Fact: If it wasn't for companies, many things about genes that we know today, we wouldn't know. We'd learn them sooner or later, but it'd take a while longer.
Let's assume companies working on genes help us advance genetic research twice as fast. So, after 25 years of research, we've done 50 years-worth of publicly-funded research.
In 25 years, when current patents expire, we'll be exactly where we'd be in terms of publicly available knowledge (at a smaller cost to the public), but we'll have pushed science by an extra 50 years of knowledge (which will be still patented). 25 years later, we'll be 50 years ahead in publicly avaialble knowledge compared to where we'd be, if companies couldn't hold patents and wouldn't invest in genetic research.
I'm against patents on genetic research, but if you really think about it, maybe breast cancer tests wouldn't be available today if companies didn't spend on genetic research, so we're not really losing anything...
It is very cold of them to withhold some much-needed research from the public, though.
So when US courts shut down ICraveTV a couple of years ago, they had no right to do so?
I think I'm going to Canada and opening an ICraveTV-like website. Now, when major networks take me to court, I'll point to this ruling and laugh.
Oh, wait. Major networks will sue me and win anyway. Money talks, and both of these rulings went in favor of US companies. The day when US courts actually recognize that people in other countries (and non-US citizens) should have the same rights (and responsibilities) as US citizens is far away. Right now, if you're an outsider, you already lost.
A major limiting factor for CPU design today is wire delay. Electricity runs over silicon with third speed of light (I think, something in that range, anyway), so you can't speed that up more than 3 times (and even that is highly unlikely). If the gate delay being reduced by 40 times, we won't get chips that are 3 times faster, using the same design, IMHO.
RAW is a tiled microprocessor, consisting of 16 MIPS cores, connected by a rectangular network. The best part of it is that you can connect many of these chips together to form even larger computers (the network will just extend outwards).
It's nearing completion, there are some good results. You can check out http://cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/ for details.
South Park creators announced that they've actually been able to produce the Brown Sound. They plan on broadcasting it during a commercial in the midst of Curling Finals in Salt Lake City Olympics.
The estimated cost of airing such a commercial is $10,000,000 US. The estimated cost of following cleanup is well above 1000 times of cost of the commercial. Authorities across the world are currently pleading with Olympics organizers to prevent a disaster from happening. Olympics organizers, unfortunately, are claiming that they are simply businessmen and do anything for appropriate price.
The Blue Gene supercomputer uses SMT. Guess they don't just put multiple cores on a single chip:)
m
Re:The killer with asynchronous logic may be testi
on
Clockless Computing?
·
· Score: 1
Testing is the easiest part. Verification is the difficulty here - how do you verify that you've eliminated all race conditions? The whole problem of the design is to eliminate any and all possible race conditions. Today they use two-rail logic (one wire for 0, one wire for 1) and completion circuitry to decide when a computation is finished and another can start executing in the same unit. CalTech has made a MIPS compatible processor that works (with no race condition problems).
Well, the truth is the distinction is not very clear. CS is supposed to look at a more theoretical part of the field (theory, graphics, algorithms, AI, etc) while CEng is supposed to look at more practical topics (compilers, databases, operating systems, cpu designs). The bottom line is that whichever you do, there is a significant cross over.
If you are a CEng student and an employer is only looking for CS students, then they either have a very good reason (unlikely, unless you're going to a 'think tank' environment) or they don't really know what they want. Most employers will look at both CS and CEng students.
At my undergrad institution, there were many professors who were in one deparament and affiliated with the other (CS and CEng). In my new school, we don't even have a real CEng departament. There is a Systems group in CS departament (which is where I am).
Vanu is trying to write software that will be able to decode anything from walkie-talkies to cell phones to analog tv signals to HDTV signals. I've seen their demo recently and it was quite impressive.
www.vanu.com
m
ps. I do not work for Vanu and have nothing to gain or loose from their raise or demaise.
As somebody pointed out, the reason the author was contacted is because the hardware started failing. But even if the hardware hadn't started failing, I'd be inclined to port the software to some other platform. What happens when your tape gets eaten up? You tape player fails? The teletype machine breaks?
There's a thousand ways this setup can break, and replacing/repairing this stuff may be more difficult (today) than it would be to replace/repair a 486 with a CD-ROM (for storing the program, much more durable than tapes).
Get the kid to study music. It's been shown that study of music increases ability to learn. Most of the people in my engineering undergrad program had some sort of music training. I think it enhances intuition - music is not rigorous, it's not right or wrong, but it still can be good or bad. You have to feel it. Intuition is similar - while it can be right or wrong, it's mostly difficult to understand exactly why it goes one way or the other.
If you're not qualified to teach the kid music, talk to the parents, maybe they can find somebody to give him/her some music lessons.
I hope you know that teaching nanotechnology isn't talking about nanotechnology. It's a field of science (engineering), like any others. If you haven't done graduate studies in string theory, you probably won't be able to teach it. If you haven't done graduate studies in biomedical engineering, you probably won't be able to teach it. If you haven't done graduate studies in nanotechnology, you probably won't be able to teach it.
So stick to what you know. If it's nanotechnology, then go ahead. But other fields that are starting to become edge-breaking suggests to me that you're just throwing buzzwords around, looking for topics.
Oh, and taking the kid outside and having some fun other than academic won't hurt either (as has been pointed out MANY times before).
It's probably a nice idea, but probably won't work. If it's used as a warning, people will still run the programs (that's how initial e-mail viruses spread anyway). If it stops all non-signed programs from running, people will turn it off. If they can't turn it off, they'll hate it so much, MS will change it back or give them an option.
This does raise an interesting issue. I think Java has so far given the best method to protect yourself against programs wrecking havoc on your computer - verifiability of code that doesn't do 'bad things'.
Under New Mexico law, if the candidates end up tied, the winner could be
determined by having the two men sit for a hand of poker -- with the state
going to the winner.
New Mexico statute requires that in case of a tie, "the determination as to
which of the candidates shall be declared to have been nominated or elected
shall be decided by lot." In practice, the usual method for this rare event
has been to play one hand of five-card poker.
This was last done in December 1999, in a local judge's race. Republican Jim
Blanq and Democrat Lena Milligan played one hand of poker in a courthouse
with dozens of people watching, and Blanq won.
A process or a method by which a chemical element/physical particle or a compound is delivered to a complicated mechanical/biological/electronic structure. Process involves binding of the said element or compound with other elements and/or compounds, which in turn are distributed throughout the said structure and deposited at their destination. The chamicals being distributed and the carrier elements/compounds may be in form of liquid/powder/plasma or any other suitable state.
In other words, most chem processes, including breathing.
they only get paid by the employees on stock options they get. Why should the company get to pay no taxes in return? They didn't give employees anything! Even the article says, THE SHAREHOLDERS are splitting their shares with the employees, the company LOOSES NOTHING!
And to anybody who thinks corporations shouldn't pay taxes, think again. The reason we pay taxes is so we can have a government that will create some sort of infrastructure in which its citizens can live and do business. So if corporations don't pay taxes, they shouldn't have access to useful governmental things, like courts, police, roads, and whatever else they're using. Let's see where hi-tech companies would be if they couldn't hire anybody who went to a public school or used healthcare...
Look people, Student Visas are part of a foreign affairs agenda which believes that by helping other countries become better, that we become a better global society. I fully support this, and have no problem with that.
You seem to be very naive. The whole purpose of bringing bright students from other countries to US is to get them educated and ready to support US economy. They come here, they learn, maybe do some research (grad students), and then they become productive members of US society. Reason they do it? US can't educate enough people in lower levels of education, send them to their colleges and fill those high-tech jobs. I know, 'cause at my school in my departament every other student is from outside US. My two roommates are from outside, and two out of three of my office mates are from outside. So am I.
US doesn't care about other countries, if it doesn't benefit US.
I don't see how this could be stopped, unless you forbid running of GPL software on non-GPL systems.
Solaris is compiled without including GPL code (presumably), so these drivers are trully running as stand-alone programs. They just call some built-in kernel functions provided by libraries from the kit.
Besides, why is this so wrong? One person writes a driver which is intended for Linux and somebody else uses a compiler to compile the driver and run it on Solaris. Cygwin allows you to compile *nix programs under Windows and run them natively. Nobody is making a big deal about that.
I don't think Apple would have a huge problem if porting to x86 only meant competing with Microsoft. Worst case scenario, nobody would buy MacOSX for x86.
I actually think they could do well against Microsoft on x86 platform. One of the reasons Apple never took off like Microsoft did is because if you buy a Mac, you're stuck with MacOS (or some *nix, which isn't acceptable for most people). If you could buy an x86 machine with MacOSX many people would try it out. They can always buy Windows and install if over MacOSX.
Real reason Apple doesn't want to port to x86 is because x86 hardware is cheaper and so Apple would loose their main business, which is hardware.
My question is why didn't Microsoft port Windows to the Mac yet?
Slashdot Mirror
Fact: If it wasn't for companies, many things about genes that we know today, we wouldn't know. We'd learn them sooner or later, but it'd take a while longer.
Let's assume companies working on genes help us advance genetic research twice as fast. So, after 25 years of research, we've done 50 years-worth of publicly-funded research.
In 25 years, when current patents expire, we'll be exactly where we'd be in terms of publicly available knowledge (at a smaller cost to the public), but we'll have pushed science by an extra 50 years of knowledge (which will be still patented). 25 years later, we'll be 50 years ahead in publicly avaialble knowledge compared to where we'd be, if companies couldn't hold patents and wouldn't invest in genetic research.
I'm against patents on genetic research, but if you really think about it, maybe breast cancer tests wouldn't be available today if companies didn't spend on genetic research, so we're not really losing anything...
It is very cold of them to withhold some much-needed research from the public, though.
m
So when US courts shut down ICraveTV a couple of years ago, they had no right to do so?
I think I'm going to Canada and opening an ICraveTV-like website. Now, when major networks take me to court, I'll point to this ruling and laugh.
Oh, wait. Major networks will sue me and win anyway. Money talks, and both of these rulings went in favor of US companies. The day when US courts actually recognize that people in other countries (and non-US citizens) should have the same rights (and responsibilities) as US citizens is far away. Right now, if you're an outsider, you already lost.
m
I don't think so.
:)
A major limiting factor for CPU design today is wire delay. Electricity runs over silicon with third speed of light (I think, something in that range, anyway), so you can't speed that up more than 3 times (and even that is highly unlikely). If the gate delay being reduced by 40 times, we won't get chips that are 3 times faster, using the same design, IMHO.
Though this would be quite an improvement
m
RAW is a tiled microprocessor, consisting of 16 MIPS cores, connected by a rectangular network. The best part of it is that you can connect many of these chips together to form even larger computers (the network will just extend outwards).
It's nearing completion, there are some good results. You can check out http://cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/ for details.
m
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that M$ didn't have such a bug and slashdot did?
m
I did always think that X-men was for real :)
m
South Park creators announced that they've actually been able to produce the Brown Sound. They plan on broadcasting it during a commercial in the midst of Curling Finals in Salt Lake City Olympics.
The estimated cost of airing such a commercial is $10,000,000 US. The estimated cost of following cleanup is well above 1000 times of cost of the commercial. Authorities across the world are currently pleading with Olympics organizers to prevent a disaster from happening. Olympics organizers, unfortunately, are claiming that they are simply businessmen and do anything for appropriate price.
m
The Blue Gene supercomputer uses SMT. Guess they don't just put multiple cores on a single chip :)
m
Testing is the easiest part. Verification is the difficulty here - how do you verify that you've eliminated all race conditions? The whole problem of the design is to eliminate any and all possible race conditions. Today they use two-rail logic (one wire for 0, one wire for 1) and completion circuitry to decide when a computation is finished and another can start executing in the same unit. CalTech has made a MIPS compatible processor that works (with no race condition problems).
m
Well, the truth is the distinction is not very clear. CS is supposed to look at a more theoretical part of the field (theory, graphics, algorithms, AI, etc) while CEng is supposed to look at more practical topics (compilers, databases, operating systems, cpu designs). The bottom line is that whichever you do, there is a significant cross over.
If you are a CEng student and an employer is only looking for CS students, then they either have a very good reason (unlikely, unless you're going to a 'think tank' environment) or they don't really know what they want. Most employers will look at both CS and CEng students.
At my undergrad institution, there were many professors who were in one deparament and affiliated with the other (CS and CEng). In my new school, we don't even have a real CEng departament. There is a Systems group in CS departament (which is where I am).
Good luck with your applications.
m
Vanu is trying to write software that will be able to decode anything from walkie-talkies to cell phones to analog tv signals to HDTV signals. I've seen their demo recently and it was quite impressive.
www.vanu.com
m
ps. I do not work for Vanu and have nothing to gain or loose from their raise or demaise.
(I wonder what it costs to look at the Windows source.)
Your soul
m
As somebody pointed out, the reason the author was contacted is because the hardware started failing. But even if the hardware hadn't started failing, I'd be inclined to port the software to some other platform. What happens when your tape gets eaten up? You tape player fails? The teletype machine breaks?
There's a thousand ways this setup can break, and replacing/repairing this stuff may be more difficult (today) than it would be to replace/repair a 486 with a CD-ROM (for storing the program, much more durable than tapes).
m
Get the kid to study music. It's been shown that study of music increases ability to learn. Most of the people in my engineering undergrad program had some sort of music training. I think it enhances intuition - music is not rigorous, it's not right or wrong, but it still can be good or bad. You have to feel it. Intuition is similar - while it can be right or wrong, it's mostly difficult to understand exactly why it goes one way or the other.
If you're not qualified to teach the kid music, talk to the parents, maybe they can find somebody to give him/her some music lessons.
m
I'd like to eventually get into nanotechnology
I hope you know that teaching nanotechnology isn't talking about nanotechnology. It's a field of science (engineering), like any others. If you haven't done graduate studies in string theory, you probably won't be able to teach it. If you haven't done graduate studies in biomedical engineering, you probably won't be able to teach it. If you haven't done graduate studies in nanotechnology, you probably won't be able to teach it.
So stick to what you know. If it's nanotechnology, then go ahead. But other fields that are starting to become edge-breaking suggests to me that you're just throwing buzzwords around, looking for topics.
Oh, and taking the kid outside and having some fun other than academic won't hurt either (as has been pointed out MANY times before).
m
It's probably a nice idea, but probably won't work. If it's used as a warning, people will still run the programs (that's how initial e-mail viruses spread anyway). If it stops all non-signed programs from running, people will turn it off. If they can't turn it off, they'll hate it so much, MS will change it back or give them an option.
This does raise an interesting issue. I think Java has so far given the best method to protect yourself against programs wrecking havoc on your computer - verifiability of code that doesn't do 'bad things'.
m
According to CNN, on presidential elections:
Under New Mexico law, if the candidates end up tied, the winner could be determined by having the two men sit for a hand of poker -- with the state going to the winner.
New Mexico statute requires that in case of a tie, "the determination as to which of the candidates shall be declared to have been nominated or elected shall be decided by lot." In practice, the usual method for this rare event has been to play one hand of five-card poker.
This was last done in December 1999, in a local judge's race. Republican Jim Blanq and Democrat Lena Milligan played one hand of poker in a courthouse with dozens of people watching, and Blanq won.
I'd like to be the dealer for that game!
m
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/14Guess NSA can't crack RSA yet, or they wouldn't be interested in this technology :)
m
If any conessions to non-Free mode of thought is a failure and defeat then what is the purpose of LGPL?
m
Is it me or does this ad admit that open operating systems have advantages?
m
A process or a method by which a chemical element/physical particle or a compound is delivered to a complicated mechanical/biological/electronic structure. Process involves binding of the said element or compound with other elements and/or compounds, which in turn are distributed throughout the said structure and deposited at their destination. The chamicals being distributed and the carrier elements/compounds may be in form of liquid/powder/plasma or any other suitable state.
In other words, most chem processes, including breathing.
m
they only get paid by the employees on stock options they get. Why should the company get to pay no taxes in return? They didn't give employees anything! Even the article says, THE SHAREHOLDERS are splitting their shares with the employees, the company LOOSES NOTHING!
And to anybody who thinks corporations shouldn't pay taxes, think again. The reason we pay taxes is so we can have a government that will create some sort of infrastructure in which its citizens can live and do business. So if corporations don't pay taxes, they shouldn't have access to useful governmental things, like courts, police, roads, and whatever else they're using. Let's see where hi-tech companies would be if they couldn't hire anybody who went to a public school or used healthcare...
m
Look people, Student Visas are part of a foreign affairs agenda which believes that by helping other countries become better, that we become a better global society. I fully support this, and have no problem with that.
You seem to be very naive. The whole purpose of bringing bright students from other countries to US is to get them educated and ready to support US economy. They come here, they learn, maybe do some research (grad students), and then they become productive members of US society. Reason they do it? US can't educate enough people in lower levels of education, send them to their colleges and fill those high-tech jobs. I know, 'cause at my school in my departament every other student is from outside US. My two roommates are from outside, and two out of three of my office mates are from outside. So am I.
US doesn't care about other countries, if it doesn't benefit US.
m
I don't see how this could be stopped, unless you forbid running of GPL software on non-GPL systems.
Solaris is compiled without including GPL code (presumably), so these drivers are trully running as stand-alone programs. They just call some built-in kernel functions provided by libraries from the kit.
Besides, why is this so wrong? One person writes a driver which is intended for Linux and somebody else uses a compiler to compile the driver and run it on Solaris. Cygwin allows you to compile *nix programs under Windows and run them natively. Nobody is making a big deal about that.
m
I don't think Apple would have a huge problem if porting to x86 only meant competing with Microsoft. Worst case scenario, nobody would buy MacOSX for x86.
I actually think they could do well against Microsoft on x86 platform. One of the reasons Apple never took off like Microsoft did is because if you buy a Mac, you're stuck with MacOS (or some *nix, which isn't acceptable for most people). If you could buy an x86 machine with MacOSX many people would try it out. They can always buy Windows and install if over MacOSX.
Real reason Apple doesn't want to port to x86 is because x86 hardware is cheaper and so Apple would loose their main business, which is hardware.
My question is why didn't Microsoft port Windows to the Mac yet?
m