nobody69 wrote:
A lot of hard sf fans on usenet had some pretty big beefs with the science part of The Matrix.
Reading the Matrix website, I learned the movie was simply an exercise in making the world's first live-acton adult-style comic book.
Adult comic books as a rule feature science that makes no sense, but is made believable to the reader by the brute force of adult-comic-book style hype. The Matrix purposely copied that convention.
fm6 wrote:
He gives us a future in which the programming art has advanced less in the next 3,000 years than it has in the last 10.... And finally, he reguritates endless truisms about "what computers can't do"
Remember when Pham says, "Nanotech! The failed dream." A major plot device in Deepness is that technological progress came to a screeching halt in the beginning of the 21st century -- just on the verge of nanotech. The concept of why technology stopped is explained in A Fire Upon the Deep.
Interestingly, Vernor Vinge did speculate on what people's reactions would be to Deepness if they hadn't first read Fire.
This was just posted to wear-hard, the wearable-computing mailing list:
Vernor Vinge to keynote ISWC 2000
From: "Thad E. Starner"
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 23:45:17 -0400 (EDT)
Folks-
Vernor Vinge will be giving the keynote address at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) 2000 on Oct. 16 here in Atlanta at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel.
I was not aware that Vernor was up for the Hugo this year, much less that he has actually won it, it appears! Wow - serendipity!
Many congratulations to Vernor and hope to see y'all soon in Atlanta.
Thad
--
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Wearable computing... Fine grained distributed computing involving networked embedded systems. Wearables together with such networks and good localizing technology would make cyberspace creep out into the real world. There would be the easy implementation of effective joint entities, such as a house bound older person, and a mobile younger person, together are able to make a lot more of a career than either could separately.
Dr. Acronym wrote:
YOU too can make hundreds of millions of dollars in days by starting a company and going IPO without even shipping a product!
The Dr.'s comment was modded funny, but it's true. Observe this discussion list for overvalued stocks. T$ will be on there...several months before it tanks.
Thomas Pabst wrote: It requires the whooping core voltage of 1.75 V by default. Normal Coppermines' only require 1.65 V. This increases the power hunger of that CPU over the Giga-Pentium III (1.7 V) significantly by already at least 3%, plus the 13% required by the higher clock speed, summing up to over 16 % more power hunger.
He added voltage and current together to get power?
The just-released Canon S100 does 1,600 x 1,200 and is the size of a deck of playing cards. Additionally, it takes high-quality pictures (although green gets somewhat under-exposed [which can be fixed in photoshop]).
You can sort-of video capture with it too with a continuous mode that does two frames-per-second. It also has a USB interface and direct video out.
CmdrTaco wrote: I've been eyeballing finger scanners since I saw a nifty one that worked through PAM at a tradeshow one time: I still think it'd be very convenient if it worked,...
I can tell you why it didn't work: You're not supposed to use your eyeball! Why do you think they're called fingerscanners?!? Would you use your finger in an eyeball scanner?
LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) is developing Hypersoar, a vehicle that takes off from ordinary airport runways like an ordinary aircraft, reaches MACH 10 skipping along [see the link] just outside the atmosphere, and lands again at airports like an ordinary aircraft.
Says the LLNL article:
HyperSoar could also be employed as
the first stage of a two-stage-to-orbit space launch system. This approach would allow approximately twice the payload-to-orbit as today's expendable launch systems for a given gross takeoff weight. At the high point of its skip, HyperSoar could eject an upper-stage vehicle and its payload into low-Earth orbit. A larger HyperSoar vehicle, the size of a Boeing 777 for example, could handle a 13,700-kilogram payload in addition to the weight of a typical second-stage launcher. At a 255,000-kilogram gross vehicle weight, the HyperSoar would weigh about half as much as the largest Ariane 4 expendable launch vehicle but could carry about 40 percent more payload.
From the a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/2000/0700i ssue/0700scicit2.html">SA article:
Perhaps more exciting is [Anthony] Cerami's recent discovery of a molecular "breaker"--a drug that may actually reverse the aging process by cracking sugar-protein links once they form. "Instead of looking for prevention, we can now administer a compound to reduce the stiffness we see in diabetes and aging," Cerami reported at a recent Novartis Foundation symposium in London. The breaker, dimethyl-3-phenacylthiazolium chloride, or ALT-711, can tear tough AGE bonds apart. Diabetic animals, old dogs and elderly rhesus monkeys given the compound daily for three weeks yielded spectacular results. "The heart and major arteries, which were quite stiff, became more pliable and elastic. So the heart could pump more blood--similar to what you'd see in a young animal," Cerami stated.
This is pretty exciting stuff. Anyone with access to Medline should check out the ALT-711 research being done. Here are the abstracts from the latest two studies:
An advanced glycation endproduct cross-link breaker can reverse age-related increases in myocardial stiffness. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A (PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) 2000 Mar 14; 97 (6): 2809-13
Decreased elasticity of the cardiovascular system is one of the hallmarks of the normal aging process of mammals. A potential explanation for this decreased elasticity is that glucose can react nonenzymatically with long-lived proteins, such as collagen and lens crystallin, and link them together, producing advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs). Previous studies have shown that aminoguanidine, an AGE inhibitor, can prevent glucose cross-linking of proteins and the loss of elasticity associated with aging and diabetes. Recently, an AGE cross-link breaker (ALT-711) has been described, which we have evaluated in aged dogs. After 1 month of administration of ALT-711, a significant reduction ( approximately 40%) in age-related left ventricular stiffness was observed [(57.1 +/- 6.8 mmHg x m(2)/ml pretreatment and 33.1 +/- 4.6 mmHg x m(2)/ml posttreatment (1 mmHg = 133 Pa)]. This decrease was accompanied by improvement in cardiac function.
Improvement by aminoguanidine of insulin secretion from pancreatic islets grafted to syngeneic diabetic rats. Biochem Pharmacol (BIOCHEMICAL PHARMACOLOGY) 2000 Jul 15; 60 (2): 263-8
Prolonged hyperglycemia inhibits B-cell function by mechanisms that are largely unclarified. We investigated the involvement of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), using aminoguanidine as well as the AGE-breaking compound ALT-711 in a transplantation model. Islets from Wistar-Furth rats were transplanted under the kidney capsule of syngeneic streptozocin-diabetic recipients. Aminoguanidine was administered as 1 g/L in the drinking water. Graft-bearing kidneys were isolated and perfused to investigate insulin secretion, and grafts were excised to measure preproinsulin mRNA contents. In all transplants to diabetic rats, insulin responses to 27.8 mM glucose were abolished and aminoguanidine failed to correct this abnormality. However, aminoguanidine treatment for 8 weeks following transplantation increased preproinsulin mRNA contents of the grafts (P less than 0.05). In addition, treatment with aminoguanidine enhanced the insulin secretory response to arginine (P less than 0.05). Arginine-induced insulin secretion was also enhanced when aminoguanidine treatment was started after an initial 2-week implantation period rather than immediately after transplantation. On the other hand, treatment with ALT-711 (0.1 mg/kg by gavage) for 8 weeks completely failed to affect B-cell function of grafts, and ALT-711 was also ineffective under in vitro conditions. Our findings indicate that aminoguanidine effects in vivo are to a major extent not coupled to AGEs or nitric oxide synthetase inhibition, but possibly to oxidative modifications accomplished by the guanidine compound.
Strange they didn't mention ZF Linux, the company founded by PC/104 inventor David Feldman. They have had an SOC out for a while that comes with Linux installed, and they just introduced a new low-power version (586; 1/2 watt @ 133MHz).
The fastest sprinter at the Sydney Olympics will not surpass 37km/h (23 mph)
It's going to be a boring 100m competition then. Even if the runners could achieve their maximum velocity (37km/h, or 10.28 m/s) in just two seconds (the first 10 meters) of acceleration, then the winning time would be somewhere close to 11 seconds.
A more realistic estimate for the maximum speed [calculations]....
This tells us the maximum speed will be somewhere around... 34 mph.
You are correct in pointing out, AC, that 23 MPH is not the typical top speed of 100m sprints. 23 MPH is actually the average velocity of 100m sprints. But top speeds aren't 34 MPH as you calculate. Top speeds are actually about 27 MPH.
World's Fastest Man
The 1998 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records features an article about Donovan Bailey, billed as the fastest man alive. The article begins: "Canadian Donovan Bailey rocketed into the record books when he set a new world mark of 9.84 seconds for the 100-meter dash at the Atlanta Olympics." It briefly recounts Bailey's career and, toward the end, quotes Bailey: "No one has ever run as fast as I have, running 27 mph."
When Roy D. North, a computer programmer and mathematical gadfly now based in Connecticut, came across that passage, something bothered him. When he calculated Bailey's speed from the given time and distance, he obtained 22.7 miles per hour.
"What went wrong here?" North wondered. "Was Bailey misquoted? Was there a typo?"
North had to find out how that apparent mismatch had come about, and his search turned up an article in the Aug. 5, 1996, Sports Illustrated. The account mentioned that Bailey's speed at the 60-meter mark of the race was 27.1 miles per hour.
Mystery solved! One speed was the average over the entire race, and the other was the instantaneous velocity at a particular point in the race.
gordyf said, I've always wondered just what Intel's new CPUs are doing when they get 1-2 watts. Maybe they're idle.
Intel's older chips pull 1/2 watt in performance idle, so "no": the new chips don't use more power idling than the old chips did. The power figures Intel quotes are for when they are running office apps.
Intel's new CPUs don't consume 1-2 watts. They consume less than 1 watt. And they do this because they run at 1.1 volts. (Recent best low-voltages from Intel were 1.35v and, previous to that, 1.6v. {Crusoes max out at at least 1.6v}) Here is Intel's press-release page; it has a table of their current mobile chips at the bottom.
It mentions that the power ratings (including the one for the sub-1-watt PIII) are for average power and links to a definition of average power which says,
Average power represents the power consumed by the processor while running typical office applications by an average user. Average power is measured by running industry standard benchmarks, such as Ziff-Davis* BatteryMark* 3.0 or BAPCo * SYSmark* 98 for Battery Life.
Slashdot Mirror
nobody69 wrote:
A lot of hard sf fans on usenet had some pretty big beefs with the science part of The Matrix.
Reading the Matrix website, I learned the movie was simply an exercise in making the world's first live-acton adult-style comic book.
Adult comic books as a rule feature science that makes no sense, but is made believable to the reader by the brute force of adult-comic-book style hype. The Matrix purposely copied that convention.
Why Hugo? Why not Waldo?
Hugo Gernsback, creator of Amazing Stories, the first science-fiction magazine.
fm6 wrote:
He gives us a future in which the programming art has advanced less in the next 3,000 years than it has in the last 10.... And finally, he reguritates endless truisms about "what computers can't do"
Remember when Pham says, "Nanotech! The failed dream." A major plot device in Deepness is that technological progress came to a screeching halt in the beginning of the 21st century -- just on the verge of nanotech. The concept of why technology stopped is explained in A Fire Upon the Deep.
Interestingly, Vernor Vinge did speculate on what people's reactions would be to Deepness if they hadn't first read Fire.
but this all pales the shock of seeing Galaxy Quest beat The Matrix
The Muppet Movie almost won a Hugo in 1980.
Vernor Vinge has recently retired from his position as a Mathematical and Computer Sciences professor at San Diego State University.
Now he can write full time.
Interesting review here
More great reviews here.
This was just posted to wear-hard, the wearable-computing mailing list:
Vernor Vinge to keynote ISWC 2000
From: "Thad E. Starner"
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 23:45:17 -0400 (EDT)
Folks-
Vernor Vinge will be giving the keynote address at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) 2000 on Oct. 16 here in Atlanta at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel.
I was not aware that Vernor was up for the Hugo this year, much less that he has actually won it, it appears! Wow - serendipity!
Many congratulations to Vernor and hope to see y'all soon in Atlanta.
Thad
--
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to wear-hard-request@haven.org
Wear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org
fredegar:
I'm wondering if you have any specific ideas for a near future novel running around in your head. What current developments would you want to explore?
V_Vinge:
Wearable computing... Fine grained distributed computing involving networked embedded systems. Wearables together with such networks and good localizing technology would make cyberspace creep out into the real world. There would be the easy implementation of effective joint entities, such as a house bound older person, and a mobile younger person, together are able to make a lot more of a career than either could separately.
frankie wrote:
If laptop hard drive prices drop below $15 per Gb, I'll expand my Wallstreet...
IBM 30GT 30 gigabyte 12.5mm laptop drives are only $437 shipped, at onvia.com:
Check the current best prices.
Ten years from now Trapezoidal Hexecontahedron will be all the rage. (With built-in gyroscopes to keep them from rolling away).
Hemos wrote:
VMSK/2 Promisses 5 Times More Bandwidth
...And 50% more "s"s.
applications are developed to take advantage of the increased capacity of modern drives
Steve Mann wears four Toshiba 18GB laptop drives full time for his wearable computer rig.
Dr. Acronym wrote:
YOU too can make hundreds of millions of dollars in days by starting a company and going IPO without even shipping a product!
The Dr.'s comment was modded funny, but it's true. Observe this discussion list for overvalued stocks. T$ will be on there...several months before it tanks.
Black Parrot wrote:
See Netcraft's analysis of OS market shares in their July 2000 survey.
In short, and using the conservative numbers:
Linux : 29.99%
Windows (all types) : 28.32%
Solaris : 16.33%
Other : 23.59%
Unknown : 1.76%
When you say "conservative", you mean counting active sites as opposed to all sites?
mikpos wrote:
He didn't mention current at all; where are you getting that from?
From the clockspeed. Clockspeed = current.
Thomas Pabst wrote:
It requires the whooping core voltage of 1.75 V by default. Normal Coppermines' only require 1.65 V. This increases the power hunger of that CPU over the Giga-Pentium III (1.7 V) significantly by already at least 3%, plus the 13% required by the higher clock speed, summing up to over 16 % more power hunger.
He added voltage and current together to get power?
Zoyd wrote:
But best of all, it exists.
...and had a hyperlink to a price-comparison for Canon S10s in stead of S100s.
PHr0D wrote:
Thats cool but...I think I'd prefer a higher resolution
The just-released Canon S100 does 1,600 x 1,200 and is the size of a deck of playing cards. Additionally, it takes high-quality pictures (although green gets somewhat under-exposed [which can be fixed in photoshop]).
You can sort-of video capture with it too with a continuous mode that does two frames-per-second. It also has a USB interface and direct video out.
But best of all, it exists.
My roommate and I were getting annoyed by apparant prank callers
There is no such thing as a "prank caller." The term is "crank caller."
CmdrTaco wrote:
I've been eyeballing finger scanners since I saw a nifty one that worked through PAM at a tradeshow one time: I still think it'd be very convenient if it worked,...
I can tell you why it didn't work: You're not supposed to use your eyeball! Why do you think they're called fingerscanners?!? Would you use your finger in an eyeball scanner?
What are the alternatives?
LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) is developing Hypersoar, a vehicle that takes off from ordinary airport runways like an ordinary aircraft, reaches MACH 10 skipping along [see the link] just outside the atmosphere, and lands again at airports like an ordinary aircraft.
Says the LLNL article:
This is pretty exciting stuff. Anyone with access to Medline should check out the ALT-711 research being done. Here are the abstracts from the latest two studies:
Strange they didn't mention ZF Linux, the company founded by PC/104 inventor David Feldman. They have had an SOC out for a while that comes with Linux installed, and they just introduced a new low-power version (586; 1/2 watt @ 133MHz).
EMJ will be their distributor.
The bbc page claims that:
It's going to be a boring 100m competition then. Even if the runners could achieve their maximum velocity (37km/h, or 10.28 m/s) in just two seconds (the first 10 meters) of acceleration, then the winning time would be somewhere close to 11 seconds.
A more realistic estimate for the maximum speed [calculations]....
This tells us the maximum speed will be somewhere around
You are correct in pointing out, AC, that 23 MPH is not the typical top speed of 100m sprints. 23 MPH is actually the average velocity of 100m sprints. But top speeds aren't 34 MPH as you calculate. Top speeds are actually about 27 MPH.
Here's a little tidbit on the subject from the Mathematical Accociation of America.
I've always wondered just what Intel's new CPUs are doing when they get 1-2 watts. Maybe they're idle.
Intel's older chips pull 1/2 watt in performance idle, so "no": the new chips don't use more power idling than the old chips did. The power figures Intel quotes are for when they are running office apps.
Intel's new CPUs don't consume 1-2 watts. They consume less than 1 watt. And they do this because they run at 1.1 volts. (Recent best low-voltages from Intel were 1.35v and, previous to that, 1.6v. {Crusoes max out at at least 1.6v}) Here is Intel's press-release page; it has a table of their current mobile chips at the bottom.
It mentions that the power ratings (including the one for the sub-1-watt PIII) are for average power and links to a definition of average power which says,