SPAM is sent from compromised computers. If you make people pay for posts then the owners of compromised computers will be billed - not the real senders of SPAM. Billing would help minimize the problem, but we would still receive a pile of SPAM. And a pile of people who only use their computer once a week would have to foot the bill.
Trade and the Internet have both done far more to render the traditional (pre WWII) strategies of war obsolete then have nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons had their place but they really are no longer relevant. People in the US and Russia are no longer afraid of each other thanks to communication (the Internet) and mutually beneficial trade. First world countries will no longer engage in war with each other.
Future conflicts will centre around the domestic disputes in mainly third world countries. When countries like Russia and the US get involved in such conflicts it will be to stabilize the situation - not to invade and take over. Invading and taking over has proved to be a very difficult and expensive operation - one that simply is not worth it.
Our university simply uses terminal services. Most people use their laptops but some PCs are made available for those who do not have a laptop. Several terminal servers are available depending on the program and required software.
Agree completely. In reality, only two things are required. First, AIs should be hard-wired (like human instinct) to recognize human emotions, specifically joy. Second, AIs should have the desire to make the humans around them happy. Note that this is a desire and not a rule.
This would result in an entity more like a pet dog then a human. And if we ever create intelligent robots, this is exactly how they should be.
where women tend to take up more and more of the roles that used to be man-only but men are not keeping in taking up some of the roles that used to be a wife's responsibilities.
Most of the mothers I know have a very hard time sharing the responsibilities of raising a child. Fathers appear to be fine with letting the kids play - even when that play puts the kids at risk of getting a scratch. Mothers, however, are far more protective. As such, the mothers I know tend to take control of caring for the kids while dictating what the father should be doing. And you know the saying, "If you want a job done right you have to do it yourself."? That could explain the unbalanced workload taken on by most mothers.
Could these issues be solved with capacitors? They would be more efficient then batteries - regardless of any foreseeable improvements to battery tech. And with the development of super-capacitors, it would not take much of a capacitor to get the job done.
So I thing that charge time does have a big role to play in this announcement. Delivering high current easily is a problem that was solved a long time ago. But the problem of quickly and safely charging a battery is still very relevant.
perhaps if they didn't force kids under penalty of law to attend schools they clearly don't want to be in
Actually, it's the other way around. Schools are legally required to provide an opportunity for students to receive an education - students are not legally required to attend. When a student is disruptive the school is placed in a tricky situation. Allowing the student to receive an education is mandatory, but if it results in the other students not receiving an education then the school must take action. Kicking out the disruptive student is one of the only options. Should it happen frequently then the student must be expelled.
Once expelled, the parents will likely attempt to sue the school. The school then needs to make the case that the student prevented the education of the other students and as such, had to be removed. In addition, the student proved that they would not change their behaviour thereby warranting expulsion. Having police records to back up these statements helps ensure the school avoids the lawsuit.
Better to do it in software. This way different settings can be used for internal / external audio devices. Volume, balance, equalizer, etc. can all be adjusted for your external device and you don't have re-adjust them every time you want to switch over to your internal speakers. Plug in the audio cable and the software makes all the changes for you.
You need the ability to independently turn on / off the different audio devices in a modern computer. We are no longer limited to a simple internal speaker + external 1/8" audio jack configuration. The old mechanical 1/8" jack + switch is not an option. Now we have multiple channels, optical cables, USB + 1394 devices.. Audio is not simple anymore.
You should try the new Apple laptops that support "multi-touch" - or whatever they are calling it. Being able to use up to four fingers for different tasks is amazing. They have also increased the size of the trackpad to accommodate multiple finger gestures. I tried one for a while and found that using it was actually superior to using a mouse in many ways. Going back to the small trackpads is just painful.
Now I've also used the IBM pointers and I do like them. They would be especially useful if someone were to make a netbook with an extra wide screen that was essentially the same size as the keyboard. Such a device would have no room for a trackpad. Not that great for general computing but great for movies. It would be for people who primarily wanted an entertainment device that could double as a general purpose computer.
Assuming that it plays 1080p correctly, the Ion platform would make for an excellent AppleTV. The only question is that will it be cheap enough. But the extra horsepower of the Atom could allow the AppleTV to be used for other things.
There were rumors about Apple using the Ion platform in the mini but I believe those to be false. The AppleTV appears to be a much more likely target.
There are a number of solutions to this problem. The one that's most likely to happen is that a new type of dimmer will be created which does something sane for ballasts like reduce the peak voltage, and labeling will be created for both such dimmers and the CFL and LED light bulbs with compatible ballasts. Another solution would be to simply put the dimming entirely within the ballast itself, then the switch would just send a message to the bulb via radio or another out-of-band channel to the bulb circuitry to dim. But while this would be more efficient, this is not going to happen in today's fragmented home automation market without a government mandate, or at least the threat of a government mandate, to standardize.
I'm not sure exactly how LED bulbs are powered, but they likely do not use ballasts. The high operating voltage of a CFL is why they require a ballast - LED lights require the opposite. If I were to design a circuit for powering LED lights I would simply rectify the AC into DC then utilize a switching power supply to produce a constant current output. But the point is mute as you are correct that current dimmer circuits would not work. (And who knows, what I described might be considered a ballast to some.)
The point you make about requiring the logic to be in the switch is an excellent one. But it is potentially even easier then you think. First off, don't limit it just to dimmer switches - all switches should have the logic. There is no need to transmit a signal to the bulb. The switch is responsible for limiting the DC current to the bulb. The bulb is now greatly simplified, the cost is lowered, and the environmental damage associated with replacing the bulb is reduced.
A potential problem arrises when multiple lights are connected in parallel. New houses could replace the wiring between the switch and light with wire that more closely resembles twisted pair. Each light would have a dedicated pair of wires providing ~100mA. Compared to how houses are currently wired with #14 Cu wire - this might even be cheaper. The more lights required the more expensive the switch but at least it is only a one time cost.
Existing houses would be more difficult. For these, a system as you described would work - but forget about wireless as it would cause way too much grief. Instead, the switch could output a DC voltage with a small control signal modulated on top. Electronics that decode the signal and produce a steady DC current could be added to the lighting fixture boxes. Now no wiring is being changed and the same LED lights (simple lights with no extra electronics) could be used in either system.
Personally, I like the first idea the most. Using a different kind of wire for the lights assures that electricians would not get confused. The second solution is acceptable but only because the wiring is already done so there is little chance for error. One would simply have to be careful when installing as sometimes things such as bathroom fans are connected to the lighting circuit.
Don't you have years worth of favourite code snipets in C++, Java, etc. that you've developed and reuse in your projects? Switching to Objective-C isn't about learning the trivial syntax differences, it's about having to rewrite what you have because almost nobody has any Objective-C code lying around.
You can mix Objective C and C++ so you point is moot. Well, mostly moot as there are certain restrictions that result from ObjC++. More info is available here.
The new Apple displays are not wireless, but they do come with an adapter for supplying your laptop with power. It might not be the same as a dock but it is close. Three little connectors plug into the side of your laptop and you're good to go.
But when you install Snow Leopard it will install both the 64 and 32 bit versions of the OS and applications. If you were to install the OS on an external hard drive you could plug it into a 32 bit machine and boot in 32bit mode. Plugging the hard drive into a 64 bit machine would simply boot in 64bit mode.
So while Snow Leopard might come in two different versions, it will appear to be a single version. A single install will work on any machine - regardless of the hardware. The only problem people will have is that a 64bit only application will likely fail when run on 32bit hardware.
I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...
Memorizing mathematical tables is one of the most important things you can do in elementary school. It sticks with you your entire life and assists you is ways that you probably do not even realize. The vast majority of mathematical problems one faces on a day to day basis are of this type. From purchasing food to solving partial differential equations - it all involves simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
In my experience, those who have not practised their basic mathematics are seriously effected in post secondary education. When in a lecture, if you waste your time verifying the basics you miss out on what is really being taught. The instructor goes to the next problem while you are still digesting the previous one. You spend all your time taking notes - hoping that it all makes sense when you review it.
I am grateful that my mother used to sit me down from an early age and go over math tables. I would do them every day for ~5 min a day - a very small investment in time. A timer would tell me when to stop and the number of problems completed would be recorded. Every day I would compete against my previous results. While I hated it at the time, I now see why it was so important.
The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes.
Don't make the mistake of confusing learning with discovering. We are no more capable of learning now then we were thousands of years ago - despite our technology. Technology can help overcome some of the roadblocks to learning, such as accessibility of knowledge, but it does not magically make us better learners. The act of learning really has not changed in centuries; and so long as the human brain exists as it does now, it isn't going to.
Technology provides us with tools that make our life easier. Wonderful tools that change the way we live our lives. It provides shortcuts - a way to get from point A to point B with less labour. This is great, but it doesn't help in learning how to get from point A to point B. If your goal is to learn (and not to do) then you don't want technology getting in the way.
The problem with technology in schools is that it is used to simplify tasks that need to be done for the sake of learning. For example, using calculators to solve simple addition. But tasks with no value wrt learning make for good uses of technology. For example, a computer and text editor are great for learning how to write HTML. The goal is to learn HTML and the technology simply enables this. But using Dreamweaver would interfere with the goal of learning HTML.
Another reason why governments don't want to push for electric vehicles is that you can not tax them. People will charge at home so the only option is to place a tax on all electricity - people would revolt. Hydrogen maintains the current structure for fuel / road taxes. Governments like this because it is a significant source of income (especially here in Canada). So even if electric vehicles are better, governments will still support building an expensive hydrogen infrastructure.
And fyi, with a little more progress made on the supercapacitor front, there will be no question that purely electric vehicles are "technically" the way to go.
But the Athlon uses twice the power as an Atom 230 and is far from twice as fast. It is true that an AMD "system" can compete with the current Atom but this is only because of the horrible chipset used with the Atom. Package an Atom in a better "system" (like the Asus EEE Box) and you can drop the max system power usage to 20w.
Comparing the performance of the Athlon to an Atom 330 is a better comparison as both CPUs use 8w. In this situation, the Atom overpowers the Athlon in almost every benchmark.
Currently, the saving grace of the Athlon is that there are plenty of different options available to diy builders. The Atom is only available with a motherboard - and it's soldered on. Want firewire?, more then 2Gigs RAM?, better video?, - you're out of luck. The Atom is an amazing CPU but the Atom offerings are severely limited.
Ok, you've expressed how much more variance there is in the Apple product line compared to the XBox. Now, just for the sake of completeness, why don't you express how much more variance in the supported hardware for Ubuntu compared to Apple.
Ubuntu obviously supports more hardware but that was not the point. The point was that Mac OS X is not designed to target only specific hardware - it was designed just like all the other operating systems out there. Support for additional hardware can easily be added with a driver should someone decide to write one. It can even run on AMD hardware if you download the patched version.
So the grandparent was correct - the optimizations developers can make for static hardware like the XBox do not apply to Mac OS X. There are simply way to many different Mac hardware configurations out there.
Having said that, Snow Leopard is said to offer many optimizations - but they are not device specific.
Temperature should not be a problem when placed in gel. The gel should do a reasonable job at dissipating the heat - so long as the gel is not an insulator (it probably is not.)
But a bigger concern for me would be how to let air into the drive. The drive heads float on a tiny bit of air - they don't operate in a vacuum. I seam to remember that drives had a tiny hole* (usually covered with a sticker + warning) for air to go in and out of the drive. I assume the sticker acted as a filter. Anyway, when the drive operates it heats up and air escapes from the drive via the hole. When the drive cools off air enters the drive via the hole. Now what if this hole is covered with gel? Over time, more and more gel will get sucked into the drive leading to eventual failure. Or, the sticker blocks the gel and the next time the drive starts up there is insufficient air pressure in the drive and the heads risk scraping along the platter.
Now the original person in question might have compensated for this somehow. I'm just a fool who didn't read the article - unfortunately slashdotted. But I bring up this point to make sure others do not destroy their drives.
*Note that modern drives could very well be different.
I would avoid any type of insulation. The temperature of the hard drive would go way up. I remember reading on/. about a study by Google that proved HDs could handle high temperatures without damage - but I don't think they were insulating their drives. Best to avoid it.
With all the assumptions that are required your calculation is probably good. I'm not completely sure if you assumed that 1 tonne CO2 = 1 tonne coal. But either way, I just managed to procrastinate for another 15 minutes...
But a tonne of coal results in much more then a tonne of CO2. There are those two oxygen atoms for each carbon atom that you have to take into account. So each tonne of coal actually results in > 3 tonnes of CO2.
Slashdot Mirror
SPAM is sent from compromised computers. If you make people pay for posts then the owners of compromised computers will be billed - not the real senders of SPAM. Billing would help minimize the problem, but we would still receive a pile of SPAM. And a pile of people who only use their computer once a week would have to foot the bill.
Trade and the Internet have both done far more to render the traditional (pre WWII) strategies of war obsolete then have nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons had their place but they really are no longer relevant. People in the US and Russia are no longer afraid of each other thanks to communication (the Internet) and mutually beneficial trade. First world countries will no longer engage in war with each other.
Future conflicts will centre around the domestic disputes in mainly third world countries. When countries like Russia and the US get involved in such conflicts it will be to stabilize the situation - not to invade and take over. Invading and taking over has proved to be a very difficult and expensive operation - one that simply is not worth it.
Our university simply uses terminal services. Most people use their laptops but some PCs are made available for those who do not have a laptop. Several terminal servers are available depending on the program and required software.
Agree completely. In reality, only two things are required. First, AIs should be hard-wired (like human instinct) to recognize human emotions, specifically joy. Second, AIs should have the desire to make the humans around them happy. Note that this is a desire and not a rule.
This would result in an entity more like a pet dog then a human. And if we ever create intelligent robots, this is exactly how they should be.
Most of the mothers I know have a very hard time sharing the responsibilities of raising a child. Fathers appear to be fine with letting the kids play - even when that play puts the kids at risk of getting a scratch. Mothers, however, are far more protective. As such, the mothers I know tend to take control of caring for the kids while dictating what the father should be doing. And you know the saying, "If you want a job done right you have to do it yourself."? That could explain the unbalanced workload taken on by most mothers.
Could these issues be solved with capacitors? They would be more efficient then batteries - regardless of any foreseeable improvements to battery tech. And with the development of super-capacitors, it would not take much of a capacitor to get the job done.
So I thing that charge time does have a big role to play in this announcement. Delivering high current easily is a problem that was solved a long time ago. But the problem of quickly and safely charging a battery is still very relevant.
Actually, it's the other way around. Schools are legally required to provide an opportunity for students to receive an education - students are not legally required to attend. When a student is disruptive the school is placed in a tricky situation. Allowing the student to receive an education is mandatory, but if it results in the other students not receiving an education then the school must take action. Kicking out the disruptive student is one of the only options. Should it happen frequently then the student must be expelled.
Once expelled, the parents will likely attempt to sue the school. The school then needs to make the case that the student prevented the education of the other students and as such, had to be removed. In addition, the student proved that they would not change their behaviour thereby warranting expulsion. Having police records to back up these statements helps ensure the school avoids the lawsuit.
Better to do it in software. This way different settings can be used for internal / external audio devices. Volume, balance, equalizer, etc. can all be adjusted for your external device and you don't have re-adjust them every time you want to switch over to your internal speakers. Plug in the audio cable and the software makes all the changes for you.
You need the ability to independently turn on / off the different audio devices in a modern computer. We are no longer limited to a simple internal speaker + external 1/8" audio jack configuration. The old mechanical 1/8" jack + switch is not an option. Now we have multiple channels, optical cables, USB + 1394 devices.. Audio is not simple anymore.
You should try the new Apple laptops that support "multi-touch" - or whatever they are calling it. Being able to use up to four fingers for different tasks is amazing. They have also increased the size of the trackpad to accommodate multiple finger gestures. I tried one for a while and found that using it was actually superior to using a mouse in many ways. Going back to the small trackpads is just painful.
Now I've also used the IBM pointers and I do like them. They would be especially useful if someone were to make a netbook with an extra wide screen that was essentially the same size as the keyboard. Such a device would have no room for a trackpad. Not that great for general computing but great for movies. It would be for people who primarily wanted an entertainment device that could double as a general purpose computer.
Assuming that it plays 1080p correctly, the Ion platform would make for an excellent AppleTV. The only question is that will it be cheap enough. But the extra horsepower of the Atom could allow the AppleTV to be used for other things.
There were rumors about Apple using the Ion platform in the mini but I believe those to be false. The AppleTV appears to be a much more likely target.
I'm not sure exactly how LED bulbs are powered, but they likely do not use ballasts. The high operating voltage of a CFL is why they require a ballast - LED lights require the opposite. If I were to design a circuit for powering LED lights I would simply rectify the AC into DC then utilize a switching power supply to produce a constant current output. But the point is mute as you are correct that current dimmer circuits would not work. (And who knows, what I described might be considered a ballast to some.)
The point you make about requiring the logic to be in the switch is an excellent one. But it is potentially even easier then you think. First off, don't limit it just to dimmer switches - all switches should have the logic. There is no need to transmit a signal to the bulb. The switch is responsible for limiting the DC current to the bulb. The bulb is now greatly simplified, the cost is lowered, and the environmental damage associated with replacing the bulb is reduced.
A potential problem arrises when multiple lights are connected in parallel. New houses could replace the wiring between the switch and light with wire that more closely resembles twisted pair. Each light would have a dedicated pair of wires providing ~100mA. Compared to how houses are currently wired with #14 Cu wire - this might even be cheaper. The more lights required the more expensive the switch but at least it is only a one time cost.
Existing houses would be more difficult. For these, a system as you described would work - but forget about wireless as it would cause way too much grief. Instead, the switch could output a DC voltage with a small control signal modulated on top. Electronics that decode the signal and produce a steady DC current could be added to the lighting fixture boxes. Now no wiring is being changed and the same LED lights (simple lights with no extra electronics) could be used in either system.
Personally, I like the first idea the most. Using a different kind of wire for the lights assures that electricians would not get confused. The second solution is acceptable but only because the wiring is already done so there is little chance for error. One would simply have to be careful when installing as sometimes things such as bathroom fans are connected to the lighting circuit.
You can mix Objective C and C++ so you point is moot. Well, mostly moot as there are certain restrictions that result from ObjC++. More info is available here.
The new Apple displays are not wireless, but they do come with an adapter for supplying your laptop with power. It might not be the same as a dock but it is close. Three little connectors plug into the side of your laptop and you're good to go.
More info can be found here..
But when you install Snow Leopard it will install both the 64 and 32 bit versions of the OS and applications. If you were to install the OS on an external hard drive you could plug it into a 32 bit machine and boot in 32bit mode. Plugging the hard drive into a 64 bit machine would simply boot in 64bit mode.
So while Snow Leopard might come in two different versions, it will appear to be a single version. A single install will work on any machine - regardless of the hardware. The only problem people will have is that a 64bit only application will likely fail when run on 32bit hardware.
I believe the aluminum is used for rocket fuel. Once upon a time the British learned first hand that Al burns...
Memorizing mathematical tables is one of the most important things you can do in elementary school. It sticks with you your entire life and assists you is ways that you probably do not even realize. The vast majority of mathematical problems one faces on a day to day basis are of this type. From purchasing food to solving partial differential equations - it all involves simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
In my experience, those who have not practised their basic mathematics are seriously effected in post secondary education. When in a lecture, if you waste your time verifying the basics you miss out on what is really being taught. The instructor goes to the next problem while you are still digesting the previous one. You spend all your time taking notes - hoping that it all makes sense when you review it.
I am grateful that my mother used to sit me down from an early age and go over math tables. I would do them every day for ~5 min a day - a very small investment in time. A timer would tell me when to stop and the number of problems completed would be recorded. Every day I would compete against my previous results. While I hated it at the time, I now see why it was so important.
Don't make the mistake of confusing learning with discovering. We are no more capable of learning now then we were thousands of years ago - despite our technology. Technology can help overcome some of the roadblocks to learning, such as accessibility of knowledge, but it does not magically make us better learners. The act of learning really has not changed in centuries; and so long as the human brain exists as it does now, it isn't going to.
Technology provides us with tools that make our life easier. Wonderful tools that change the way we live our lives. It provides shortcuts - a way to get from point A to point B with less labour. This is great, but it doesn't help in learning how to get from point A to point B. If your goal is to learn (and not to do) then you don't want technology getting in the way.
The problem with technology in schools is that it is used to simplify tasks that need to be done for the sake of learning. For example, using calculators to solve simple addition. But tasks with no value wrt learning make for good uses of technology. For example, a computer and text editor are great for learning how to write HTML. The goal is to learn HTML and the technology simply enables this. But using Dreamweaver would interfere with the goal of learning HTML.
Another reason why governments don't want to push for electric vehicles is that you can not tax them. People will charge at home so the only option is to place a tax on all electricity - people would revolt. Hydrogen maintains the current structure for fuel / road taxes. Governments like this because it is a significant source of income (especially here in Canada). So even if electric vehicles are better, governments will still support building an expensive hydrogen infrastructure.
And fyi, with a little more progress made on the supercapacitor front, there will be no question that purely electric vehicles are "technically" the way to go.
But the Athlon uses twice the power as an Atom 230 and is far from twice as fast. It is true that an AMD "system" can compete with the current Atom but this is only because of the horrible chipset used with the Atom. Package an Atom in a better "system" (like the Asus EEE Box) and you can drop the max system power usage to 20w.
Comparing the performance of the Athlon to an Atom 330 is a better comparison as both CPUs use 8w. In this situation, the Atom overpowers the Athlon in almost every benchmark.
Currently, the saving grace of the Athlon is that there are plenty of different options available to diy builders. The Atom is only available with a motherboard - and it's soldered on. Want firewire?, more then 2Gigs RAM?, better video?, - you're out of luck. The Atom is an amazing CPU but the Atom offerings are severely limited.
Ubuntu obviously supports more hardware but that was not the point. The point was that Mac OS X is not designed to target only specific hardware - it was designed just like all the other operating systems out there. Support for additional hardware can easily be added with a driver should someone decide to write one. It can even run on AMD hardware if you download the patched version.
So the grandparent was correct - the optimizations developers can make for static hardware like the XBox do not apply to Mac OS X. There are simply way to many different Mac hardware configurations out there.
Having said that, Snow Leopard is said to offer many optimizations - but they are not device specific.
Temperature should not be a problem when placed in gel. The gel should do a reasonable job at dissipating the heat - so long as the gel is not an insulator (it probably is not.)
But a bigger concern for me would be how to let air into the drive. The drive heads float on a tiny bit of air - they don't operate in a vacuum. I seam to remember that drives had a tiny hole* (usually covered with a sticker + warning) for air to go in and out of the drive. I assume the sticker acted as a filter. Anyway, when the drive operates it heats up and air escapes from the drive via the hole. When the drive cools off air enters the drive via the hole. Now what if this hole is covered with gel? Over time, more and more gel will get sucked into the drive leading to eventual failure. Or, the sticker blocks the gel and the next time the drive starts up there is insufficient air pressure in the drive and the heads risk scraping along the platter.
Now the original person in question might have compensated for this somehow. I'm just a fool who didn't read the article - unfortunately slashdotted. But I bring up this point to make sure others do not destroy their drives.
*Note that modern drives could very well be different.
I would avoid any type of insulation. The temperature of the hard drive would go way up. I remember reading on /. about a study by Google that proved HDs could handle high temperatures without damage - but I don't think they were insulating their drives. Best to avoid it.
How about a synthetic rubber like neoprene?
where any clear beverage must not contain any caffeine.
Ok, just did a few of my own calculations.
1 metric tonne of coal = 6705kwh of energy (ignoring heat -> electricity losses)
assume 40% efficient conversion = 2682 kwh/tonne coal
assuming coal is pure carbon = 731 kwh/tonne CO2
With all the assumptions that are required your calculation is probably good. I'm not completely sure if you assumed that 1 tonne CO2 = 1 tonne coal. But either way, I just managed to procrastinate for another 15 minutes...
But a tonne of coal results in much more then a tonne of CO2. There are those two oxygen atoms for each carbon atom that you have to take into account. So each tonne of coal actually results in > 3 tonnes of CO2.