
I don't think gieger counters will help, but detecting a change in the yield will allow this condition to be detected.
> I'd assume that they assume that each download equates to the lost revenue they would otherwise have got from a theatre ticket, rental or media sale and multiply out accordingly.
Unlikely. They are suing this guy for $600,000 dollars for 4 movies at best, 1 movie at worst. That means each copy of a movie is worth $150,000./me checks the price of the last DVD I bought... nope, I'm not bankrupt yet.
What they should have done is send him an invoice for the RRP of the DVD version of the movies, and if he didn't pay, then sue him. If you just sue (or first ask for more than the value of the goods) you are acting in bad faith, you are cheating, you are likely to lose a case in front of a non-biased judge. See if they win, then you know what to think of the guy in the wig.
Biggest mistake the MPAA or RIAA ever made is going after old people - old people vote so politicians listen. Always go after young people if you want to get away with an organised crime racket.
I tried it. I get about 2.5 seconds each way to start writer. The java runtime used is gcj, this is on Athlon64 3000+ with 64 bit kernel (Winchester core).
> Christoph (no, it's not me) is not "lkml's resident pitt-bull". He's just someone who knows a lot about filesystems and who's one of the more prolific contributors to the kernel - why Hans Reiser seems to think the he's on a personal crusade against Reiser4,
I don't doubt that he is very skilled, but he's still the resident pit bull, if you've read any of the flame fests he's been involved in. He jumps in to just about every fireball conjuring match that rears its ugly head on lkml (Hans Reiser is similar in his conviction, and that is the reason for their professional relationship problem that has undoubtedly delayed the passage of reiser4).
The vfs already has modularity, and the vfs is *the* Linux filesystem where the filesystems are modules that implement separate storage backends but all the same semantics.
One problem with reiser4 (now addressed in the code proposed for inclusion at this time) was that it changed some of the defined semantics of the vfs. This bit won't go in until it is thoroughly discussed and user-space has subsequently been prepared for it (and deprecation of the old behaviour widely expected).
The problem with the modularity of reiser4 is that is implemented fully inside reiser4 instead of being designed as a modification of the vfs where reiser4 simply provides one storage backend. The reiser4 modules should have been put right up behind the vfs as a proof of concept for the first integration, where the new modularity features could be moved bit-by-bit into the vfs, where all filesystem are then just a storage backend and all could be easily made to support the transaction and query facilities expected.
Some of the style problems included things like generic datatypes being implemented in the reiser4 directory instead of as a general facility for the kernel as a whole. Most of these were fixed, I believe, but AFAIK the problem of the level at which the modularity is implemented, and the failure to distinguish between semantic/feature modules and storage backend is not a good design.
Linus won't order it in since Andrew Morton (his right-hand man) has already indicated that it will go in. There are a few concerns raised by Christoph Hellwig (lkml's resident pitt-bull) that Andrew Morton has asked to be fixed before it goes into vanilla. Mostly these issues have only held up inclusion (a filesystem would normally have got merged with just those style issues) because of concerns that after inclusion the code would be abandoned and even cleanups being opposed by the original developers as allegedly happened with reiser3.
features and performance are *not* the top priorities in Linux, the top priority is maintainability. The rate at which features and performance improvements are added is a consequence of the maintainability, which must not be compromised for the sake of a slightly cool filesystem.
Simple solution... Require that Microsoft supports OpenDocument. Then we have the long-lifetime of the data with access available to all sectors of society, including disabled government employees via Microsoft Office and poor tax-payers via OpenOffice.org/KOffice/etc.
If you're going to require something of somebody, its a good idea to require it of government and of private enterprise, and a bad idea to require it of private citizens. So the requirement to make data available freely to all citizens is paramount with the imposition being upon Microsoft and upon the government to make that happen - rather than requiring citizens to fork out money to one government preferred rich man to go to his private coffers.
> People tend to show up on/. and proclaim "I use Linux exclusively!" and then add parenthetically "(except when I need Windows)".
This is normal for a human, I bet you think in exactly the same way. It is possible, in the mind of a human, for the sum of the probabilities of the possible ways an event could happen to add up to much more than one.
For example "I am pink". This is a statement as absolute as "I use Linux exclusively", yet I can follow up with "I am also kind of tallow with blue veins and red blotches". When I look closely, nearly *none* of my skin is pink yet I can say I am pink with certainty - and in the minds of normal humans be absolutely, 100% correct while also being, in those same minds, absolutely, 100% wrong.
This is why it is difficult to make a computer respond similarly to a human given the same stimuli - the logic is remarkably confusing and virtually impossible to describe.
Linux is substantially more scaleable now than it was even just 6 months ago (not the vanilla, but quite well tested scaleability patches). This could account for the improvement. I suspect if they ran just half of it now, they'd get a little bit over half the performance (but not much over half - that is how good Linux is these days).
The quoted response time is not necessarily interesting.
While hunting for an LCD screen that I'll be happy with, I've come across the NEC 1770 with claims of being TN-film, and also with claims of being S-IPS. Does anybody know if there are two variations of that model?
That is LCD backlight draw. Roll on long life LEPs - or give me 5 cheap and easily swappable screens. They got the right wavelengths to replace LCD, they just haven't got the lifetime. But the extra waste of disposable screens can be easily offset by the greener production process - and the money made could help produce longer lived screens sooner. Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.
That's a load of crap, I don't know *anywhere* to buy firefox, Firefox has a 0% market share. It has a 9.5% consumer webbrowsing share though - if that is important.
Re:Watch a little more closely ...
on
Deep in the Core
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> > Killing each other comes much more naturally, and a large percentage of our technological advances revolve around finding ways to kill each other more efficiently.
> While true, there is also a lot devoted to keeping soldiers alive.
This is not a reply to the parent, but just to let people know early as they read these comments that the GamePC site has been hacked and now shows the inside of some bloke's anus, so don't click.
> Isn't the 400W while idling for TWO Xeons (4 cores) and the rest of the system?
"while idling"
>... which isn't bad for a modern CPU under load.
"under load"
What kinda crack you smokin'? I want some!
BTW, when you look at what an Opteron can do, yeah, that's bad for a modern CPU. For a ten year old computer with that processing capability it is very very good indeed but this is 2k5 here and we expect a little better. I know I do, but I've got used to AMD64.
Slashdot Mirror
> Now if this is such promising stuff here then why has it been collecting dust for the past three years?
Because he has to wait for another research institute with equipment to spare to be able to be modified to run some more experiments. That's what the funding request is for.
Eric Lerner's work has had only a couple of arguments presented against it and has not been fully tested yet. That's what his research is supposed to do. That is what the scientific community is supposed to do: Theorise, test, theorise, test, theorise, test...
We're waiting for this to be tested, then we all get to know whether he's right or not, any posturing on either side is wrong, and any posturers are anti-scientific.
Every major commercial (but funded with our money) research facility keeps its science close to its chest.
He's a scientist (allegedly), safety is not his job. That's the job of the materials engineers that will actually build the damn things.
I beleive the mechanism proposed is that of conducting coils around the ion and electron beams. These two currents passing through coils causes electrons in the coils to rotate around them, thus moving from one end of the coils to the other, providing an EMF.
Magnetic deceleration is not used in the current research apparatus. It currently uses inertial deceleration (60cm concrete wall). This is not going to be a problem.
Too much fuel causes a both a huge electrical impedance needing more input energy, a greater volume of fuel to heat before ignition needing more input energy, and a greater mass to form a plasmoid needing more input energy to form stronger magnetic field. That's a lot more input energy needed, it is not going to be a problem either.
A legitimate concern. Shielding is extremely unlikely to fail, but such a failure would be devastating.
I don't think gieger counters will help, but detecting a change in the yield will allow this condition to be detected.
Go download Firefox 1.5 RC1 and help test it.
I would if they'd provide a goddammed amd64 build!
> I just can't wait until we see sites declaring "Page will not render correctly under Microsoft IE".
http://maihem.org/
> I'd assume that they assume that each download equates to the lost revenue they would otherwise have got from a theatre ticket, rental or media sale and multiply out accordingly.
/me checks the price of the last DVD I bought... nope, I'm not bankrupt yet.
Unlikely. They are suing this guy for $600,000 dollars for 4 movies at best, 1 movie at worst. That means each copy of a movie is worth $150,000.
What they should have done is send him an invoice for the RRP of the DVD version of the movies, and if he didn't pay, then sue him. If you just sue (or first ask for more than the value of the goods) you are acting in bad faith, you are cheating, you are likely to lose a case in front of a non-biased judge. See if they win, then you know what to think of the guy in the wig.
Biggest mistake the MPAA or RIAA ever made is going after old people - old people vote so politicians listen. Always go after young people if you want to get away with an organised crime racket.
> it sure starts up a lot faster than Office ever did all those years ago when I still used it.
To be fair to Office, you're running OpenOffice on a lot faster hardware than you ran Office on all those years ago.
gcj has an interpreter associated with it called gij.
I'm on Ubuntu. The packages are thus:
4 .deb4 .deb4 .deb4 .deb6 4.deb. deb. debm d64.debb . deb4 .debd 64.deb
tricky@maihem:/var/cache/apt/archives$ ls -l *ffice*.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29138 2005-10-22 09:47 openoffice.org2_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2813238 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-base_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3579878 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-calc_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22900216 2005-10-22 05:35 openoffice.org2-common_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31410644 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-core_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1780530 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-draw_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 211060 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-gnome_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10917468 2005-10-07 23:20 openoffice.org2-help-en-gb_1.9.129-0.1ubuntu5_all
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10917518 2005-10-22 15:34 openoffice.org2-help-en-gb_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 10941694 2005-10-07 23:20 openoffice.org2-help-en-us_1.9.129-0.1ubuntu5_all
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 556844 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-impress_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2301594 2005-10-22 05:35 openoffice.org2-java-common_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_all.de
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2541646 2005-10-02 19:00 openoffice.org2-l10n-en-gb_1.9.129-0.1ubuntu3_all
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2548458 2005-10-22 06:02 openoffice.org2-l10n-en-gb_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 593056 2005-10-22 05:35 openoffice.org2-l10n-en-us_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 309896 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-math_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_amd6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4762282 2005-10-22 09:48 openoffice.org2-writer_2.0.0-0ubuntu1-0ubuntu1_am
That's (approx):
core - 31.3M
common - 22.5M
writer - 4.6M
calc - 3.4M
impress - 5.3M
and other miscellaneous
I'd say about 67M is shared, help, and localisation.
I tried it. I get about 2.5 seconds each way to start writer. The java runtime used is gcj, this is on Athlon64 3000+ with 64 bit kernel (Winchester core).
> Christoph (no, it's not me) is not "lkml's resident pitt-bull". He's just someone who knows a lot about filesystems and who's one of the more prolific contributors to the kernel - why Hans Reiser seems to think the he's on a personal crusade against Reiser4,
I don't doubt that he is very skilled, but he's still the resident pit bull, if you've read any of the flame fests he's been involved in. He jumps in to just about every fireball conjuring match that rears its ugly head on lkml (Hans Reiser is similar in his conviction, and that is the reason for their professional relationship problem that has undoubtedly delayed the passage of reiser4).
The vfs already has modularity, and the vfs is *the* Linux filesystem where the filesystems are modules that implement separate storage backends but all the same semantics.
One problem with reiser4 (now addressed in the code proposed for inclusion at this time) was that it changed some of the defined semantics of the vfs. This bit won't go in until it is thoroughly discussed and user-space has subsequently been prepared for it (and deprecation of the old behaviour widely expected).
The problem with the modularity of reiser4 is that is implemented fully inside reiser4 instead of being designed as a modification of the vfs where reiser4 simply provides one storage backend. The reiser4 modules should have been put right up behind the vfs as a proof of concept for the first integration, where the new modularity features could be moved bit-by-bit into the vfs, where all filesystem are then just a storage backend and all could be easily made to support the transaction and query facilities expected.
Some of the style problems included things like generic datatypes being implemented in the reiser4 directory instead of as a general facility for the kernel as a whole. Most of these were fixed, I believe, but AFAIK the problem of the level at which the modularity is implemented, and the failure to distinguish between semantic/feature modules and storage backend is not a good design.
Linus won't order it in since Andrew Morton (his right-hand man) has already indicated that it will go in. There are a few concerns raised by Christoph Hellwig (lkml's resident pitt-bull) that Andrew Morton has asked to be fixed before it goes into vanilla. Mostly these issues have only held up inclusion (a filesystem would normally have got merged with just those style issues) because of concerns that after inclusion the code would be abandoned and even cleanups being opposed by the original developers as allegedly happened with reiser3.
features and performance are *not* the top priorities in Linux, the top priority is maintainability. The rate at which features and performance improvements are added is a consequence of the maintainability, which must not be compromised for the sake of a slightly cool filesystem.
Simple solution... Require that Microsoft supports OpenDocument. Then we have the long-lifetime of the data with access available to all sectors of society, including disabled government employees via Microsoft Office and poor tax-payers via OpenOffice.org/KOffice/etc.
If you're going to require something of somebody, its a good idea to require it of government and of private enterprise, and a bad idea to require it of private citizens. So the requirement to make data available freely to all citizens is paramount with the imposition being upon Microsoft and upon the government to make that happen - rather than requiring citizens to fork out money to one government preferred rich man to go to his private coffers.
Power consumtion is lower than backlit LCD according to other articles found through google.
> People tend to show up on /. and proclaim "I use Linux exclusively!" and then add parenthetically "(except when I need Windows)".
This is normal for a human, I bet you think in exactly the same way. It is possible, in the mind of a human, for the sum of the probabilities of the possible ways an event could happen to add up to much more than one.
For example "I am pink". This is a statement as absolute as "I use Linux exclusively", yet I can follow up with "I am also kind of tallow with blue veins and red blotches". When I look closely, nearly *none* of my skin is pink yet I can say I am pink with certainty - and in the minds of normal humans be absolutely, 100% correct while also being, in those same minds, absolutely, 100% wrong.
This is why it is difficult to make a computer respond similarly to a human given the same stimuli - the logic is remarkably confusing and virtually impossible to describe.
Linux is substantially more scaleable now than it was even just 6 months ago (not the vanilla, but quite well tested scaleability patches). This could account for the improvement. I suspect if they ran just half of it now, they'd get a little bit over half the performance (but not much over half - that is how good Linux is these days).
The quoted response time is not necessarily interesting.
While hunting for an LCD screen that I'll be happy with, I've come across the NEC 1770 with claims of being TN-film, and also with claims of being S-IPS. Does anybody know if there are two variations of that model?
That is LCD backlight draw. Roll on long life LEPs - or give me 5 cheap and easily swappable screens. They got the right wavelengths to replace LCD, they just haven't got the lifetime. But the extra waste of disposable screens can be easily offset by the greener production process - and the money made could help produce longer lived screens sooner. Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.
> Firefox has a 9.5% market share.
That's a load of crap, I don't know *anywhere* to buy firefox, Firefox has a 0% market share. It has a 9.5% consumer webbrowsing share though - if that is important.
> > Killing each other comes much more naturally, and a large percentage of our technological advances revolve around finding ways to kill each other more efficiently.
> While true, there is also a lot devoted to keeping soldiers alive.
But only because dead soldiers can't kill people.
This is not a reply to the parent, but just to let people know early as they read these comments that the GamePC site has been hacked and now shows the inside of some bloke's anus, so don't click.
> Isn't the 400W while idling for TWO Xeons (4 cores) and the rest of the system?
... which isn't bad for a modern CPU under load.
"while idling"
>
"under load"
What kinda crack you smokin'? I want some!
BTW, when you look at what an Opteron can do, yeah, that's bad for a modern CPU. For a ten year old computer with that processing capability it is very very good indeed but this is 2k5 here and we expect a little better. I know I do, but I've got used to AMD64.