Seriously speaking, what percentage of parents are terrified of social networking sites these days? I remember back in the 90s when everybody thought the internet was out to seduce and corrupt their children, but this is 2007. You can find worse things in google than found on most social networking sites. So how many people are really still afraid of these mysterious-yet-elusive "internet predators"?
A simple example is to ask yourself how many times that you had to learn that fire is hot? An AI system may have to learn this every time that you turn it on.
I think the estimates we saw in class a year ago was that this could explain from 10% to maybe 30% of the heating that has happened in the last 30 years.
Does this estimate of 10% to 30% due to cosmic rays include or not include a positive feedback due to water vapor?
It's not the cost of the wafer itself. It's the fact that hundreds of fabrication steps have to be applied individually to each wafer. So the cost of each fabrication step is roughly multiplied by the number of wafers you need to process. Fewer wafers allow for lower costs.
But are those costs equal for the 45nm versus 65nm versions?
Just moving the chip from 65 nm to 45 nm means you can produce twice as much on the same silicon wafer. Also, if a 65 nm chip performs well, then a 45 nm version of it (with slight modifications of course) will work even better.
But how much does this really affect the retail price of a cpu? From randomly googling around, it looks like silicon wafer cost only translates to a dollar or two per cpu, so who cares if they can drop this expense by half? Surely other factors would be more important for cost, such as design expense, manufacturing time, and the cost of the fabrication equipment (which would increase if more manufacturing units are needed due to longer manufacturing time).
Power loss and speed seem to be complicated things, and I really doubt this continues to get better as the fabrication process keeps going to infinitesimally small sizes. It seems to be getting hard to keep the electrons confined at these small sizes, and that's going to have to start having a dominant negative impact at some point.
You cannot prove innocence. That's why our verdicts are "guilty" and "not guilty".
Actually, you can, and there is historical precedent for this. When DNA tests became available, many people who were previously found "guilty" by the courts were able to prove their innocence with the use of a DNA test on evidence that was previously used for the conviction.
(If you want to substitute "prove their not-guiltiness", feel free.)
Well, as a fundamental principle there cannot really be an open source program which supports digital rights restriction (because someone can just remove it). So either they must be willing to accept standard convenient file formats which do not include rights restrictions, or they have to use a closed-source program which does. As far as I know, the number of closed-source media players on Linux is fairly small.
Of course, the ideal solution is for public libraries to simply use standard file formats. Perhaps they could simply watermark the videos with your library card number and send them in standard format.
People should be forced to go to the library to check out media.
Not that this will be the primary group of people interested in this service, but what about the elderly and disabled? It seems to me that they would find access to their local public library from their own home to be a valuable service. People who can't walk or drive to the library might still like to read books or watch movies from their library.
Leave doing it from the comfort of your own home is for the weak.
Or written more responsibly, the weak can still do it from the comfort of their home.
I tried going through it manually, and then noticed there were countless emails, most of which were boring. A much better approach is to google through the emails for keywords like this.
In doing so, I noticed the first hit is a document outlining their strategy for partially breaking networking compatibility with Linux. "Our Linux Strategy"
Another document from January of '99 describes Linux's greatest strength over NT as its flexibility, and its greatest weakness as its ease of use (although nearly every usage problem specifically mentioned no longer applies in modern Linux distributions). It also describes two of their worst-case scenarios being that IBM and Sun adopt Linux. One quote of interest is, "There is the very real long term threat that as MS expends the development dollars to create a bevy of new features in NT, Linux will simply cherry pick the best features an [sic] incorporate them into their codebase. The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated."
I am getting sick of *cough*democrats*cough* always complaining about voting systems.
If you're not concerned with the system by which votes are counted, then you clearly have no interest in continuing to live in a democracy.
If small groups of individuals are given the capability to significantly manipulate the vote results, then it will not take long to turn a democracy into a dictatorship.
As other people have pointed out, there is a compromise position: you could have electronic consoles to actually enter the vote, but which produce a paper receipt that's then put into a scanner to be counted. That way you get basically all the advantages of e-voting, with the benefits of optical-scan, but without having to have voters actually write anything on the cards. (Because, apparently, as a society we are incapable of writing and following simple instructions anymore. Not that this surprises me.)
Woah woah woah, hold on a second there. This is a seriously bad idea, and only gives a false sense of security. Electronic machines which tally an optically scanned ballot are JUST as exploitable as electronic machines which tally the buttons pressed on a touchscreen. (I suggest looking up the demonstrated exploits in existing optical scan machines, such as the pre-vote memory card compromise.)
If you want to combine the best of both worlds, you have to do it right. A vote can be entered electronically, but then it must be printed on a paper ballot which is reviewed by the voter before accepting. The paper ballot must then be declared THE official record in all cases of dispute. The vote can be tallied electronically by the machine it was initially entered into, but it must be immediately audited that night at each polling site by counting at least a set percentage (between 10% and 100%) of all paper ballots printed at that location, chosen completely at random. Any statistically significant difference between the paper audit and the electronic count should trigger a full paper ballot count (and if it happens repeatedly, an investigation).
The reason why we allow private entities to commercialize the results of federally-funded research is because the previous situation was so bad -- useful research was just sitting in labs because nobody could make any money off it.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe that a patent is required to make use of this research. The only thing required is that it be made public. A centralized repository of such research would do the job nicely.
It is true that there are many undesired patents, but the grandparent is correct. Most research simply requires work BEYOND what is done by public funds, because there is a significant degree of work between a thing working for research purposes, and working smoothly enough to sell in volume. A patent often provides an incentive for a company to devote large amounts of material and labor to bridging this gap, and it helps them recover their investment from doing this.
Now it is certainly possible to have a working system without such patents, but not with our current funding practices. Right now, work is usually only funded if it is novel, and work after novel and up to practical is not funded because it is cheaper for the government to push this expense toward industry with the promise of a patent. To bypass this step without having technology rot in the labs, government research funds would have to be substantially increased and would have to include the funding of practical implementation development. This would have a number of advantages for accessibility, as have been mentioned elsewhere here, but it would require an additional expense which no one is currently putting forward.
If modern [fluorescent] bulbs bother you, than a CRT would certainly bother you.
Yes, and yes some do.
With modern fluorescent bulbs, there is no reason not to use them.
Sure, if you pretend that everybody else who is bothered by them is imagining it, then there are no problems. Oorrr, you could try believing people instead of dismissing them just because you don't notice it.
It's also important to realize that this metric is just for Fedora Core 6, not "all instances of Fedora 1-6".
Precisely. The first thing I thought is that these numbers will be really insightful after they're collected for a year or two, and if many of the other major Linux update sources start collecting them as well.
In any market calculation, a Linux Laptop gets counted twice. You usually can't buy a good Linux Laptop without getting Windows and a bunch of adware pre-installed on it. Every single laptop I've purchased in the last 6 or 7 years came with Windows, but in every case, I only bought laptops with hardware which worked under Linux, since that's what I really want to run. Statistically speaking, a market analysis would show this as one purchase of Windows and one Linux user, when really the presence or absence of Linux support forms the entirety of my purchase decision.
So yes, market share analysis is missing a bit of information due to the constraints of how hardware is currently purchased.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously speaking, what percentage of parents are terrified of social networking sites these days? I remember back in the 90s when everybody thought the internet was out to seduce and corrupt their children, but this is 2007. You can find worse things in google than found on most social networking sites. So how many people are really still afraid of these mysterious-yet-elusive "internet predators"?
The same way it happened the first time. Evolve it.
Run it on a Dell laptop. It will learn faster.
Does this estimate of 10% to 30% due to cosmic rays include or not include a positive feedback due to water vapor?
Stop that...
But are those costs equal for the 45nm versus 65nm versions?
But how much does this really affect the retail price of a cpu? From randomly googling around, it looks like silicon wafer cost only translates to a dollar or two per cpu, so who cares if they can drop this expense by half? Surely other factors would be more important for cost, such as design expense, manufacturing time, and the cost of the fabrication equipment (which would increase if more manufacturing units are needed due to longer manufacturing time).
Power loss and speed seem to be complicated things, and I really doubt this continues to get better as the fabrication process keeps going to infinitesimally small sizes. It seems to be getting hard to keep the electrons confined at these small sizes, and that's going to have to start having a dominant negative impact at some point.
Actually, you can, and there is historical precedent for this. When DNA tests became available, many people who were previously found "guilty" by the courts were able to prove their innocence with the use of a DNA test on evidence that was previously used for the conviction.
(If you want to substitute "prove their not-guiltiness", feel free.)
This of course is a perfect example of where it actually IS appropriate to point a torch.
slashdot/slashdot was already registered and working by the time I got there.
Well, as a fundamental principle there cannot really be an open source program which supports digital rights restriction (because someone can just remove it). So either they must be willing to accept standard convenient file formats which do not include rights restrictions, or they have to use a closed-source program which does. As far as I know, the number of closed-source media players on Linux is fairly small.
Of course, the ideal solution is for public libraries to simply use standard file formats. Perhaps they could simply watermark the videos with your library card number and send them in standard format.
"The Dutch interior ministry already warned that it will no longer allow clowns' faces on passports."
:)
Hahahah. That should go on a quote board somewhere.
I tried going through it manually, and then noticed there were countless emails, most of which were boring. A much better approach is to google through the emails for keywords like this.
In doing so, I noticed the first hit is a document outlining their strategy for partially breaking networking compatibility with Linux. "Our Linux Strategy"
Another document from January of '99 describes Linux's greatest strength over NT as its flexibility, and its greatest weakness as its ease of use (although nearly every usage problem specifically mentioned no longer applies in modern Linux distributions). It also describes two of their worst-case scenarios being that IBM and Sun adopt Linux. One quote of interest is, "There is the very real long term threat that as MS expends the development dollars to create a bevy of new features in NT, Linux will simply cherry pick the best features an [sic] incorporate them into their codebase. The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated."
If small groups of individuals are given the capability to significantly manipulate the vote results, then it will not take long to turn a democracy into a dictatorship.
If you want to combine the best of both worlds, you have to do it right. A vote can be entered electronically, but then it must be printed on a paper ballot which is reviewed by the voter before accepting. The paper ballot must then be declared THE official record in all cases of dispute. The vote can be tallied electronically by the machine it was initially entered into, but it must be immediately audited that night at each polling site by counting at least a set percentage (between 10% and 100%) of all paper ballots printed at that location, chosen completely at random. Any statistically significant difference between the paper audit and the electronic count should trigger a full paper ballot count (and if it happens repeatedly, an investigation).
Now it is certainly possible to have a working system without such patents, but not with our current funding practices. Right now, work is usually only funded if it is novel, and work after novel and up to practical is not funded because it is cheaper for the government to push this expense toward industry with the promise of a patent. To bypass this step without having technology rot in the labs, government research funds would have to be substantially increased and would have to include the funding of practical implementation development. This would have a number of advantages for accessibility, as have been mentioned elsewhere here, but it would require an additional expense which no one is currently putting forward.
In any market calculation, a Linux Laptop gets counted twice. You usually can't buy a good Linux Laptop without getting Windows and a bunch of adware pre-installed on it. Every single laptop I've purchased in the last 6 or 7 years came with Windows, but in every case, I only bought laptops with hardware which worked under Linux, since that's what I really want to run. Statistically speaking, a market analysis would show this as one purchase of Windows and one Linux user, when really the presence or absence of Linux support forms the entirety of my purchase decision.
So yes, market share analysis is missing a bit of information due to the constraints of how hardware is currently purchased.