Don't forget, it was once said with great enthusiasm that one day computers might weigh under a ton!
Seriously, there are two sides to the story, or in this case the research. Your side, with big fat equipment which hits the news every now and then when it breaks another barrier, and the side looking at how nature et al implements quantum computers. AFAIK, there is still ongoing investigation into whether and how every one of our cells utilises the quantum nature of particles in DNA manipulation - and if it is possible under the conditions in a human cell, it should certainly be possible in a home PC.
Going back to your analogy of the transistor, I would disagree slightly. I would say that quantum computing is still in its 'valve' era or even before that. Noone has yet made the 'quantum transistor' that will help it take the leap from the theoretical and laboratories into first business and then the home.
Could this be the Linux 'killer app'? So far, linux has always been playing catchup to Windoze (in desktop-users eyes, anyway), trying to port as many programs as possible to be closer in look and feel for the mainstream.
However, this is something new - as far as I know, new to any OS, ever. Integrated voice recognition... something I've wanted for years, and a feature that your 'average Joe' can get excited about. Don't look at me like that, you've all seen users go 'Oooh! Look at that!' at the latest Windoze animations, or get all excited about the ******* paperclip in Office. They need something to catch their attention - this could be just what Linux needs to break the mainstream market.
Just remember 1-2-3... it doesn't take something amazing, just something noone else has done yet.
Ah yes - but I want the performance offered by top-range kit. Which is my problem. When I first got into Linux, a few years back, I was broke and therefore Linux liked my (old, reliable, well-known) kit. Now, I have a bit more cash and I've had to go back to Windoze to make my (new, fast) stuff work...
"'The Lord of the Rings', on which he'd worked for over 14 years, had been refused by publishers and he had almost given up hope of ever seeing it in print."
How close...
IMHO, the world would be a worse place without this book (these books). And I'm sure there are plenty of others out there who will agree with me.
Thanks for this, Hemos. Don't know why I like this, but I really do.
Nah, it's called 'hivemind' and is highly kibological. Technically, you should gain part of any Karma I recieve, but the SlashBop tech doesn't understand hivemind correctly yet... sorry 'bout that.
A big 'thankyou' to the guys at Anandtech for this one. This has always been my major bone with Linux - hardware vendors rarely even know if what they sell will work with Linux, let alone how well!
How about a new symbol to go alongside the ubiquitous 'Designed for Windows {95/98/ME/NT}' and 'plug & pray' ones on new hardware? Something like 'Designed for Linux - designed to work', or even just a pretty picture so you know it's tested and includes Linux drivers.
Then I might actually be able to tell if my new kit works on a decent OS before forking out the hardearned or waiting for someone else to try it first!
An AGP port or slot is where you plug in an expansion card which utilises the AGP bus. Just as with PCI slots/bus, and ISA slots/bus. If you want more technical info on what a bus is and isn't, email me or reply, but this post is already rather offtopic.
Hmmm... does this remind anyone else of that scene in Apollo 13 where they have to bodge an air filter together?
"After a day and a half in the LM a warning light showed that the carbon dioxide had built up to a dangerous level. Mission Control devised a way to attach the CM canisters to the LM system by using plastic bags, cardboard, and tape- all materials carried on board."
The various guns usually have at least A & B buttons as well as the trigger. These can be configured (in time crisis) to activate the 'hide' command on either letting go of or pressing the button. GunCon is pretty good, but there are nicer PSX guns out there. And they're none of them perfect...
Yes, I expect so. The same way that dot-matrix printers are now as expensive as inkjets, and new 486 processors cost more than K6-2's. Basically as the demand gets less there will be fewer made, so the price will go up, so the demand will drop, and so on. The opposite will happen in LCD's - increasing demand will eventually reduce prices as more are manufactured and companies find cheaper ways to produce them.
Or the UK, possibly. 3 people I know have been offered jobs by Demon Internet after hacking their servers. One took it up, another is now working for another company he hacked into in New Zealand.
Apparently, this is Demon's standard policy. They believe that an ex-burgalar makes the best security guard, to coin a phrase.
I doubt it. By the time this is on the consumer market, CRT's will probably be almost gone anyway. The Mitsubishsi Diamondtron is a copy that's almost as good and much cheaper though.
So... they have an exclusive on something that's not secret, and really means nothing in terms of real life products for about 5-10 years.
This won't make any real difference to the market - it'll be at least 12 years before this hits the level where general consumers will be buying, by which tim IMO 3D technology will be much more of an issue than it is now. So it's not gonna be driving prices down anytime soon!
So, to sum up: Nice bit of news to keep an eye on, but nothing to get excited about for a few years surely?
When you're inside an insane system like this (as I am now), it really is as bad as it sounds. I like my subjects, I like my teachers, I get on well with other students - and yet every morning I struggle to drag myself into school.
At least in America you (theoretically) have constitutional rights - in Britain we have no such thing! If you are accused of anything, from theft to drug abuse, there is no trial or appeal: the school hands out punishment as it sees fit. The only time this changes is if the offence is serious enough to warrant getting the police involved.
I fully agree with Griffiths in not speaking out before, while organising the event - if you do so, you are kicked out of the organisations you are complaining about, not listened to! The only way to get your views heard is to play along until you have a chance to speak out as he did. It was people like him who changed my school to allow us to vote on at least some parts of our organisation, and the fact that parents like his will support their children rather than believe every word the teachers say.
I, for one, cannot wait until I leave school forever in 6 months time. And I only hope that when I have children of my own, I will back them up against the system as my mother has me.
Or, in words: The root mean square speed of molecules of a gas is given by the square root of all of (the temperature (T, in Kelvin) multiplied by 3k (k being the Boltzmann constant - 1.38 times 10 to the power of -23 joules per Kelvin),all divided by the mass of a molecule (in Kg) )
Sorry - I've just been doing my Physics revision. Actually, technically this only works for an ideal gas...
No, seriously: while our police force isn't as bad as your FBI, they now have even more worrying powers. If I have my computer equipment confiscated, they can demand passwords for all encrypted files - and I face 2 years in jail if I can't provide them, or a valid reason for not having them!
Of course, this hasn't been tested in court yet on such ideas as 'I forgot it'. But still, the fact that this got through parliament is very, very worrying.
And: either my government uses the term 'Hacking' wrongly in their documents, or they want to arrest all computer scientists...
You could probably rig a device to wipe mag storage (since I know my mobile phone is capable of killing floppies!) from that distance, but modern equipment is quite well shielded. If you spike the EM too high you could conceivably damage yourself too... the jury's still out on this one though. Plus, the power requirement's quite high to say the least...
I favour my solution: A large, loaded crossbow hanging by my bed and a home-made Taser in my back pocket!
I have a feeling this could work very well for long gaming sessions due to its 'ergonomic' design - my keyboard kills my wrists after only an hour or so.
I think a lot of people may be missing the point here - this device is not intended to increase functionality; it is intended for comfort and speed. As I see it, this is a trade-off that may well be worthwhile: the number of times I've died because my hand was in the wrong place on the keyboard...
I wonder if it would be possible to configure this with a 'shift' type button for the more esoteric controls many people seem to want. Two shift buttons would increase the total possible commands to 32 (9 original, 8 each with shift 1 or 2 depressed, 7 with both shift 1 & 2 depressed), which should be enough for the most complex config while still keeping the comfort and speed of the main, most-used buttons.
It wasn't actually the termination of your account that quote referred to - rather, the removal of your pages from Angelfire etc.
I believe under the DCMA they should have ensured you knew about the removal a certain number of days before it happened and had adequate time to protest.
The computer industry has to be the only one where weekly downtime is expected and accepted, where the industry-standard software for end users is hated by everyone, and where a product that dosen't work can't be taken back to the shop (Oh no mate, you've opened the shrinkwrap - can't take that back now...)
This should have been the bill that would put an end to a lot of this, but no:
while software companies should provide reliable goods, they shouldn't have to bear potentially enormous risks associated with the use of their products.
"How many companies are there who would undertake that risk?" Kupferschmid asks. "No one would. It's just too great."
So: The industry knows that its software can cause enormous problems, and yet does not want to take responsibility for them. If a building contractor were to say that, they would be slapped down!
Now instead of a law which would finally force companies to take responsibility for their software and actions, we have one which will instead give them more opportunity to prevent us from doing anything about it. How long before license agreements prevent the dicussion of bugs found in the program? It could be done!
This is just the final blow to our frail human psyches by the spin of the ad-doctors...
First, they had us queueing for hours and fighting over cabbage patch dolls, with the justification that it was 'for the kids'. Now, we're prepared to do it for big boys toys.
As more and more money is spent on pre-launch hype, this kind of thing will happen more and more. One can only hope that we will eventually desensitise to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, there are two sides to the story, or in this case the research. Your side, with big fat equipment which hits the news every now and then when it breaks another barrier, and the side looking at how nature et al implements quantum computers. AFAIK, there is still ongoing investigation into whether and how every one of our cells utilises the quantum nature of particles in DNA manipulation - and if it is possible under the conditions in a human cell, it should certainly be possible in a home PC.
Going back to your analogy of the transistor, I would disagree slightly. I would say that quantum computing is still in its 'valve' era or even before that. Noone has yet made the 'quantum transistor' that will help it take the leap from the theoretical and laboratories into first business and then the home.
Of course, it may yet just not work ;-)
Beg:
However, this is something new - as far as I know, new to any OS, ever. Integrated voice recognition... something I've wanted for years, and a feature that your 'average Joe' can get excited about. Don't look at me like that, you've all seen users go 'Oooh! Look at that!' at the latest Windoze animations, or get all excited about the ******* paperclip in Office. They need something to catch their attention - this could be just what Linux needs to break the mainstream market.
Just remember 1-2-3... it doesn't take something amazing, just something noone else has done yet.
Great. A step backwards in the name of progress.
JJ
How close...
IMHO, the world would be a worse place without this book (these books). And I'm sure there are plenty of others out there who will agree with me.
Thanks for this, Hemos. Don't know why I like this, but I really do.
JJ
Oy! hands off my karma! I'd post this at 0 if I could, but there's no option to... it's a joke!
JJ
How about a new symbol to go alongside the ubiquitous 'Designed for Windows {95/98/ME/NT}' and 'plug & pray' ones on new hardware? Something like 'Designed for Linux - designed to work', or even just a pretty picture so you know it's tested and includes Linux drivers.
Then I might actually be able to tell if my new kit works on a decent OS before forking out the hardearned or waiting for someone else to try it first!
JJ
JJ
"After a day and a half in the LM a warning light showed that the carbon dioxide had built up to a dangerous level. Mission Control devised a way to attach the CM canisters to the LM system by using plastic bags, cardboard, and tape- all materials carried on board."
Will they never learn?
The various guns usually have at least A & B buttons as well as the trigger. These can be configured (in time crisis) to activate the 'hide' command on either letting go of or pressing the button. GunCon is pretty good, but there are nicer PSX guns out there. And they're none of them perfect...
Yes, I expect so. The same way that dot-matrix printers are now as expensive as inkjets, and new 486 processors cost more than K6-2's. Basically as the demand gets less there will be fewer made, so the price will go up, so the demand will drop, and so on. The opposite will happen in LCD's - increasing demand will eventually reduce prices as more are manufactured and companies find cheaper ways to produce them.
However, with Visa's currency exchange fees on top, I'm guessing it'll be around $50 in total.
Or the UK, possibly. 3 people I know have been offered jobs by Demon Internet after hacking their servers. One took it up, another is now working for another company he hacked into in New Zealand.
Apparently, this is Demon's standard policy. They believe that an ex-burgalar makes the best security guard, to coin a phrase.
JJ
This won't make any real difference to the market - it'll be at least 12 years before this hits the level where general consumers will be buying, by which tim IMO 3D technology will be much more of an issue than it is now. So it's not gonna be driving prices down anytime soon!
So, to sum up: Nice bit of news to keep an eye on, but nothing to get excited about for a few years surely?
At least in America you (theoretically) have constitutional rights - in Britain we have no such thing! If you are accused of anything, from theft to drug abuse, there is no trial or appeal: the school hands out punishment as it sees fit. The only time this changes is if the offence is serious enough to warrant getting the police involved.
I fully agree with Griffiths in not speaking out before, while organising the event - if you do so, you are kicked out of the organisations you are complaining about, not listened to! The only way to get your views heard is to play along until you have a chance to speak out as he did. It was people like him who changed my school to allow us to vote on at least some parts of our organisation, and the fact that parents like his will support their children rather than believe every word the teachers say.
I, for one, cannot wait until I leave school forever in 6 months time. And I only hope that when I have children of my own, I will back them up against the system as my mother has me.
Crms=sqrt((3kT)/m)
Or, in words: The root mean square speed of molecules of a gas is given by the square root of all of (the temperature (T, in Kelvin) multiplied by 3k (k being the Boltzmann constant - 1.38 times 10 to the power of -23 joules per Kelvin),all divided by the mass of a molecule (in Kg) )
Sorry - I've just been doing my Physics revision. Actually, technically this only works for an ideal gas...
No, seriously: while our police force isn't as bad as your FBI, they now have even more worrying powers. If I have my computer equipment confiscated, they can demand passwords for all encrypted files - and I face 2 years in jail if I can't provide them, or a valid reason for not having them!
Of course, this hasn't been tested in court yet on such ideas as 'I forgot it'. But still, the fact that this got through parliament is very, very worrying.
And: either my government uses the term 'Hacking' wrongly in their documents, or they want to arrest all computer scientists...
I favour my solution: A large, loaded crossbow hanging by my bed and a home-made Taser in my back pocket!
I think a lot of people may be missing the point here - this device is not intended to increase functionality; it is intended for comfort and speed. As I see it, this is a trade-off that may well be worthwhile: the number of times I've died because my hand was in the wrong place on the keyboard...
I wonder if it would be possible to configure this with a 'shift' type button for the more esoteric controls many people seem to want. Two shift buttons would increase the total possible commands to 32 (9 original, 8 each with shift 1 or 2 depressed, 7 with both shift 1 & 2 depressed), which should be enough for the most complex config while still keeping the comfort and speed of the main, most-used buttons.
Why would it be difficult to get an MS employee to download anything moronic? I would have thought it to be the easiest thing in the world...
I believe under the DCMA they should have ensured you knew about the removal a certain number of days before it happened and had adequate time to protest.
JJ
This should have been the bill that would put an end to a lot of this, but no:
while software companies should provide reliable goods, they shouldn't have to bear potentially enormous risks associated with the use of their products.
"How many companies are there who would undertake that risk?" Kupferschmid asks. "No one would. It's just too great."
So: The industry knows that its software can cause enormous problems, and yet does not want to take responsibility for them. If a building contractor were to say that, they would be slapped down!
Now instead of a law which would finally force companies to take responsibility for their software and actions, we have one which will instead give them more opportunity to prevent us from doing anything about it. How long before license agreements prevent the dicussion of bugs found in the program? It could be done!
First, they had us queueing for hours and fighting over cabbage patch dolls, with the justification that it was 'for the kids'. Now, we're prepared to do it for big boys toys.
As more and more money is spent on pre-launch hype, this kind of thing will happen more and more. One can only hope that we will eventually desensitise to it.