I think the distinction is that the former of your items fail to stand up to independent review. There is evidence for scientific theories that can be judged objectively by anyone who cares to do so. ESP, alien abductyion, etc. fail to ever provide any evidence that we can apply the scientific process to. All evidence for those events is hearsay, speculative, or achieved through dubious means. It's very difficult to "believe" in ESP when every ESP capable person put in a scientific study fails to produce results that are better than chance.
Perhaps the education system has failed in other areas....
We in the United States of America do NOT live in a Democracy, we live in a Republic. Remember your "pledge of allegiance"
...and to the Republic for which it stands. one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
The democratic process is certainly used within a republican system, but the two concepts are not interchangeble.
That aside, I agree. Not only are the general public ignorant of most of the science going on today; they are indeed ignorant of how most all of their world works. People today just take things for granted... the iron gets hot, the milk in the fridge is cold, the traffic lights are never green for simultaneously crossing traffic, etc. Very few people ever ask "why", and even fewer ever seek out an answer.
I'm shocked that a NASA scientist would make such sweeping statements and predictions based on what the article portrays as a few photographs over on year of Mars history.
They don't seem to rule out that this ice is being shifted to another location. Perhaps the other pole? Could it be settling underground in solid form? Yes, they make some comments about ravines and such, but the comments are superficial.
As I think I saw another poster mention, could it be a part of some longer event cycle? Could some other chemistry be at work, with the CO combining with something else instead of transforming to a gas?
There are lots of questions that weren't answered about the WHY and WHERE. Not to mention that this throws more evididence at the global warming issue of Earth. If Mars is warming, perhaps the Earth warming is a part of some larger issue such as a warmer period in a solar cycle. Perhaps we are moving through a warmer part of the galaxy/universe and that's making everything hotter. Perhaps the higher gaseous CO2 levels on earth are due do higher temperatures on the planet, and not the other way around.
They seem to have a poor version check. NS 6x does not work with the site. They claim I should updgade to Netscape 4.x or IE4 or 5.
Ironic. A web consultancy (I think the article stated) has a poorly written web interface.
Microsoft seems re-defining the term "embeded". In my experience, embeded means a device who's OS is completly invisible to the end users.
To me a sales/Internet kiosk is not embedded, a PDA is not embedded. Embedded systems are not necessarily small, but the user is not required to know abut the system at all. For instance, a telephone switches, PVR, heart-rate monitor, automotive control.
These devices run with minimal system resoures for years on end without errors, reboots or upgrades. Frequently, the OS is coded in ROM. T
I used to use an OS called OS/9 from Microware on my 6809 based Tandy Color Computer. This OS ran in 64K (not Meg) or RAM and a single 360KB floppy drive. It's a real time, protected memory, secure operating system. OS/9 runs on quite a few low-wattage CPUs with significant processing power. While not free, it is a mature, reliable OS. And I mean OS, not kernel.
Probably everone in the United States interacts with and OS/9 embedded system on a regular basis, but they'll never know it.
MS on the other hand is providing an OS that will still run on a high power consumption system with tremendous resources that is built in to, or controls some other device or structure. In most of the applications this "embeded XP" would target, the OS would be the front end that interacts with the end user.
The problem with the system requirements you list as being "below the radar" is the demands of the ATM environment.
These machines need to be reliable under almost any concievable environmental circumstances.
In the Phoenix, Arizona area, for instance, a stand-alone ATM in a small shed requires a LOT of cooling. These machines need to use the least amount of power possible to keep that cooling load, and electrical costs down.
Should the cooling fail, the machine needs to be stable and shut down politely to avoid financial errors.
Given the choice between a 1.4GHz Inel chip that diapates tremendous heat, or a 60Mhz PPC that dissaptes less than 20W, most any reasonable designer would choose the PPC (or other low power platform).
I used to have @Home in my apartment, I HATED the politics. Now in my house, I have a cable modem with a smaller cable company called Cable America.
Thier user agreement makes no limitation on servers, number of nodes or the like. The only limitation I recall is that I can not "resell the bandwidth" or "use it for commercial purposes". Now... I suppose I could give away access/bandwidth, and just charge for air-time on an 802.11 network to my LAN or server.
I've no compulsion to do this as I enjoy the roughly 300KB/s downloads and 50K/s uploads of me connection. Sharing for me is not an option.
My provider does charge $10/month for static routable IPs though. Still, I run 6 nodes behind a Gnu/Linux box that they never see. The server runs sendmail, ftp and apache for 9 domain names, plus several minor web sites for friends.
I've had this whole charge per node / charge per connection argument with other providers though, such as Sprint Broadband. They wanted to charge my customers (computer consultant don't ya know) per box, instead of per connection. They seem to think that it should cost more to have 20 nodes doing light browsing, than 1 node saturating a T1 23 hours a day.
If I purchase a connection I should get a connection. If I purchase an IP address I should get an IP address. What I do after that should not be the provider's business.
I personally like the 'use whatever gets the job done' technique.
Writing differnt parts of apps in difernt languages is the easiest way for me to accomplish a task, and to support the software later. For instance, writing some things in AWK or PERL will dramatically reduce the complexity of a C++ program. I Write some things in C or Assembly (I gave up machine language with my 6809) for speed or source code control.
There is something to be said for developing a library of code all in one language, but for my purposes the multi-language approach works best.
I saw this system on TechTVs week in review. The system box is tethered to the display unit by a cable up to 200ft long. The Box contains the HD, processor, display card, etc. The flat panel display contains the CD/DVD drive, camera and a speaker.
The mouse and keyboard are the only wireless parts of the system.
According to dinky Jim Lauderback, HP claims you'll only need to change the dispaly component every 5-6 yeats, and the system box every 2-3 years.
Been there done that.
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 1
Maybe I'm one of the few with this opinion, but I'd hashed over most of the ideas in this book by the time I was in high-school.
Adams doesn't cover any new ground here, and is simply regurgitating other people's ideas and opinions in a mediocre story format.
There are several connections he makes that are mildly interesting, but skips many other connections and observations. For the most part this book is not worth the time or money. I purchased it looking forward to the promised "brain spinning in my head" and instead was bored stiff throughout most of it.
I do enjoy some of his Dilbert books, "The Joy of Work":), and so on. But this one just missed all the marks.
I don't understand this facination of the politicians with NOT taxing the Internet, or conversely, trying to tax sales over the internet.
If they start charging me a tax to purchase items on the 'net, then they had better also start a national tax for purchasing items over the phone or via mail order.
As for the taxing Internet access, I ALREADY pay taxes for that. My phone and cable bills hanve many federal, state, and local taxes for line access, univeral number portability, exise taxes, etc. How could they start taxing me based on the content of what I do with that circuit I'm already taxed for.
SO.. YEA!! But I don't unsterstand why they need to specifically state that Internet sales should be treated like all other "on-site" sales.
The easier way to explain this is that it simply is not possible for every roadwayin the country to be connected every other highway. The resulting mess of infinite possible paths would ensure that no traffic ever got to its destination.
Sometimes you need to take smaller interconnecting roads, sometimes you just cant get there from here.
The latter is becoming more and more scarce in the real and digital worlds.
Paying per byte of transfer from a server is not fair to the readers either. Why should I be penalised because someone puts a 4MB bacgroung image in their page.
The potential for abuse in either the "pay per page" or "pay per byte" is tremedous. Neither addresses caching, repeated refreshes (perhaps forced by the page itself), proxy servers, and the non virtual/real-world relationship to identies.
The web is too large and too "open source" to be taken over by commercial billing schemes, just as there would be no way to charge per breath of air.
USB will not allow two computers (hosts) to be on the same bus. This is the major drawback to USB vs FireWire.
USB was is and plans to be a host/slave system. A computer is required to control the peripherals.
FireWire is compeltely capable of carrying network traffic and there are RFCs and an IEEE working group defining the bridges, switches and protocols for this to happen.
FireWire is a masterless bus system that allows multiple computers to share peripherals, or each other's data. You don't even need a computer! with enough smarts a FireWire capable TV could play movies from a FireWire hard drive.
The article does not state they will be using this in 10-15 years in CPUs, but that they will be doing it as soon as the engineers figure out how t oapply the technology. Someone mis-read the text.
The article claims this technology will put IBM 10-15 years ahead of the Moore's Law curve.
To quote the article....
"...will allow the company to stay ahead of the curve of Moore's Law 15 to 20 years in the future..."
Yes it isn't the best way to express the idea but it's not that hard to understand.
This is why I don't read SlashDot very often. this is about the 10th time I've seen you mis-report an artice. I'm amazed at how many people respond to them without actually reading the article themselves.
I read the disclaimer at the SPEC site. It seems the manufactureres each ran the tests themselves. This seems to mean that there was no common environment or proceedure to base these tests on. I'd like to see Linux win this battle, but lets do it again on common ground with the same clients, same cables and switches, etc... Standardization, yea that's the ticket.
From the SPEC site disclaimer: These are submissions by member companies and the contents of any SPEC reporting page are the submittor's responsibility. SPEC makes no warranties about the accuracy or veracity of this data. Please note that other results, those not appearing here and from non-member companies, are in circulation; by license agreement, these results must comply with SPEC run and reporting rules but SPEC does not warrant that they do.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the distinction is that the former of your items fail to stand up to independent review.
There is evidence for scientific theories that can be judged objectively by anyone who cares to do so. ESP, alien abductyion, etc. fail to ever provide any evidence that we can apply the scientific process to. All evidence for those events is hearsay, speculative, or achieved through dubious means.
It's very difficult to "believe" in ESP when every ESP capable person put in a scientific study fails to produce results that are better than chance.
We in the United States of America do NOT live in a Democracy, we live in a Republic. Remember your "pledge of allegiance"
The democratic process is certainly used within a republican system, but the two concepts are not interchangeble.
That aside, I agree. Not only are the general public ignorant of most of the science going on today; they are indeed ignorant of how most all of their world works. People today just take things for granted... the iron gets hot, the milk in the fridge is cold, the traffic lights are never green for simultaneously crossing traffic, etc. Very few people ever ask "why", and even fewer ever seek out an answer.
I'm shocked that a NASA scientist would make such sweeping statements and predictions based on what the article portrays as a few photographs over on year of Mars history.
They don't seem to rule out that this ice is being shifted to another location. Perhaps the other pole? Could it be settling underground in solid form? Yes, they make some comments about ravines and such, but the comments are superficial.
As I think I saw another poster mention, could it be a part of some longer event cycle? Could some other chemistry be at work, with the CO combining with something else instead of transforming to a gas?
There are lots of questions that weren't answered about the WHY and WHERE. Not to mention that this throws more evididence at the global warming issue of Earth. If Mars is warming, perhaps the Earth warming is a part of some larger issue such as a warmer period in a solar cycle. Perhaps we are moving through a warmer part of the galaxy/universe and that's making everything hotter. Perhaps the higher gaseous CO2 levels on earth are due do higher temperatures on the planet, and not the other way around.
They seem to have a poor version check. NS 6x does not work with the site. They claim I should updgade to Netscape 4.x or IE4 or 5.
Ironic. A web consultancy (I think the article stated) has a poorly written web interface.
Growing number of advertisements on your device
Greater ability for telcos to track your every move
Grief when your higher airtime bill arrives.
Microsoft seems re-defining the term "embeded". In my experience, embeded means a device who's OS is completly invisible to the end users.
To me a sales/Internet kiosk is not embedded, a PDA is not embedded. Embedded systems are not necessarily small, but the user is not required to know abut the system at all. For instance, a telephone switches, PVR, heart-rate monitor, automotive control.
These devices run with minimal system resoures for years on end without errors, reboots or upgrades. Frequently, the OS is coded in ROM. T
I used to use an OS called OS/9 from Microware on my 6809 based Tandy Color Computer. This OS ran in 64K (not Meg) or RAM and a single 360KB floppy drive. It's a real time, protected memory, secure operating system. OS/9 runs on quite a few low-wattage CPUs with significant processing power. While not free, it is a mature, reliable OS. And I mean OS, not kernel.
Probably everone in the United States interacts with and OS/9 embedded system on a regular basis, but they'll never know it.
MS on the other hand is providing an OS that will still run on a high power consumption system with tremendous resources that is built in to, or controls some other device or structure. In most of the applications this "embeded XP" would target, the OS would be the front end that interacts with the end user.
The problem with the system requirements you list as being "below the radar" is the demands of the ATM environment.
These machines need to be reliable under almost any concievable environmental circumstances.
In the Phoenix, Arizona area, for instance, a stand-alone ATM in a small shed requires a LOT of cooling. These machines need to use the least amount of power possible to keep that cooling load, and electrical costs down.
Should the cooling fail, the machine needs to be stable and shut down politely to avoid financial errors.
Given the choice between a 1.4GHz Inel chip that diapates tremendous heat, or a 60Mhz PPC that dissaptes less than 20W, most any reasonable designer would choose the PPC (or other low power platform).
I used to have @Home in my apartment, I HATED the politics. Now in my house, I have a cable modem with a smaller cable company called Cable America.
Thier user agreement makes no limitation on servers, number of nodes or the like. The only limitation I recall is that I can not "resell the bandwidth" or "use it for commercial purposes". Now... I suppose I could give away access/bandwidth, and just charge for air-time on an 802.11 network to my LAN or server.
I've no compulsion to do this as I enjoy the roughly 300KB/s downloads and 50K/s uploads of me connection. Sharing for me is not an option.
My provider does charge $10/month for static routable IPs though. Still, I run 6 nodes behind a Gnu/Linux box that they never see. The server runs sendmail, ftp and apache for 9 domain names, plus several minor web sites for friends.
I've had this whole charge per node / charge per connection argument with other providers though, such as Sprint Broadband. They wanted to charge my customers (computer consultant don't ya know) per box, instead of per connection. They seem to think that it should cost more to have 20 nodes doing light browsing, than 1 node saturating a T1 23 hours a day.
If I purchase a connection I should get a connection. If I purchase an IP address I should get an IP address. What I do after that should not be the provider's business.
I personally like the 'use whatever gets the job done' technique.
Writing differnt parts of apps in difernt languages is the easiest way for me to accomplish a task, and to support the software later. For instance, writing some things in AWK or PERL will dramatically reduce the complexity of a C++ program. I Write some things in C or Assembly (I gave up machine language with my 6809) for speed or source code control.
There is something to be said for developing a library of code all in one language, but for my purposes the multi-language approach works best.
I saw this system on TechTVs week in review. The system box is tethered to the display unit by a cable up to 200ft long. The Box contains the HD, processor, display card, etc. The flat panel display contains the CD/DVD drive, camera and a speaker.
The mouse and keyboard are the only wireless parts of the system.
According to dinky Jim Lauderback, HP claims you'll only need to change the dispaly component every 5-6 yeats, and the system box every 2-3 years.
Maybe I'm one of the few with this opinion, but I'd hashed over most of the ideas in this book by the time I was in high-school. :), and so on. But this one just missed all the marks.
Adams doesn't cover any new ground here, and is simply regurgitating other people's ideas and opinions in a mediocre story format.
There are several connections he makes that are mildly interesting, but skips many other connections and observations. For the most part this book is not worth the time or money. I purchased it looking forward to the promised "brain spinning in my head" and instead was bored stiff throughout most of it.
I do enjoy some of his Dilbert books, "The Joy of Work"
I don't understand this facination of the politicians with NOT taxing the Internet, or conversely, trying to tax sales over the internet.
If they start charging me a tax to purchase items on the 'net, then they had better also start a national tax for purchasing items over the phone or via mail order.
As for the taxing Internet access, I ALREADY pay taxes for that. My phone and cable bills hanve many federal, state, and local taxes for line access, univeral number portability, exise taxes, etc. How could they start taxing me based on the content of what I do with that circuit I'm already taxed for.
SO.. YEA!! But I don't unsterstand why they need to specifically state that Internet sales should be treated like all other "on-site" sales.
The easier way to explain this is that it simply is not possible for every roadwayin the country to be connected every other highway. The resulting mess of infinite possible paths would ensure that no traffic ever got to its destination.
Sometimes you need to take smaller interconnecting roads, sometimes you just cant get there from here.
The latter is becoming more and more scarce in the real and digital worlds.
Paying per byte of transfer from a server is not fair to the readers either. Why should I be penalised because someone puts a 4MB bacgroung image in their page.
The potential for abuse in either the "pay per page" or "pay per byte" is tremedous. Neither addresses caching, repeated refreshes (perhaps forced by the page itself), proxy servers, and the non virtual/real-world relationship to identies.
The web is too large and too "open source" to be taken over by commercial billing schemes, just as there would be no way to charge per breath of air.
Won't happen
USB will not allow two computers (hosts) to be on the same bus. This is the major drawback to USB vs FireWire.
USB was is and plans to be a host/slave system. A computer is required to control the peripherals.
FireWire is compeltely capable of carrying network traffic and there are RFCs and an IEEE working group defining the bridges, switches and protocols for this to happen.
FireWire is a masterless bus system that allows multiple computers to share peripherals, or each other's data. You don't even need a computer! with enough smarts a FireWire capable TV could play movies from a FireWire hard drive.
The article does not state they will be using this in 10-15 years in CPUs, but that they will be doing it as soon as the engineers figure out how t oapply the technology. Someone mis-read the text.
The article claims this technology will put IBM 10-15 years ahead of the Moore's Law curve.
To quote the article....
"...will allow the company to stay ahead of the curve of Moore's Law 15 to 20 years in the future..."
Yes it isn't the best way to express the idea but it's not that hard to understand.
This is why I don't read SlashDot very often. this is about the 10th time I've seen you mis-report an artice. I'm amazed at how many people respond to them without actually reading the article themselves.
I read the disclaimer at the SPEC site. It seems the manufactureres each ran the tests themselves. This seems to mean that there was no common environment or proceedure to base these tests on.
I'd like to see Linux win this battle, but lets do it again on common ground with the same clients, same cables and switches, etc... Standardization, yea that's the ticket.
From the SPEC site disclaimer:
These are submissions by member companies and the contents of any SPEC reporting page are the submittor's responsibility. SPEC makes no warranties about the accuracy or veracity of this data. Please note that other results, those not appearing here and from non-member companies, are in circulation; by license agreement, these results must comply with SPEC run and reporting rules but SPEC does not warrant that they do.