You apply a voltage gradient. By some clever field manipulation, sensor placement, and computational wizardry you can address a spot in a three-dimensional lattice. It would probably work something like an MRI, if it had the bastard child of an STM.
You have to start worrying at quantum effects WAY before the scale which is currently in most modern computers. Interesting question though.
And while single-atom memory is an interesting feat, memory density isn't everything. It lets you get more capacity into less space, which can be nice. But if size was everything, I'd use my hard drive instead of my system memory and CPU cache. After all, it's easy to get a hard drive on the order of a couple terabytes while system memory is still typically on the order of a few gigabytes, and CPU cache is on the order of a few megabytes.
Which is to say that even if you're fighting with high-caliber corporate lawyers, the law still favors the abuser as long as they show any moderation whatsoever.
Let's see. A remote website infects your computer with code which does things on your system without your consent and resists your attempts to delete it through the use of hidden copies. I think we have a word for this already. Starts with a V.
LAN play works in Steam offline mode according to the FAQ. You still have to install the Steam client and get spammed with their ads even if you buy a boxed edition, but you can still play on a LAN (unlike certain other LAN gaming franchises we could name - which have been cracked anyway).
I'm curious whether they did this more for "zomg the pirates" or because they want to force people who play it at home with their family to buy multiple copies. Personally, I'd be more inclined to worry about hampering migration from Civ 5. Say someone plays it at home with their wife and two kids...okay, that's four copies of Civ 5 now versus continuing to play Civ 4 this weekend. And next. And so forth. Raising the barrier to entry can be problematic when you're self-competing.
The problem here is that many potential scenarios are being reduced to a blanket statement in the media.
Two examples.
Say I live a block from a major chain grocer. They have trucks coming and going to deliver their produce and other stock, which pollute at some rate. Now say I can either walk a block and buy a bag of carrots, or I can order one from their delivery service. If I walk, I'm polluting at whatever rate corresponds to a human walking - pretty low, probably around what it would be if I was just sitting at home doing nothing, and slightly beneficial to my health. If I order it, a truck picks up a batch of groceries from the store and then drives to my home and several others. For this, it's probably true that the second case has a significant pollution margin compared to the first case. This does not make the second case a major pollutant source, just one which is likely greater than the first case.
Now say I want to order a mattress. I could rent a van, go driving around to several mattress shops, and drive my purchase home. Alternately, I could use public transit to visit several stores and then have one delivered in a truck along with several other deliveries. Maybe the truck is diesel and the van uses unleaded. Okay...it's probably true that the truck pollutes less than if everyone it's delivering to drives to the store themselves.
What the heck are they comparing here? All in-person purchases to all online purchases? All deliveries? Yes, I chose extremes - because they're a good way to illustrate that the article is making some unsupportable blanket statements. If the question is buying a shirt from Target versus getting it online...well, it's harder to say which is better. Using a car probably pollutes more than delivery or public transit - one engine tends to be less wasteful than dozens. But of the remaining two? Okay, the bus was going there with or without you, but the FedEx truck was driving its route with or without you as well. Maybe the difference isn't all that large.
The bigger problem here is that modern environmentalism is riddled with this sort of irresponsible reporting. Did it arise from the media article or from the researchers? Who knows. Both have been known to be guilty of this, although it's often the simple case of journalists being given topics to report on which they lack the competency to interpret accurately. But FUD and panic aren't going to save the planet.
I love how they think implementing it in silicon is hard.
There was this little invention in 1956 called the Programmable Read-Only Memory (PROM). It has only gotten easier (and cheaper) since. Similar technology is presumably used to implement the very chips used to power "authorized" HCDP links. Shouldn't they know exactly how cheap and easy these are to use? With geniuses like this running the show, no wonder we keep ending up with all this tedious security theater in the media industries.
The obvious conclusion here is that the people deciding policy and making crazy talk in public know nothing about the technology they're using - and worse, pushing on us.
It's also trivial to bake the sample. Sure, you surveyed 2100 people. But were they an accurate model of the population as a whole, or did you select for a group which gives you a very narrow sample with well-known psychographics then use loaded questions to give you exactly the data you want to get the statistics you've been paid to deliver? Statistics are only as honest as the methodology is transparent.
Most of my physics classes either allowed any calculator the student wanted short of something capable of running a CAS, or allowed NO calculator use. As long as you're consistent and let people know the exam rules well in advance (i.e. in the course syllabus on Week 1) then no one has any reasonable cause to complain. And really, the only physics exams where a calculator should be necessary are the freshman survey courses - if there.
As far as other devices like translators - they should only be allowed in exams if they're approved on a university (or at least departmental) level. Otherwise you're buying trouble. These things are not your responsibility. The university has presumably already made a determination that the student is competent to take courses taught and tested in English. You are not only creating potential exam security issues, you are also opening yourself to complaints from the remaining students since this creates a bias which is inconsistent with university policy.
MapReduce is a sequence of batch operations, and generally, Lipkovits explains, you can't start your next phase of operations until you finish the first. It suffers from "stragglers," he says. If you want to build a system that's based on series of map-reduces, there's a certain probability that something will go wrong, and this gets larger as you increase the number of operations. "You can't do anything that takes a relatively short amount of time," Lipkovitz says, "so we got rid of it."
"[The new framework is] completely incremental," he says. When a new page is crawled, Google can update its index with the necessarily changes rather than rebuilding the whole thing.
There are still cases where Caffeine uses batch processing, and MapReduce is still the basis for myriad other Google services. But prior the arrival of Caffeine, the indexing system was Google's largest MapReduce application, so use of the platform has been significantly, well, reduced.
They're not still using MapReduce for the index. It's still supported in the framework for secondary computations where appropriate, and it's still used in some other Google services, but it's been straight-up replaced for the index. Colossus is not a new improved version of MapReduce, it's a completely different approach to maintaining the index.
No, the old system was transactional as well. The problem was that it was transactional across a very large number of operations being run in parallel, and any failure could cause the entire transaction to fail. The new system is incremental rather than monolithic. While it may not be quite as fast across a large number of transactions, it doesn't risk major processing losses either. Such failures are very unlikely, but the Google index has grown large enough that it is probably running into unlikely problems all the time.
MapReduce is also staged, and the first stage must complete before the second can start. At Google's scales, this adds up to quite a lot of wasted power.
Processing a batch of data with Colossus is probably slower than using MapReduce under ideal circumstances. But failures don't incur a major penalty under Colossus, and MapReduce ties up CPU cycles with waits which aren't wasted under Colossus. Even if Colossus is slower under ideal circumstances, it's more reliable and more efficient in practice.
Colossus is incremental, whereas MapReduce is batch-based.
In MapReduce, you run code against each item with each operation spread across N processors, then you reduce it using a second set of code. You have to wait for the first stage to finish before running the second stage. The second stage is itself broken up into a number of discrete operations and tends to be restricted to summing results of the first stage together, and the return profile of the overall result needs to be the same as that for a single reduce operation. This is really great for applications which can be broken up in this fashion, but there are disadvantages as well.
MapReduce is a sequence of batch operations, and generally, Lipkovits explains, you can't start your next phase of operations until you finish the first. It suffers from "stragglers," he says. If you want to build a system that's based on series of map-reduces, there's a certain probability that something will go wrong, and this gets larger as you increase the number of operations. "You can't do anything that takes a relatively short amount of time," Lipkovitz says, "so we got rid of it."
The problem for Google is that the disadvantages scale. The fact that you have to wait for all operations from the first stage to finish and that you have to wait for the whole thing to run before you find out if something broke can have a very high cost at high item counts (noting that MapReduce typically runs against millions of items or more, so "high" is very high). With the present size, it's apparently more advantageous to get changes committed successfully the first time, even if MapReduce might be able to compute the result faster under ideal circumstances.
For example, why do you use ECC memory in a server? Because you have a bloody lot of memory across a bloody lot of computers running a bloody lot of operations, and failures potentially have more serious consequences than if a program on someone's desktop. At higher scales, non-ideal circumstances are more common and have more serious consequences. So while they still use MapReduce for some functions where it's appropriate, it's no longer appropriate for the purpose of maintaining the search index. It's just gotten too big.
Almost right. You can only really make those heavier elements through processes which occur during a supernova, yes. But although lighter elements (say, carbon) can be made during normal stellar lifetimes...how are you going to get it out?
I found a supernova remnant this morning. It was my foot.
The article is a little less than clear about the actual research that occurred, as usual. From the sound of it, I suspect that what they found was discrete ejecta - a blob of material which recognizably came from a specific supernova which had not mixed with other material. This is cool since it gives us a sample which we can study in that specific context.
To translate your query into a more IT-intelligible analogue, can you build a model of the internet by posting random things to Slashdot and then watching Google Trends?
Slashdot Mirror
Do they serve business customers as well? Because if they do, this is probably going to get them sued before long.
You apply a voltage gradient. By some clever field manipulation, sensor placement, and computational wizardry you can address a spot in a three-dimensional lattice. It would probably work something like an MRI, if it had the bastard child of an STM.
You have to start worrying at quantum effects WAY before the scale which is currently in most modern computers. Interesting question though.
And while single-atom memory is an interesting feat, memory density isn't everything. It lets you get more capacity into less space, which can be nice. But if size was everything, I'd use my hard drive instead of my system memory and CPU cache. After all, it's easy to get a hard drive on the order of a couple terabytes while system memory is still typically on the order of a few gigabytes, and CPU cache is on the order of a few megabytes.
You know those exploding consoles on Star Trek? Did you ever wonder why someone would invent exploding keyboards? Now you know.
Which is to say that even if you're fighting with high-caliber corporate lawyers, the law still favors the abuser as long as they show any moderation whatsoever.
If it was so successful, shouldn't I know or care what their product is by now?
To put off writing their thesis.
Let's see. A remote website infects your computer with code which does things on your system without your consent and resists your attempts to delete it through the use of hidden copies. I think we have a word for this already. Starts with a V.
Too late, they already created the universe through a predestination paradox.
Yes. Ads. For specials from Steam. Presented on my computer as pop-ups. Entiende ahora?
For all I know, there's even a way to disable them. But why the heck should I have to figure out how, just to play a game I paid for?
If I could get science journalism articles to always link to the research paper involved, I would be able to die happy.
LAN play works in Steam offline mode according to the FAQ. You still have to install the Steam client and get spammed with their ads even if you buy a boxed edition, but you can still play on a LAN (unlike certain other LAN gaming franchises we could name - which have been cracked anyway).
I'm curious whether they did this more for "zomg the pirates" or because they want to force people who play it at home with their family to buy multiple copies. Personally, I'd be more inclined to worry about hampering migration from Civ 5. Say someone plays it at home with their wife and two kids...okay, that's four copies of Civ 5 now versus continuing to play Civ 4 this weekend. And next. And so forth. Raising the barrier to entry can be problematic when you're self-competing.
The problem here is that many potential scenarios are being reduced to a blanket statement in the media.
Two examples.
Say I live a block from a major chain grocer. They have trucks coming and going to deliver their produce and other stock, which pollute at some rate. Now say I can either walk a block and buy a bag of carrots, or I can order one from their delivery service. If I walk, I'm polluting at whatever rate corresponds to a human walking - pretty low, probably around what it would be if I was just sitting at home doing nothing, and slightly beneficial to my health. If I order it, a truck picks up a batch of groceries from the store and then drives to my home and several others. For this, it's probably true that the second case has a significant pollution margin compared to the first case. This does not make the second case a major pollutant source, just one which is likely greater than the first case.
Now say I want to order a mattress. I could rent a van, go driving around to several mattress shops, and drive my purchase home. Alternately, I could use public transit to visit several stores and then have one delivered in a truck along with several other deliveries. Maybe the truck is diesel and the van uses unleaded. Okay...it's probably true that the truck pollutes less than if everyone it's delivering to drives to the store themselves.
What the heck are they comparing here? All in-person purchases to all online purchases? All deliveries? Yes, I chose extremes - because they're a good way to illustrate that the article is making some unsupportable blanket statements. If the question is buying a shirt from Target versus getting it online...well, it's harder to say which is better. Using a car probably pollutes more than delivery or public transit - one engine tends to be less wasteful than dozens. But of the remaining two? Okay, the bus was going there with or without you, but the FedEx truck was driving its route with or without you as well. Maybe the difference isn't all that large.
The bigger problem here is that modern environmentalism is riddled with this sort of irresponsible reporting. Did it arise from the media article or from the researchers? Who knows. Both have been known to be guilty of this, although it's often the simple case of journalists being given topics to report on which they lack the competency to interpret accurately. But FUD and panic aren't going to save the planet.
I love how they think implementing it in silicon is hard.
There was this little invention in 1956 called the Programmable Read-Only Memory (PROM). It has only gotten easier (and cheaper) since. Similar technology is presumably used to implement the very chips used to power "authorized" HCDP links. Shouldn't they know exactly how cheap and easy these are to use? With geniuses like this running the show, no wonder we keep ending up with all this tedious security theater in the media industries.
The obvious conclusion here is that the people deciding policy and making crazy talk in public know nothing about the technology they're using - and worse, pushing on us.
It's also trivial to bake the sample. Sure, you surveyed 2100 people. But were they an accurate model of the population as a whole, or did you select for a group which gives you a very narrow sample with well-known psychographics then use loaded questions to give you exactly the data you want to get the statistics you've been paid to deliver? Statistics are only as honest as the methodology is transparent.
Most of my physics classes either allowed any calculator the student wanted short of something capable of running a CAS, or allowed NO calculator use. As long as you're consistent and let people know the exam rules well in advance (i.e. in the course syllabus on Week 1) then no one has any reasonable cause to complain. And really, the only physics exams where a calculator should be necessary are the freshman survey courses - if there.
As far as other devices like translators - they should only be allowed in exams if they're approved on a university (or at least departmental) level. Otherwise you're buying trouble. These things are not your responsibility. The university has presumably already made a determination that the student is competent to take courses taught and tested in English. You are not only creating potential exam security issues, you are also opening yourself to complaints from the remaining students since this creates a bias which is inconsistent with university policy.
Statistics: making the unlikely happen every day if you roll the dice enough times.
You really ought to meet my friends Irony and Sarcasm.
Sorry, Colossus is the file system. Caffeine is the new computational framework.
I made the same error in several posts now...but Slashdot doesn't support editing. Oh well! Everyone reads the entire thread, right?
No, that's not it.
MapReduce is a sequence of batch operations, and generally, Lipkovits explains, you can't start your next phase of operations until you finish the first. It suffers from "stragglers," he says. If you want to build a system that's based on series of map-reduces, there's a certain probability that something will go wrong, and this gets larger as you increase the number of operations. "You can't do anything that takes a relatively short amount of time," Lipkovitz says, "so we got rid of it."
"[The new framework is] completely incremental," he says. When a new page is crawled, Google can update its index with the necessarily changes rather than rebuilding the whole thing.
There are still cases where Caffeine uses batch processing, and MapReduce is still the basis for myriad other Google services. But prior the arrival of Caffeine, the indexing system was Google's largest MapReduce application, so use of the platform has been significantly, well, reduced.
They're not still using MapReduce for the index. It's still supported in the framework for secondary computations where appropriate, and it's still used in some other Google services, but it's been straight-up replaced for the index. Colossus is not a new improved version of MapReduce, it's a completely different approach to maintaining the index.
No, the old system was transactional as well. The problem was that it was transactional across a very large number of operations being run in parallel, and any failure could cause the entire transaction to fail. The new system is incremental rather than monolithic. While it may not be quite as fast across a large number of transactions, it doesn't risk major processing losses either. Such failures are very unlikely, but the Google index has grown large enough that it is probably running into unlikely problems all the time.
MapReduce is also staged, and the first stage must complete before the second can start. At Google's scales, this adds up to quite a lot of wasted power.
Processing a batch of data with Colossus is probably slower than using MapReduce under ideal circumstances. But failures don't incur a major penalty under Colossus, and MapReduce ties up CPU cycles with waits which aren't wasted under Colossus. Even if Colossus is slower under ideal circumstances, it's more reliable and more efficient in practice.
Colossus is incremental, whereas MapReduce is batch-based.
In MapReduce, you run code against each item with each operation spread across N processors, then you reduce it using a second set of code. You have to wait for the first stage to finish before running the second stage. The second stage is itself broken up into a number of discrete operations and tends to be restricted to summing results of the first stage together, and the return profile of the overall result needs to be the same as that for a single reduce operation. This is really great for applications which can be broken up in this fashion, but there are disadvantages as well.
MapReduce is a sequence of batch operations, and generally, Lipkovits explains, you can't start your next phase of operations until you finish the first. It suffers from "stragglers," he says. If you want to build a system that's based on series of map-reduces, there's a certain probability that something will go wrong, and this gets larger as you increase the number of operations. "You can't do anything that takes a relatively short amount of time," Lipkovitz says, "so we got rid of it."
The problem for Google is that the disadvantages scale. The fact that you have to wait for all operations from the first stage to finish and that you have to wait for the whole thing to run before you find out if something broke can have a very high cost at high item counts (noting that MapReduce typically runs against millions of items or more, so "high" is very high). With the present size, it's apparently more advantageous to get changes committed successfully the first time, even if MapReduce might be able to compute the result faster under ideal circumstances.
For example, why do you use ECC memory in a server? Because you have a bloody lot of memory across a bloody lot of computers running a bloody lot of operations, and failures potentially have more serious consequences than if a program on someone's desktop. At higher scales, non-ideal circumstances are more common and have more serious consequences. So while they still use MapReduce for some functions where it's appropriate, it's no longer appropriate for the purpose of maintaining the search index. It's just gotten too big.
Almost right. You can only really make those heavier elements through processes which occur during a supernova, yes. But although lighter elements (say, carbon) can be made during normal stellar lifetimes...how are you going to get it out?
I found a supernova remnant this morning. It was my foot.
The article is a little less than clear about the actual research that occurred, as usual. From the sound of it, I suspect that what they found was discrete ejecta - a blob of material which recognizably came from a specific supernova which had not mixed with other material. This is cool since it gives us a sample which we can study in that specific context.
Nutrition tracking in the middle of an obesity epidemic isn't a privacy issue, it's a small step in the right direction.
That doesn't really sound like the best way to implement it though. On the other hand, it should at least sort of work, which is better than nothing.
To translate your query into a more IT-intelligible analogue, can you build a model of the internet by posting random things to Slashdot and then watching Google Trends?