What if Jupiter has life too? Archaebacterium (vent bacteria) digests sulfur and live in rock at extremely high temperatures. I have spun a bacteria culture at 100g. The bacteria's life processes continued. Due to evaporation of the culture, the centrifuge knocked itself out of balance after 3 weeks. So, bacteria can exist in chemically diverse, high temperature and high gravity environments. Can't NASA crash it into IO, a highly volcanic and radioactive moon instead of risking either Jupiter or Europa's environments?
...Until all the "damage" has been done then Ban exports. As usual too little too late then hit the problem with a sledgehammer. Let countries (Bosnia) starve until they turn into angry mobs and then "fix" the problem with guns. Let 3 million women get raped in the former Yugoslavia then send in troops. Wait until everyone on the planet has PGP and then ban crypto exports. Promote free elections in E. Timor then walk out when the going gets rough. Maybe they're planning on using ECHELON to check all the data that gets produced by any network super computer.
This may seem crazy to long time slashdoters but I think it could work:
Make it so moderators cannot mark anything down. All posts start at one and can only go up from there. This would prevent the majority rule suppression of good ideas. If you don't want to read trolls and flamebait set your threshold higher.
Why put a limit of +5 on a post? A +50 post might be a good story unto itself. If for instance if Linus, Carmack, Drexler or Gates wanted to use the forum to speak their minds it would probably warrant it's own story.
Since obviously trolls are seeking attention it might be good to give each post a counter. The only way you know someone has read your opinion is if it gets replied to or moderation. I have twenty posts without moderation or replies. Do I live in a vacuum? has anyone really read any of them? If there was a counter I might at least have the instant gratification of knowing someone read my work. Perhaps trolls would attempt to expand their audience by not trolling. If the average "1" gets 1000 page views and the average "5" gets 100,000 page views the quality of posts would rise simply because people looking for attention would write quality posts instead of trolls.
Perhaps start all anonymous coward posts at 0, registered users at 1 and the ability to spend karma to shout.
I would like to know what percentage of people on slashdot are moderators at any given time. if there is one moderator for each 100 posts how can you expect good moderation? who has time to critique and research 100 posts? if you had one moderator per 25 posts the moderators would actually have time to check the facts in a post instead of arbitrarily marking something up just because it was long or used 10 dollar words.
With a few of these Ideas implemented we might actually see GOOD ideas not just popular ideas float to the top.
Democracies say 1000 people have more wisdom than one person. Dictatorships say 1 person has more wisdom than 1000 people. Both are false.
Whatever they can accomplish with hardware would take that load off the processor. There is a ceiling to processor power. We may be far from it now but when we do reach that point in time when processors just can't get any faster this will be invaluable technology. It is also good to look at graphics cards. 3D graphics consumes an inordinate amount of processing power. Because such a large percentage of power is taken, it is wise to have a graphics card. Software memory management may go the way of software 3D rendering and free our processors for other tasks. DVD is bogging your CPU? Get a hardware Renderer. Print management? Encryption? Compression protocols? All can be done in hardware. Think: If your modem card had a compression sub processor, you could use some pretty extreme zero loss compression techniques without adding to latency. If powerful hardware compression were standardized you could effectively reduce bandwidth requirements across the entire network. As long as all these CPU power robbing functions remain software we can expect to need faster and faster processors. As I have said, there is a limit to that.
Don't knee jerk because hardware may cause your favorite C++ functions to become obsolete. Just keep in mind what 3D cards have done and you will understand the direction these amazingly forward thinking boys are taking. Not that faster processors are a bad thing. I just like to get the most out of what I do have.
What rated Moderation? You replied to a joke post with a running joke and funny comment. Your moderator has a large stick shoved squarely and firmly up his ass. Meta will go: WTF? Thousands of worthy posts on/. and this moderator bothered with this? I guess its better this guy wastes his points on stupid shit than moderating important stuff like John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source.
Ok we're all geeks at heart dying to become Johnny Silverhand but forget about that for this technology. Instead focus on what it implied: Computer control of a cell. Given a more mobile marionette such as a single cell organism you would effectively have the first nanomachine. Imagine a vacuole racing around at your bidding doing cosmically tiny chores. R/C white blood cells saying "it's a good cell" and you telling it "no, it's cancer, eat it." Perhaps triggering the cells in a spiders spinneret to make silk and not stop until it dies. We would all like to see Tethered satellites, Space elevators and the cure for cancer. If this technology can put us on the road to nanotech it may have a bright future indeed.
I'm not a scientist but I'm glad I had the same reservations about this article as you did. The science in the article was even more vague than what you might find in "Popular Science" or "Discover Magazine." I think this is a trend in science journalism. Twenty years ago picking up a copy of "Scientific American" I could understand maybe one article each issue. I know I haven't gotten that much smarter but I can now understand most of the articles in "Scientific American." Considering how far science has advanced in the last twenty years I would have to agree that as a whole there has been a shift toward popularizing science journalism for the sake of the all mighty dollar. However, if it gets younger people interested in science all the better. To many of the best young minds have left science for other more lucrative fields. Given that there were a billion people at the turn of the last century and one absolutely amazing mind, Einstein, there ought to be 6 Einstein alive today. I have yet to hear about him or her. One of them is probably an engineer for Toyota or an Accountant for Dean Whitter. Mundane tasks to be sure compared to knowing what god was thinking when he created the universe (Einstein's words).
I like the way you think and I've read a few of your posts. *but* (there's always one of those eh?) There is no way to perfectly covert an analog signal to digital and back again. No matter how you accomplish your A/D conversion (Continuously variable slope delta, pulse code, sigma-delta coversion, etc..)digital must sample at finite frequencies a wave form as that is infinitly complex. Consider the coastal length geometry problem. If you measured the coast of the US at one meter resolution the length of the coast would me considerably shorter than if you measured it at 1 mm resolution where you would measure the diameter of every pebble in the water. Whether the human ear can dicern the difference between 32kb/s sampleing rate and 64kb/s sampleing rate is a matter of opinion. I understand birds will not answer their species calls at a digital sampleing rate of less than 256kb/s. Birds don't like speakers that are limited to human hearing ranges either. Sampleing music at a higher rate is a job for CD's eventual replacement. I don't think if we get to 128kb/s there will be anyone who still thinks "LPs are better man"
BTW that code was not obtained under a warrant so is now inadmissible in court. Now Carmack has no case whatsoever because his only evidence would have been that source. Not to mention Slade can now push slander/conspiracy. Here is how Slade plays it: "Carmack ruined my good name as a programmer by posting his plan. Carmack also incited a hundred thousand of his adoring fans to steal my software off my computer for him." Carmack gets played as the ring leader of a bunch of hackers intent on taking by force what they no legal right to. What a F**king mess. Carmack should have shut up and just taken the kid to court
Didn't Bell telephone have to pay damages to RCA in addition to being broken up into the Baby Bells? Bell had solid state digital signal processing equipmet and RCA tried once in the early seveties to market what we now call a PBX or private branch exchange. A PBX is a small onsite switch owned by the end user. Bell simply would not hook up to it. If they didn't own it it wasn't supposed to be attached to the phone system. Anyway the point is Bell had to Pay RCA money. It didn't help RCA. where are they now? But as I said Microsoft "Paying" would be accomplished by a massive stock sell off in order to give the damaged parties cash in which case microsoft stock could be diluted among many owners or perhaps open to hostile takeover/parting out. I don't know. The only precedent I can draw from happened when I was 11.
Thanks, that was mostly supposed to be a funny post. with inside jokes refering to Neil Stephensons book... as for tests? I went to desert storm... and back to the tan land 7 years later. Yes, its my real name and address. yes the VA has my record including my SW asia ribbons. thank you for your reply I was wondering if anyone actualy read anything I have written since I'm new and untill this post had never recieved moderation. Of course I think the moderation was screwed but I'm sure everyone who gets moderated down feels the same way.
Neil Stephenson is an author in the cyberpunk genre. He wrote "Snow Crash" a book about lots of high tech goodies, hacking peoples minds using memes and wearable computers. In his world, wearable computers are used mainly by surveillance people. Thus "spooks" (CIA) and "Gargoyles" people who hang out on street corners recording everything hoping something good happens so they can sell the information. Sort of like people who have a wearable webcam with a database that includes the identities of every person on the planet. In his book big brother is not watching you so much as everyone is watching each other hoping to sell each other out for a dime. His next book involves Nanotechnology. If you don't know anything about this you should really get into it. Start by reading any books by Eric Drexler. Basically nanotech is molecule sized machines that can assemble anything you want. In "Diamond Age" one of the main characters programs nanites (the tiny machines) to make a book that is actually an insanely powerful supercomputer. The book called "a little girls primer" is given to a tiny girl. she reads it and answers it's questions everyday. she spends her entire adolescence read the book and learning about the foundations of Turing machines (computers). Sort of like playing pokemon but learning instead of catching silly cartoons she learns to be the greatest programmer the world has ever seen. That is why I'd love "a little girls primer" since she carried it everywhere it became a wearable in a sense. it was also a vastly powerful computer wired into the worlds networks and sort of looked out for her and kept her out of trouble... and got her into trouble too. But don't let me spoil it for you. go to the book store and get some nice dry paper in your hands with clear text w/o eye strain. After you read those two Stephenson books you'll probably want "Cryptonomicon" which as you can imagine is great too. Code breaking, Computers, German U-boats, extra-national currencies and online banking. If you don't want to read Drexler just search "Nanotechnology" here at/. and I am sure you'll find something.
This Isn't for you but whoever the fuck moderated my post better have read all these books too... an it was hella on topic! what the FUCK is technology without APPLICATIONS? I think I made a point of citing two of the BEST applications of wearables ever published. Since the WHOLE point of/. is spreading information, just because mine comes from books (RFTMAH) doesn't mean it doesn't apply. As for redundant? I was a brand new slashdotter when I wrote it and didn't know how to set my threshold so I read every post up to the point that I wrote it and none of them were the same. I am Unique. ptHHHhpppt.
Solid state. Look at the cost curve. As long as we don't let M$ bloat (in other words stop buying it and stick with Linux) a 50 gig, more than big enough, solid state mass storage system will reach the $1000 mark. What is seek time? Just a few ns latency. Whether it is that flourescent stuff or something entirely different the next generation of cheap mass storage is solid state. Not one terrabit 30,000rpm cylinders one third taken up by whatever passes for WIN2.01K
Music riffs are not open source. Music has some of the tightest written copyright law in existence. But as Puff and V-Ice have shown, if you add your own lyrics and change the beat no matter where or how you got your source melody, You can sell it and make millions There is nothing the even the largest entertainment companies in the world can do about it. ID is a very small entertainment company. If Slade doesn't back down, someone will back him and he will win. If you don't think that applies, music copyright laws have been in existence for decades. Presidencies have been set. This is just another entertainment industry. Slade has added his own rap to an open and overused riff. He can win on entertainment legal precedencies since there is no precedence in this industry. Trust me, this is the last thing you want going to court. Imagine Microsoft (The Heavy e.g. ID) suing RealNetworks (The Little Guy e.g. Slade) for distributing a product comparable to Windows Media because Realnetworks uses The Windows OS to run. Especially after giving away The OS to everyone! In the current Judicial climate? I don't think so.
This is not my hope for it but there are far too many people that want to see this go to court without thinking: Lacking a precedence makes this harder not easier. Carmak is not your knight in shining armor riding the budweiser horses. He is an Entertainment company Executive. Slash is Vanilla Ice singing ICE ICE baby to Carmack's riff. No, Queen and their Label did not win that lawsuit. Just in case you read this Slash: V-Ice is universally hated and never worked in the industry again so if your Ego is giving you aspirations you can eat it.
Say goodbye to open source. It was fun while it lasted. We are programmers not lawyers. A lawyer would have set a precedent for Open Source's validity instead of working for years under the assumption that it was bullet proof.
This may be off topic but how often does ergonomics come up? I should shout this but I have no karma. 11% of the people on this planet are left handed. We might all be brain damaged (see the book: "the left handed syndrome") but we still buy computers and yes, peripherals. I firmly believe the only reason Logitech has any market share at all is because MICROSOFT DOES NOT MAKE LEFT HANDED MICE. I would love to own an IntelliEye 5 button mouse but I can't do a damn thing with my right hand. I am willing to say I'd pay 100 bucks for a good left handed mouse. Windows supports reversing your buttons for left handed use but all the Microsoft mice are ergonomically optimized for right handed people to the point that lefties can't use them. So I am stuck with the crappy compromise: the symmetrical mice from Logitech. And don't even ask about trackballs. There is not a single trackball at all for lefties. Joysticks? Forget it. Lefty Keypad? forget it. But I could live without all that If I could just get a mouse to fit my LEFT HAND.
I was stationed at Camp Doha, Kuwait from June '97 to June '98 in the US ARMY. I was promoted to SGT after being there only a week. I was in 385th Signal Company. A normal tour for a signal soldier is one year in Kuwait. Camp Doha is a logistics center for all forces in Kuwait. Army Brigade task forces, composed of about 3000 men, are rotated through Kuwait for three months at a time. There are four rotations a year. The rotations overlap by about ten days to insure there is always a task force in Kuwait. A marine amphibious assault force is in Kuwait in December.
Kuwaiti Liberation Day is February 22. Saddam usually gets surly about that time of year and 1998 was no exception. He kicked the UN inspectors out of Iraq and we had a stand off with him. We brought in another 8000 US Soldiers in to Kuwait then. Camp Doha is a big storage depot for equipment and ammunition. All the US has to do is send personnel to Kuwait and issue them the equipment that is already in place. We no longer have to execute a slow build up of forces. Camp Doha however can only support a brigade (about 32 tanks). Most of the new troops came from Ft Stewart. There were other indications of how serious it was. There were 7 Generals at Camp Doha including one from Australia and one from the UK, Navy SEALS, Army special forces and DELTA force present, Including two AC-130 Gunships. It was a regular dog and pony show.
I was at Udari Range at this point providing secure telephone communications from the forward battle field commander to the Generals at Camp Doha. Udari range is 12km from the Iraqi border. Arriving with all these people was the Anthrax vaccine. Taking the vaccine was mandatory. I was in charge of 6 people. I was instructed to take my soldiers weapons away from them and put them under lock and key. We all had to go to the Mess tent to take our shots. Once there we were placed under MP guard and corralled into lines. We were told that the MPs would force anyone who resisted. I didn't see anyone resist. The shot burned really bad for about twenty minutes. The burning sort of crept up on you. One minute you would be laughing at your buddy cause he was crying about how bad it hurt the next you wouldn't be laughing any more. We were all sick for about 36 hours. The shot is injected into muscle. That muscle develops a golf ball sized lump or hardness in it that lasts a month. We repeated this 4 times before I left Kuwait.
An anthrax vaccine was tested prior to the gulf war but was not used on soldiers during that conflict. I believe it caused actual anthrax in testing. We were given a different vaccine. When we took it there had never been any human trials. We were the guinea pigs at gunpoint. I heard that one soldier went into anyphlaxis shock. Sort of an allergy induced coma. Apparently she swelled up until her fingers looked like sausages. I believe that does account for the.007 percent reported harmfull side effects. That is rumor though. Now, only about 7,000 people received the vaccine. That means that probably 700 women received it based on the ratio of men to women. I wonder, since no pregnancy tests were done, how many of those women were pregnant. Normally new drug testing is done on a voluntary basis. A huge amount of money is paid to unemployed people generally and years of follow-ups are done. There have been no follow-ups to this vaccine. No one has ever given me a blood test to see if I have produced anthrax antibodies or have any lingering side effects.
I suppose I could go on and on. The military has proven time and again that they care little for the patriots who serve in it. From nuclear testing with exposed troops, Agent Orange, gulf war syndrome to untested anthrax vaccinations the army proves they don't care a bit.
Obviously the US Government is not above harming US Citizens. As for Microsoft I've said it before and I'll say it again: Bill Gates has enough money to buy 2 gigabytes of storage space for every man woman and child on the planet. All 6 billion of us. Windows is full of holes. Windows contains 65,535 ports. No one knows what they do. Is it a coincidence that the one corporation that could collect, store and use information on every single Windows OS user is also a monopoly and the single most powerful corporation in the world has ever seen. Motive, Means and Opportunity. We just need a body.
Reading Microsoft's Windows source code would go a long way toward finding a body. Perhaps if Steve Gibson ever gets Project-X working we will have a body.
The comment " we use the Windows API GetPrivateProfileString() in order to read configuration files" prompted me to read all my.cfg and any referenced.ini files. I honestly don't think there is anything Microsoft doesn't know about me. Time to set TweakUI to Paranoid until I can get Linux to work.
Anyone feeling like I do, that you don't know anything until you have to teach it is welcome to the learning experience of giving me a hand starting linux. I am guessing you were all joking about black helicopters. I have seen them.
In a settlement the injured party(s) must collect damages. If open source windows is on the negotiation table despite Microsoft's public protests to the contrary, that still doesn't address damages to Intel, Apple, RealNetworks, IBM, Compaq, AOL and Consumers (all damaged parties named in U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's preliminary judgment). Even if Bill was quoted correctly "I would agree to open windows source code if that was all that is necessary", this would not be agreeable to the damaged parties.
Most "damaged parties" want money or stock in Microsoft. Settling with 50 states and several corporations will effectively dismantle Microsoft anyway. Sun, Netscape, etc. will all soon own a piece of Microsoft. They will have the source code anyway: why would they settle for "just" the old source code (win3x, win9x), when they will be getting the old code and all future code(win2k, winME, etc) due to ownership of controlling shares of Microsoft. For all you crazy linux hackers:) gnashing your teeth in anticipation of the source... well you guys were not named as damaged parties and will never put your grubby paws on Windows source code.
Due to low yields, the entire production run will consist of three units. One each for IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer. Price is expected to be low seven digits. Intel will ramp up to this huge production run by opening a seventh factory employing 4 guys and a monkey.
The Willamette will be introduced at 800 mhz initially and climb in 33 mhz increments for a total of 22 separate processors. To prevent VAI from gaining market share Intel will be creating 22 new slot types believed to be labeled SLOT E through SLOT BB, skipping the letters Q and Z.
Interestingly, you will be able to overclock the new Celerons to 1.5 ghz three months prior to Willamette's 1.5 ghz release. Sadly, the price of rambus is expected to climb as long as Intel's processors remain faster than their AMD counterparts. That's ok to potential low end Celeron customers because they only expect to get 16 megs of ram with their sub-$1000 systems.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel however: In 2001 Intel will debut a whole new way to compute! Intel is building a vast server running at 10.94 TeraFLOPs/sec capable of running everybody's desktops from San Jose. You will have instantaneous access at anytime to the worlds fastest computer. The home client will be called Q Box! followed of course by Z Box! completely skipping X Box... This is of course the natural next step in the evolution of home computing. Intel will no longer be putting serial numbers on their processors to keep track of you. They will already have all your data. Rumors of Intel's collaboration with the folks at SETI@home are patently false. Intel did mention not to expect more than one frame every 18 hrs 13 min 45.4 sec on your first person shooter.
This was not a hack. I have a mIRC script that auto-joins after kick. NO, I am not a script kiddy or a Hacker. There are several types of scripts which really fall into two categories: Protection and Destruction. My simple Protection script would have allowed me to do the same thing. Even someone using standard mIRC or Pirch would have had no trouble doing what he did. this reminds me of the online assassination of Lord British. Perhaps they should have been running something like Dalnet has, namely password protected nicknames.
With the possible exception 1:56, the rest of us computer geeks can shut up. Orpheus has shed light on DNA like the rest of us ought to, but do not, shed light on linux. His depth and research have made us all look pretty weak. Not to mention his other two well thought submissions on this topic.
Is there a storage density equivalent to Moore's Law? Consider a standard drive bay: 1980, single density single side 5 1/4 inch floppy, I think 340 KB. 1981 some smart guy made a square hole punch (you know you bought one) and all our single sides became double sides. double density arrived the same year so we got 1440 KB. 1984 1 Meg hard drive cost 1000 greenbacks (oooh ahhh!) Mac introduced the 1.44 3 1/2 inch but 1.44 Meg and 1440 KB are dogs of the same litter. You just didn't have to take the thing out and flip it all the time. I think I had a 420 Meg with my DX2/66 PC in 1990. 3.2 Gig in 1996. Now? 34 gig in 2000. I guess I'll stop writing for a sec and draw myself a chart to see where I'm going with this.... Looks like each year density increases by 50%... So Perdo's Law states that storage density increases by 50% each year. I should qualify that with "consumer" storage density simply because I can remember drooling over $50k, 56 gig optical storage for servers in the early 90's. So, all of the sudden this fluorescent plastic storage fits right in the natural curve. If something really breaks the curve, get excited. BTW, has anyone figured out when Moore's Law will mandate nano-computers (nanomachines required for the assembly)? I am not a computer architecture engineer and a physicist but someone out there must be. I'm sure Perdo's Law would dictate nano-storage eventually. I believe however that since the sum total of man's knowledge is probably more than doubling every year, Perdo's law dictates you will never have the sum total of man's knowledge on your desktop or pocket or implant... where ever you decide to stick it.
reading the news most people think distributed denial of service was invented this week. That is not entirely the case. There is an IRC channel invented by "oddone" called #mocklamer on effnet. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/4397/in dex.html It forms the principals of a distributed attack. #mocklamer is just that however. Everyone in the channel can request that an individual become the target of every ones ridicule. "Scoobster", the programmer of an IRC script called littlestar included support for both mocklamer and nukes of various types. one of those nuke programs is now widely recognized as one of the first trojan horses. The victims of the distributed denial of service attacks received huge ICMP bombs. The author of littlestare included a program to send those too. The supposed author of the program responsible for the attacks stated in an interview with zdnet that he got his start hacking effnet. I just can't help but noticing how interesting that is. Can you? For all you super cool wannabe H4XORS and script kiddies. The ground is littered with the corpses of freedoms lost. A secure Internet is also an un-free Internet. You folks out there who are busy pointing out the security holes in the internet and writing programs to post on hacker sites are wrong. Countries go to war for money. The US has gone to war for as little as 3 million 1999 adjusted dollars. Guns cause us to loose money? take 'em away. Make prostitution illegal? no way it's a free country. HAHA. Computers cause us to loose money? Take 'em away. And don't say "Oh no, computers are here to stay, there so useful and necessary." At one time the same was said about guns. You might be a master of software but the US regulates the hardware. You are just a punk with a gameboy when the feds shut down your router. So... keep it up. You need a license to own a dog. What makes you think that your computer privileges are rights? Remember, the constitution poses no threat to our current form of government. Keep it up. This gave you a cold pit in your belly? Fix it. Start at home though.
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What if Jupiter has life too? Archaebacterium (vent bacteria) digests sulfur and live in rock at extremely high temperatures. I have spun a bacteria culture at 100g. The bacteria's life processes continued. Due to evaporation of the culture, the centrifuge knocked itself out of balance after 3 weeks. So, bacteria can exist in chemically diverse, high temperature and high gravity environments. Can't NASA crash it into IO, a highly volcanic and radioactive moon instead of risking either Jupiter or Europa's environments?
This may seem crazy to long time slashdoters but I think it could work:
Make it so moderators cannot mark anything down. All posts start at one and can only go up from there. This would prevent the majority rule suppression of good ideas. If you don't want to read trolls and flamebait set your threshold higher.
Why put a limit of +5 on a post? A +50 post might be a good story unto itself. If for instance if Linus, Carmack, Drexler or Gates wanted to use the forum to speak their minds it would probably warrant it's own story.
Since obviously trolls are seeking attention it might be good to give each post a counter. The only way you know someone has read your opinion is if it gets replied to or moderation. I have twenty posts without moderation or replies. Do I live in a vacuum? has anyone really read any of them? If there was a counter I might at least have the instant gratification of knowing someone read my work. Perhaps trolls would attempt to expand their audience by not trolling. If the average "1" gets 1000 page views and the average "5" gets 100,000 page views the quality of posts would rise simply because people looking for attention would write quality posts instead of trolls.
Perhaps start all anonymous coward posts at 0, registered users at 1 and the ability to spend karma to shout.
I would like to know what percentage of people on slashdot are moderators at any given time. if there is one moderator for each 100 posts how can you expect good moderation? who has time to critique and research 100 posts? if you had one moderator per 25 posts the moderators would actually have time to check the facts in a post instead of arbitrarily marking something up just because it was long or used 10 dollar words.
With a few of these Ideas implemented we might actually see GOOD ideas not just popular ideas float to the top.
Democracies say 1000 people have more wisdom than one person.
Dictatorships say 1 person has more wisdom than 1000 people.
Both are false.
This is good stuff,
Whatever they can accomplish with hardware would take that load off the processor. There is a ceiling to processor power. We may be far from it now but when we do reach that point in time when processors just can't get any faster this will be invaluable technology. It is also good to look at graphics cards. 3D graphics consumes an inordinate amount of processing power. Because such a large percentage of power is taken, it is wise to have a graphics card. Software memory management may go the way of software 3D rendering and free our processors for other tasks. DVD is bogging your CPU? Get a hardware Renderer. Print management? Encryption? Compression protocols? All can be done in hardware. Think: If your modem card had a compression sub processor, you could use some pretty extreme zero loss compression techniques without adding to latency. If powerful hardware compression were standardized you could effectively reduce bandwidth requirements across the entire network. As long as all these CPU power robbing functions remain software we can expect to need faster and faster processors. As I have said, there is a limit to that.
Don't knee jerk because hardware may cause your favorite C++ functions to become obsolete. Just keep in mind what 3D cards have done and you will understand the direction these amazingly forward thinking boys are taking. Not that faster processors are a bad thing. I just like to get the most out of what I do have.
Ok we're all geeks at heart dying to become Johnny Silverhand but forget about that for this technology. Instead focus on what it implied: Computer control of a cell. Given a more mobile marionette such as a single cell organism you would effectively have the first nanomachine. Imagine a vacuole racing around at your bidding doing cosmically tiny chores. R/C white blood cells saying "it's a good cell" and you telling it "no, it's cancer, eat it." Perhaps triggering the cells in a spiders spinneret to make silk and not stop until it dies. We would all like to see Tethered satellites, Space elevators and the cure for cancer. If this technology can put us on the road to nanotech it may have a bright future indeed.
I like the way you think and I've read a few of your posts. *but* (there's always one of those eh?) There is no way to perfectly covert an analog signal to digital and back again. No matter how you accomplish your A/D conversion (Continuously variable slope delta, pulse code, sigma-delta coversion, etc..)digital must sample at finite frequencies a wave form as that is infinitly complex. Consider the coastal length geometry problem. If you measured the coast of the US at one meter resolution the length of the coast would me considerably shorter than if you measured it at 1 mm resolution where you would measure the diameter of every pebble in the water. Whether the human ear can dicern the difference between 32kb/s sampleing rate and 64kb/s sampleing rate is a matter of opinion. I understand birds will not answer their species calls at a digital sampleing rate of less than 256kb/s. Birds don't like speakers that are limited to human hearing ranges either. Sampleing music at a higher rate is a job for CD's eventual replacement. I don't think if we get to 128kb/s there will be anyone who still thinks "LPs are better man"
BTW that code was not obtained under a warrant so is now inadmissible in court. Now Carmack has no case whatsoever because his only evidence would have been that source. Not to mention Slade can now push slander/conspiracy. Here is how Slade plays it: "Carmack ruined my good name as a programmer by posting his plan. Carmack also incited a hundred thousand of his adoring fans to steal my software off my computer for him." Carmack gets played as the ring leader of a bunch of hackers intent on taking by force what they no legal right to. What a F**king mess. Carmack should have shut up and just taken the kid to court
Thanks, that was mostly supposed to be a funny post. with inside jokes refering to Neil Stephensons book... as for tests? I went to desert storm... and back to the tan land 7 years later. Yes, its my real name and address. yes the VA has my record including my SW asia ribbons. thank you for your reply I was wondering if anyone actualy read anything I have written since I'm new and untill this post had never recieved moderation. Of course I think the moderation was screwed but I'm sure everyone who gets moderated down feels the same way.
This Isn't for you but whoever the fuck moderated my post better have read all these books too... an it was hella on topic! what the FUCK is technology without APPLICATIONS? I think I made a point of citing two of the BEST applications of wearables ever published. Since the WHOLE point of /. is spreading information, just because mine comes from books (RFTMAH) doesn't mean it doesn't apply. As for redundant? I was a brand new slashdotter when I wrote it and didn't know how to set my threshold so I read every post up to the point that I wrote it and none of them were the same. I am Unique. ptHHHhpppt.
This is not my hope for it but there are far too many people that want to see this go to court without thinking: Lacking a precedence makes this harder not easier. Carmak is not your knight in shining armor riding the budweiser horses. He is an Entertainment company Executive. Slash is Vanilla Ice singing ICE ICE baby to Carmack's riff. No, Queen and their Label did not win that lawsuit. Just in case you read this Slash: V-Ice is universally hated and never worked in the industry again so if your Ego is giving you aspirations you can eat it.
Say goodbye to open source. It was fun while it lasted. We are programmers not lawyers. A lawyer would have set a precedent for Open Source's validity instead of working for years under the assumption that it was bullet proof.
This may be off topic but how often does ergonomics come up? I should shout this but I have no karma. 11% of the people on this planet are left handed. We might all be brain damaged (see the book: "the left handed syndrome") but we still buy computers and yes, peripherals. I firmly believe the only reason Logitech has any market share at all is because MICROSOFT DOES NOT MAKE LEFT HANDED MICE. I would love to own an IntelliEye 5 button mouse but I can't do a damn thing with my right hand. I am willing to say I'd pay 100 bucks for a good left handed mouse. Windows supports reversing your buttons for left handed use but all the Microsoft mice are ergonomically optimized for right handed people to the point that lefties can't use them. So I am stuck with the crappy compromise: the symmetrical mice from Logitech. And don't even ask about trackballs. There is not a single trackball at all for lefties. Joysticks? Forget it. Lefty Keypad? forget it. But I could live without all that If I could just get a mouse to fit my LEFT HAND.
I was stationed at Camp Doha, Kuwait from June '97 to June '98 in the US ARMY. I was promoted to SGT after being there only a week. I was in 385th Signal Company. A normal tour for a signal soldier is one year in Kuwait. Camp Doha is a logistics center for all forces in Kuwait. Army Brigade task forces, composed of about 3000 men, are rotated through Kuwait for three months at a time. There are four rotations a year. The rotations overlap by about ten days to insure there is always a task force in Kuwait. A marine amphibious assault force is in Kuwait in December.
Kuwaiti Liberation Day is February 22. Saddam usually gets surly about that time of year and 1998 was no exception. He kicked the UN inspectors out of Iraq and we had a stand off with him. We brought in another 8000 US Soldiers in to Kuwait then. Camp Doha is a big storage depot for equipment and ammunition. All the US has to do is send personnel to Kuwait and issue them the equipment that is already in place. We no longer have to execute a slow build up of forces. Camp Doha however can only support a brigade (about 32 tanks). Most of the new troops came from Ft Stewart. There were other indications of how serious it was. There were 7 Generals at Camp Doha including one from Australia and one from the UK, Navy SEALS, Army special forces and DELTA force present, Including two AC-130 Gunships. It was a regular dog and pony show.
I was at Udari Range at this point providing secure telephone communications from the forward battle field commander to the Generals at Camp Doha. Udari range is 12km from the Iraqi border. Arriving with all these people was the Anthrax vaccine. Taking the vaccine was mandatory. I was in charge of 6 people. I was instructed to take my soldiers weapons away from them and put them under lock and key. We all had to go to the Mess tent to take our shots. Once there we were placed under MP guard and corralled into lines. We were told that the MPs would force anyone who resisted. I didn't see anyone resist. The shot burned really bad for about twenty minutes. The burning sort of crept up on you. One minute you would be laughing at your buddy cause he was crying about how bad it hurt the next you wouldn't be laughing any more. We were all sick for about 36 hours. The shot is injected into muscle. That muscle develops a golf ball sized lump or hardness in it that lasts a month. We repeated this 4 times before I left Kuwait.
An anthrax vaccine was tested prior to the gulf war but was not used on soldiers during that conflict. I believe it caused actual anthrax in testing. We were given a different vaccine. When we took it there had never been any human trials. We were the guinea pigs at gunpoint. I heard that one soldier went into anyphlaxis shock. Sort of an allergy induced coma. Apparently she swelled up until her fingers looked like sausages. I believe that does account for the
I suppose I could go on and on. The military has proven time and again that they care little for the patriots who serve in it. From nuclear testing with exposed troops, Agent Orange, gulf war syndrome to untested anthrax vaccinations the army proves they don't care a bit.
Obviously the US Government is not above harming US Citizens. As for Microsoft I've said it before and I'll say it again: Bill Gates has enough money to buy 2 gigabytes of storage space for every man woman and child on the planet. All 6 billion of us. Windows is full of holes. Windows contains 65,535 ports. No one knows what they do. Is it a coincidence that the one corporation that could collect, store and use information on every single Windows OS user is also a monopoly and the single most powerful corporation in the world has ever seen. Motive, Means and Opportunity. We just need a body.
Reading Microsoft's Windows source code would go a long way toward finding a body. Perhaps if Steve Gibson ever gets Project-X working we will have a body.
The comment " we use the Windows API GetPrivateProfileString() in order to read configuration files" prompted me to read all my
Anyone feeling like I do, that you don't know anything until you have to teach it is welcome to the learning experience of giving me a hand starting linux. I am guessing you were all joking about black helicopters. I have seen them.
Most "damaged parties" want money or stock in Microsoft. Settling with 50 states and several corporations will effectively dismantle Microsoft anyway. Sun, Netscape, etc. will all soon own a piece of Microsoft. They will have the source code anyway: why would they settle for "just" the old source code (win3x, win9x), when they will be getting the old code and all future code(win2k, winME, etc) due to ownership of controlling shares of Microsoft. For all you crazy linux hackers :) gnashing your teeth in anticipation of the source... well you guys were not named as damaged parties and will never put your grubby paws on Windows source code.
The Willamette will be introduced at 800 mhz initially and climb in 33 mhz increments for a total of 22 separate processors. To prevent VAI from gaining market share Intel will be creating 22 new slot types believed to be labeled SLOT E through SLOT BB, skipping the letters Q and Z.
Interestingly, you will be able to overclock the new Celerons to 1.5 ghz three months prior to Willamette's 1.5 ghz release. Sadly, the price of rambus is expected to climb as long as Intel's processors remain faster than their AMD counterparts. That's ok to potential low end Celeron customers because they only expect to get 16 megs of ram with their sub-$1000 systems.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel however: In 2001 Intel will debut a whole new way to compute! Intel is building a vast server running at 10.94 TeraFLOPs/sec capable of running everybody's desktops from San Jose. You will have instantaneous access at anytime to the worlds fastest computer. The home client will be called Q Box! followed of course by Z Box! completely skipping X Box... This is of course the natural next step in the evolution of home computing. Intel will no longer be putting serial numbers on their processors to keep track of you. They will already have all your data. Rumors of Intel's collaboration with the folks at SETI@home are patently false. Intel did mention not to expect more than one frame every 18 hrs 13 min 45.4 sec on your first person shooter.
Is there a storage density equivalent to Moore's Law? Consider a standard drive bay: 1980, single density single side 5 1/4 inch floppy, I think 340 KB. 1981 some smart guy made a square hole punch (you know you bought one) and all our single sides became double sides. double density arrived the same year so we got 1440 KB. 1984 1 Meg hard drive cost 1000 greenbacks (oooh ahhh!) Mac introduced the 1.44 3 1/2 inch but 1.44 Meg and 1440 KB are dogs of the same litter. You just didn't have to take the thing out and flip it all the time. I think I had a 420 Meg with my DX2/66 PC in 1990. 3.2 Gig in 1996. Now? 34 gig in 2000. I guess I'll stop writing for a sec and draw myself a chart to see where I'm going with this.... Looks like each year density increases by 50%... So Perdo's Law states that storage density increases by 50% each year. I should qualify that with "consumer" storage density simply because I can remember drooling over $50k, 56 gig optical storage for servers in the early 90's. So, all of the sudden this fluorescent plastic storage fits right in the natural curve. If something really breaks the curve, get excited. BTW, has anyone figured out when Moore's Law will mandate nano-computers (nanomachines required for the assembly)? I am not a computer architecture engineer and a physicist but someone out there must be. I'm sure Perdo's Law would dictate nano-storage eventually. I believe however that since the sum total of man's knowledge is probably more than doubling every year, Perdo's law dictates you will never have the sum total of man's knowledge on your desktop or pocket or implant... where ever you decide to stick it.
reading the news most people think distributed denial of service was invented this week. That is not entirely the case. There is an IRC channel invented by "oddone" called #mocklamer on effnet. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/4397/in dex.html It forms the principals of a distributed attack. #mocklamer is just that however. Everyone in the channel can request that an individual become the target of every ones ridicule. "Scoobster", the programmer of an IRC script called littlestar included support for both mocklamer and nukes of various types. one of those nuke programs is now widely recognized as one of the first trojan horses. The victims of the distributed denial of service attacks received huge ICMP bombs. The author of littlestare included a program to send those too. The supposed author of the program responsible for the attacks stated in an interview with zdnet that he got his start hacking effnet. I just can't help but noticing how interesting that is. Can you? For all you super cool wannabe H4XORS and script kiddies. The ground is littered with the corpses of freedoms lost. A secure Internet is also an un-free Internet. You folks out there who are busy pointing out the security holes in the internet and writing programs to post on hacker sites are wrong. Countries go to war for money. The US has gone to war for as little as 3 million 1999 adjusted dollars. Guns cause us to loose money? take 'em away. Make prostitution illegal? no way it's a free country. HAHA. Computers cause us to loose money? Take 'em away. And don't say "Oh no, computers are here to stay, there so useful and necessary." At one time the same was said about guns. You might be a master of software but the US regulates the hardware. You are just a punk with a gameboy when the feds shut down your router. So... keep it up. You need a license to own a dog. What makes you think that your computer privileges are rights? Remember, the constitution poses no threat to our current form of government. Keep it up. This gave you a cold pit in your belly? Fix it. Start at home though.