Um, the angry ranting column is more appropriately your local rag.
I say let's arraign Steve Jobs for not anticipating that addiction to iPods would cause Aussie kids to walk in front of moving vehicles. He should have known that Apple's uber-coolness would cause this utter madness in teenagers and Gen-Ys. Maybe we should start the campaign to extradite him from his lair in Cupertino now - as soon as we actually get a functioning government Downunder...
It is not geothermal - it's a ground-source heat pump.
If everbody in a crowded neighbourhood used such heat pumps, the benefits per household would become marginal. There is so much heat energy transfer that is physically possible within a bounded body of earth. The energy is not completely free from that perspective - there would need to be an ACTIVE (e.g. electrically-driven) transfer of heat energy back into the ground if the entire neighbourhood fulfilled its heating requirements during winter.
It is an elegant mechanism for relatively isolated and freestanding dwellings that don't have to compete for "heat" from their neighbours.
I know I wading into dangerous territory on/. with this bit of unreferenced information. I believe that musicians have complained for years about the sound derived from CDs in comparison to LP records. It appears that they have some quantitative backing in that CDs have music sampled at approximately 2x the audible range. However it appears that humans perceive frequency harmonics in the audible range though they cannot hear the direct frequencies. By sampling at only 2x the audible range this excludes the harmomics so beloved of people with attuned "musical ears". Perhaps somebody can sunstantiate this factoid.
Of course now that most music is crappy compressed and lossy mp3, a Gen-Y probably wouldn't appreciate even CD-quality sound, having heard nothing better in their youth.
Slashdot readers aren't immune to this phenomenon. At the height of the Internet Bubble, there was the infamous MCI Worldcom report on fibre backbone needing to double every MONTH to carry the predicted rise in broadband internet traffic. That figure was quoted and requoted in many serious media sources and various blogs without anybody querying it until Worldcom became mired in fraud allegations and bankruptcy. Mind you - many companies (over)invested in capacity and the traffic didn't eventuate to generate the necessary revenues.
I would have thought that Wikileaks has the responsibility of ensuring any data released does not endanger lines or violate criminal and civil codes. Mr Assange does come across as a tool at times - takes the glory without accepting any responsibility.
Having said that there is less than meets the eye with respect to the Wikileaks data on Afghanistan - much of the content such as elements in Pakistan's ISI aiding the Taliban, and civilian deaths is well known or assumed. Some of it pre-dates the latest campaigns.
My understanding is that it relates to the area of sw patents in particular, not an entire system.
But on that subject, I'm sure every other slashdotter here can relate a story on how the patent system can be, and is, abused based on legal (mis)interpretations of prior art or discovery, or simple incompetence of the Patent Office (often due to an overload of spurious patents). True innovation is sometimes NOT rewarded.
And copyright in terms of length is a joke - 80 years post-death of the artist.
Do you get it now?
This is partially why coding cowboys proliferate and why the industry still hasn't grown up as an engineering discipline. "Just dive in" is usually a cover for bad habits, incomplete knowledge, and cavalier attitudes to design.
(I learned the same way. It's stress-relieving since you have the illusion of making progress, without understanding nuances and context. Though in the slashdot crowd I would be an old-schooler having developed proprietary firmware language, written in assembly code, and designed C, Fortran and Pascal based products. Nothing changes - sighhhhhhh.)
On-line courses compound the cliche of developers being unsocial dweebs. Very few people have the luxury of working in a vacuum; most workplaces demand and need teamwork and cooperation with respect to both clients and colleagues. Part of the learning is the interaction with students and lecturers. Go to a real school and learn...
Never really understood the Murdoch "hate" exhibited by US and UK citizens. His newspapers and TV programs as such are rather benign and upmarket in Australia. What he is (or his organization at least) is an excellent judge of national character giving the people the news and the TV that they desire. Says more about viewing and reading habits in the US and the UK than most commentators would like to admit. He has got that (large) segment of the market figured out otherwise he would not be so successful.
This is pure speculation on my part, but the Twinkie looks large enough to carry a couple of rods or thereabouts that can be dropped on an enemy (a non-NPT nuclear power perhaps) at short notice. It skirts around the illegality of having permanent (?) space-based weapons platforms.
Even a cursory comparison between democracies and dictatorships reveals that the very worst environmental degradation occurs in - you guessed it - dictatorships. A free press goes a long way in the powers-that-be to account. In dictatorships the first items normally suspended is free assembly and free press.
China has nothing to teach us in that score. Remember it was their diplomatic actions that substantially sabotaged climate agreement at Copenhagen.
If you want to take an evidence-based appraoch, do the research.
If there is no Error Correction on the RAM, then there is no protection.
As for "Assembly magic" - I don't think so. The microcode is embedded within commercial micros and any compiled and assembled code will be programmed in flash memory.
"...vulnerable electric cars..." Also don't think so. SEU effects DRAM. That could possibly impact any and every modern vehicle. Though to save cost and idle power consumtpion I imagine many vendors would introduce their electronics code in flash memory. I don't know what Toyota uses for an engine controller, but generally their electronics don't use RAM.
The protection you build into electronics should be in proportion to the impact of a single or double-bit soft error. Unfortunately, the vehicle industry is subject to poor economics: high fixed costs, low operating margins. Unless you design and manufacture high-margin electronics, ECC on RAM is not likely to be high on the to-do list of hardware design. The BOM costs are too high; the risks perceived to be too low.
Even with hihg-margin, high-availability systems, you are not likely to design in much more than a single-bit error correction/double-bit error detection hardware module.
I would be interested to know what the available statistics are for so-called SEU in ground-based electronic systems. I think in my entire design career of 10 years I only ever saw a single likely soft error recorded during (RAM) memory checking (that couldn't be explained otherwise). The airline industry should have such stats for their avionics systems. Hopefully it is close to zero, assuming they shielding their electronics well.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, the angry ranting column is more appropriately your local rag. I say let's arraign Steve Jobs for not anticipating that addiction to iPods would cause Aussie kids to walk in front of moving vehicles. He should have known that Apple's uber-coolness would cause this utter madness in teenagers and Gen-Ys. Maybe we should start the campaign to extradite him from his lair in Cupertino now - as soon as we actually get a functioning government Downunder...
It is not geothermal - it's a ground-source heat pump. If everbody in a crowded neighbourhood used such heat pumps, the benefits per household would become marginal. There is so much heat energy transfer that is physically possible within a bounded body of earth. The energy is not completely free from that perspective - there would need to be an ACTIVE (e.g. electrically-driven) transfer of heat energy back into the ground if the entire neighbourhood fulfilled its heating requirements during winter. It is an elegant mechanism for relatively isolated and freestanding dwellings that don't have to compete for "heat" from their neighbours.
I know I wading into dangerous territory on /. with this bit of unreferenced information. I believe that musicians have complained for years about the sound derived from CDs in comparison to LP records. It appears that they have some quantitative backing in that CDs have music sampled at approximately 2x the audible range. However it appears that humans perceive frequency harmonics in the audible range though they cannot hear the direct frequencies. By sampling at only 2x the audible range this excludes the harmomics so beloved of people with attuned "musical ears". Perhaps somebody can sunstantiate this factoid.
Of course now that most music is crappy compressed and lossy mp3, a Gen-Y probably wouldn't appreciate even CD-quality sound, having heard nothing better in their youth.
Not to mention "delux" HDMI cables that transmit 0s & 1s so much better than the cheap versions.
Slashdot readers aren't immune to this phenomenon. At the height of the Internet Bubble, there was the infamous MCI Worldcom report on fibre backbone needing to double every MONTH to carry the predicted rise in broadband internet traffic. That figure was quoted and requoted in many serious media sources and various blogs without anybody querying it until Worldcom became mired in fraud allegations and bankruptcy. Mind you - many companies (over)invested in capacity and the traffic didn't eventuate to generate the necessary revenues.
I would have thought that Wikileaks has the responsibility of ensuring any data released does not endanger lines or violate criminal and civil codes. Mr Assange does come across as a tool at times - takes the glory without accepting any responsibility. Having said that there is less than meets the eye with respect to the Wikileaks data on Afghanistan - much of the content such as elements in Pakistan's ISI aiding the Taliban, and civilian deaths is well known or assumed. Some of it pre-dates the latest campaigns.
I'd pay for that app to break the walled garden.
My understanding is that it relates to the area of sw patents in particular, not an entire system. But on that subject, I'm sure every other slashdotter here can relate a story on how the patent system can be, and is, abused based on legal (mis)interpretations of prior art or discovery, or simple incompetence of the Patent Office (often due to an overload of spurious patents). True innovation is sometimes NOT rewarded. And copyright in terms of length is a joke - 80 years post-death of the artist. Do you get it now?
This is partially why coding cowboys proliferate and why the industry still hasn't grown up as an engineering discipline. "Just dive in" is usually a cover for bad habits, incomplete knowledge, and cavalier attitudes to design. (I learned the same way. It's stress-relieving since you have the illusion of making progress, without understanding nuances and context. Though in the slashdot crowd I would be an old-schooler having developed proprietary firmware language, written in assembly code, and designed C, Fortran and Pascal based products. Nothing changes - sighhhhhhh.)
On-line courses compound the cliche of developers being unsocial dweebs. Very few people have the luxury of working in a vacuum; most workplaces demand and need teamwork and cooperation with respect to both clients and colleagues. Part of the learning is the interaction with students and lecturers. Go to a real school and learn...
Stereotypical slash-dotter: comments loaded with adjectives and zero facts. Go troll and flame the Fox News site if it makes you feel better.
Never really understood the Murdoch "hate" exhibited by US and UK citizens. His newspapers and TV programs as such are rather benign and upmarket in Australia. What he is (or his organization at least) is an excellent judge of national character giving the people the news and the TV that they desire. Says more about viewing and reading habits in the US and the UK than most commentators would like to admit. He has got that (large) segment of the market figured out otherwise he would not be so successful.
This is pure speculation on my part, but the Twinkie looks large enough to carry a couple of rods or thereabouts that can be dropped on an enemy (a non-NPT nuclear power perhaps) at short notice. It skirts around the illegality of having permanent (?) space-based weapons platforms.
Even a cursory comparison between democracies and dictatorships reveals that the very worst environmental degradation occurs in - you guessed it - dictatorships. A free press goes a long way in the powers-that-be to account. In dictatorships the first items normally suspended is free assembly and free press. China has nothing to teach us in that score. Remember it was their diplomatic actions that substantially sabotaged climate agreement at Copenhagen. If you want to take an evidence-based appraoch, do the research.
If there is no Error Correction on the RAM, then there is no protection. As for "Assembly magic" - I don't think so. The microcode is embedded within commercial micros and any compiled and assembled code will be programmed in flash memory. "...vulnerable electric cars..." Also don't think so. SEU effects DRAM. That could possibly impact any and every modern vehicle. Though to save cost and idle power consumtpion I imagine many vendors would introduce their electronics code in flash memory. I don't know what Toyota uses for an engine controller, but generally their electronics don't use RAM.
The protection you build into electronics should be in proportion to the impact of a single or double-bit soft error. Unfortunately, the vehicle industry is subject to poor economics: high fixed costs, low operating margins. Unless you design and manufacture high-margin electronics, ECC on RAM is not likely to be high on the to-do list of hardware design. The BOM costs are too high; the risks perceived to be too low. Even with hihg-margin, high-availability systems, you are not likely to design in much more than a single-bit error correction/double-bit error detection hardware module. I would be interested to know what the available statistics are for so-called SEU in ground-based electronic systems. I think in my entire design career of 10 years I only ever saw a single likely soft error recorded during (RAM) memory checking (that couldn't be explained otherwise). The airline industry should have such stats for their avionics systems. Hopefully it is close to zero, assuming they shielding their electronics well.