While *this* isn't helpful - as C/perl/brainfuck/etc. are high-level languages - one certainly could (try to) design quadralingual machine code so that all of a sudden there's a BSI-style virus that runs on x86/PPC/m68k etc. Granted it probably wouldn't work *well*, but it'd be interesting to see even bilingual assembler.
A while ago/. ran a story (about a year after it was published, but that's fine) about a guy evolving software on FPGAs. That'd be cool enough, but the genetic algorithm figured out how to exploit *analog* and weak-linkage (adjacent gates crosstalking) aspects of the FPGA - so now not only do we have our own computers, we suddenly have our own combination analog/digital computers, should we want them, and it would be really cool to have an evolving computer... a genetic speech-recognition chip, or somesuch.
FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array (also FPLGA - Field Programmable Logic Gate Array).
These neat chips have the wonderful feature of turning *software* into hardware. They take a bitsequence (much like... uh... oh yeah, object code!) and rewire themselves on the fly. Some chips can even do ~10 complete reprogrammings per second. They also come in various degrees of "fineness" - some give you individual gates (not, and, or, xor, etc.) while others give you computational or other large units (multiplier, adder, memory, I/O bus). I dunno if any give the "best of both worlds" but it would not be hard to glue a handful of FPGAs together, one that handled IO, one that was the reprogrammable cruncher, etc.
So it's certainly possible to design chips, just as one codes. And, hey, if the design doesn't work, it's not like you cooked a chip - keep a "known-good" (or good-enough =) version in a serial FLASH or battery-backed serial (static) RAM chip and program out to another battery-backed serial (static) RAM chip. Design some trivial (read: the simplest case is just a DPST switch) hardware to pick which chip gets read at bootup, and *bang* back in business.
Sounds promising. Maybe somebody should offer kits of interwired FPLGAs and the necessary program-storage chips. Would be interesting to port Linux to such a computer (augmented, obviously, with interfaces - like USB [storage, sound, networking], FDD [bootstrapping the Linux kernel to then get at the USB stuffs], and some form of a video console [prolly serial at first]) The interface glue would be difficult but not prohibitively so. And all it takes is one person to publish the designs. Conveniently, there are many off-the-shelf chips with well-available specs for USB host and device support (Phillips makes some, for instance), FDDs have been around so long that I'm sure the chips are there for cheap, and serial, well, I'm sure some FPGAs have serial I/O on them, and if not, oh well, it's easy to do in hardware (shift registers, clock generator, done).
Hey, just occurred to me. Asynchronus computing is becoming more and more discussed as central CPU clocks reach "terminal velocity." An array of FPGAs would be a *great* way to do coarse-grained async computing.
-Knots
Re:Sony == DMCA. Bad people. M'kay?
on
Sony PCG-U1
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I Know it's bad form to reply to myself, but I *do* take issue with the anti-theft provisions of the DMCA.
Personally, yes, I think artists should be paid for their work. HOWEVER, I have not yet read a convincing argument that digital copying (not moving) constitutes theft.
Sorry for self-reply. -Knots
Re:Sony == DMCA. Bad people. M'kay?
on
Sony PCG-U1
·
· Score: 1
I take no issue with the anti-theft provisions of the DMCA - the idea is "good." What isn't good is the anti-1st-ammendment provisions.
Just because we *can* copy something, the crime is *NOT* the ability to copy, but rather the copying itself.
A sag in (especially music and movie) revenue of Sony might teach them a lesson. Or, more likely, they'll blame the pirates, collect insurance money (yes, they do!), and go on lobbying for more civil-rights-reducing laws. Now that's evil.
-Knots
Re:Sony == DMCA. Bad people. M'kay?
on
Sony PCG-U1
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
While I'm no fan of Sony as a company, one has to admit that they occassionally do something right.
It might be better if Sony's revenue stream dropped off entirely, but I consider 2nd-best to be a relocation of its revenue stream away from music. Since fewer computers (especially these things) will be sold than CDs and at a narrower profit margin, buying one of these as opposed to the eqivelant price in CDs gives Sony less money.
Ok, so I'm an apologist. I confess, I thought of buying it. EEEEEEEEE. I feel so dirty.::goes to take a shower::
Diversity is good, yes, as long as everybody speaks the same protocols. As things are now, it's becoming *less* an issue, though it will never go away - TCP/IP etc. has been around for decades and basically has the mid-level data layers, and we have standards like HTTP, FTP, IRC, etc. JAVA and IVM and others are proposing that even execution environments be abstracted so everything "speaks" the same "assember" code [though, of course, native is faster].
Celera used the HGP's data to augment their own - so their task was significantly smaller (and thus cheaper).
Current drug development does not, actually, use DNA sequences - that's going to be something new. We've never had the compute power to fold that many protiens and see what happens - so we make a drug and test it to see what happens in reality.
I take issue with holding patents until double R+D is made. There is simply no excuse for holding a patent that long, ESPECIALLY as we do move to more DNA based drugs. DNA should not be patentable at all (patents do not cover "discoveries of nature" or somesuch).
Maybe drug patents should be more like old copyrights - last a couple of years per renewal (5 to 10, I'd prefer ~7) and are renewable a few times. Now, add the following catch: to renew the 1st time, there must be significant progress towards market-status; to renew the 2nd, the drug must actually be on the market, and to renew the 3rd, the drug's market price must have shown a decrease.
Not set in stone (duh, it's a post on slashdot. ^_^), but that system would have the following advantages: 1) There is a window for R+D cost recovery 2) There is no possibility of a company squashing "virtual" competition by sitting on a patent. 3) There is a requirement that price drop after some years on the market. Not a perfect solution to the aids victims, no, but IMHO closer to ideal. For the drugs like AIDS treatments, maybe the US or UN should fund a significant part of R+D, so the recovery is lower, so the drugs can have low caps set on their prices and the companies still make money.
Anybody? (Moderators, if you feel like modding, that's cool too, though I'd certainly rather have a reply or two.)
That's probably true, however... it would be nice if the manual didn't say it was a feature and that "this device adheres to Sony's digital content protection system" (or similar). And all their MD deck units I've seen say the same and only provide analog out. Though maybe I'm wrong (I hope!).
I have a portable minidisk recorder unit that fits well in the palm of my hand. It works wonderfully, accepting whatever sounds I give it from a mic, analog, or digital line in. However, it does irk me that a purely digital device all the way up to the DACs has no digital output - digital copy protection in its most primitive form.
So I keep pristine digital copies of all my media and use my minidisk as you sugguest - a tape player replacement.
So run it yourself on your firewall / router and on your client boxes. Doesn't seem that hard. I do some prioritizing in my routing queue of packets with destination ports that indicate SSH (22) and try to give a slight speed boost to 21,23, and 80, though more often than not, those don't matter that much.
Actually, if everybody did a "ls" on one node's file tree, the latency would be a once-only filesystem access followed by whatever network latency there is as the machine sends out the answers. It won't have to touch disk again because Linux will have loaded the page into its cache, we presume.
Though yes, there certainly are cases where this will be unable to handle the load (as with any computer), but the load level an openMosix cluster can handle will be, for almost all uses, it would seem, much larger than any of the nodes in single.
Yes. We don't know that you aren't able to burn entire DVDs onto tubes of EPROM chips and stealing that way. You are, of course, guilty until proven innocent, but we give you no opportunity to prove yourself.
That does indeed make more sense. Ok, cool. Thanks. Though, what kind of cost savings are we talking here, even in best case situations? WinModems aren't *that* much cheaper to make than the full things, are they?
What about doing pulse encoding on a generated 2.5GHz signal?
If it's an FM signal (I don't know) wouldn't the beat frequency against a generated 2.5GHz signal be the data we wanted? Now we'd only have to sample within a few hundred kilohertz, right? And the reverse would be possible too, apply the generated signal as an input to the 2.5GHz signal generator as a clock skew?
I detest winmodems as modems as much as the next guy. However, since they are essentially ADC/DACs after a phone-grade coupling transformer (I think?) they offer interesting potential for phreaks (recording without pickup click, etc.)
WinWiFi would just be ADC/DACs behind... an antenna. So if it's done in an interesting way, we would have an arbitrary frequency digital tuner in our computers, capable of bandwidths limited only by the thruput of the DAC/ADC chip(s).
Now, if they made I2O WinWiFi, that'd be cool. Universally supported across all OSes, if I understand I2O correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
While *this* isn't helpful - as C/perl/brainfuck/etc. are high-level languages - one certainly could (try to) design quadralingual machine code so that all of a sudden there's a BSI-style virus that runs on x86/PPC/m68k etc. Granted it probably wouldn't work *well*, but it'd be interesting to see even bilingual assembler.
=)
-Knots
Sojourner had an 80C58 chip, I think. Nowhere near up to the 486's level.
And they still wouldn't give me schematics when I asked. You know it's D o DEFENSE classified (WTF?!).
A while ago /. ran a story (about a year after it was published, but that's fine) about a guy evolving software on FPGAs. That'd be cool enough, but the genetic algorithm figured out how to exploit *analog* and weak-linkage (adjacent gates crosstalking) aspects of the FPGA - so now not only do we have our own computers, we suddenly have our own combination analog/digital computers, should we want them, and it would be really cool to have an evolving computer... a genetic speech-recognition chip, or somesuch.
Just something I remembered.
-knots
FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array (also FPLGA - Field Programmable Logic Gate Array).
These neat chips have the wonderful feature of turning *software* into hardware. They take a bitsequence (much like... uh... oh yeah, object code!) and rewire themselves on the fly. Some chips can even do ~10 complete reprogrammings per second. They also come in various degrees of "fineness" - some give you individual gates (not, and, or, xor, etc.) while others give you computational or other large units (multiplier, adder, memory, I/O bus). I dunno if any give the "best of both worlds" but it would not be hard to glue a handful of FPGAs together, one that handled IO, one that was the reprogrammable cruncher, etc.
So it's certainly possible to design chips, just as one codes. And, hey, if the design doesn't work, it's not like you cooked a chip - keep a "known-good" (or good-enough =) version in a serial FLASH or battery-backed serial (static) RAM chip and program out to another battery-backed serial (static) RAM chip. Design some trivial (read: the simplest case is just a DPST switch) hardware to pick which chip gets read at bootup, and *bang* back in business.
Sounds promising. Maybe somebody should offer kits of interwired FPLGAs and the necessary program-storage chips. Would be interesting to port Linux to such a computer (augmented, obviously, with interfaces - like USB [storage, sound, networking], FDD [bootstrapping the Linux kernel to then get at the USB stuffs], and some form of a video console [prolly serial at first]) The interface glue would be difficult but not prohibitively so. And all it takes is one person to publish the designs. Conveniently, there are many off-the-shelf chips with well-available specs for USB host and device support (Phillips makes some, for instance), FDDs have been around so long that I'm sure the chips are there for cheap, and serial, well, I'm sure some FPGAs have serial I/O on them, and if not, oh well, it's easy to do in hardware (shift registers, clock generator, done).
Hey, just occurred to me. Asynchronus computing is becoming more and more discussed as central CPU clocks reach "terminal velocity." An array of FPGAs would be a *great* way to do coarse-grained async computing.
-Knots
Actually, I Know it's bad form to reply to myself, but I *do* take issue with the anti-theft provisions of the DMCA.
Personally, yes, I think artists should be paid for their work. HOWEVER, I have not yet read a convincing argument that digital copying (not moving) constitutes theft.
Sorry for self-reply.
-Knots
I take no issue with the anti-theft provisions of the DMCA - the idea is "good." What isn't good is the anti-1st-ammendment provisions.
Just because we *can* copy something, the crime is *NOT* the ability to copy, but rather the copying itself.
A sag in (especially music and movie) revenue of Sony might teach them a lesson. Or, more likely, they'll blame the pirates, collect insurance money (yes, they do!), and go on lobbying for more civil-rights-reducing laws. Now that's evil.
-Knots
While I'm no fan of Sony as a company, one has to admit that they occassionally do something right.
::goes to take a shower::
It might be better if Sony's revenue stream dropped off entirely, but I consider 2nd-best to be a relocation of its revenue stream away from music. Since fewer computers (especially these things) will be sold than CDs and at a narrower profit margin, buying one of these as opposed to the eqivelant price in CDs gives Sony less money.
Ok, so I'm an apologist. I confess, I thought of buying it. EEEEEEEEE. I feel so dirty.
-knots
"Support bacteria! It's the only culture most people have." ^_^
Random offtopic commenting. I apologize profusely.
-Knots
"And in the blue corner..." Ok, who got a funny image in their head of a refigerator and a blender fighting?
Sorry for decreasing the S:N ratio.
-Knots
Diversity is good, yes, as long as everybody speaks the same protocols. As things are now, it's becoming *less* an issue, though it will never go away - TCP/IP etc. has been around for decades and basically has the mid-level data layers, and we have standards like HTTP, FTP, IRC, etc. JAVA and IVM and others are proposing that even execution environments be abstracted so everything "speaks" the same "assember" code [though, of course, native is faster].
Just my two cents.
-Knots
Correct, as far as you go.
Celera used the HGP's data to augment their own - so their task was significantly smaller (and thus cheaper).
Current drug development does not, actually, use DNA sequences - that's going to be something new. We've never had the compute power to fold that many protiens and see what happens - so we make a drug and test it to see what happens in reality.
I take issue with holding patents until double R+D is made. There is simply no excuse for holding a patent that long, ESPECIALLY as we do move to more DNA based drugs. DNA should not be patentable at all (patents do not cover "discoveries of nature" or somesuch).
Maybe drug patents should be more like old copyrights - last a couple of years per renewal (5 to 10, I'd prefer ~7) and are renewable a few times. Now, add the following catch: to renew the 1st time, there must be significant progress towards market-status; to renew the 2nd, the drug must actually be on the market, and to renew the 3rd, the drug's market price must have shown a decrease.
Not set in stone (duh, it's a post on slashdot. ^_^), but that system would have the following advantages:
1) There is a window for R+D cost recovery
2) There is no possibility of a company squashing "virtual" competition by sitting on a patent.
3) There is a requirement that price drop after some years on the market. Not a perfect solution to the aids victims, no, but IMHO closer to ideal. For the drugs like AIDS treatments, maybe the US or UN should fund a significant part of R+D, so the recovery is lower, so the drugs can have low caps set on their prices and the companies still make money.
Anybody? (Moderators, if you feel like modding, that's cool too, though I'd certainly rather have a reply or two.)
Responding to sig: That puts all of modern particle physics in its place, doesn't it. ^_^
-Knots
"Message from Opticon, news from the fassion bomb..." -- Orgy, Opticon.
This has been a randomness attack.
-Knots
Whole new meaning to "meta-moderation" there.
-knots
That's probably true, however... it would be nice if the manual didn't say it was a feature and that "this device adheres to Sony's digital content protection system" (or similar). And all their MD deck units I've seen say the same and only provide analog out. Though maybe I'm wrong (I hope!).
-knots.
I have a portable minidisk recorder unit that fits well in the palm of my hand. It works wonderfully, accepting whatever sounds I give it from a mic, analog, or digital line in. However, it does irk me that a purely digital device all the way up to the DACs has no digital output - digital copy protection in its most primitive form.
So I keep pristine digital copies of all my media and use my minidisk as you sugguest - a tape player replacement.
Just another "me too."
-Knots
So we should start calling this the first of the Oracles?
-Knots
So run it yourself on your firewall / router and on your client boxes. Doesn't seem that hard. I do some prioritizing in my routing queue of packets with destination ports that indicate SSH (22) and try to give a slight speed boost to 21,23, and 80, though more often than not, those don't matter that much.
-Knots
Actually, if everybody did a "ls" on one node's file tree, the latency would be a once-only filesystem access followed by whatever network latency there is as the machine sends out the answers. It won't have to touch disk again because Linux will have loaded the page into its cache, we presume.
Though yes, there certainly are cases where this will be unable to handle the load (as with any computer), but the load level an openMosix cluster can handle will be, for almost all uses, it would seem, much larger than any of the nodes in single.
-Knots
Yes. We don't know that you aren't able to burn entire DVDs onto tubes of EPROM chips and stealing that way. You are, of course, guilty until proven innocent, but we give you no opportunity to prove yourself.
Welcome to Evil-Free America
-Knots
That does indeed make more sense. Ok, cool. Thanks. Though, what kind of cost savings are we talking here, even in best case situations? WinModems aren't *that* much cheaper to make than the full things, are they?
-Knots
What about doing pulse encoding on a generated 2.5GHz signal?
If it's an FM signal (I don't know) wouldn't the beat frequency against a generated 2.5GHz signal be the data we wanted? Now we'd only have to sample within a few hundred kilohertz, right? And the reverse would be possible too, apply the generated signal as an input to the 2.5GHz signal generator as a clock skew?
Just guessing, really.
--Knots
I detest winmodems as modems as much as the next guy. However, since they are essentially ADC/DACs after a phone-grade coupling transformer (I think?) they offer interesting potential for phreaks (recording without pickup click, etc.)
WinWiFi would just be ADC/DACs behind... an antenna. So if it's done in an interesting way, we would have an arbitrary frequency digital tuner in our computers, capable of bandwidths limited only by the thruput of the DAC/ADC chip(s).
Now, if they made I2O WinWiFi, that'd be cool. Universally supported across all OSes, if I understand I2O correctly.
Just my b'10' cents.
-Knots
Somebody else has seen Sneakers!!!
You just made my day! =)
(lameness filter be damned. I'll SCREAM if I want to. Actually, it's not so bad to use lowercase anyway.)
Does anybody know the iterative rules for the repeated prisoner's dillema simulation? (The one with George Washingtons).
I've toyed around but been unable to get them.
Thanks in advance
-Knots