If I interpret the purpose of the job correctly, the public relations staff listens to the public. Therefore, if Intel listens to its own public relations staff, they are listening to the public.
It only had a 2MB graphics card but it ran Descent 2 blazing fast, even at 640X480. I never understood why, but I loved that computer, even when my friends had PIIs. I think my dad donated that chip & motherboard to a charity, and now it's running linux and serving websites for several local non-profits. I'm so proud!
I recall reading that Einstein and several other prominent scientists believed that this principle, which could under some circumstances yield superluminal communication, was impossible. It wasn't that they had a particular reason why, but it simply seemed so improbable, much as the concept of nuclear energy must have seemed two centuries ago. Strangely enough, I've seen this kind of stuff in sci-fi written decades ago. I guess this proves Einstein's point, that "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Most people are unable to comprehend the signifigance of exponentiating technology, but here's a perfect example. A hundred years from now, we might be seeing things we had never dreamed of. Fortunately, the scientists of today are quite well aware that there is a lot that we do not know, and they are willing to explore. We could see all sorts of breakthroughs involving string theory or any other sort of thing that is only vaguely understood (or not even conceived of) now. At the last turn of the century, students were being discouraged from going into physics, because the experts believed that they basically knew everything. A famous physicist (Heisenberg, I think) said that there were only a few things that remained unexplained, such as a few peculiar properties of light. He said they probably weren't too important. Then Einstein came along and blew that away. Now it would seem that Einstein, himself a sceptic as all humans are, is being surpassed. I'm sure he would be proud, though.
It is illegal to keep mp3s in any kind of publically accessible directory, even if you own the CD. Having the CD, or even going out and buying it after receiving a lawsuit, will not protect you. It doesn't matter whether it's napster, ftp, fserve, etc.
I am well aware that napster can be a great marketing tool. Well, the obvious answer to this is to let the program remain in distribution, and let the artists and their labels decide which ones to authorize for distribution. Nobody has the right to make up their minds for them. They have every right to sue someone who does.
It is true that pirating has been around for ages. In many cases, it would be things like mix tapes, tapes from the radio, or tape copies of CDs. These were (and still are) usually distributed face to face. This is an inherently limited form of transaction, with very little risk of getting caught, and little damage to the artist, since these have a very high rate of turning into purchases. Napster distribution is different, however. It does not have this morally mitigating factor. Napster is blind. Napster allows anyone to go online and download just that one hit they want, and never buy the album. They don't have to ask a friend for a recommendation, or have to discuss it in the way people often do when trading tapes or mp3s on an individual basis. It's a pure and simple rip-off.
Actually, the scientifically proven limit of silicon technology is much smaller than this. I remember a couple months ago, someone proved that the minimum thickness of the insulator was 4 atoms. Of course, mass-producing on that scale would require lasers with such a short wavelength that the energy delivered by that high-frequency beam would wreak all kinds of havoc on the chip, so a manufacturing process that small is only possible under extremely limited conditions, which will not likely be overcome any time before the next major breakthrough in computing technology.
Personally, I'm more interested in the molecular scale quantum computing technology. I believe it was Los Alamos that put 3 quantum transistors on a single proline molecule. You know, proline, one of them amino acids. We might even be able to grow our computer chips from a DNA or RNA template in the distant future. That is something that could go a lot farther.
The Spitfire chips will behave more or less like the first released Athlons, only a bit nicer on the cache and the heat. Meanwhile, the Celerons are still on a 66MHz bus, with no plans to upgrade. Intel is now looking at 733 and 766 MHz Celerons. This will be an insane bottleneck. We're looking at 11x and 11 1/2x clock multipliers. The Spitfires will run on a 133MHz motherboard (or 200, if that ever happens) and will be much nicer on the caching and RAM bandwidth. Sure, 766 is a fast chip, but on a Celeron, most of it will go to waste.
If you read the article, the lawsuit was fairly limited in scope. They were only suing over titles that were obvious rip-offs. These games not only took advantage of the method of gameplay, but they also tried to invoke the legacies of those games which Hasbro has rights to. That's stepping over the line. It's one thing to make a 3D shooter, and quite another to make one called "Escape from Nazi War prison, with simplistic rectangular VGA graphics that will run on an 8088." Whether or not it's friendly, it's certainly fair, and as a business, they have to enforce their intellectual property rights. Either that or they could let it go until everything becomes a standard, and then demand royalties. *cough* Unisys *cough* That certainly didn't go over well. Come on, they're playing by the rules. They haven't even asked for retroactive royalties, merely a cessation of distribution of these ripoff products. I'm quite certain that anyone who wanted to make their own asteroids game could probably get licensing fairly cheap. Or, heaven forbid, think up something new.
This is not stuff the federal government does. The federal government only has the power to regulate interstate commerce. If the system you suggest were implemented, it would also give the federal government control over intrastate commerce, which is not supposed to happen. I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but I can't imagine enough people getting excited enough about it for a constitutional amendment.
I confess, this is sort of a moot point anyway, since location of incorporation is irrelevant for taxation purposes. It doesn't matter if the company is based in Palo Alto or Redmond, I'm still paying Virginia sales tax if I buy it down the street. In fact, Federal Judges have ruled that if I buy from a website in Illinois, that company has to pay sales tax to Virginia (whether they charge me for it or not), but only if they actually have a business location in Virginia.
I agree that something needs to be worked out. I just don't think that's the best way of going about it.
Well, I don't think any judge likes punishing really popular corporations with limitations that would not be placed on competitors, since it's always open to review (judges hate being overturned), but as Judge Jackson has noted before, Microsoft has not obeyed previous consent decrees. No slap on the wrist this time. They get what they deserve.
Both the PIII and the Athlon only emulate x86 instructions. This means that there can be a lot of overhead, making the runtimes somewhat unpredictable. The aging x86 instruction set has been hacked over so many times, especially in the realm of floating point, that you really can't expect any consistency. Between 3DNow and SSE you've got two sporadically undersupported systems of acceleration. In general, if you want real-time, that means it must be reliable. That means you have to look not only at the average run-time, but the worst-case runtime. To get a reliable worst-case runtime, you have to be free of caching concerns, which will hurt your average performance. The best way around this is to go into RISC territory. This is where the Alpha shines. I also know that the G4 is not nearly as overcomplicated as the x86 chips, so Altivec, if properly supported, could do fairly well. Still, for reliable performance, you'd want something that handles things in a fairly standard way, so you don't have to worry about architecture extensions. Once again, Alpha shines. There are plenty of other things out there, like Power3 for example, but I think that cost becomes a serious concern once you get into that range.
Have you people missed the point of these systems? These are not meant to be rendering farms, nor would they do too well for the bucks on SETI. They are incredibly powerful data servers. They move things from point a to point b. They do it very well, in fact. They do not have SIMD FPUs like the AltiVec, PIII, K6-2, Athlon, etc. If you want a super fast Seti machine, get an Alpha cluster. The idea of each linux instance adding speed is because of the way the data pipeline works, not some voodoo in the processor.
If you read the article, you'd notice that the two VPU's serve entirely different purposes.
As for the system not taking full advantage of its capabilities, 5% of that thing can probably take my P.C. in 3d rendering. 50% would put it to shame.
There's a point beyond which further optimization goes to waste because you have nothing on the market. Kudos to them for getting games for this thing on release. Performance will improve. Show a little patience.
Sony is NOT making a P.C. Sony is NOT making a web-server. Sony is not making a word-processor. They are making a gaming console. They are making a gaming console so that they can make money. Red Hat and other Linux companies make money on support. If your console system needs tech support, no one will buy it. The reason why they're not using Celerons is because a) Celerons suck, you'd be better with a K6-2 b) They're making a freaking gaming console
When you make a gaming console, you want it to SCREAM. That's what they have. This hardware blows Dual PIII systems out of the water for the task it was designed for. This is a specialized system. It seems that the pervading mindset around here is to use the same stuff for everything, which Linux is rather good at. This doesn't mean that I should be running Linux on my TI-89. It may well be possible, but is it worthwhile? No. Proprietary stuff is good for simple tasks, when the distributed effort of open source is unnecessary. I'm not saying it's always superior, but in this case, it gets the job done. Console systems are blazing fast because everything is extremely optimized. No room to use the wrong optimizer on compile.
Iridium was a perfect example of someone going to way too much effort to accomplish the task at hand. Sure, I'd LOVE to have an Alpha in my pocket calculator, and it might actually make a difference once in a blue moon, but the price difference is not worth it to me. Sure, you could probably find a few idiots, or a few people who actually need alphas in their pocket calculators, but not enough to pay for all the overhead, such as developing the nuclear fuel cell liquid nitrogen refrigerator and the insulation that would protect me from getting my balls frozen off or burned off when the coolant ran out.
The ideal solution is not to simply turn away all customers linked from outside, but rather to spawn a new window with your whole page, and whatever frame setup you may have, so that people know they're buying from you instead of someone else. Basically, you set up a top frame to put your advertising and "Welcome to Ticketmaster" signs, and then whenever you receive an http request for any other page on your site, simply serve up that frame with a reference to your content below it. I know there are sites that do this. You could tweak it so that the initial service of the top frame would spawn itself in a new window. This I have also seen done. These don't seem to be terribly complex systems to put into place. Keep in mind that these sites probably handle huge amounts of dynamic content, so this would hardly add strain. It sure seems simple to me.
...because my ISP banned the entire AOL.com domain after the ORBS announcement.
No, seriously folks. I read it. It's utter crap. Completely, total, utter crap. This guy belongs in a graphic-design firm, not a physics lab.
Ok, here's the part I'm not sure about (if I'm wrong, correct, don't flame):
His initial conjectures appear to be quite wrong. Due to the wave-particle duality of light, light can interfere, resulting in effects that can be considered absorption. Just because it doesn't work the same way as a kitchen sponge doesn't make it not so. I remember an experiment a few years ago that got a lot of hype for "teleporting" a photon across a room. Well, that was the press going wild, but they were able to carry one light wave on another light wave by interfering the signal wave with a polarized laser, and then crossing that carrier beam with another polarized beam to undo the change. Something had to happen to those photons.
Here's the part I am sure about:
This guy assumes that you can somehow cancel out "gravitational mass" and thus eliminate the effects of relativity. Even if we assume for the moment this is true, this would NOT allow superluminal travel. It would merely cause the body in question to behave somewhat like light. If the body in question traveled at the speed of light (relative to any frame of reference, since it's always the same) nothing inside it would age. Thus, you could never stop at your destination. I remember an experiment that has either already occurred or is ongoing to determine if neutrinos have mass. The way to determine this is to see if neutrinos can change from one form to another in their travel from the sun to the earth. If they can change, they must have mass, meaning that they are subject to the progression of time. If they do not change, this allows the possibility that they do not have mass, since a massless object is not affected by time and thus cannot change internally.
In addition, recent experiments (posted on Slashdot) have shown that even photons, massless though they may be, still have momentum, allowing the possibility of laser sails.
Also, if you think about how you would block a kind of radiation (gravitons) that has not ever been detected (meaning that it could be non-existant, or as some astrophysical observations of neutron stars suggest, possibly propagate by a non-particle means), even if it is in particle form, you'd have to hit it EXACTLY on with the photon. To my knowledge, basically all particles of this nature have such non-existant or extremely small size that they are treated as non-existent. Think about neutrinos, which may have mass. (I don't know how that experiment turned out) If you shoot 3 Neutrinos at a trillion mile thick wall of lead, at least one will probably come out the other side. (I probably screwed up something in that relationship, but you get the idea.) Light waves can interfere with each other because both involved particles have magnetic fields. Unless gravitons are electromagnetic (that's quite a stretch) they would be very unlikely to collide with photons. The reactor inside that fighter jet he's got on that page would have to be more powerful than the sun (and probably the entire galaxy, if not the universe) to emit that much radiation. Sure, it might not actually take a whole load of energy to do it, as his pseudo-science suggests, but where are you going to get a 1-planck light emitter?
Assuming this technology doesn't violate the laws of physics (which I'm pretty sure it does) it would certainly be infeasible. There IS some evidence to support gravity deflection by other means (also recently on Slashdot) but this is bogus.
What the Supreme Court says is open to debate, like you say. The critical distinction is that, unlike literary analysis, cases and laws are decided based on these "opinions". I am not a lawyer. That's why, before making my post, I asked a lawyer. In addition, I looked up a few of my sources for a paper that I've been researching for a month on a related topic, including analyses of this case. These sources are considered to be experts. Granted, that term may not mean squat in a technical field where everyone wants to do it their own way, but it has a lot of standing in the judicial system. Among my sources were articles written by Supreme Court justices. According to them, I'm right. Your initial point was right, too, but I see no need for you to be flaming other people to get attention for yourself. I might point out that it's rather redundant to post the same thing in 6 different places on a thread. Yes, I checked up on you. I do ALL my homework. I learn a lot, too. Now I've learned what a Karma whore is. (Granted, this is anecdotal, so if the correct term is troll, or something else entirely, please let me know.) Is this a flame? Yes. Do I feel guilty about it? No. Did you start it? Yes.
Did you read it? They gave up "All rights, if any" In other words, just as Linus can tell people not to use "Linux" in a domain name if he doesn't think they have any business using it, Mattel can tell people they can't use "cyber patrol" or some obvious derivative in a name of some kind. In other words, they still have no control over distribution. Perhaps they could demand that something by the name "cphack.exe" or "cphack.c" be taken off of a mirror, but if you change the name, you're not violating any rights of theirs. They only got what rights the programmers had, if any.
I didn't misunderstand the case. You misunderstood the way the Supreme Court works. If the Court rules that oranges are unconstitutional, that may or may not mean that it also considers apples to be unconstitutional. You have to look at the case. If the court rules that oranges are unconstitutional because they are fruits, and fruits are unconsitutional, then apples are also unconstitutional, even if they were never at issue in the case that appeared before the court. Conversely, if the court rules group libel/slander laws constitutional under certain guidelines, it may implicitly rule ones pertaining to individuals constitutional as well. If you read the case (as I have) it in fact does leave that door open. As it stands, very few specific laws of that kind are in place or enforced, since inciteful speech is covered in many ways (don't curse at the police when they arrest you, trust me), and the rest is usually boring enough that prosecutors will leave it to the civil courts.
Did you have a point? Yes.
Was it mutually exclusive to mine? No.
Do your homework before you flame. I've been researching supreme court cases on this specific topic for almost a month.
Who moderated this anyway? It sure looked like flamebait to me.
In the U.S., it is constitutional to pass a law allowing jail time for any libellous statement that can be considered an incitement to a breach of peace. I am not a lawyer, but I think the Supreme Court justices who decided Beauharnai s v. Illinois definitely were. That precedent stands today. Of course, the stuff on that page is certainly not incitement, and it in fact is probably not even libellous. Just watch out for those sweeping generalizations.
After previewing the comment several times, it keeps putting that space before the 's' in Beauharnais. What's up with that?
The answer is most definitely NO. The reason why the keydump works is because the chip catches the person typing the password. If it isn't typed, it doesn't dump. Last time I checked, a hacker cannot remotely press down the keys on your keyboard.
I have seen a lot of questions here about white holes and black hole decay. I thin kI should clarify some of the misconceptions.
Many people have difficulty with the idea of a black hole sucking up matter for all eternity, and have thus looked for a way out, something which allows that matter to be reclaimed by the universe. This has led to some rather interesting theories regarding things like white holes. These theories have never been supported by any astronomical evidence, nor do they even make much logical or mathematical sense, at least not in a typical Einsteinian view of the universe. Fortunately, someone has found a "way out". This person is Stephen Hawking. He devised a mechanism by which a black hole could leak out matter and energy slowly over time. This so-called "Hawking radiation" is emitted proportionally to the size of the black hole at the event horizon. Thus, a large black hole would emit energy and matter much faster than a small one, but a small one could eventually decay to the point where it no longer had the mass to generate the gravity well required to contain light. Of course, this is a VERY slow process, and most black holes are gaining mass many orders of magnitude faster than they are losing them.
So, yes, if you went into a black hole, you would be able to get out...
...In trillions of pieces over trillions of years.
The concept that security breaches such as those that would be possible like this hinges on the assumption that our systems are still mostly secure because if would be extremely difficult to properly generate false data in the form of the authentic. This breaks down completely if someone steals the right spec-sheet or source code. What they need for anything with wireless access is to put it on its own network. Something that doesn't even run on TCP/IP. Security through obscurity is flawed, but a lack of access of any kind is a very valid security paradigm. Of course, extremely high grade encryption, along with frequency-hopping, and other methods must also be used. Basically, they need a network that is designed such that there is no computer on it that is also connected to the internet. Not even having a wire that could connect to the internet. When lives are on the line, you need more than just a code solution, you need something physical. I personally wouldn't consider it safe until the most feasible method of "hacking" these systems is to use the time-honored method of paying off the disgruntled employees.
Slashdot Mirror
If I interpret the purpose of the job correctly, the public relations staff listens to the public. Therefore, if Intel listens to its own public relations staff, they are listening to the public.
Did I miss something?
Pardon my ignorance, but I can't find these anywhere. Where might I look for specs on one of these? Do you have a link, please?
It only had a 2MB graphics card but it ran Descent 2 blazing fast, even at 640X480. I never understood why, but I loved that computer, even when my friends had PIIs. I think my dad donated that chip & motherboard to a charity, and now it's running linux and serving websites for several local non-profits. I'm so proud!
I recall reading that Einstein and several other prominent scientists believed that this principle, which could under some circumstances yield superluminal communication, was impossible. It wasn't that they had a particular reason why, but it simply seemed so improbable, much as the concept of nuclear energy must have seemed two centuries ago. Strangely enough, I've seen this kind of stuff in sci-fi written decades ago. I guess this proves Einstein's point, that "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Most people are unable to comprehend the signifigance of exponentiating technology, but here's a perfect example. A hundred years from now, we might be seeing things we had never dreamed of. Fortunately, the scientists of today are quite well aware that there is a lot that we do not know, and they are willing to explore. We could see all sorts of breakthroughs involving string theory or any other sort of thing that is only vaguely understood (or not even conceived of) now. At the last turn of the century, students were being discouraged from going into physics, because the experts believed that they basically knew everything. A famous physicist (Heisenberg, I think) said that there were only a few things that remained unexplained, such as a few peculiar properties of light. He said they probably weren't too important. Then Einstein came along and blew that away. Now it would seem that Einstein, himself a sceptic as all humans are, is being surpassed. I'm sure he would be proud, though.
It is illegal to keep mp3s in any kind of publically accessible directory, even if you own the CD. Having the CD, or even going out and buying it after receiving a lawsuit, will not protect you. It doesn't matter whether it's napster, ftp, fserve, etc.
I am well aware that napster can be a great marketing tool. Well, the obvious answer to this is to let the program remain in distribution, and let the artists and their labels decide which ones to authorize for distribution. Nobody has the right to make up their minds for them. They have every right to sue someone who does.
It is true that pirating has been around for ages. In many cases, it would be things like mix tapes, tapes from the radio, or tape copies of CDs. These were (and still are) usually distributed face to face. This is an inherently limited form of transaction, with very little risk of getting caught, and little damage to the artist, since these have a very high rate of turning into purchases. Napster distribution is different, however. It does not have this morally mitigating factor. Napster is blind. Napster allows anyone to go online and download just that one hit they want, and never buy the album. They don't have to ask a friend for a recommendation, or have to discuss it in the way people often do when trading tapes or mp3s on an individual basis. It's a pure and simple rip-off.
Actually, the scientifically proven limit of silicon technology is much smaller than this. I remember a couple months ago, someone proved that the minimum thickness of the insulator was 4 atoms. Of course, mass-producing on that scale would require lasers with such a short wavelength that the energy delivered by that high-frequency beam would wreak all kinds of havoc on the chip, so a manufacturing process that small is only possible under extremely limited conditions, which will not likely be overcome any time before the next major breakthrough in computing technology.
Personally, I'm more interested in the molecular scale quantum computing technology. I believe it was Los Alamos that put 3 quantum transistors on a single proline molecule. You know, proline, one of them amino acids. We might even be able to grow our computer chips from a DNA or RNA template in the distant future. That is something that could go a lot farther.
The Spitfire chips will behave more or less like the first released Athlons, only a bit nicer on the cache and the heat. Meanwhile, the Celerons are still on a 66MHz bus, with no plans to upgrade. Intel is now looking at 733 and 766 MHz Celerons. This will be an insane bottleneck. We're looking at 11x and 11 1/2x clock multipliers. The Spitfires will run on a 133MHz motherboard (or 200, if that ever happens) and will be much nicer on the caching and RAM bandwidth. Sure, 766 is a fast chip, but on a Celeron, most of it will go to waste.
If you read the article, the lawsuit was fairly limited in scope. They were only suing over titles that were obvious rip-offs. These games not only took advantage of the method of gameplay, but they also tried to invoke the legacies of those games which Hasbro has rights to. That's stepping over the line. It's one thing to make a 3D shooter, and quite another to make one called "Escape from Nazi War prison, with simplistic rectangular VGA graphics that will run on an 8088." Whether or not it's friendly, it's certainly fair, and as a business, they have to enforce their intellectual property rights. Either that or they could let it go until everything becomes a standard, and then demand royalties. *cough* Unisys *cough* That certainly didn't go over well. Come on, they're playing by the rules. They haven't even asked for retroactive royalties, merely a cessation of distribution of these ripoff products. I'm quite certain that anyone who wanted to make their own asteroids game could probably get licensing fairly cheap. Or, heaven forbid, think up something new.
This is not stuff the federal government does. The federal government only has the power to regulate interstate commerce. If the system you suggest were implemented, it would also give the federal government control over intrastate commerce, which is not supposed to happen. I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but I can't imagine enough people getting excited enough about it for a constitutional amendment.
I confess, this is sort of a moot point anyway, since location of incorporation is irrelevant for taxation purposes. It doesn't matter if the company is based in Palo Alto or Redmond, I'm still paying Virginia sales tax if I buy it down the street. In fact, Federal Judges have ruled that if I buy from a website in Illinois, that company has to pay sales tax to Virginia (whether they charge me for it or not), but only if they actually have a business location in Virginia.
I agree that something needs to be worked out. I just don't think that's the best way of going about it.
Ok, so it may not be very insightful, but how, I ask, can a first post possibly be redundant?
Well, I don't think any judge likes punishing really popular corporations with limitations that would not be placed on competitors, since it's always open to review (judges hate being overturned), but as Judge Jackson has noted before, Microsoft has not obeyed previous consent decrees. No slap on the wrist this time. They get what they deserve.
Both the PIII and the Athlon only emulate x86 instructions. This means that there can be a lot of overhead, making the runtimes somewhat unpredictable. The aging x86 instruction set has been hacked over so many times, especially in the realm of floating point, that you really can't expect any consistency. Between 3DNow and SSE you've got two sporadically undersupported systems of acceleration. In general, if you want real-time, that means it must be reliable. That means you have to look not only at the average run-time, but the worst-case runtime. To get a reliable worst-case runtime, you have to be free of caching concerns, which will hurt your average performance. The best way around this is to go into RISC territory. This is where the Alpha shines. I also know that the G4 is not nearly as overcomplicated as the x86 chips, so Altivec, if properly supported, could do fairly well. Still, for reliable performance, you'd want something that handles things in a fairly standard way, so you don't have to worry about architecture extensions. Once again, Alpha shines. There are plenty of other things out there, like Power3 for example, but I think that cost becomes a serious concern once you get into that range.
Have you people missed the point of these systems? These are not meant to be rendering farms, nor would they do too well for the bucks on SETI. They are incredibly powerful data servers. They move things from point a to point b. They do it very well, in fact. They do not have SIMD FPUs like the AltiVec, PIII, K6-2, Athlon, etc. If you want a super fast Seti machine, get an Alpha cluster. The idea of each linux instance adding speed is because of the way the data pipeline works, not some voodoo in the processor.
If you read the article, you'd notice that the two VPU's serve entirely different purposes.
As for the system not taking full advantage of its capabilities, 5% of that thing can probably take my P.C. in 3d rendering. 50% would put it to shame.
There's a point beyond which further optimization goes to waste because you have nothing on the market. Kudos to them for getting games for this thing on release. Performance will improve. Show a little patience.
Sony is NOT making a P.C. Sony is NOT making a web-server. Sony is not making a word-processor. They are making a gaming console. They are making a gaming console so that they can make money. Red Hat and other Linux companies make money on support. If your console system needs tech support, no one will buy it. The reason why they're not using Celerons is because
a) Celerons suck, you'd be better with a K6-2
b) They're making a freaking gaming console
When you make a gaming console, you want it to SCREAM. That's what they have. This hardware blows Dual PIII systems out of the water for the task it was designed for. This is a specialized system. It seems that the pervading mindset around here is to use the same stuff for everything, which Linux is rather good at. This doesn't mean that I should be running Linux on my TI-89. It may well be possible, but is it worthwhile? No. Proprietary stuff is good for simple tasks, when the distributed effort of open source is unnecessary. I'm not saying it's always superior, but in this case, it gets the job done. Console systems are blazing fast because everything is extremely optimized. No room to use the wrong optimizer on compile.
Mark my words. Sony will make a killing.
Iridium was a perfect example of someone going to way too much effort to accomplish the task at hand. Sure, I'd LOVE to have an Alpha in my pocket calculator, and it might actually make a difference once in a blue moon, but the price difference is not worth it to me. Sure, you could probably find a few idiots, or a few people who actually need alphas in their pocket calculators, but not enough to pay for all the overhead, such as developing the nuclear fuel cell liquid nitrogen refrigerator and the insulation that would protect me from getting my balls frozen off or burned off when the coolant ran out.
The ideal solution is not to simply turn away all customers linked from outside, but rather to spawn a new window with your whole page, and whatever frame setup you may have, so that people know they're buying from you instead of someone else. Basically, you set up a top frame to put your advertising and "Welcome to Ticketmaster" signs, and then whenever you receive an http request for any other page on your site, simply serve up that frame with a reference to your content below it. I know there are sites that do this. You could tweak it so that the initial service of the top frame would spawn itself in a new window. This I have also seen done. These don't seem to be terribly complex systems to put into place. Keep in mind that these sites probably handle huge amounts of dynamic content, so this would hardly add strain. It sure seems simple to me.
...because my ISP banned the entire AOL.com domain after the ORBS announcement.
No, seriously folks. I read it. It's utter crap. Completely, total, utter crap. This guy belongs in a graphic-design firm, not a physics lab.
Ok, here's the part I'm not sure about (if I'm wrong, correct, don't flame):
His initial conjectures appear to be quite wrong. Due to the wave-particle duality of light, light can interfere, resulting in effects that can be considered absorption. Just because it doesn't work the same way as a kitchen sponge doesn't make it not so. I remember an experiment a few years ago that got a lot of hype for "teleporting" a photon across a room. Well, that was the press going wild, but they were able to carry one light wave on another light wave by interfering the signal wave with a polarized laser, and then crossing that carrier beam with another polarized beam to undo the change. Something had to happen to those photons.
Here's the part I am sure about:
This guy assumes that you can somehow cancel out "gravitational mass" and thus eliminate the effects of relativity. Even if we assume for the moment this is true, this would NOT allow superluminal travel. It would merely cause the body in question to behave somewhat like light. If the body in question traveled at the speed of light (relative to any frame of reference, since it's always the same) nothing inside it would age. Thus, you could never stop at your destination. I remember an experiment that has either already occurred or is ongoing to determine if neutrinos have mass. The way to determine this is to see if neutrinos can change from one form to another in their travel from the sun to the earth. If they can change, they must have mass, meaning that they are subject to the progression of time. If they do not change, this allows the possibility that they do not have mass, since a massless object is not affected by time and thus cannot change internally.
In addition, recent experiments (posted on Slashdot) have shown that even photons, massless though they may be, still have momentum, allowing the possibility of laser sails.
Also, if you think about how you would block a kind of radiation (gravitons) that has not ever been detected (meaning that it could be non-existant, or as some astrophysical observations of neutron stars suggest, possibly propagate by a non-particle means), even if it is in particle form, you'd have to hit it EXACTLY on with the photon. To my knowledge, basically all particles of this nature have such non-existant or extremely small size that they are treated as non-existent. Think about neutrinos, which may have mass. (I don't know how that experiment turned out) If you shoot 3 Neutrinos at a trillion mile thick wall of lead, at least one will probably come out the other side. (I probably screwed up something in that relationship, but you get the idea.) Light waves can interfere with each other because both involved particles have magnetic fields. Unless gravitons are electromagnetic (that's quite a stretch) they would be very unlikely to collide with photons. The reactor inside that fighter jet he's got on that page would have to be more powerful than the sun (and probably the entire galaxy, if not the universe) to emit that much radiation. Sure, it might not actually take a whole load of energy to do it, as his pseudo-science suggests, but where are you going to get a 1-planck light emitter?
Assuming this technology doesn't violate the laws of physics (which I'm pretty sure it does) it would certainly be infeasible. There IS some evidence to support gravity deflection by other means (also recently on Slashdot) but this is bogus.
What the Supreme Court says is open to debate, like you say. The critical distinction is that, unlike literary analysis, cases and laws are decided based on these "opinions". I am not a lawyer. That's why, before making my post, I asked a lawyer. In addition, I looked up a few of my sources for a paper that I've been researching for a month on a related topic, including analyses of this case. These sources are considered to be experts. Granted, that term may not mean squat in a technical field where everyone wants to do it their own way, but it has a lot of standing in the judicial system. Among my sources were articles written by Supreme Court justices. According to them, I'm right. Your initial point was right, too, but I see no need for you to be flaming other people to get attention for yourself. I might point out that it's rather redundant to post the same thing in 6 different places on a thread. Yes, I checked up on you. I do ALL my homework. I learn a lot, too. Now I've learned what a Karma whore is. (Granted, this is anecdotal, so if the correct term is troll, or something else entirely, please let me know.) Is this a flame? Yes. Do I feel guilty about it? No. Did you start it? Yes.
Did you read it? They gave up "All rights, if any" In other words, just as Linus can tell people not to use "Linux" in a domain name if he doesn't think they have any business using it, Mattel can tell people they can't use "cyber patrol" or some obvious derivative in a name of some kind. In other words, they still have no control over distribution. Perhaps they could demand that something by the name "cphack.exe" or "cphack.c" be taken off of a mirror, but if you change the name, you're not violating any rights of theirs. They only got what rights the programmers had, if any.
I didn't misunderstand the case. You misunderstood the way the Supreme Court works. If the Court rules that oranges are unconstitutional, that may or may not mean that it also considers apples to be unconstitutional. You have to look at the case. If the court rules that oranges are unconstitutional because they are fruits, and fruits are unconsitutional, then apples are also unconstitutional, even if they were never at issue in the case that appeared before the court. Conversely, if the court rules group libel/slander laws constitutional under certain guidelines, it may implicitly rule ones pertaining to individuals constitutional as well. If you read the case (as I have) it in fact does leave that door open. As it stands, very few specific laws of that kind are in place or enforced, since inciteful speech is covered in many ways (don't curse at the police when they arrest you, trust me), and the rest is usually boring enough that prosecutors will leave it to the civil courts.
Did you have a point?
Yes.
Was it mutually exclusive to mine?
No.
Do your homework before you flame. I've been researching supreme court cases on this specific topic for almost a month.
Who moderated this anyway? It sure looked like flamebait to me.
In the U.S., it is constitutional to pass a law allowing jail time for any libellous statement that can be considered an incitement to a breach of peace. I am not a lawyer, but I think the Supreme Court justices who decided Beauharnai s v. Illinois definitely were. That precedent stands today. Of course, the stuff on that page is certainly not incitement, and it in fact is probably not even libellous. Just watch out for those sweeping generalizations.
After previewing the comment several times, it keeps putting that space before the 's' in Beauharnais. What's up with that?
The answer is most definitely NO. The reason why the keydump works is because the chip catches the person typing the password. If it isn't typed, it doesn't dump. Last time I checked, a hacker cannot remotely press down the keys on your keyboard.
I have seen a lot of questions here about white holes and black hole decay. I thin kI should clarify some of the misconceptions.
...In trillions of pieces over trillions of years.
Many people have difficulty with the idea of a black hole sucking up matter for all eternity, and have thus looked for a way out, something which allows that matter to be reclaimed by the universe. This has led to some rather interesting theories regarding things like white holes. These theories have never been supported by any astronomical evidence, nor do they even make much logical or mathematical sense, at least not in a typical Einsteinian view of the universe. Fortunately, someone has found a "way out". This person is Stephen Hawking. He devised a mechanism by which a black hole could leak out matter and energy slowly over time. This so-called "Hawking radiation" is emitted proportionally to the size of the black hole at the event horizon. Thus, a large black hole would emit energy and matter much faster than a small one, but a small one could eventually decay to the point where it no longer had the mass to generate the gravity well required to contain light. Of course, this is a VERY slow process, and most black holes are gaining mass many orders of magnitude faster than they are losing them.
So, yes, if you went into a black hole, you would be able to get out...
The concept that security breaches such as those that would be possible like this hinges on the assumption that our systems are still mostly secure because if would be extremely difficult to properly generate false data in the form of the authentic. This breaks down completely if someone steals the right spec-sheet or source code. What they need for anything with wireless access is to put it on its own network. Something that doesn't even run on TCP/IP. Security through obscurity is flawed, but a lack of access of any kind is a very valid security paradigm. Of course, extremely high grade encryption, along with frequency-hopping, and other methods must also be used. Basically, they need a network that is designed such that there is no computer on it that is also connected to the internet. Not even having a wire that could connect to the internet. When lives are on the line, you need more than just a code solution, you need something physical. I personally wouldn't consider it safe until the most feasible method of "hacking" these systems is to use the time-honored method of paying off the disgruntled employees.