The problem is the so called inventions. They are obvious and natural conclusions. There is no revolutionary idea or inspiration. Patents are to reward and motivate people to develop ideas, implement and produce useful products. These inventions were inevitable. If you could wipe everyone mind in the world and all evidence someone would "invent" it within a week if not days. There is no need to reward these "inventions". It is not revolutionary. It's nothing like the invention of transistors or semiconductors.
I imagine this is in response to steam machines and steam itself. Just look at the recent Slashdot post of the number of ported steam games for Linux. This must be scaring the s*** out of them.
I'm definitely part of the PC master race but strangely this makes me want one of these new XBox's as a sort of second system/portable system.
What this means is that Microsoft is going to market machines with at least one X16 slot if not two or four. They might also allow some high end system vendors to produce their own machines with Microsoft providing the canned operating system/interface. Water-cooling anyone?
High end systems that can be upgraded but meant for people that only play games on their PC. Direct competition to steam.
It's also their only play for VR systems. Note the DX12 feature that uses different vendors graphics cards no matter if it's Intel/AMD/nVidia. Throw in external PCIE expansion boxes that one can expand an XBOX or laptop system with.
It also allows them to expand on their justification of the machine as an always on appliance. If you need more horse power for your games you can buy it. Furthermore the graphics in the games they produce will no longer be crippled to the hardware. They will blow PS4/PS5 out of the water.
I think one solution for that would be binning players systems. If people only want to play against other people with comparable systems I see no reason this couldn't be a feature. I can also imagine ways to handicap players systems.
The higher the basic income the higher the price increase on items. Primarily something like rent. Look at the market in Los Angeles. It's more or less at full occupancy so when all those people start receiving their basic income check their rent will go up 80% of the check.
Just look at what student loans have done. Colleges just raise their rates in proportion to the student loans. Increasing the student loans only increases what colleges charge.
Sure in small sample sizes you can analyze behavior of the subjects but you really need to look at entire communities otherwise you won't see price increases and what you need set the basic income to... which may make the discussion entirely moot.
I think the solution for the new PC is going to be a combination of both. 4 fast as possible cores; maybe 8. Then massive additional cores at lower clock speeds and simpler design. Most likely implies a hybrid NUMA design with additional performance specs and turntables for the host OS and user level software(games). Probably a few modes of operating. Automatic management and succeeding levels of the OS taking over management.
Think of the slower processors as something akin to a floating point coprocessor. Programmers are lazy. Until the hardware exists and they know they will see a benefit they don't want to program for it. Programming for massive unknown hyperthreading is a hard topic. They will always choose the lowest common denominator.
But having both fast/few and slow/many/efficient changes the game. The fast/few is at the end of it's performance curve life but will live on. It's nice to have a few cores around that run two to three times faster for difficult programs. But having an undetermined number of extra processors sitting around.... programmers won't be able to control themselves when they want more performance.
I can also imagine this extending to mixed architectures such as x86+Arm like we have heard rumors about. CISC+RISC in the same computer; blasphemy. FPGA compute boards and graphics card becoming coprocessors and integrating on a more equal level with the CPU's.
P.S. The future of operating systems is a three tiered approach: Hypervisor->OS->Programs. The hypervisor being something akin to a microkernel. What if instead of building compatibility into successive operating systems you could run them all together and forget about compatibility altogether. With additional software and drivers I can even see compositing. This means we can run FreeBSD, Redhat Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and GNU Hurd, and multiple x86 and Arm versions of Android all on the same machine. Imagine all those with compositing extensions.... And once you get rid of the browser with Flash and Shockwave 99% of viruses disappear so administration actually gets easier and if you do get a virus you can always rollback; or rollout clones to test software. Also one can setup a file system with features like file versioning and encryption so that programs can't just hijack your data.
The reason I brought up the above is because one can further still extend the hardware with a clustering OS. A business could install such a specialized clustering OS on each of it's desktop machines in the building and then have it's own cloud. Imagine using something like that for rendering and processing video.
This is what I have been saying for years. Although I have usually stipulated they should be using superconducting highways; I see that's not necessary to get the ball rolling on a national infrastructure. I think it should be a government run operation with subcontractors building it out. It should be government run because I feel it's a matter of national security. Should a natural disaster strike the government should have a locked in system for rerouting massive amounts of power around damaged areas. But one of the problems with the current grid is that when power is generated from renewable resources it's in areas away from where the majority of the consumers are.
I don't see the big deal. The only thing they really control is registered blocks of IP addresses. As far as domain names... it's since different DNS services can compete side by side; anyone can come up with an alternative system.
One can easily alias domain names from one system into their own top level domain like: microsoft.com.icann
Furthermore programs could then have search paths for multiple domain system. The system is easily extended. An improvement on this would be if web sites that instead did something like a cname to a GUID and then the GUID/PubKey and that is what is then resolved to an IP address.
What I would like to see is them forcing the issue of IPv6. Such as in order to renew your IPv4 block you must insure that a certain percentage of your network is IPv6 with this number growing year after year. Also they could reduce the blocks of already assigned IPv4 addresses. It's not like people/businesses don't have alternative in IPv6.
But capable of %80. It's going to take a combination of everything. Run nuclear the backbone but use up renewable where and when you can get it.
And I'll gladly live next to a reactor if I get a little something out of it... like free power for life. You could build it in the desert and I'd move right next to it and just crank up the AC.
But really we need to focus more on small thorium reactors with enough classic reactors to breed the thorium. And truly our country needs to get off it's ass and start recycling nuclear waste.
They are creating a patent portfolio so they can counter-sue other companies that may sue them. Doesn't matter if the patents are bogus.. it takes time and lawyers fees to go through the federal courts. And the patent system isn't broken?
We need a patent system with more critical examiners. But the examiners are understaffed and only seem to rubber stamp patents anyway so lets create a separate court system for just patents; with an overstaffed public defenders office whose job it is to strike down patents. All patent must go before a judge before they are officially approved. Furthermore anyone in the public can sue to challenge the patent to augment the public defenders. And the judge must have the special responsibility to not approve a patent if he has any doubt. Meaning it's up to whomever submitted the patent to prove their case and that all issues have been brought up. Make it mandatory that the patent has to serve the public's interest; and in conjunction with that judgement make the term length of the patent variable. Furthermore the court should have the ability to set the valuation of a patent and to forcibly grant licenses to others.
Or better yet a vehicle that can swap out the back end. You can have truck, a van, or an SUV, or a truck with multiple back beds that can be dropped off like a dump truck.
Immigration is an important economic issue. It's lowers wages. It's a way to balance economic forces but if unchecked it gives businesses an unfair pool of low wages employees. If you don't respect parts of your country for it's economic impact on your then I don't see anything wrong with what your doing as a "statement of protest". You have the unalienable right to express your dissatisfaction. But being realistic it just won't have an economic impact.
There is a lost season of Gillian's Island out there.... I swear I saw 3 of the episodes.... plus secret commentary from the actors talking about the lost season themselves....
Can we please get rid of the popular science. Everyone on Slashdot know the promise... Let's rename it Scotty Slashdot and refocus on practical engineering.... rather that PHD's that might as well be science fiction.
The brain is the communication hub for the body. It's has a spinal column that spans neurons across the body. Nerves whose purpose is input and output to the brain.... And we are playing with switching them on and off with light and sound.... We haven't even figures out how nerves address the brain and each other. We don't even know how to coax the brain into making new connections. So primitive.
The market is more than large enough that Tesla can't keep up with demand. Porsche adds luxuries on top of the electric car. What if you don't like the look of the Tesla or you want other colors/features. These are two kids playing in a sandbox the size of a small city. More than enough room for both of them. I even find it likely that Tesla may consult for them and eventually in 5 years be selling them batteries from their Giga factories.
Our species has not existed for very long, maybe a few hundred thousand years. Only in the last hundred years have we even begun playing with electromagnetic waves. Our experts consider this feasible. We need to look closer at science fiction and start speculation on technology. We have to assume that faster than light communication is indeed possible if not outright travel.
There are millions of planets out there that do have life on them. Jungle worlds. How do two species communicate over such large distances. You figure out what other intelligent species ares going to find interesting and you build a monument where they will already be looking. Take in the fact that humans already without ever meeting an alien already have "invasion" fears... It's only practical that you don't build a light house directly in your back yard but rather put it close enough that if you still exist you relay though it. If you've gone extinct then it's still a monument to your existence in a place that other intelligent being were going to look anyway.
All we are talking about is smoke signals. When we find it it will give us clues to FTL communication though something like that might still take us a hundred years even with outright clues. There is likely a network of living intelligent species out there. But by finding one that has gone extinct may provide clues for contacting other living species.
I live in Los Angeles and I think commute time should count in some way for all jobs. This would motivate businesses and city government to do practical civil engineering. Do something like half time or such.
If your going to have a business you need affordable housing near that business where people want to live. If your driving more than an hour a day or two hours on rapid transit then something is obviously wrong.
I have a problem even with steam. Ebook stores.. you kidding me. What happens when they go bankrupt or get their division bought out. Services end. Otherwise I'd be spending 80 percent of my money on such content. I buy something... I want access to it forever. I want to be able to resell it although it all likelihood I never would being the digital hoarder that I am. I still have the boxes and some of the better manuals from games I bought back in the 90's.
Who watches shows on a schedule anymore? It might take me a year or two before I start watching a series. By then I know which have multiple seasons and might be worth watching. But I eventually do get around to every series that I would have watched on a schedule. In fact I have more time now to watch shows and I watch more shows. No more 2am mornings with nothing to watch. We need to get shows to stop all this fall/spring premiere schedule stuff and instead have new shows every month. And no more pilot episodes but rather half season pilot series. In fact it would be better for the shows if they just did away with seasons all together and instead focused on shows more as mini series. And maybe a series takes two years to get renewed... so what.
Just pointing out the obvious. Some people like me pace so going to a gym onsite make sense. Same with going to get food. Geeks by and large don't like suits and having to take time to take it to a dry cleaner is a drag. Dry cleaning service motivates people to dress nicer.
I think one thing they can do for moral is install the expensive lighting that simulates UV exposure. Maybe going so far as to have it cycle brightness depending on the time of day.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is the so called inventions. They are obvious and natural conclusions. There is no revolutionary idea or inspiration. Patents are to reward and motivate people to develop ideas, implement and produce useful products. These inventions were inevitable. If you could wipe everyone mind in the world and all evidence someone would "invent" it within a week if not days. There is no need to reward these "inventions". It is not revolutionary. It's nothing like the invention of transistors or semiconductors.
I imagine this is in response to steam machines and steam itself. Just look at the recent Slashdot post of the number of ported steam games for Linux. This must be scaring the s*** out of them.
I'm definitely part of the PC master race but strangely this makes me want one of these new XBox's as a sort of second system/portable system.
What this means is that Microsoft is going to market machines with at least one X16 slot if not two or four. They might also allow some high end system vendors to produce their own machines with Microsoft providing the canned operating system/interface. Water-cooling anyone?
High end systems that can be upgraded but meant for people that only play games on their PC. Direct competition to steam.
It's also their only play for VR systems. Note the DX12 feature that uses different vendors graphics cards no matter if it's Intel/AMD/nVidia. Throw in external PCIE expansion boxes that one can expand an XBOX or laptop system with.
It also allows them to expand on their justification of the machine as an always on appliance. If you need more horse power for your games you can buy it. Furthermore the graphics in the games they produce will no longer be crippled to the hardware. They will blow PS4/PS5 out of the water.
I think one solution for that would be binning players systems. If people only want to play against other people with comparable systems I see no reason this couldn't be a feature. I can also imagine ways to handicap players systems.
It also means a biological computer could catch a cold.
Talk about hacking...
The higher the basic income the higher the price increase on items. Primarily something like rent. Look at the market in Los Angeles. It's more or less at full occupancy so when all those people start receiving their basic income check their rent will go up 80% of the check.
Just look at what student loans have done. Colleges just raise their rates in proportion to the student loans. Increasing the student loans only increases what colleges charge.
Sure in small sample sizes you can analyze behavior of the subjects but you really need to look at entire communities otherwise you won't see price increases and what you need set the basic income to... which may make the discussion entirely moot.
I think the solution for the new PC is going to be a combination of both. 4 fast as possible cores; maybe 8. Then massive additional cores at lower clock speeds and simpler design. Most likely implies a hybrid NUMA design with additional performance specs and turntables for the host OS and user level software(games). Probably a few modes of operating. Automatic management and succeeding levels of the OS taking over management.
Think of the slower processors as something akin to a floating point coprocessor. Programmers are lazy. Until the hardware exists and they know they will see a benefit they don't want to program for it. Programming for massive unknown hyperthreading is a hard topic. They will always choose the lowest common denominator.
But having both fast/few and slow/many/efficient changes the game. The fast/few is at the end of it's performance curve life but will live on. It's nice to have a few cores around that run two to three times faster for difficult programs. But having an undetermined number of extra processors sitting around.... programmers won't be able to control themselves when they want more performance.
I can also imagine this extending to mixed architectures such as x86+Arm like we have heard rumors about. CISC+RISC in the same computer; blasphemy. FPGA compute boards and graphics card becoming coprocessors and integrating on a more equal level with the CPU's.
P.S. The future of operating systems is a three tiered approach: Hypervisor->OS->Programs. The hypervisor being something akin to a microkernel. What if instead of building compatibility into successive operating systems you could run them all together and forget about compatibility altogether. With additional software and drivers I can even see compositing. This means we can run FreeBSD, Redhat Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and GNU Hurd, and multiple x86 and Arm versions of Android all on the same machine. Imagine all those with compositing extensions.... And once you get rid of the browser with Flash and Shockwave 99% of viruses disappear so administration actually gets easier and if you do get a virus you can always rollback; or rollout clones to test software. Also one can setup a file system with features like file versioning and encryption so that programs can't just hijack your data.
The reason I brought up the above is because one can further still extend the hardware with a clustering OS. A business could install such a specialized clustering OS on each of it's desktop machines in the building and then have it's own cloud. Imagine using something like that for rendering and processing video.
This is what I have been saying for years. Although I have usually stipulated they should be using superconducting highways; I see that's not necessary to get the ball rolling on a national infrastructure. I think it should be a government run operation with subcontractors building it out. It should be government run because I feel it's a matter of national security. Should a natural disaster strike the government should have a locked in system for rerouting massive amounts of power around damaged areas. But one of the problems with the current grid is that when power is generated from renewable resources it's in areas away from where the majority of the consumers are.
I don't see the big deal. The only thing they really control is registered blocks of IP addresses. As far as domain names... it's since different DNS services can compete side by side; anyone can come up with an alternative system.
One can easily alias domain names from one system into their own top level domain like:
microsoft.com.icann
Furthermore programs could then have search paths for multiple domain system. The system is easily extended. An improvement on this would be if web sites that instead did something like a cname to a GUID and then the GUID/PubKey and that is what is then resolved to an IP address.
What I would like to see is them forcing the issue of IPv6. Such as in order to renew your IPv4 block you must insure that a certain percentage of your network is IPv6 with this number growing year after year. Also they could reduce the blocks of already assigned IPv4 addresses. It's not like people/businesses don't have alternative in IPv6.
But capable of %80. It's going to take a combination of everything. Run nuclear the backbone but use up renewable where and when you can get it.
And I'll gladly live next to a reactor if I get a little something out of it... like free power for life. You could build it in the desert and I'd move right next to it and just crank up the AC.
But really we need to focus more on small thorium reactors with enough classic reactors to breed the thorium. And truly our country needs to get off it's ass and start recycling nuclear waste.
Undoubtedly this is for government monitoring. When the government requests it they can no doubt secretly command your phone to download this app.
They are creating a patent portfolio so they can counter-sue other companies that may sue them. Doesn't matter if the patents are bogus.. it takes time and lawyers fees to go through the federal courts. And the patent system isn't broken?
We need a patent system with more critical examiners. But the examiners are understaffed and only seem to rubber stamp patents anyway so lets create a separate court system for just patents; with an overstaffed public defenders office whose job it is to strike down patents. All patent must go before a judge before they are officially approved. Furthermore anyone in the public can sue to challenge the patent to augment the public defenders. And the judge must have the special responsibility to not approve a patent if he has any doubt. Meaning it's up to whomever submitted the patent to prove their case and that all issues have been brought up. Make it mandatory that the patent has to serve the public's interest; and in conjunction with that judgement make the term length of the patent variable. Furthermore the court should have the ability to set the valuation of a patent and to forcibly grant licenses to others.
The notifications pages that come up need improvement to let people know what happened. Just because a certificate doesn't pass doesn't mean
Second there needs to be laws on the books that manufactures must abide by to sell embedded products.
1. They must offer security updates for all embedded devices for 25 years.
2. They can EOL their product anytime prior by opening the devices to external developers and firmware.
3. Going bankrupt does not negate these responsibilities so each product must have an immediate action plan to comply with #2.
4. Every company must be audited yearly for #3.
Sounds to me like they need a queue for robotic mars missions. The most expensive thing is the launch not what they are sending into space.
Or better yet a vehicle that can swap out the back end. You can have truck, a van, or an SUV, or a truck with multiple back beds that can be dropped off like a dump truck.
Immigration is an important economic issue. It's lowers wages. It's a way to balance economic forces but if unchecked it gives businesses an unfair pool of low wages employees. If you don't respect parts of your country for it's economic impact on your then I don't see anything wrong with what your doing as a "statement of protest". You have the unalienable right to express your dissatisfaction. But being realistic it just won't have an economic impact.
There is a lost season of Gillian's Island out there.... I swear I saw 3 of the episodes.... plus secret commentary from the actors talking about the lost season themselves....
Can we please get rid of the popular science. Everyone on Slashdot know the promise... Let's rename it Scotty Slashdot and refocus on practical engineering.... rather that PHD's that might as well be science fiction.
The brain is the communication hub for the body. It's has a spinal column that spans neurons across the body. Nerves whose purpose is input and output to the brain.... And we are playing with switching them on and off with light and sound.... We haven't even figures out how nerves address the brain and each other. We don't even know how to coax the brain into making new connections. So primitive.
The market is more than large enough that Tesla can't keep up with demand. Porsche adds luxuries on top of the electric car. What if you don't like the look of the Tesla or you want other colors/features. These are two kids playing in a sandbox the size of a small city. More than enough room for both of them. I even find it likely that Tesla may consult for them and eventually in 5 years be selling them batteries from their Giga factories.
We spend all the money on a space station and we can't even shuttle around in LEO to fix satellites.
Our species has not existed for very long, maybe a few hundred thousand years. Only in the last hundred years have we even begun playing with electromagnetic waves. Our experts consider this feasible. We need to look closer at science fiction and start speculation on technology. We have to assume that faster than light communication is indeed possible if not outright travel.
There are millions of planets out there that do have life on them. Jungle worlds. How do two species communicate over such large distances. You figure out what other intelligent species ares going to find interesting and you build a monument where they will already be looking. Take in the fact that humans already without ever meeting an alien already have "invasion" fears... It's only practical that you don't build a light house directly in your back yard but rather put it close enough that if you still exist you relay though it. If you've gone extinct then it's still a monument to your existence in a place that other intelligent being were going to look anyway.
All we are talking about is smoke signals. When we find it it will give us clues to FTL communication though something like that might still take us a hundred years even with outright clues. There is likely a network of living intelligent species out there. But by finding one that has gone extinct may provide clues for contacting other living species.
I live in Los Angeles and I think commute time should count in some way for all jobs. This would motivate businesses and city government to do practical civil engineering. Do something like half time or such.
If your going to have a business you need affordable housing near that business where people want to live. If your driving more than an hour a day or two hours on rapid transit then something is obviously wrong.
I have a problem even with steam. Ebook stores.. you kidding me. What happens when they go bankrupt or get their division bought out. Services end. Otherwise I'd be spending 80 percent of my money on such content. I buy something... I want access to it forever. I want to be able to resell it although it all likelihood I never would being the digital hoarder that I am. I still have the boxes and some of the better manuals from games I bought back in the 90's.
Who watches shows on a schedule anymore? It might take me a year or two before I start watching a series. By then I know which have multiple seasons and might be worth watching. But I eventually do get around to every series that I would have watched on a schedule. In fact I have more time now to watch shows and I watch more shows. No more 2am mornings with nothing to watch. We need to get shows to stop all this fall/spring premiere schedule stuff and instead have new shows every month. And no more pilot episodes but rather half season pilot series. In fact it would be better for the shows if they just did away with seasons all together and instead focused on shows more as mini series. And maybe a series takes two years to get renewed... so what.
Just pointing out the obvious. Some people like me pace so going to a gym onsite make sense. Same with going to get food. Geeks by and large don't like suits and having to take time to take it to a dry cleaner is a drag. Dry cleaning service motivates people to dress nicer.
I think one thing they can do for moral is install the expensive lighting that simulates UV exposure. Maybe going so far as to have it cycle brightness depending on the time of day.