First off, modern interferometers work in at most the infrared because, as the frequency gets higher, it gets harder and harder to line up the wave fronts. Secondly, even if you did create a visible light interferometer, doing such alignment in *space* would be virtually impossible, especially if you don't have some sort of rigid structure aligning the satellites. So, in short, the very idea is flat out ridiculous.
Since the fishing companies share a common resource devoid of any recognized property rights, they have no financial incentive to conserve or improve the resources that they exploit.
Yeah! 'cuz this never happens with privately-owned natural resources! Heck, just look at the forest industry. They've done a great job of preserving the resources that they exploit! At least, they did in the magical fairy land known as "idealized capitalism".
Unfortunately, in the real world, companies are just as likely to do whatever it takes to increase short-term profit, even if they end up shooting themselves in the foot in the long-run.
Not really, no. The HURD is a project to implement a Unix-like API on top of a microkernel (originally Mach, now L4) as a set of servers. This is distinctly different from running an entire Linux kernel as a single L4 process (which is what is done with L4Linux).
Uhh... no. A linux kernel, running under Xen, on any x86 cpu, is virtualized. On non-vanderpool CPUs, the kernel has been recompiled so that it doesn't invoke certain classes of instructions, but it's still being run in a fully virtualized environment.
Uhh, actually, the original poster was right. The x86 is actually quite difficult to virtualize effectively. This is because the x86 CPU has certain classes of instructions that make is exceedingly difficult to virtualize effectively, as the x86 doesn't allow you to trap and emulate them correctly. In fact, I would contend that simulating an x86 CPU is probably as easy, or perhaps easier, technically speaking, than actually virtualizing the x86. After all, while emulators like bochs exist, there still does not exist a true, effective open source x86 virtualizer (AFAIK, plex86 is dead). And, no, Xen doesn't count. In order to get around these limitations in the x86 processor, Xen actually requires the OS to be modified such that it doesn't execute these difficult-to-virtualize instructions.
Now, granted, all this will change with new x86_64 processors, but for a rootkit like this to be really interesting, you probably want to install it on as many machines as possible, meaning you'd have to build for the lowest common denominator.
Incidentally, I should point out that, as hard as it is, virtualization of the x86 is, as you say, much faster, performance wise, than emulation. However, that doesn't make the task any less difficult.
If you think any company can afford to give private offices to anybody but it's most important employees, you're deluding yourself.
When did I say they could? My point is that offices are better. Period. Whether a company can afford them is a completely different issue. I happen to work for a tech company on a site in a smaller Canadian city where office space is relatively cheap. Consequently, we all have two-person offices (with windows, no less). Is this unusual? Probably. Is it incredibly awesome? Definitely! 'course, it helps that there are management-types in the company who have actually coded, and thus understand the value of a quiet, distraction-free environment.
Yeah, that's nice in theory. In practice, the people most dedicated to The Flow (tm), are the antisocial, uncooperative nitwits who hole themselves up in their offices for 8+ hours each day, only to turn out piles of un-reviewed, un-documented, poorly-specified crap (whether code or otherwise).
Well, good to see you aren't prejudiced...
With no exceptions, the best tech workers I know are balanced, social people who prefer not to hole up in their offices.
Who said anything about being "[holed] up"? Believe it or not, there are those of us who like socializing with co-workers while still having the opportunity to drop into the zone and get things done (which is, IMHO, the most pleasurable part of my job). In my case, I work in a tech company where we all have offices (actually, they're double-occupancy offices, which is still far better than cubicles), and we socialize a great deal. None of us close our doors unless we're deeply into things, and of course we have other methods of communication, such as IRC. It works great. If you need to concentrate, you can, if you need to have a quick discussion, you have IRC, and if you need to hash things out more thoroughly, you can have face-to-face convos without distracting other people.
They beat working in a doored, fully-walled office
You must be on crack to believe that. Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing. Many people have likely experienced this: ever start working and then suddenly realize it's already lunch time? Have you had periods where you spend a couple hours deeply focused while getting enormous amounts of work done? That's flow.
The thing is, getting into this state requires at least 20 minutes to a half an hour, and it can be very easily disturbed by outside distractions, such as noise, conversations, etc. And any break in ones concentration just requires another 20 minutes of recovery time. Consequently, open, cubicle-style workspaces are exactly the *worst* kind of work environment for these kinds of professions. All they do is increase the amount of distraction and make it more difficult for employees to enter a proper state of flow, when they are most productive.
This would be why I greatly favour offices over any other kind of open concept design, at least for these types of jobs. Does that mean slackers can slack off more easily? Sure. But you'll see greatly increased productivity from the quality employees, as they'll be able to get more work done due to less distraction. And for those slackers, well, the more they slack off, the more obvious it is that they're doing it, giving you the opportunity to cut out the chaff from the wheat.
*shrug* That's entirely up to you. The real point is that, if someone wants to make their Wifi connection available to the public (as I do, since I appreciate open WAPs and make use of them when necessary), it's entirely possible to do it in a safe, auditable fashion. And, in the context of this conversation, your point about bandwidth usage need not be a concern.
Uhh, actually my comment implies the exact opposite. I feel operators of theatres, etc, should have the right to disable cell phones on their premises if they see fit in order to provide a more pleasurable experience for their customers, and that they should not be obligated to advertise this fact (it should be the individual's responsibility to check their cell reception when they enter a building if they need to be reachable).
But it's good to see that black-and-white, partisan rhetoric is alive and well on Slashdot. Keep it up! We need the posts of individuals such as yourself to remind the rest of us why liberal-vs-conservative ranting is idiotic and unproductive.
Because, as a republican, his comedy has changed from intelligent to idiotic. Rather than thoughtful jokes and lampooning of the left, he makes idiot comments like the one quoted. Hell, he spends half his time making pandering, transparently "patriotic" comments in order to rile up the audience and get cheap laughs. Comments like turning Iraq into a sheet of glass ring a bell.
It's sad. I think there was a time he was an intelligent comic. But those days are long past.
What?!? Sorry, buddy, but you've got that backwards. Energy, in bulk, is simply getting more expensive. This isn't a problem just in the US. This is a problem for everyone. The cost of a barrel of oil is going to continue to increase as new sources dwindle and demand outstrips supply, and the same is true for many other primary fuel sources (eg, natural gas).
So, tell me, which company is likely to be more profitable and competative: the one that uses a lot of energy, and thus must pay for it, or the one that uses less energy, and thus pays less? Furthermore, as traditional energy costs increase further, green power becomes a more and more attractive option.
To give a more realistic example, imagine you have an office building designed to use natural lighting, thus decreasing the amount of artificial light required. Clearly, the company operating this building makes substantial savings on electricity costs, and as energy costs increase, the amount of savings will also increase. Sounds like a pretty strong competative advantage to me.
*Where* does this idea come from? Seriously? The amount of sheer innovation that can be done, and money to be made, in the areas of green power, increasing efficiency of existing devices, etc, etc, is *massive*. This is, if anything, an *opportunity*, one that doomsayers like yourself really seem to be missing.
Oh, so doctors should never go to a theater, because heaven forbid they might actually get called on an emergency?
Absolutely! As a doctor, you go in knowing full well the restrictions that are place on your life when you must be on call. If you can't live with that, find another line of work. Meanwhile, the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer for their career choices.
Unless I'm mistaken, generally speaking, it is illegal to interfere with cell phone operation.
You're mistaken. Technologies which actively disable cell phones by sending out a competing signal are illegal, as they break the rules set down by the FCC. This technology, which is just a glorified faraday cage, is perfectly legal, since it's a passive technology.
Uhh... what's newsworthy is that this capability is now available in an easily applicable paint. Or are you of the belief that installing copper mesh is as easy as putting a coat of paint on the walls?
Clearly the only sustainable way to keep farming for gas is to rotate crops, use proper irrigation, fertilize appropriately, etc...
The problem is this last step. Modern fertilization is a *major* environmental problem. For example, runoff causes the fertilizers to become concentrated in the river water. When this water runs off into the ocean and it produces things like massive algae blooms. Do I have a solution? Obviously not. But to think modern farming is harmless to the environment is to simply blind oneself to the facts.
This is a form of evolution if you like it or not.
Uhh... actually, it's not. Evolution is defined by the idea that individuals will have an increased or decreased chance of reproducing as a result of the interplay between genetic traits and evolutionary pressures. Thus, traits which increase the chances of reproduction have a higher probability of being passed on to the next generation.
OTOH, the switching of genders based on external pressures is not an example of evolution, since it affects the individual, not the population as a whole.
*However*, the ability to switch genders in the event of a gender bias in the population is, in itself, a trait which is likely to be passed on to subsequent generations, as it makes the individual more likely to reproduce. Thus, it is a good example of a trait which is developed via evolution. But, the act of switching genders, itself, is not evolution at work.
ROFL. If such information was, in fact, in that data, it would be classified and redacted in no time.
My gawd... it really does amaze me how willing people are to roll over on their own civil rights just for an illusion of safety. Seriously, get some balls. Your founding fathers would be ashamed.
'course, the beauty of emulation, today, is that all this is really moot. Just grab the emulators and, err, acquire the games, and you're set! Even better, get yourself a Dreamcast or hacked XBox, and have your retrogaming fun right in your living room. Not like back in the day when, once you got one of the systems, you were probably locked in (unless you had more money than my family did)... which, as you can probably guess, meant that I grew up an SMS fanboy.:)
Slashdot Mirror
First off, modern interferometers work in at most the infrared because, as the frequency gets higher, it gets harder and harder to line up the wave fronts. Secondly, even if you did create a visible light interferometer, doing such alignment in *space* would be virtually impossible, especially if you don't have some sort of rigid structure aligning the satellites. So, in short, the very idea is flat out ridiculous.
Since the fishing companies share a common resource devoid of any recognized property rights, they have no financial incentive to conserve or improve the resources that they exploit.
Yeah! 'cuz this never happens with privately-owned natural resources! Heck, just look at the forest industry. They've done a great job of preserving the resources that they exploit! At least, they did in the magical fairy land known as "idealized capitalism".
Unfortunately, in the real world, companies are just as likely to do whatever it takes to increase short-term profit, even if they end up shooting themselves in the foot in the long-run.
Not really, no. The HURD is a project to implement a Unix-like API on top of a microkernel (originally Mach, now L4) as a set of servers. This is distinctly different from running an entire Linux kernel as a single L4 process (which is what is done with L4Linux).
Uhh... no. A linux kernel, running under Xen, on any x86 cpu, is virtualized. On non-vanderpool CPUs, the kernel has been recompiled so that it doesn't invoke certain classes of instructions, but it's still being run in a fully virtualized environment.
And to provide actual numbers to back this assertion, you can see the numbers from the Energy Information Administration here.
Not in the slightest.
Uhh, actually, the original poster was right. The x86 is actually quite difficult to virtualize effectively. This is because the x86 CPU has certain classes of instructions that make is exceedingly difficult to virtualize effectively, as the x86 doesn't allow you to trap and emulate them correctly. In fact, I would contend that simulating an x86 CPU is probably as easy, or perhaps easier, technically speaking, than actually virtualizing the x86. After all, while emulators like bochs exist, there still does not exist a true, effective open source x86 virtualizer (AFAIK, plex86 is dead). And, no, Xen doesn't count. In order to get around these limitations in the x86 processor, Xen actually requires the OS to be modified such that it doesn't execute these difficult-to-virtualize instructions.
Now, granted, all this will change with new x86_64 processors, but for a rootkit like this to be really interesting, you probably want to install it on as many machines as possible, meaning you'd have to build for the lowest common denominator.
Incidentally, I should point out that, as hard as it is, virtualization of the x86 is, as you say, much faster, performance wise, than emulation. However, that doesn't make the task any less difficult.
If you think any company can afford to give private offices to anybody but it's most important employees, you're deluding yourself.
When did I say they could? My point is that offices are better. Period. Whether a company can afford them is a completely different issue. I happen to work for a tech company on a site in a smaller Canadian city where office space is relatively cheap. Consequently, we all have two-person offices (with windows, no less). Is this unusual? Probably. Is it incredibly awesome? Definitely! 'course, it helps that there are management-types in the company who have actually coded, and thus understand the value of a quiet, distraction-free environment.
Yeah, that's nice in theory. In practice, the people most dedicated to The Flow (tm), are the antisocial, uncooperative nitwits who hole themselves up in their offices for 8+ hours each day, only to turn out piles of un-reviewed, un-documented, poorly-specified crap (whether code or otherwise).
Well, good to see you aren't prejudiced...
With no exceptions, the best tech workers I know are balanced, social people who prefer not to hole up in their offices.
Who said anything about being "[holed] up"? Believe it or not, there are those of us who like socializing with co-workers while still having the opportunity to drop into the zone and get things done (which is, IMHO, the most pleasurable part of my job). In my case, I work in a tech company where we all have offices (actually, they're double-occupancy offices, which is still far better than cubicles), and we socialize a great deal. None of us close our doors unless we're deeply into things, and of course we have other methods of communication, such as IRC. It works great. If you need to concentrate, you can, if you need to have a quick discussion, you have IRC, and if you need to hash things out more thoroughly, you can have face-to-face convos without distracting other people.
They beat working in a doored, fully-walled office
You must be on crack to believe that. Anyone who works in a job that requires any kind of concentration (software development being the most obvious example) will, given the opportunity, enter a state of "flow" where they are wholly committed to the work they're doing. Many people have likely experienced this: ever start working and then suddenly realize it's already lunch time? Have you had periods where you spend a couple hours deeply focused while getting enormous amounts of work done? That's flow.
The thing is, getting into this state requires at least 20 minutes to a half an hour, and it can be very easily disturbed by outside distractions, such as noise, conversations, etc. And any break in ones concentration just requires another 20 minutes of recovery time. Consequently, open, cubicle-style workspaces are exactly the *worst* kind of work environment for these kinds of professions. All they do is increase the amount of distraction and make it more difficult for employees to enter a proper state of flow, when they are most productive.
This would be why I greatly favour offices over any other kind of open concept design, at least for these types of jobs. Does that mean slackers can slack off more easily? Sure. But you'll see greatly increased productivity from the quality employees, as they'll be able to get more work done due to less distraction. And for those slackers, well, the more they slack off, the more obvious it is that they're doing it, giving you the opportunity to cut out the chaff from the wheat.
Luckily, Canada is the USA's largest source of oil
_ publications/company_level_imports/current/import. html
Not by much, though:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data
*shrug* That's entirely up to you. The real point is that, if someone wants to make their Wifi connection available to the public (as I do, since I appreciate open WAPs and make use of them when necessary), it's entirely possible to do it in a safe, auditable fashion. And, in the context of this conversation, your point about bandwidth usage need not be a concern.
Haven't heard of "Traffic Shaping", I take it?
Uhh, actually my comment implies the exact opposite. I feel operators of theatres, etc, should have the right to disable cell phones on their premises if they see fit in order to provide a more pleasurable experience for their customers, and that they should not be obligated to advertise this fact (it should be the individual's responsibility to check their cell reception when they enter a building if they need to be reachable).
But it's good to see that black-and-white, partisan rhetoric is alive and well on Slashdot. Keep it up! We need the posts of individuals such as yourself to remind the rest of us why liberal-vs-conservative ranting is idiotic and unproductive.
Because, as a republican, his comedy has changed from intelligent to idiotic. Rather than thoughtful jokes and lampooning of the left, he makes idiot comments like the one quoted. Hell, he spends half his time making pandering, transparently "patriotic" comments in order to rile up the audience and get cheap laughs. Comments like turning Iraq into a sheet of glass ring a bell.
It's sad. I think there was a time he was an intelligent comic. But those days are long past.
What?!? Sorry, buddy, but you've got that backwards. Energy, in bulk, is simply getting more expensive. This isn't a problem just in the US. This is a problem for everyone. The cost of a barrel of oil is going to continue to increase as new sources dwindle and demand outstrips supply, and the same is true for many other primary fuel sources (eg, natural gas).
So, tell me, which company is likely to be more profitable and competative: the one that uses a lot of energy, and thus must pay for it, or the one that uses less energy, and thus pays less? Furthermore, as traditional energy costs increase further, green power becomes a more and more attractive option.
To give a more realistic example, imagine you have an office building designed to use natural lighting, thus decreasing the amount of artificial light required. Clearly, the company operating this building makes substantial savings on electricity costs, and as energy costs increase, the amount of savings will also increase. Sounds like a pretty strong competative advantage to me.
ruining our economy
*Where* does this idea come from? Seriously? The amount of sheer innovation that can be done, and money to be made, in the areas of green power, increasing efficiency of existing devices, etc, etc, is *massive*. This is, if anything, an *opportunity*, one that doomsayers like yourself really seem to be missing.
Oh, so doctors should never go to a theater, because heaven forbid they might actually get called on an emergency?
Absolutely! As a doctor, you go in knowing full well the restrictions that are place on your life when you must be on call. If you can't live with that, find another line of work. Meanwhile, the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer for their career choices.
Unless I'm mistaken, generally speaking, it is illegal to interfere with cell phone operation.
You're mistaken. Technologies which actively disable cell phones by sending out a competing signal are illegal, as they break the rules set down by the FCC. This technology, which is just a glorified faraday cage, is perfectly legal, since it's a passive technology.
Uhh... what's newsworthy is that this capability is now available in an easily applicable paint. Or are you of the belief that installing copper mesh is as easy as putting a coat of paint on the walls?
Clearly the only sustainable way to keep farming for gas is to rotate crops, use proper irrigation, fertilize appropriately, etc...
The problem is this last step. Modern fertilization is a *major* environmental problem. For example, runoff causes the fertilizers to become concentrated in the river water. When this water runs off into the ocean and it produces things like massive algae blooms. Do I have a solution? Obviously not. But to think modern farming is harmless to the environment is to simply blind oneself to the facts.
Uhh... nitrogen isn't the only nutrient soil needs to support life. What do you think the other two numbers on those bags of fertilizer represent?
This is a form of evolution if you like it or not.
Uhh... actually, it's not. Evolution is defined by the idea that individuals will have an increased or decreased chance of reproducing as a result of the interplay between genetic traits and evolutionary pressures. Thus, traits which increase the chances of reproduction have a higher probability of being passed on to the next generation.
OTOH, the switching of genders based on external pressures is not an example of evolution, since it affects the individual, not the population as a whole.
*However*, the ability to switch genders in the event of a gender bias in the population is, in itself, a trait which is likely to be passed on to subsequent generations, as it makes the individual more likely to reproduce. Thus, it is a good example of a trait which is developed via evolution. But, the act of switching genders, itself, is not evolution at work.
ROFL. If such information was, in fact, in that data, it would be classified and redacted in no time.
My gawd... it really does amaze me how willing people are to roll over on their own civil rights just for an illusion of safety. Seriously, get some balls. Your founding fathers would be ashamed.
Translation:
GP: "X is true!"
You: "no, X is false!"
Either way, you're both makin' shit up to fit your own world views. The truth is, in fact, likely somewhere in between.
'course, the beauty of emulation, today, is that all this is really moot. Just grab the emulators and, err, acquire the games, and you're set! Even better, get yourself a Dreamcast or hacked XBox, and have your retrogaming fun right in your living room. Not like back in the day when, once you got one of the systems, you were probably locked in (unless you had more money than my family did)... which, as you can probably guess, meant that I grew up an SMS fanboy. :)