And you know what? It isn't a crime to allow it. As long as a public research or education institute uses federal money in their respective stem cell programs, they are limited to a small set of approved cell-lines. What they choose to do with their own private money is their own damn business.
The voting public apparently agrees that federal money should be restricted; if there really was any strong opposition, then the results of November's election would have shown otherwise.
Sounds interesting, maybe HP/Compaq should consider trying it this Christmas. I hear that they're going to have a lot of computers sitting around idle...
Re:Still can't figure out how it works...
on
Optical Camouflage
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
When you watch football, and you see the yellow line drawn on the screen, do you wonder why it looks like it goes under their feet and not through their bodies? Think of it the same way the local weatherman stands in front of the map... real-time color analysis/replacement.
1. Take a picture of the background. 2. Put an object in front of the camera, painted with an obviously different color than the objects in the background. 3. Profit... no wait, I mean... using a computer, replace all the pixels of that special color with the pixels of the background image, and you have modern television overlays. 4. But this only works through a video feed; to move into real-space, you need a video projector. Take the image with the special color, and use it as a mask... the image will only shine where the special color exists, and not shine where it doesn't. That's how they get the projector to not shine on the hands. 5. Note that their special color is silver; like a white screen, a sufficiently light color such that color projected on it will appear. Viola!
Is it time to add Amazon to the/etc/hosts.deny file?
If you're a member company, employing Amazon's services, then in my opinion you should be responsible for providing Amazon with the links you want Amazon to vend, not that Amazon should crawl through your site for your pricing information...
Thanks, I think I'll check that out... on another note, the Gateway series by Fredrick Pohl (writeup) deals with a lot of the same topics... not as much in the first book, but the "computerized human" idea really takes off in the second book... the series is a quick read, but I enjoyed it.
Ok, take a step back for a second. An artificial intelligence is essentially code running in a state machine... heck, "threads" of code running in an asynchronous processor pretty much defines biological life too, doesn't it? The difference is that we have a top-down design control with AI that we don't have with biology (yet). The meta-question that we haven't answered yet is: Is the intelligence in the code being run, or is it in the processor running the code?
Let me throw some more questions into the mix:
Suppose you can save the "state" of every variable in the process, and write it to disk. Does your AI "die" if you halt the processor, or does it "pause"? If you reload from disk, the AI has no sense of time loss... from its internal viewpoint, no time has elapsed between processor clock ticks.
Is "death" now defined as never re-executing the code? Or, if the AI has the ability to move its code stream from one processor to another, do we say that the entity "moved", or that the original stream "died" and a second one was "born" on the new process... because in theory, the original code can keep processing after forking the copy to the 2nd processor...
Now save the state, launch a second processor from the same data while executing the 1st... you've just cloned the AI. What would happen if you bring AI(original) to meet AI(clone)? Unlike biological replicants, there is no "age" difference between the copies, and a 100% history/memory duplication.. what kind of psychological damage will occur?
Assume a human programmer writes the initial code, and pipes it into the processor, and through self-modification, the AI drifts from the original specs. Should the human be paid for running the processor, or should the human be paid for the original code?
If an AI earns money for playing games, should it pay for the processor time that keeps it alive? After all, humans work, then go to the grocery store to pay for food that keeps our bodies going...
And lastly, I heard a different version of your closing quote... Ancient Chinese Curse: May you live in interesting times.:)
I try to be fair to these companies, but the salmon on doubt keeps nibbling on my toes... For a thought experiment, suppose California's e-Waste bill goes through, and suddenly the responsibility for disposal is removed from the consumer?
First, I won't be surprised if California signs this one, as it would clear the State from the costs of disposal, clearing up lots of tax dollars for the other social programs in their nearly-bankrupt budget. The Politicians can then say, look at all the money this bill saved!
Second, I don't see "distributor" named, I see "manufacturer". With a quick Google search, I can see that Hewlet Packard happens to own advanced supply-chain-management software, where HP can purchase cheap parts from other manufacturers, put them in their machines, then scoot them out the door. Quote: "A plastic printer cover, for example, may start its life overseas as goop at a resin manufacturer, which works with a plastics compounder to provide the material to an injection molder. That injection molder, in turn, sells its finished parts to a manufacturer, which puts the product together for HP."
Wouldn't you think that since HP out-sources so much of their manufacturing, what's to stop them from saying, "I didn't manufacture this, our records show Wang's Plastics did, so it's their responsibility to manage disposal!" HP, and all the other big "Silicon Valley" computer companies will just pass the buck back to the original manufacturer, HP will keep their profits, and the little supplier will be hosed.
In my opinion, the "observer" does not have to be sentient. To me, an observer is an outside object, animate or inanimate, that is affected by the outcome of an event between other objects.
What was Heisenberg's theory? You can know position or you can know velocity, but you cannot determine both at the same time without some uncertainty. So, either your system is affected by the velocity of a wave (with light, velocity & energy dictates wavelength) or by the position (distance & mass dictates gravity).
In my opinion, this must work for gravity, because objects are interlinked over large distances, and therefore positions & mass must relate to the observer in some way, because the observing object is always drawn towards the mass. I can't think of any known formulas where velocity of an object creates a gravity well, only mass. On the flip side, because of the light refraction experiments we know that photon positions can vary within the bounds of uncertainty. But, there are many people far smarter than I who like to think about these things, so I'll leave it to them to resolve the details:)
One of the first things to come out of NASA after Bush took over was to focus on Mars again... a much loftier goal with some actual gains to be had.
I'd rather that they can the political abortion that the ISS has become... a cost-overrun political appeasement project solely designed to boost Clinton's foreign policy appearance... and all it got us was a hole in the wallet, rocket designs delievered to the Chinese, and a new foreign aid program for Russia.
America is not suffering from a lack of vision; it is suffering from a lack of results, a plague of soured "return on investments". It's one thing to have lofty goals, but it is quite another to spend without purpose.
Why was the ISS built? Was it so NASA scientists could perform all of these hi-tech crystal expieriments & gravity tests? NASA lists a set of reasons here. Some goals are noble... "To create a permanent orbiting science institute in space capable of performing long-duration research in the materials and life sciences areas in a nearly gravity-free environment", "To conduct medical research in space", "To develop new materials and processes in collaboration with industry"
No, why was it really built? Two more "reasons" are more ominous (and really, the only goals that suceeded). "To forge new partnerships with the nations of the world." and "To sustain and strengthen the United States' strongest export sector-aerospace technology-which in 1995 exceeded $33 billion." In retrospect, we now know that that "export sector" was selling long range rocket diagrams & targeting systems to the Chinese, some of the more ethically dubious actions of the Clinton administration. ISS was a shortcut for the US government to funnel money out to other First World nations, which bloated the national budget and artifically increased our Gross Domestic Product... a surprising correlation to Wall Street's activities over the same time period.
So, where is America's spirit of exporation today? In my opinion, it's not outward to the stars, but inward... the Internet. We're working to build a world of interconnected services, where a doctor can telemeter themselves accross the country to perform operations, or have digital paper, or communicate in virtual worlds (EverQuest & now the Sims Online). Each new network discovery has the same effect as throwing another satelite in space, for a much smaller cost.
What will it take to rekindle the spirit to go to space? Money. Show me where I can make a profit, when the transportation costs are negligible, or maybe asteroid mining to find pure crystals of metal, or terraforming... this time around, it's not government that's going to have to lead the way.
The Thanksgiving holiday (a United States holiday dedictated to giving thanks for the harvest) occurs every year on the last Thursday in November. The following day (Friday) is normally a work holiday, so that workers can have a 4 day weekend. So, having that friday as a holiday means a lot of people have the day off with nothing to do, so they go out shopping.
In the past, that was also the day when stores would bring out their Christmas merchandise; that is why Santa rides in the Thanksgiving parades, to symbolize the arrival of the Chrismas season. Of course today, Chrismas shopping begins October 14th, don't ask me why.
On top of that, stores now offer many sales that day, so it draws out more people to go shopping. When people shop, they buy, which means earnings for the stores. When a business is balancing their accounting, the term "in the red" means that they are losing money, and "in the black" indicates that the business is profitable. Over this weekend, many department stores do so much business they go from losses to profit, thus they are now "in the black", which results in the name... Black Friday.
The new International Spy Museum in Washington DC has a very nice walk-through of photos taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis... 3 foot tall pictures show the (before and after) construction of facilities on the island.
Combined with intelligence information about a shipment of material on route to Cuba made, they make a very telling case for why the blockade was ordered. My parents claim that the US was never closer to nuclear war than on that day, and the museum does a very good job of putting the story together. I'd definitely recommend a trip.
My friends and I are involved in governmental and utility-type industries, from the Navy to Bulk Power to the NSA. We all read Slashdot, we all worry about the average person's right to get our data, because we're counted among that average. It is a little pretentious of you to say it's an "Us vs Them" battle, when the Them are citizens just like You.
Do I think the agencies needs oversight? Hell yea! But, I also believe my employer has the right to protect its assets (including its employees), and if that means taking the road maps off of the internet for fear of attack, then so be it. We need to Watch the Watchers, as the saying goes, and its time for our generation to step up into politics and demand our elected officials to provide accountability.
every time the IT staff goes to make an upgrade on the server. That's the problem with having one site that houses all of the applications; when that site is down, everything is down. RAID drives are ok for individual redundancy, until there's a glitch and the motherboard melts (happened at my company), then you better hope you have backup hardware in the closet (which they didn't).
It only takes one misconfigured router in the right place to knock out a whole company. If IBM has their way, one operator error could take down a city.
The problem here is that Financial data with the Company's credentials are being released to the Public, at a time not of the Company's choosing.
If the person who discovered the information kept it private, but made stock trades with the Company, we call that Insider Trading, and the person would face jail time. In this case, the person discovered the file, and released it under the guise of being "official", simply because it was located on (a non-referenced portion of) the Company's site. In effect, Reuters was pretending it was an official release.
A secondary problem is that a production system (the external web) is being treated as a test environment, by loading data into the folders but not linking to them. Anything on a production system can be accessed by anyone, and if the Company was not ready for that data to be accessed, then it shouldn't have been placed on the server until the minute they were ready to release.
Here's another scenario: Suppose a week ago, the Company began setting up for their earnings report. They put a copy of their earnings on the web, but did not link to it. In the mean time, the data became stale because of an error discovered in accounting. The file was not updated, because it is not linked to, so the world does not know it exists. Reuters now guesses the file, and publishes the link. The data is an unauthorized release of stale data, but it is being published by a source claiming it is official data. Outside investors would see the stale data, and would make costly financial decisions based on the (unknowingly false) data. The Company's stock could plummit, and severe losses could ensue. Plus, under recent disclosure laws, the Company's CEO could face stiff fines/jail for falsifying data.
So, both groups are guilty, the webmasters for not securing the data, and Reuters for unauthorized disclosure. I agree they should be sued, not for the simple act of "linking", but for falsifying the announcement of an earnings report, and let the SEC sort this one out.
The explorer part of me is saying, "Yay! It's about time we started building more structures in space. The Lagrange point would make a good neutral spot halfway to the moon." But then the realist in me says, "Given that NASA has proven that it can't stick to a budget, how much is this overrun going to cost?" And the article agrees with me.
Government is not the answer to promoting outer space as a new resource -- market forces have shown to be the driving force in all new ventures. We need competition in getting things into orbit, tourism to build hotels, industry to build fab plants, mining on the moon...
While we're on the tack of old science fiction, I vaguely remember a short story from my middle school years, so let me paraphrase:
Old Man "Bob" is wheelchaired into the waiting room of the hospital, where we find the rest of his family dressed in black, obviously in mourning. "Why is everyone so sad" he asks. "We just came from your funeral."
You see, "Bob" had a stroke, and died, however thanks to recent technology, he was able to save a copy of his brain about 3 months prior. The doctors cloned his old body, reloaded the brain. Of course the tech doesn't copy that well, so the life expentancy of the replacement is about a month because of cancers, but its enough time for the family to "bring back the dead", so they can all say their goodbyes in a way they couldn't the first time around. The only problem is that "Bob+1" didn't know he was only a copy, destined to die (again)...
The root problem is data transfer within the CPU, not data transfer between I/O devices.
The clock speed (now >10E9 Hz) is the upper limit of your chip's ability to move a voltage signal around the chip. Modern CPUs are "staged" designs, where data is basically broken into an opcode "decode" stage, "register load", "operation", and "register unload" stages. For a given stage, you cannot clock the output of the stage faster than the time it takes for the computations to complete, or you're basically outputting garble.
A synchronous design indicates that every flip-flop on the chip is tied to the same clock signal, which can mean one HUGE amount of wiring just to get everything running at the same speed, which raises costs. On top of that, you have charging effects due to the switching between HI and LO, which can cause voltage problems (which is why capacitors are added to CPUs) Then add resistive effects, where current becomes heat, and you run the risk of circuit damage. All of this puts some hard limits on how fast you can make a chip, and for what price.
Asynchronous chip design allows us to throw away the clock circuitry, and every stage boundary becomes status polling (are you done yet, are you done yet, ok, lets transfer the results). With proper design, you can save a lot of material, you can decouple the dependance of one stage on another, so the max instruction/second speed can now run at the raw rate of the material.
1. Your company produces media that is "harder" to copy, thus restricts fair use. 2. You wish to sell your protective media to technologically informed persons, who represent the greatest market share in the digital arena. 3. Technologically informed persons tend to digitally copy audio more than non-technological persons, thus consume more digital media. 4. Those that copy digitally tend to be pro-fair-use. 5. Those that are pro-fair-use tend to use media that does not restrict fair use, such as CDs, not DVDs.
Why do I think the makers of this format are in for a shock?
Slashdot Mirror
And you know what? It isn't a crime to allow it. As long as a public research or education institute uses federal money in their respective stem cell programs, they are limited to a small set of approved cell-lines. What they choose to do with their own private money is their own damn business.
The voting public apparently agrees that federal money should be restricted; if there really was any strong opposition, then the results of November's election would have shown otherwise.
Sounds interesting, maybe HP/Compaq should consider trying it this Christmas. I hear that they're going to have a lot of computers sitting around idle ...
When you watch football, and you see the yellow line drawn on the screen, do you wonder why it looks like it goes under their feet and not through their bodies? Think of it the same way the local weatherman stands in front of the map... real-time color analysis/replacement.
1. Take a picture of the background.
2. Put an object in front of the camera, painted with an obviously different color than the objects in the background.
3. Profit... no wait, I mean... using a computer, replace all the pixels of that special color with the pixels of the background image, and you have modern television overlays.
4. But this only works through a video feed; to move into real-space, you need a video projector. Take the image with the special color, and use it as a mask... the image will only shine where the special color exists, and not shine where it doesn't. That's how they get the projector to not shine on the hands.
5. Note that their special color is silver; like a white screen, a sufficiently light color such that color projected on it will appear. Viola!
Is it time to add Amazon to the /etc/hosts.deny file?
If you're a member company, employing Amazon's services, then in my opinion you should be responsible for providing Amazon with the links you want Amazon to vend, not that Amazon should crawl through your site for your pricing information...
Thanks, I think I'll check that out... on another note, the Gateway series by Fredrick Pohl (writeup) deals with a lot of the same topics... not as much in the first book, but the "computerized human" idea really takes off in the second book... the series is a quick read, but I enjoyed it.
Let me throw some more questions into the mix:
- Suppose you can save the "state" of every variable in the process, and write it to disk. Does your AI "die" if you halt the processor, or does it "pause"? If you reload from disk, the AI has no sense of time loss... from its internal viewpoint, no time has elapsed between processor clock ticks.
- Is "death" now defined as never re-executing the code? Or, if the AI has the ability to move its code stream from one processor to another, do we say that the entity "moved", or that the original stream "died" and a second one was "born" on the new process... because in theory, the original code can keep processing after forking the copy to the 2nd processor...
- Now save the state, launch a second processor from the same data while executing the 1st... you've just cloned the AI. What would happen if you bring AI(original) to meet AI(clone)? Unlike biological replicants, there is no "age" difference between the copies, and a 100% history/memory duplication.. what kind of psychological damage will occur?
- Assume a human programmer writes the initial code, and pipes it into the processor, and through self-modification, the AI drifts from the original specs. Should the human be paid for running the processor, or should the human be paid for the original code?
- If an AI earns money for playing games, should it pay for the processor time that keeps it alive? After all, humans work, then go to the grocery store to pay for food that keeps our bodies going...
And lastly, I heard a different version of your closing quote... Ancient Chinese Curse: May you live in interesting times.So I guess nambla.kids.us is right out?
I try to be fair to these companies, but the salmon on doubt keeps nibbling on my toes... For a thought experiment, suppose California's e-Waste bill goes through, and suddenly the responsibility for disposal is removed from the consumer?
First, I won't be surprised if California signs this one, as it would clear the State from the costs of disposal, clearing up lots of tax dollars for the other social programs in their nearly-bankrupt budget. The Politicians can then say, look at all the money this bill saved!
Second, I don't see "distributor" named, I see "manufacturer". With a quick Google search, I can see that Hewlet Packard happens to own advanced supply-chain-management software, where HP can purchase cheap parts from other manufacturers, put them in their machines, then scoot them out the door. Quote: "A plastic printer cover, for example, may start its life overseas as goop at a resin manufacturer, which works with a plastics compounder to provide the material to an injection molder. That injection molder, in turn, sells its finished parts to a manufacturer, which puts the product together for HP."
Wouldn't you think that since HP out-sources so much of their manufacturing, what's to stop them from saying, "I didn't manufacture this, our records show Wang's Plastics did, so it's their responsibility to manage disposal!" HP, and all the other big "Silicon Valley" computer companies will just pass the buck back to the original manufacturer, HP will keep their profits, and the little supplier will be hosed.
1 terabyte should be enough for anyone...
In my opinion, the "observer" does not have to be sentient. To me, an observer is an outside object, animate or inanimate, that is affected by the outcome of an event between other objects.
:)
What was Heisenberg's theory? You can know position or you can know velocity, but you cannot determine both at the same time without some uncertainty. So, either your system is affected by the velocity of a wave (with light, velocity & energy dictates wavelength) or by the position (distance & mass dictates gravity).
In my opinion, this must work for gravity, because objects are interlinked over large distances, and therefore positions & mass must relate to the observer in some way, because the observing object is always drawn towards the mass. I can't think of any known formulas where velocity of an object creates a gravity well, only mass. On the flip side, because of the light refraction experiments we know that photon positions can vary within the bounds of uncertainty. But, there are many people far smarter than I who like to think about these things, so I'll leave it to them to resolve the details
One of the first things to come out of NASA after Bush took over was to focus on Mars again... a much loftier goal with some actual gains to be had.
I'd rather that they can the political abortion that the ISS has become... a cost-overrun political appeasement project solely designed to boost Clinton's foreign policy appearance... and all it got us was a hole in the wallet, rocket designs delievered to the Chinese, and a new foreign aid program for Russia.
America is not suffering from a lack of vision; it is suffering from a lack of results, a plague of soured "return on investments". It's one thing to have lofty goals, but it is quite another to spend without purpose.
... this time around, it's not government that's going to have to lead the way.
Why was the ISS built? Was it so NASA scientists could perform all of these hi-tech crystal expieriments & gravity tests? NASA lists a set of reasons here. Some goals are noble... "To create a permanent orbiting science institute in space capable of performing long-duration research in the materials and life sciences areas in a nearly gravity-free environment", "To conduct medical research in space", "To develop new materials and processes in collaboration with industry"
No, why was it really built? Two more "reasons" are more ominous (and really, the only goals that suceeded). "To forge new partnerships with the nations of the world." and "To sustain and strengthen the United States' strongest export sector-aerospace technology-which in 1995 exceeded $33 billion." In retrospect, we now know that that "export sector" was selling long range rocket diagrams & targeting systems to the Chinese, some of the more ethically dubious actions of the Clinton administration. ISS was a shortcut for the US government to funnel money out to other First World nations, which bloated the national budget and artifically increased our Gross Domestic Product... a surprising correlation to Wall Street's activities over the same time period.
So, where is America's spirit of exporation today? In my opinion, it's not outward to the stars, but inward... the Internet. We're working to build a world of interconnected services, where a doctor can telemeter themselves accross the country to perform operations, or have digital paper, or communicate in virtual worlds (EverQuest & now the Sims Online). Each new network discovery has the same effect as throwing another satelite in space, for a much smaller cost.
What will it take to rekindle the spirit to go to space? Money. Show me where I can make a profit, when the transportation costs are negligible, or maybe asteroid mining to find pure crystals of metal, or terraforming
A Russian State Commission is being formed to determine the reasons for the anomaly.
If there's one thing the United States taught Russia right about our form of democracy, it's bureaucracy...
Hehe, that's what the Wayback Machine is for!
Feed magazine interview, back from the grave...
The Thanksgiving holiday (a United States holiday dedictated to giving thanks for the harvest) occurs every year on the last Thursday in November. The following day (Friday) is normally a work holiday, so that workers can have a 4 day weekend. So, having that friday as a holiday means a lot of people have the day off with nothing to do, so they go out shopping.
... Black Friday.
In the past, that was also the day when stores would bring out their Christmas merchandise; that is why Santa rides in the Thanksgiving parades, to symbolize the arrival of the Chrismas season. Of course today, Chrismas shopping begins October 14th, don't ask me why.
On top of that, stores now offer many sales that day, so it draws out more people to go shopping. When people shop, they buy, which means earnings for the stores. When a business is balancing their accounting, the term "in the red" means that they are losing money, and "in the black" indicates that the business is profitable. Over this weekend, many department stores do so much business they go from losses to profit, thus they are now "in the black", which results in the name
The new International Spy Museum in Washington DC has a very nice walk-through of photos taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis... 3 foot tall pictures show the (before and after) construction of facilities on the island.
Combined with intelligence information about a shipment of material on route to Cuba made, they make a very telling case for why the blockade was ordered. My parents claim that the US was never closer to nuclear war than on that day, and the museum does a very good job of putting the story together. I'd definitely recommend a trip.
My friends and I are involved in governmental and utility-type industries, from the Navy to Bulk Power to the NSA. We all read Slashdot, we all worry about the average person's right to get our data, because we're counted among that average. It is a little pretentious of you to say it's an "Us vs Them" battle, when the Them are citizens just like You.
Do I think the agencies needs oversight? Hell yea! But, I also believe my employer has the right to protect its assets (including its employees), and if that means taking the road maps off of the internet for fear of attack, then so be it. We need to Watch the Watchers, as the saying goes, and its time for our generation to step up into politics and demand our elected officials to provide accountability.
Instead, you will have
"MY NETWORK IS BROKEN WORD WONT START"
every time the IT staff goes to make an upgrade on the server. That's the problem with having one site that houses all of the applications; when that site is down, everything is down. RAID drives are ok for individual redundancy, until there's a glitch and the motherboard melts (happened at my company), then you better hope you have backup hardware in the closet (which they didn't).
It only takes one misconfigured router in the right place to knock out a whole company. If IBM has their way, one operator error could take down a city.
No, its called Trespassing, which is listed as a Misdemeanor under California Law, with penalties up to 3 years in prison.
Reuters "stole" nothing and infringed no intellectual property rights.
No, Reuters falsified an announcement of a quarterly earnings release.
The problem here is that Financial data with the Company's credentials are being released to the Public, at a time not of the Company's choosing.
If the person who discovered the information kept it private, but made stock trades with the Company, we call that Insider Trading, and the person would face jail time. In this case, the person discovered the file, and released it under the guise of being "official", simply because it was located on (a non-referenced portion of) the Company's site. In effect, Reuters was pretending it was an official release.
A secondary problem is that a production system (the external web) is being treated as a test environment, by loading data into the folders but not linking to them. Anything on a production system can be accessed by anyone, and if the Company was not ready for that data to be accessed, then it shouldn't have been placed on the server until the minute they were ready to release.
Here's another scenario: Suppose a week ago, the Company began setting up for their earnings report. They put a copy of their earnings on the web, but did not link to it. In the mean time, the data became stale because of an error discovered in accounting. The file was not updated, because it is not linked to, so the world does not know it exists. Reuters now guesses the file, and publishes the link. The data is an unauthorized release of stale data, but it is being published by a source claiming it is official data. Outside investors would see the stale data, and would make costly financial decisions based on the (unknowingly false) data. The Company's stock could plummit, and severe losses could ensue. Plus, under recent disclosure laws, the Company's CEO could face stiff fines/jail for falsifying data.
So, both groups are guilty, the webmasters for not securing the data, and Reuters for unauthorized disclosure. I agree they should be sued, not for the simple act of "linking", but for falsifying the announcement of an earnings report, and let the SEC sort this one out.
The explorer part of me is saying, "Yay! It's about time we started building more structures in space. The Lagrange point would make a good neutral spot halfway to the moon." But then the realist in me says, "Given that NASA has proven that it can't stick to a budget, how much is this overrun going to cost?" And the article agrees with me.
Government is not the answer to promoting outer space as a new resource -- market forces have shown to be the driving force in all new ventures. We need competition in getting things into orbit, tourism to build hotels, industry to build fab plants, mining on the moon...
While we're on the tack of old science fiction, I vaguely remember a short story from my middle school years, so let me paraphrase:
Old Man "Bob" is wheelchaired into the waiting room of the hospital, where we find the rest of his family dressed in black, obviously in mourning. "Why is everyone so sad" he asks. "We just came from your funeral."
You see, "Bob" had a stroke, and died, however thanks to recent technology, he was able to save a copy of his brain about 3 months prior. The doctors cloned his old body, reloaded the brain. Of course the tech doesn't copy that well, so the life expentancy of the replacement is about a month because of cancers, but its enough time for the family to "bring back the dead", so they can all say their goodbyes in a way they couldn't the first time around. The only problem is that "Bob+1" didn't know he was only a copy, destined to die (again)...
The root problem is data transfer within the CPU, not data transfer between I/O devices.
The clock speed (now >10E9 Hz) is the upper limit of your chip's ability to move a voltage signal around the chip. Modern CPUs are "staged" designs, where data is basically broken into an opcode "decode" stage, "register load", "operation", and "register unload" stages. For a given stage, you cannot clock the output of the stage faster than the time it takes for the computations to complete, or you're basically outputting garble.
A synchronous design indicates that every flip-flop on the chip is tied to the same clock signal, which can mean one HUGE amount of wiring just to get everything running at the same speed, which raises costs. On top of that, you have charging effects due to the switching between HI and LO, which can cause voltage problems (which is why capacitors are added to CPUs) Then add resistive effects, where current becomes heat, and you run the risk of circuit damage. All of this puts some hard limits on how fast you can make a chip, and for what price.
Asynchronous chip design allows us to throw away the clock circuitry, and every stage boundary becomes status polling (are you done yet, are you done yet, ok, lets transfer the results). With proper design, you can save a lot of material, you can decouple the dependance of one stage on another, so the max instruction/second speed can now run at the raw rate of the material.
1. Your company produces media that is "harder" to copy, thus restricts fair use.
2. You wish to sell your protective media to technologically informed persons, who represent the greatest market share in the digital arena.
3. Technologically informed persons tend to digitally copy audio more than non-technological persons, thus consume more digital media.
4. Those that copy digitally tend to be pro-fair-use.
5. Those that are pro-fair-use tend to use media that does not restrict fair use, such as CDs, not DVDs.
Why do I think the makers of this format are in for a shock?