You know, it *does* take engineering effort to make something good. Intel's *problem* is that they're made to be cheap. If you want something good, it comes out of someone's pocket. What's so unreasonable about $2000 for a kickass G4 system anyway? Sure, if you want to really crank it, you can spend a lot more, but you clearly want a compromise between cheap and good. Or you could get a low-end G3 and overclock the fucker till it's blue in the face. Oh, wait; it already is. My old beige G3 233 runs happily at 300MHz. I'd overclock it more, but a) I don't need to (compiling is more or less instantaneous), and b) I like it a whole lot and don't want to fuck it up.
From the article: "As one member of EIQC, who wished to remain anonymous, predicts: 'While quantum computers may be some time off, when they are available no communication will be secure unless it is quantum.'"
This is just very, very bad journalism. Someone worked out a theory on paper and this newspaper thought it would be cool to say that it was already done. No one ever reads those big, thick journals, anyway, right?
No, there is no evidence here that this actually happened. I have friends who are working hard on making Q-computing real. As far as I know, they're all still using Sparcs and Macs, not Fairydust TWINKLE Imaginary machines. In all benchmarks I've seen, real computers completely outperforms imaginary hardware.
I just hit/. to ask for advice for building a machine, and I see this, and I think, well, wood's a lousy material for a case, but what the hell, I'll look, but the site's a joke and it would be more funny if the site didn't take so long to load, and then I thought to come back to/. and ask:
Where can one get PMac motherboards? I want to build a machine, but no one seems to want to sell just a motherboard.
If nanotechnology is freely available, the first thing to be produced would be immune systems to keep this from happening. Don't get me wrong: I don't have enough faith in every human on the planet to say that no one will die; in fact, I have the faith in every human to say that somebody's a nast bastard and will kill a lot of people. But I don't see anyone producing chlorine gas in large quantities even though it's easy as fuck to produce and very poisonous. Most people just aren't that mean, and those that are, well, we can defend ourselves if it's kept out of exclusive hands.
Law is often about precedent. In about 2 minutes, I found these PSX emulators for Wintel:
http://www.rollanet.org/~khigh/emulator.htm
I don't see what Sony can stand on in this. What patent are they claiming has been infringed? Or are they just trying to microsoft away Connectix's money by tangling them in red tape?
No, only if the "proprietary information" was patented. You can reverse engineer all you like. It's perfectly legal. It probably just voids the warranty. Which I don't think was their concern. Obviously, if they broke into Sony and stole ROMS or something, that would be illegal, but that's not what happened. They obviously just reverse engineered the thing. The only available avenue of attack is to prove that the Connectix ware makes the same virtual machine as the Playstation itself, as far as I can see (though IANAL).
This isn't a matter of whether Sony is making money, it's not a matter of whether Sony did it first even, and it's not a matter of Connectix "stealing" someone else's idea. It's a matter of law. If Sony hold patents that were infringed (and I kinda doubt there are any in this case).
The possible routes of attack on this are: Trademark infringement (does Connectix blur the line between Sony and Connectix?), Copyright infringement (Do they use any Sony code?), or patent infringement (Does Connectix use any machinery patented by Sony?).
On the first, Conncectix makes no use of the Sony or Playstation name. On the second, I doubt they use any Sony code, since it's written for a PPC. On the third, there's no machinery at all. The only precedent I know of (granted, I'm no lawyer), is that, legally speaking, software makes a machine of the processor. But it can't possibly be the same machine as the Playstation because it's a different processor, although I suppose arguments could be made here.
Personally, I think Sony should support the product. I'd like to see a Sony/Apple/Connectix triumvirate. That would produce some neat stuff. No stepped-on toes that way.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, it *does* take engineering effort to make something good. Intel's *problem* is that they're made to be cheap. If you want something good, it comes out of someone's pocket. What's so unreasonable about $2000 for a kickass G4 system anyway? Sure, if you want to really crank it, you can spend a lot more, but you clearly want a compromise between cheap and good. Or you could get a low-end G3 and overclock the fucker till it's blue in the face. Oh, wait; it already is. My old beige G3 233 runs happily at 300MHz. I'd overclock it more, but a) I don't need to (compiling is more or less instantaneous), and b) I like it a whole lot and don't want to fuck it up.
From the article: "As one member of EIQC, who wished to remain anonymous, predicts: 'While quantum computers may be some time off, when they are available no communication will be secure unless it is quantum.'"
This is just very, very bad journalism. Someone worked out a theory on paper and this newspaper thought it would be cool to say that it was already done. No one ever reads those big, thick journals, anyway, right?
No, there is no evidence here that this actually happened. I have friends who are working hard on making Q-computing real. As far as I know, they're all still using Sparcs and Macs, not Fairydust TWINKLE Imaginary machines. In all benchmarks I've seen, real computers completely outperforms imaginary hardware.
I just hit /. to ask for advice for building a machine, and I see this, and I think, well, wood's a lousy material for a case, but what the hell, I'll look, but the site's a joke and it would be more funny if the site didn't take so long to load, and then I thought to come back to /. and ask:
Where can one get PMac motherboards? I want to build a machine, but no one seems to want to sell just a motherboard.
-Little Nickie Telsa
If nanotechnology is freely available, the first thing to be produced would be immune systems to keep this from happening. Don't get me wrong: I don't have enough faith in every human on the planet to say that no one will die; in fact, I have the faith in every human to say that somebody's a nast bastard and will kill a lot of people. But I don't see anyone producing chlorine gas in large quantities even though it's easy as fuck to produce and very poisonous. Most people just aren't that mean, and those that are, well, we can defend ourselves if it's kept out of exclusive hands.
-Tesla
Law is often about precedent. In about 2 minutes, I found these PSX emulators for Wintel:
http://www.rollanet.org/~khigh/emulator.htm
I don't see what Sony can stand on in this. What patent are they claiming has been infringed? Or are they just trying to microsoft away Connectix's money by tangling them in red tape?
-Tesla
It was cracked by the time I found a copy.
-Tesla
No, only if the "proprietary information" was patented. You can reverse engineer all you like. It's perfectly legal. It probably just voids the warranty. Which I don't think was their concern. Obviously, if they broke into Sony and stole ROMS or something, that would be illegal, but that's not what happened. They obviously just reverse engineered the thing. The only available avenue of attack is to prove that the Connectix ware makes the same virtual machine as the Playstation itself, as far as I can see (though IANAL).
I don't think that's gonna happen.
-Tesla
This isn't a matter of whether Sony is making money, it's not a matter of whether Sony did it first even, and it's not a matter of Connectix "stealing" someone else's idea. It's a matter of law. If Sony hold patents that were infringed (and I kinda doubt there are any in this case).
The possible routes of attack on this are: Trademark infringement (does Connectix blur the line between Sony and Connectix?), Copyright infringement (Do they use any Sony code?), or patent infringement (Does Connectix use any machinery patented by Sony?).
On the first, Conncectix makes no use of the Sony or Playstation name. On the second, I doubt they use any Sony code, since it's written for a PPC. On the third, there's no machinery at all. The only precedent I know of (granted, I'm no lawyer), is that, legally speaking, software makes a machine of the processor. But it can't possibly be the same machine as the Playstation because it's a different processor, although I suppose arguments could be made here.
Personally, I think Sony should support the product. I'd like to see a Sony/Apple/Connectix triumvirate. That would produce some neat stuff. No stepped-on toes that way.
-Tesla