"There's a warning in my car owner's manual that admits that pouring gasoline all over myself and lighting a match may cause permanent injury or death. I should sue them!"
That's a totally inappropriate analogy. You can't find a person who has poured gasoline on himself and played with matches outside a burn unit. That's just not something that your average person expects to be able to do without serious ill effects. You can, however, find millions upon millions of people who have become accustomed to playing CDs on their computers.
It's more akin to your car owner's manual prominently noting that the wheels fall off when you honk the horn three times in rapid succession.
The point of using pigeons instead of monkeys is that pigeons are commodity birdware that can be found in any public park or on any statue. Using monkeys means all sorts of hassles. Simians not being native to the US, reliance on monkeys puts us at the mercy of tin pot dictators from monkeyed countries.
Further, pigeons have consistently been shown to outperform humans in search engine environments, and though no direct pigeon/monkey benchmarks have been performed, monkeys suffer from many of the same limitations which bottleneck human performance. They're more expensive to maintain, they crash frequently during mating season, and pigeons are completely immune to the feces-hurling problems found in all monkey clusters (and a few human ones).
Finally, TCO for a twelve-bird cluster is actually *less* than that for a single monkey. Teoma isn't going to be able to scale their system without a massive influx of cash and bananas.
I've been looking over the relevant legislation, and I cannot find a single paragraph which disqualifies unemployed carrier pigeons from receiving H1-Bs.
So we geeks could be facing some stiff competition from the Indian-avian community. Time to bone up on those coding skills, folks. And remind your boss that they type by the hunt-and-peck method.
Care to explain your reasoning? A neuron accepts signals from the neurons around it, and then either fires or doesn't fire in response. I just can't see how you could get more than one useful result out of a given firing.
I asked a game programmer about the sort of AI in his racing game. There wasn't any. All it did was put paths for the computer to follow, and add some basic collision avoidance. Difficult setting meant that the computer would follow a tighter track, follow it more aggressively, and drive faster. But it was enough to keep people playing.
"As a teenager I was fascinated by anything robotic. This led me to a study of the fundamentals of AI (Hofstadter, Lisp--the whole schmeiel). But after two semesters I realized the whole field is fooling itself. AI just won't work."
Wow. All the brilliant people at MIT and a dozen other world-class research institutions have been plugging away at this problem, and you managed to figure it all out after a couple of semesters of Lisp. Bravo. Well done. When it's time to accept your Nobel Prize for this remarkable insight, I hope you won't embarrass all the other new laureates by pointing out that all their research was bunk as well. They'd be crushed.
"Biological neurons have been shown in the laboratory to grow new connections based on information learned. In a robot, what possible mechanism could guide such growth? Programming is the only answer, but keep in mind that "programming" is just shorthand for "the intelligence of the programmer". In other words, the AI itself isn't self-contained, as it were."
Neurons do not "learn" information in any deep, metaphysical, cogito ergo sum sense. They simply grow and develop based on the inputs they receive.
Is this one of those, "Well, duh" points? Of course it is. You realize this fact as well as I do. But you ignore its implications. There's nothing impossible about creating a software-based "neuron" that can receive inputs, alter itself in response, and then propagate signals to other neurons. Such a construct would be too complex for a programmer to maintain on anything but the highest levels. Therefore, it could not be described merely as a mundane codification of the programmer's intelligence.
The biochemical processes by which intelligence arises in humans, however complicated, are irrelevant in theory. Computing is going on inside your skull, and a Turing machine can properly perform any computation devisable. I believe it's only a matter of time.
"There is no other way for "mental" activity to be guided, thus AI will always be as unattainable as the Philosopher's Stone."
Despite what your many many weeks of Lisp programming might have taught you, AI already exists in many forms. They're already doing things thought to be solely the purview of wetware as little as a decade ago. I think the situation within AI right now is analogous to biochemistry back when vitalism was in vogue (18th century, IIRC). Everyone thought that there was something unique and downright supernatural about the chemistry of life. It was even said that no organic molecule would ever be synthesized in a laboratory. Then someone synthesized a really simple molecule--possibly formic acid. Eventually, Watson and Crick came along, and these days nobody in the field would entertain the claim that something in biochemistry can never be understood in principle.
You're fighting a losing war. Join the Dark Side. We're right, we're winning, and all the hot chicks are over here.
PhysicsGenius. Heh. Troll handle if I ever heard one.
As someone who has spent way too much time with Metal Gear Solid 2, and has lured many an unwitting Russian soldier into a hail of stinger missiles, I do hope you're right.
The WINE folks would probably prefer "reimplementing" to "emulating." And while creating WINE has been anything but a trivial task, I would hazard a guess and say that it's probably easier to reimplement an existing API than to design it from scratch. Unless WINE implies something about the modularity of the Windows code that I'm missing, I don't believe this is a valid reason to criticize Microsoft.
First, despite his claims to the contrary, I don't think he can shoot flaming peanuts from his nostrils. Honey roasted, maybe.
Second, even if all open source software is too hideously complex for end users to use--and I could rattle off a good dozen products that strongly contradict the claim--it can still add a great deal to the end user's experience. Web servers, for example. The web server you're connected to at the moment might be running the "hideously complex" Apache, or a touchy/feely Windows XP with IIS. Only Netcraft knows for sure. It doesn't matter because you're only connecting through an abstracting layer called the HTTP protocol.
Another example would be the operating system. Nobody accuses MacOS X of being "a hodge-podge of interconnected modules," even though it is. The reason, again, is that the complexity is well-designed, and the user isn't subjected directly to it.
I'm surprised that the readership of Slashdot so easily accepts this encroachment on our personal freedoms. It starts out innocently enough, with a limited rollout of these privacy invasion systems in specific problem areas. But if we don't stand up now and demand an end to it, the freedom of cats everywhere to carry animals that they legally procured will soon be taken away.
Am I paranoid to imagine that this technology may someday be used in airports to keep cats from boarding flights while carrying small animals? Then what about bus stations? Churches? Restaurants? Hotels? Doesn't this amount to an illegal search by feline authorities? Where is the army of angry geeks to protest this behavior? Ahh, too busy bitching about Morpheus. I see where your priorities lie. Our founding fathers must be turning over in their graves.
Don't forget, the first thing Hitler did when he rose to power was to demand that all cats register their kills with the government. Perhaps you think I'm being an alarmist, but Midnight and I are going to be stockpiling dead woodchucks in my basement.
Sounds like you either installed StarOffice or just clicked "everything." Tell me you really *needed* TuxRacer, fifteen different text editors, and the GNU Fortran compiler.:)
I'll admit, it's a bit beefy. But if you think of it as about three bucks worth of HDD space, maybe it'll be easier to swallow.
There's a really cool message to the Judiciary...
on
More Details on the CBDTPA
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I understand your concerns. I understand that Slashdot has predicted the end of All Our Rights Everywhere so often that it becomes impossible for anyone to discern between a true threat and mere geek baiting.
But the [random letters formerly known as the SSSCA] bill really is a serious threat to the free use of your computer, and a serious overstepping of government power.
The first thing you need to remember, the thing that's at the heart of the matter, is that computers are general purpose machines. They copy and manipulate ones and zeros, and have no conscious understanding of all this bit twiddling.
Changing this fact is not trivial, and literally impossible to do at the software level. Turning a general purpose computer into something that will recognize file format X and refuse to manipulate its bits requires crippling the hardware in some way or another. Turning an audio card into something that will refuse to play unauthorized songs means writing all the necessary validations into the hardware. If someone created a sound card that simply outputted the information it got straight to the speakers, it would necessarily be made illegal under the law.
It wouldn't just apply to desktop systems and "portable music devices." Theoretically, any general purpose machine can perform the necessary calculations for displaying illegal content.
Then there's the problem of defining what constitutes "fair use" copying. If the Supreme Court has to keep revisiting the issue, there's no way in the world that the people inventing this technology are going to be able to come up with an infallible system. It won't be able to recognize whether you're copying this snippet of film as part of a documentary on modern film techniques or to be used in a commercial that implies Gwyneth Paltrow endorses the sofas your company sells. Or, as another poster mentioned, it won't be able to tell whether you're using this frame from The Simpsons as a wall poster or putting it into a media stream to broadcast over the Internet.
Finally, no reasonable implementation of these ideas is going to come close to stemming unauthorized distribution. All this super-secure technology is by necessity going to end up in the hands of the end users, who will merrily begin breaking it. Bruce Schneider points out that once a security technology gets into the hands of the enemy, it's only a matter of that enemy's time and patience before it's broken.
The only thing I can think of that would even have a prayer at stopping unauthorized copying is never letting anything be copied, ever. Once you allow for a sequence of bits that says, "This can be copied freely," then it's inevitable that a way will be found to get every piece of content into the free format.
Once this standard is hopelessly broken, the only solution will be to release another standard that isn't backward compatable. And it won't be a matter of a software update. You'll have to get all new computing gizmos. Why do I say it can't be backward compatable? Think about what it would take to break all the illegal MP3's already out there. There simply isn't any way short of making all unencrypted content unplayable.
So this bill is dooming the computer industry to release standard after broken standard, dooming the end users to buying expensive hardware that will be obsoleted in literally months, and dooming computer users in general to being unable to harness the full potential of their own machines. All this to protect a content industry from the discomfort required to bring them into the 21st century.
I hope I've adequately addressed your points. I'm not as wild-eyed crazy as I may sound. What I've presented is a worst case scenario, because any lesser cases aren't going to successfully implement the intentions of the law. Far more likely, the [random letters formerly known as the SSSCA] will be quietly repealed in a couple of years as the frustration with the unintended consequences of the law comes to a boil.
To me, this is a matter of freedoms. This law is no better than if the Feds stepped in and decided to eliminate speeding and promote safe driving by making sure the computer in every car topped out at 80 mph and installing a breathalyzer into the ignition system. Or stopping child abuse by sterilizing everyone. Illegal copying is. . . well, illegal. And rightfully so. Owning a device that has the capability to make illegal copies should not be illegal, because the devices have many perfectly legal uses. Illegal behavior should be punished, not potential for illegal behavior.
I agree with the subject line, but not necessarily with your reasoning. The copyright holders claim that massive copying reduces their sales. But even if true, it would be impossible for them to put more than a guesstimated dollar amount on the loss. It would be like trying to claim you know exactly how much your company lost due to long breaks and the pilfering of office supplies. The fact that they're not reporting it as a loss to their stockholders isn't evidence of hypocrisy.
Nor is the fact that they've reported increased earnings proof that unauthorized copying isn't hurting them.
This is precisely why we need to come up with a good, descriptive term for it, and keep hammering away with it until everyone who hasn't already sold their souls to the media content companies gets it through their heads. Select whichever you think is catchiest, or add to the list:
* The Crippled Computer Bill. * The Digital Media Scarcification Act. * The Hollywood Handout Act. * The No Copying Act. * The Napster Strangler Bill. * The Proposed Law for Keeping the Music Industry Profitable by Forcing the Costs of Copyright Enforcement Onto Hardware Vendors. (too long, I know) * The "You're Not Authorized to Play That Song on This Device" Bill.
All in all, I think the first one is the best. Sure, I'm trying to be funny, but there's also a serious point to be made. If we can give this ugly bill a catchy name, and make it stick, maybe we have half a prayer. Any suggestions welcome.
It's entirely possible that a network like this could be put together entirely from BestBuy IMacs. There are other ways of setting up the hardware that could boost performance (shared memory architectures, multiprocessor machines, and whatnot), but you have to go to specialized vendors.
It doesn't matter, really. When you're talking about clusters with this many processors, the software is infinitely more interesting than the hardware.
It's plenty easy to go out and buy a thousand chickens. But when you've harnessed them all together and trained them to cooperate in pulling your wagon, then you've created something new.
It has been said that there are two possibilities, both equally mind-boggling: That we are alone in the universe, and that we are not. The fact is, negative results are loaded with implications, just as they are in any other field of science.
No, no, no. What they're doing is linking your system to a thousand other Playstation 3's over the Internet. Unfortunately, in the test runs conducted so far, researchers keep ending up with hundreds of beautifully rendered frames five minutes later and in no particular order.
On the downside, the EULA for the PS3 now requires you to keep the machine on 24/7, and requires you to change disks occasionally so that it can crunch numbers for other games. If you do not have the game requested, you're required to go buy it.
Sorry, but this sounds like either a truly horrible idea, an attempt at cashing in on a hot buzzword, or (most likely) both.
Actual performance of machines improves much faster than Moore's "Law" * would predict. Moore's Law really only applies to how fast you can flip a series of logic gates back and forth. The rest of the improvement comes from research into things like better algorithms, better processor design, faster buses, etc.
*"Moore's Interesting Trend" would be more technically correct.
"We can't hurt the environment because we're part of the environment! Everything we do is 100% natural!"
This is a blatant attempt at distracting the debate from the real issues. The question of whether humanity's actions should be described as "natural" or as something apart from nature is more of a semantic debate, and it sheds no light on the real issues. Whether our behaviors are "natural" because we are a product of natural evolution is irrelevant. The question is whether we are doing damage to the environment that will degrade both the health of the ecosystem as a whole and to our own prospects for long-term survival.
There are plenty of examples of species' performing actions that undermined their own future. Locusts can overbreed, then feed and feed until everything edible is gone. The Ebola virus kills its hosts off so quickly that it doesn't have enough time to spread to others, inhibiting its long-term survivability. These actions are natural, but stupid and self-destructive.
Again, the real question is whether our actions are beneficial, not whether they can be defined as "natural."
Oh, and it's a self-serving and disingenuous argument if only because it's primarily put forth by right-wing Republicans who almost invariably believe that mankind is a special creation of God, not just another part of nature. To put it bluntly, the people who put forth the argument almost never really believe it. That's pretty much the definition of sophistry.
"Secondly, even if the global climate changed, it is hard to believe life on earth would be wiped out. Good grief, we can't even get rid of cockroaches, and the doomsayers get all in a tizzy about their favorite collections of spores, molds, and fungus (thanks, Egon)."
This is a line of reasoning that has always baffled me. I'll quickly agree that we'll never be able to get rid of the cockroaches or the bacteria, no matter how many pesticides we spray or how many asteroids we smack into the planet. So what? Not every species is as tenacious as the cockroach.
Take mammals, for example. There is no species of mammal, humanity included, that could survive the sorts of climate changes that cockroaches could handle.
The trick isn't keeping some form of life around to repopulate the planet once we're through destroying it. The trick is to keep ourselves alive and do so in a way that leaves us all healthy and happy for generations to come. That doesn't mean squandering our natural resources in a two-century economic orgy. Nor does it mean everyone should slash the tires on their SUVs, switch to veganism, and start worshipping the Earth Mother. Just be interested in understanding the consequences of our current lifestyles, and willing to make adjustments when necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a totally inappropriate analogy. You can't find a person who has poured gasoline on himself and played with matches outside a burn unit. That's just not something that your average person expects to be able to do without serious ill effects. You can, however, find millions upon millions of people who have become accustomed to playing CDs on their computers.
It's more akin to your car owner's manual prominently noting that the wheels fall off when you honk the horn three times in rapid succession.
Note to self: Don't metamod for at least a couple of weeks.
The point of using pigeons instead of monkeys is that pigeons are commodity birdware that can be found in any public park or on any statue. Using monkeys means all sorts of hassles. Simians not being native to the US, reliance on monkeys puts us at the mercy of tin pot dictators from monkeyed countries.
Further, pigeons have consistently been shown to outperform humans in search engine environments, and though no direct pigeon/monkey benchmarks have been performed, monkeys suffer from many of the same limitations which bottleneck human performance. They're more expensive to maintain, they crash frequently during mating season, and pigeons are completely immune to the feces-hurling problems found in all monkey clusters (and a few human ones).
Finally, TCO for a twelve-bird cluster is actually *less* than that for a single monkey. Teoma isn't going to be able to scale their system without a massive influx of cash and bananas.
Man, doesn't *anybody* read the articles?
I've been looking over the relevant legislation, and I cannot find a single paragraph which disqualifies unemployed carrier pigeons from receiving H1-Bs.
So we geeks could be facing some stiff competition from the Indian-avian community. Time to bone up on those coding skills, folks. And remind your boss that they type by the hunt-and-peck method.
Nothing that you'd notice in your commode, anyhow. See The Bad Coriolis Page for further details.
Your fourth grade science teacher lied to you. Hunt her down and leave a dead woodchuck in her mailbox.
Care to explain your reasoning? A neuron accepts signals from the neurons around it, and then either fires or doesn't fire in response. I just can't see how you could get more than one useful result out of a given firing.
I asked a game programmer about the sort of AI in his racing game. There wasn't any. All it did was put paths for the computer to follow, and add some basic collision avoidance. Difficult setting meant that the computer would follow a tighter track, follow it more aggressively, and drive faster. But it was enough to keep people playing.
Wow. All the brilliant people at MIT and a dozen other world-class research institutions have been plugging away at this problem, and you managed to figure it all out after a couple of semesters of Lisp. Bravo. Well done. When it's time to accept your Nobel Prize for this remarkable insight, I hope you won't embarrass all the other new laureates by pointing out that all their research was bunk as well. They'd be crushed.
Neurons do not "learn" information in any deep, metaphysical, cogito ergo sum sense. They simply grow and develop based on the inputs they receive.
Is this one of those, "Well, duh" points? Of course it is. You realize this fact as well as I do. But you ignore its implications. There's nothing impossible about creating a software-based "neuron" that can receive inputs, alter itself in response, and then propagate signals to other neurons. Such a construct would be too complex for a programmer to maintain on anything but the highest levels. Therefore, it could not be described merely as a mundane codification of the programmer's intelligence.
The biochemical processes by which intelligence arises in humans, however complicated, are irrelevant in theory. Computing is going on inside your skull, and a Turing machine can properly perform any computation devisable. I believe it's only a matter of time.
Despite what your many many weeks of Lisp programming might have taught you, AI already exists in many forms. They're already doing things thought to be solely the purview of wetware as little as a decade ago. I think the situation within AI right now is analogous to biochemistry back when vitalism was in vogue (18th century, IIRC). Everyone thought that there was something unique and downright supernatural about the chemistry of life. It was even said that no organic molecule would ever be synthesized in a laboratory. Then someone synthesized a really simple molecule--possibly formic acid. Eventually, Watson and Crick came along, and these days nobody in the field would entertain the claim that something in biochemistry can never be understood in principle.
You're fighting a losing war. Join the Dark Side. We're right, we're winning, and all the hot chicks are over here.
PhysicsGenius. Heh. Troll handle if I ever heard one.
As someone who has spent way too much time with Metal Gear Solid 2, and has lured many an unwitting Russian soldier into a hail of stinger missiles, I do hope you're right.
God have mercy on my soul.
The WINE folks would probably prefer "reimplementing" to "emulating." And while creating WINE has been anything but a trivial task, I would hazard a guess and say that it's probably easier to reimplement an existing API than to design it from scratch. Unless WINE implies something about the modularity of the Windows code that I'm missing, I don't believe this is a valid reason to criticize Microsoft.
A few misconceptions need to be cleared up here.
First, despite his claims to the contrary, I don't think he can shoot flaming peanuts from his nostrils. Honey roasted, maybe.
Second, even if all open source software is too hideously complex for end users to use--and I could rattle off a good dozen products that strongly contradict the claim--it can still add a great deal to the end user's experience. Web servers, for example. The web server you're connected to at the moment might be running the "hideously complex" Apache, or a touchy/feely Windows XP with IIS. Only Netcraft knows for sure. It doesn't matter because you're only connecting through an abstracting layer called the HTTP protocol.
Another example would be the operating system. Nobody accuses MacOS X of being "a hodge-podge of interconnected modules," even though it is. The reason, again, is that the complexity is well-designed, and the user isn't subjected directly to it.
I'm surprised that the readership of Slashdot so easily accepts this encroachment on our personal freedoms. It starts out innocently enough, with a limited rollout of these privacy invasion systems in specific problem areas. But if we don't stand up now and demand an end to it, the freedom of cats everywhere to carry animals that they legally procured will soon be taken away.
Am I paranoid to imagine that this technology may someday be used in airports to keep cats from boarding flights while carrying small animals? Then what about bus stations? Churches? Restaurants? Hotels? Doesn't this amount to an illegal search by feline authorities? Where is the army of angry geeks to protest this behavior? Ahh, too busy bitching about Morpheus. I see where your priorities lie. Our founding fathers must be turning over in their graves.
Don't forget, the first thing Hitler did when he rose to power was to demand that all cats register their kills with the government. Perhaps you think I'm being an alarmist, but Midnight and I are going to be stockpiling dead woodchucks in my basement.
I was right with you until you added "IF it tries to come in with a dead mouse." Where's the fun in THAT?
Sounds like you either installed StarOffice or just clicked "everything." Tell me you really *needed* TuxRacer, fifteen different text editors, and the GNU Fortran compiler. :)
I'll admit, it's a bit beefy. But if you think of it as about three bucks worth of HDD space, maybe it'll be easier to swallow.
Go to Comments to the Senate Judiciary Committee and check out the comment by Stuart Ballard. +5 insightful doesn't do it justice.
Ctrl-F is your friend. Now go.
Gentle Reader,
I understand your concerns. I understand that Slashdot has predicted the end of All Our Rights Everywhere so often that it becomes impossible for anyone to discern between a true threat and mere geek baiting.
But the [random letters formerly known as the SSSCA] bill really is a serious threat to the free use of your computer, and a serious overstepping of government power.
The first thing you need to remember, the thing that's at the heart of the matter, is that computers are general purpose machines. They copy and manipulate ones and zeros, and have no conscious understanding of all this bit twiddling.
Changing this fact is not trivial, and literally impossible to do at the software level. Turning a general purpose computer into something that will recognize file format X and refuse to manipulate its bits requires crippling the hardware in some way or another. Turning an audio card into something that will refuse to play unauthorized songs means writing all the necessary validations into the hardware. If someone created a sound card that simply outputted the information it got straight to the speakers, it would necessarily be made illegal under the law.
It wouldn't just apply to desktop systems and "portable music devices." Theoretically, any general purpose machine can perform the necessary calculations for displaying illegal content.
Then there's the problem of defining what constitutes "fair use" copying. If the Supreme Court has to keep revisiting the issue, there's no way in the world that the people inventing this technology are going to be able to come up with an infallible system. It won't be able to recognize whether you're copying this snippet of film as part of a documentary on modern film techniques or to be used in a commercial that implies Gwyneth Paltrow endorses the sofas your company sells. Or, as another poster mentioned, it won't be able to tell whether you're using this frame from The Simpsons as a wall poster or putting it into a media stream to broadcast over the Internet.
Finally, no reasonable implementation of these ideas is going to come close to stemming unauthorized distribution. All this super-secure technology is by necessity going to end up in the hands of the end users, who will merrily begin breaking it. Bruce Schneider points out that once a security technology gets into the hands of the enemy, it's only a matter of that enemy's time and patience before it's broken.
The only thing I can think of that would even have a prayer at stopping unauthorized copying is never letting anything be copied, ever. Once you allow for a sequence of bits that says, "This can be copied freely," then it's inevitable that a way will be found to get every piece of content into the free format.
Once this standard is hopelessly broken, the only solution will be to release another standard that isn't backward compatable. And it won't be a matter of a software update. You'll have to get all new computing gizmos. Why do I say it can't be backward compatable? Think about what it would take to break all the illegal MP3's already out there. There simply isn't any way short of making all unencrypted content unplayable.
So this bill is dooming the computer industry to release standard after broken standard, dooming the end users to buying expensive hardware that will be obsoleted in literally months, and dooming computer users in general to being unable to harness the full potential of their own machines. All this to protect a content industry from the discomfort required to bring them into the 21st century.
I hope I've adequately addressed your points. I'm not as wild-eyed crazy as I may sound. What I've presented is a worst case scenario, because any lesser cases aren't going to successfully implement the intentions of the law. Far more likely, the [random letters formerly known as the SSSCA] will be quietly repealed in a couple of years as the frustration with the unintended consequences of the law comes to a boil.
To me, this is a matter of freedoms. This law is no better than if the Feds stepped in and decided to eliminate speeding and promote safe driving by making sure the computer in every car topped out at 80 mph and installing a breathalyzer into the ignition system. Or stopping child abuse by sterilizing everyone. Illegal copying is. . . well, illegal. And rightfully so. Owning a device that has the capability to make illegal copies should not be illegal, because the devices have many perfectly legal uses. Illegal behavior should be punished, not potential for illegal behavior.
I agree with the subject line, but not necessarily with your reasoning. The copyright holders claim that massive copying reduces their sales. But even if true, it would be impossible for them to put more than a guesstimated dollar amount on the loss. It would be like trying to claim you know exactly how much your company lost due to long breaks and the pilfering of office supplies. The fact that they're not reporting it as a loss to their stockholders isn't evidence of hypocrisy.
Nor is the fact that they've reported increased earnings proof that unauthorized copying isn't hurting them.
This is precisely why we need to come up with a good, descriptive term for it, and keep hammering away with it until everyone who hasn't already sold their souls to the media content companies gets it through their heads. Select whichever you think is catchiest, or add to the list:
* The Crippled Computer Bill.
* The Digital Media Scarcification Act.
* The Hollywood Handout Act.
* The No Copying Act.
* The Napster Strangler Bill.
* The Proposed Law for Keeping the Music Industry Profitable by Forcing the Costs of Copyright Enforcement Onto Hardware Vendors. (too long, I know)
* The "You're Not Authorized to Play That Song on This Device" Bill.
All in all, I think the first one is the best. Sure, I'm trying to be funny, but there's also a serious point to be made. If we can give this ugly bill a catchy name, and make it stick, maybe we have half a prayer. Any suggestions welcome.
It's entirely possible that a network like this could be put together entirely from BestBuy IMacs. There are other ways of setting up the hardware that could boost performance (shared memory architectures, multiprocessor machines, and whatnot), but you have to go to specialized vendors.
It doesn't matter, really. When you're talking about clusters with this many processors, the software is infinitely more interesting than the hardware.
It's plenty easy to go out and buy a thousand chickens. But when you've harnessed them all together and trained them to cooperate in pulling your wagon, then you've created something new.
It has been said that there are two possibilities, both equally mind-boggling: That we are alone in the universe, and that we are not. The fact is, negative results are loaded with implications, just as they are in any other field of science.
A petabyte is 1024 terabytes. A terabyte is 1024 gigabytes. So you're looking at 1,363,149 gigs of storage.
That's about enough to hold two and a half millennia of MP3's, or the Microsoft DirectX SDK.
No, no, no. What they're doing is linking your system to a thousand other Playstation 3's over the Internet. Unfortunately, in the test runs conducted so far, researchers keep ending up with hundreds of beautifully rendered frames five minutes later and in no particular order.
On the downside, the EULA for the PS3 now requires you to keep the machine on 24/7, and requires you to change disks occasionally so that it can crunch numbers for other games. If you do not have the game requested, you're required to go buy it.
Sorry, but this sounds like either a truly horrible idea, an attempt at cashing in on a hot buzzword, or (most likely) both.
Actual performance of machines improves much faster than Moore's "Law" * would predict. Moore's Law really only applies to how fast you can flip a series of logic gates back and forth. The rest of the improvement comes from research into things like better algorithms, better processor design, faster buses, etc.
*"Moore's Interesting Trend" would be more technically correct.
"We can't hurt the environment because we're part of the environment! Everything we do is 100% natural!"
This is a blatant attempt at distracting the debate from the real issues. The question of whether humanity's actions should be described as "natural" or as something apart from nature is more of a semantic debate, and it sheds no light on the real issues. Whether our behaviors are "natural" because we are a product of natural evolution is irrelevant. The question is whether we are doing damage to the environment that will degrade both the health of the ecosystem as a whole and to our own prospects for long-term survival.
There are plenty of examples of species' performing actions that undermined their own future. Locusts can overbreed, then feed and feed until everything edible is gone. The Ebola virus kills its hosts off so quickly that it doesn't have enough time to spread to others, inhibiting its long-term survivability. These actions are natural, but stupid and self-destructive.
Again, the real question is whether our actions are beneficial, not whether they can be defined as "natural."
Oh, and it's a self-serving and disingenuous argument if only because it's primarily put forth by right-wing Republicans who almost invariably believe that mankind is a special creation of God, not just another part of nature. To put it bluntly, the people who put forth the argument almost never really believe it. That's pretty much the definition of sophistry.
This is a line of reasoning that has always baffled me. I'll quickly agree that we'll never be able to get rid of the cockroaches or the bacteria, no matter how many pesticides we spray or how many asteroids we smack into the planet. So what? Not every species is as tenacious as the cockroach.
Take mammals, for example. There is no species of mammal, humanity included, that could survive the sorts of climate changes that cockroaches could handle.
The trick isn't keeping some form of life around to repopulate the planet once we're through destroying it. The trick is to keep ourselves alive and do so in a way that leaves us all healthy and happy for generations to come. That doesn't mean squandering our natural resources in a two-century economic orgy. Nor does it mean everyone should slash the tires on their SUVs, switch to veganism, and start worshipping the Earth Mother. Just be interested in understanding the consequences of our current lifestyles, and willing to make adjustments when necessary.