So the difference is 11 %. I think whenever you're comparing two quantities, especially when you're not very familiar with the concepts, you can estimate the meaning of the difference by their ratio. Absolute differences are much less meaningful in science.
However, there are some quantities whose number doesn't scale linearly with the physical effect. For example sound pressure (dB scale) and earthquake power (Richter scale) use logarithmic scales, where the absolute difference translates to physical ratio. For example an increase of 10 dB in volume means a 10-fold increase in the physical sound pressure.
I run Gentoo as well, but I always use the vanilla kernel instead of the Gentoo version. Thus I'm happily running 2.6.13 already on my laptop:) It will take some time (days, if not weeks) for the 2.6.13-gentoo release, and I don't see any benefits in using it.
I share your fury concerning blogs, podcasting and whatever today's new media technology is. However, I don't see any problem or anything new with this; the same thing happened with all of our existing communications tech when they were introduced.
For example, about ten years ago in Finland cell phones began to be affordable for widespread consumer use. People got crazy about the new technology and started calling/texting each other from the most inappropriate places, often just because they could. They would talk about their newest phone and their whereabouts, for example. It's taken several years for cell phones to lose the gadget factor and become tools that are used when/where appropriate.
On the other hand, human communication has never been solely about the content, especially with friends and SOs. People do blog for this reason too.
If there's a threshold temperature that must be crossed for the reaction to happen, or for it to break even, then 60% of that temperature is not good enough.
What you say is absolutely correct, but only in the context of research itself - not in a/. article summary where no specific figures ("billions") are given.
I agree. However, I'd like to assume that when we're discussing nontrivial temperatures that only scientists deal with, we should assume that the scientific (i.e. Kelvin) scale is being used.
Freedom of software is a philosophy, and as such it's not exactly defined, nor legally significant.
On the other hand, GPL exists as a legally binding license that implements the philosophy as much as possible. When you use the GPL, there's no need to dispute it philosophically, since you can simply refer to the actual contents of the agreement.
When you're talking about billions of degrees the temperature scale is pretty irrelevant.
Not so IMHO. There's a linear dependence between Fahrenheit and Celsius/Kelvin. While the constant term is meaningless with such high numbers, the ratio of 9/5 doesn't go anywhere. Fahrenheit 1e9 is roughly 6e8 Kelvin (or degrees Celsius).
It depends on the local law. In Finland it's legal to download anything you find on the Net. The illegal part is distributing something without permission.
I also had a 486 with 8 MB and Windows 3.1. However, I switched directly to Linux, so I've never ran any Windows 9x or later.
Actually, my new laptop came with 98SE which I used for playing music for a few months, until I got the sound card drivers for Linux. The reason was that the drivers were just then being developed and they weren't included in the vanilla kernel, so it took some time to find them. But I guess in practice I'm clean when it comes to Win9x+;)
Adding might be kinda weird, but dividing is actually much easier in base-12 than in base-10. For example, base-12 can be easily divided into 2,3,4, and 6 while base-10 can only be divided into 2 and 5. Now, if only we could all grow another finger and then revise our number system and have a superior metric system.
That's just the problem with Imperial units, the ratio between successive units is different from the base of the number system. Besides, the Imperial ratio is sometimes 12, sometimes 8 (pints to gallon), sometimes 3 (feet to yards), etc. which adds to the confusion. Metric is great for two reasons: for having a self-consistent ratio, and for that ratio being the same as our number base.
Code translation (ala Transmeta) - Possible, skeptacle of this, but could be quite interesting
With this tiny font, I couldn't make out what the word there was, but after reaching for my skeptacles it was all clear. Truly the wealth of alternative spellings on Slashdot never ceases to surprise. I'm not even a native English speaker.
I find it seriously doubtful that the next intel chip (at least the one that apple is planning to use) will use a translation layer. Think about it; if it had such a capability, why would they (Apple) go through all the trouble to program an incredibly slow emulator when they could pressure intel to make it processor/firmware reliant and avoid the panic from the intel switch?
There's already an x86<->RISC translation in Intel chips, since Pentium Pro. It's in hardware for now. I imagine it would be feasible (and incredibly cool) to have a version of Pentium M where the translation layer is PPC instead of x86. Of course it'll be easier to switch when in software, but this is the kind of thing that is being used right now.
it would seem dumb to JIT-compile to X86, which in turn is translated to VLIW.
Yes... I also thought of this for a second, but there's a counterpoint; the native ISA will have the freedom to be changed radically, while x86 is the stable ISA that is visible outside. I think this is a good thing (just like the fluctuations in the Linux module API) because it allows for faster development.
It's all the same. If you modulate a carrier faster, the spectral bandwidth used by the signal gets wider.
This view is so wrong that I don't even know how to start explaining it, although it's superficially correct. You should probably look at Shannon's theorem for details.
I've always thought anything more than 20 kHz as broadband. After all, 'broadband' refers to 'bandwidth' which is something you measure in Hertz and its multiples. Not quite the same thing as data rate that you measure in bps...
In fact, 3d would hinder their ability to see things because foreground objects would obscure background objects.
There is the fundamental problem that humans only have 2D retinas. We cannot see in true 3D. Physically, you can think about the light ray taking up one dimension, so in a world of N spatial dimensions you can only have N-1 dimensional vision.
Since most of us have two of the 2-dimensional retinas, we can imagine what the three-dimensional world is like. There's no need for true 3D projection because we wouldn't be able to see it anyway.
I'm slightly more interested in PS3. Not because of technical superiority; the new Xbox seems like a more conventional multiproc machine, versus the new fancy Cell arch, so the 360 is more likely easier to program for at this point. On the other hand, the PS3 seems a lot more Linux friendly; there's already Cell code in the vanilla kernel sources, contributed by IBM, and the PS3 is reputed to have Linux on the hard drive.
I think buying a PS3 will send a better message about interest in Linux, than buying anything Microsoft. Of course Sony is not the most Linux-friendly company around, but in this case they are much better than Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
In Firefox, you achieve the same with a single mouse click: paste the url into the browser window, and it opens the site.
If you paste some other text besides an url, it does a Google search and goes to the first hit.
In this case I happen to know it is... I have an M.Sci. in physics, with a little materials science background as well :)
So the difference is 11 %. I think whenever you're comparing two quantities, especially when you're not very familiar with the concepts, you can estimate the meaning of the difference by their ratio. Absolute differences are much less meaningful in science.
However, there are some quantities whose number doesn't scale linearly with the physical effect. For example sound pressure (dB scale) and earthquake power (Richter scale) use logarithmic scales, where the absolute difference translates to physical ratio. For example an increase of 10 dB in volume means a 10-fold increase in the physical sound pressure.
I run Gentoo as well, but I always use the vanilla kernel instead of the Gentoo version. Thus I'm happily running 2.6.13 already on my laptop :) It will take some time (days, if not weeks) for the 2.6.13-gentoo release, and I don't see any benefits in using it.
There should be "the operating system" so that people would not have to worry about complicated names such as Linux, OSX or Windows.
For example, about ten years ago in Finland cell phones began to be affordable for widespread consumer use. People got crazy about the new technology and started calling/texting each other from the most inappropriate places, often just because they could. They would talk about their newest phone and their whereabouts, for example. It's taken several years for cell phones to lose the gadget factor and become tools that are used when/where appropriate.
On the other hand, human communication has never been solely about the content, especially with friends and SOs. People do blog for this reason too.
I agree. However, I'd like to assume that when we're discussing nontrivial temperatures that only scientists deal with, we should assume that the scientific (i.e. Kelvin) scale is being used.
Fat lazy pedophile SF author! If you're going to insult someone, do it properly!
(I'm actually a big fan of Clarke's works, btw ;)
Freedom of software is a philosophy, and as such it's not exactly defined, nor legally significant. On the other hand, GPL exists as a legally binding license that implements the philosophy as much as possible. When you use the GPL, there's no need to dispute it philosophically, since you can simply refer to the actual contents of the agreement.
Not so IMHO. There's a linear dependence between Fahrenheit and Celsius/Kelvin. While the constant term is meaningless with such high numbers, the ratio of 9/5 doesn't go anywhere. Fahrenheit 1e9 is roughly 6e8 Kelvin (or degrees Celsius).
I'm sure you mean Pentium M. P4-M is practically the same as P4, but Pentium M is the sane choice when you're talking low power with high performance.
It depends on the local law. In Finland it's legal to download anything you find on the Net. The illegal part is distributing something without permission.
Actually, my new laptop came with 98SE which I used for playing music for a few months, until I got the sound card drivers for Linux. The reason was that the drivers were just then being developed and they weren't included in the vanilla kernel, so it took some time to find them. But I guess in practice I'm clean when it comes to Win9x+ ;)
At least rdate uses TCP by default, and UDP is optional.
Do you PINE for the good old days when men were men and used real mail clients?
That's just the problem with Imperial units, the ratio between successive units is different from the base of the number system. Besides, the Imperial ratio is sometimes 12, sometimes 8 (pints to gallon), sometimes 3 (feet to yards), etc. which adds to the confusion. Metric is great for two reasons: for having a self-consistent ratio, and for that ratio being the same as our number base.
With this tiny font, I couldn't make out what the word there was, but after reaching for my skeptacles it was all clear. Truly the wealth of alternative spellings on Slashdot never ceases to surprise. I'm not even a native English speaker.
There's already an x86<->RISC translation in Intel chips, since Pentium Pro. It's in hardware for now. I imagine it would be feasible (and incredibly cool) to have a version of Pentium M where the translation layer is PPC instead of x86. Of course it'll be easier to switch when in software, but this is the kind of thing that is being used right now.
Yes... I also thought of this for a second, but there's a counterpoint; the native ISA will have the freedom to be changed radically, while x86 is the stable ISA that is visible outside. I think this is a good thing (just like the fluctuations in the Linux module API) because it allows for faster development.
This view is so wrong that I don't even know how to start explaining it, although it's superficially correct. You should probably look at Shannon's theorem for details.
I've always thought anything more than 20 kHz as broadband. After all, 'broadband' refers to 'bandwidth' which is something you measure in Hertz and its multiples. Not quite the same thing as data rate that you measure in bps...
4. 'Broadband' is the wrong term to use if you're talking about high capacity internet access. 'Bandwidth' does not mean 'data rate'.
There is the fundamental problem that humans only have 2D retinas. We cannot see in true 3D. Physically, you can think about the light ray taking up one dimension, so in a world of N spatial dimensions you can only have N-1 dimensional vision.
Since most of us have two of the 2-dimensional retinas, we can imagine what the three-dimensional world is like. There's no need for true 3D projection because we wouldn't be able to see it anyway.
I think buying a PS3 will send a better message about interest in Linux, than buying anything Microsoft. Of course Sony is not the most Linux-friendly company around, but in this case they are much better than Microsoft.
No. If I have been able to see further, it is because I am surrounded by midgets.