Not sure how to phrase this, but, well, what is the status of O'Reilley and marketing books to schools and colleges for use as textbooks. Our textbooks suck, and if there textbook versions of ya'lls books it would rock. -Crutcher
For our FASTEST computers, we cannot go with pure optical computers, because there are a conditions in which an optical switch is going to be SLOWER than an elctrical one, and have to work on higher energy levels. And If we reach the level where we NEED 3d chips, that will be a liability.
On Cooling, silicon based chips could still be built 3d, if one laid a lattice of a VERY heat conductive material through them (like gold or platinum) and posibliy dunked them in some nitrogen.
In short, lets get some hairy golf balls into our computers.
First, A disclaimer: The comments I am going to make are not about what we will need in 5 or in 10 years, but what we will need at some unnamed future time when we finally need it. And they are not about the raw archetecture, but about archetectures that follow its general theory.
And Yes, I want quantum computers, but lets leave them out of this discusion. End Disclaimer
We need this type of chip, because, realy, our current chip archetectures can only scale so far. They have internal bottlenecks, and IO bottlenecks, and though we keep squeezeing more and more out of them, WE CANT KEEP IT UP FOREVER.
So, what is the best archetecture theory we have? What is the most we can squeeze into and out of a processor of a given size?
Well, ultimatly, that is a question of IO. Personaly, I think this form of chip is the best 2D approach (though maybe some wacky fractal aproach might be better), but even it is limited by it's own IO, and keeping all the processor units busy becomes harder and harder with each row and collumn you add (at a damn fast rate).
So, what I am ranting about is that we need this, but we need it to have (at some future time when we can build such a thing) Depth as well, so that we have a smaller bottle-neck, because the area/perimiter ratio is much worse than the volume/surface ratio.
ex: a square processor with 1,000,000 cells has 3,996 External cells for IO, though the 4 cells in the corners only pipe to other external cells, and aren't really useful (though you leave them in, just in case)
a cubic processor with 1,000,000 cells has 58,808 external cells for IO, with 8 corner cells.
The average distance between cells is also MUCH smaller, allowing for more efficient internal communication.
which one is going to have an easier time connecting to the outside world?
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Science FUD. Your fears of "what if it makes a **super** bacteria" are, and I am not exagerating, exactly as likely as saying "exposure to twinkies will cause a **super** bacteria to mutate".
Here's Why: 1) Anything which causes chemical damage to DNA is technicaly a "mutagen". 2) Almost everything is a "mutagen". (well, thats an exageration, but lots and lots and lots of stuff is a mutagen). 3) Because of this, everything (especialy things with **short** life cycles like bacteria) is constantly mutating. 4) The vast majority (read 999,999 out of 1,000,000) of mutations are **HARMFUL** to the life form. (Imagine, what is the likelyhood that smacking my computer with a hammer will make it work **better**?) 5) Air Bourne Bacteria is almost always in spore form (low water contenet, almost no chemical activity), and damage to bacterial spores makes it rather hard for them to reinstate, but thats okay for the bacteria, because they produce so MANY spores. 6) Evolution is pushed by small changes, (ie. many little benificial mutations **in**a**row**) so to get a **super**bacteria** from a radiation stream, you would basicaly be asking the hammer that you just hit your desktop computer with to produce a Cray out of the ruble.
Remember boys and girls, evolution needs TWO things, a mutation source, and a selector (this one survives better than that one AND has more kids), and randomly blasting out radiation WILL increase the rate of mutation, but it wont DIRECT it. This is why we dont have flying cats, despit all the fun chemical mutagens that we expose ourselves and our pets to every single day. (like caffine) and all the fun energy ones weve been exposed to for ages (UV radiation, physical stress (like being slapped), strong temperature gradients, etc.)
But for anyone who doesn't believe me, go get your Junior Quack Scientist Memebership Card(tm) and go off and study ball lightning and bigfoot.
Okay, this question (of weather pics that **appear** to be children are treated identicaly to pics which **are** of children) has been raised a few times here before. As I recall, the legal concensus was that any **image** that sufficiently emulates children is technically covered by the child porn laws. Now in some cases (where there is a REAL model) this can be defended in court, (see your honor, she looks young, but she is ACTUALLY 20, etc.) But if there is no **real** model, I imagine the law will treat it **exactly** like kiddie porn.
I've been waiting N years to get one of these bad boys, I wan't permanently implanted HUDs, why would I want to take it off?
On a more serious note, the **same** problems were reported when television was introduced, when monitors were introduced, and especialy when 3d games were introduced. It is the result of a strange learning morphism in the way your brain sees things, but the good news is, you learn to **switch** modes pretty fast, which is why you can play quake and the get up and walk.
Everyone remembers the massive change that came fall of '95, as the web hit mainstream. Well, almost everyone. It seems that the nature of the Internet and related technologys tends to engender a peculiar type of forgetfulness. Most people seem to have forgotten how they worked/played before it all went down, but thats because most people didnt see it comming, and weren't watching their own opinions change.
Well, here we have a chance to watch it again. True Ubiqitious Online shopping will require a company like this to actualy go mainstream, and in a year and a half, it will be difficult to remember a world/without/ the neighborhood Webvan Guy bringing home the bacon for you.
It seems that ESR's recent writing are both volumous and comprehensive, and If he is taking suggestions for after-the-fact mods, perhaps we are beginning to see an era in which we "open source" our documentation, theory, and text-books. Yeah, I know, books are open, you can read them. But I am talking about development projects, where the original author throws up a basic outline of the work, with a few sections filled in, and then manages the submissions. So I want to propose the _YALS_ project, standing for "Yet Another Love Story", we need some web space, and a few core developers, and we'll be ready to go. The basic outline will be: 1) Character_One Meets Character_Two 2) Character_One Loses Character_Two 3) Character_One Gets Character_Two We should try to flesh the plot out by August 20th, Aiming for a Version 0.1 publication by January 1st. Check The site at http://taz.eng.ua.edu:1138/crutcher/yals
Okay, the palm is neat and all, but what I want is the following:
Small, folding form-factor, that could easily be shoved in a pocket (roughly palm sized when folded) with a screen and keyboard. Small (64K?) memory, ROM burned OS, terminal emulator maried to PCS phone technology. It would need almost no processor power, minimal long term storage (to keep config info) and with modern batteries could have a LONG battery life. If connected to the PCS net properly, it would have little bandwidth, and that could be made CHEAP.
For sysadmins like myself, this thing would be heavenly. Imagine ALWAYS being at a terminal. Imagine all the down time you could pick up (waiting in line at stores, eating lunch) without the need for all that bulky crap that comes with a laptop, or the cutesy crap that is imbedded in most PDAs.
But because I represent a VERY marginal section of the market, I doubt it would be made. (a pda with no OS? horrors!!)
Does anyone remember last year when e-paper started in the media? The process we have already heard about, it was suposedly developed by a Kid at MIT, who now is involved with the E-Ink company, WHO ARE ALREADY SELLING IT! There was a slashdot article awhile back that linked to the publicity anouncement.
So, the question is, is Xerox trying to steal the e-paper industry from E-Ink? If they have been working on this stuff, why didn't we hear from them when e-paper was last getting a big hype-push?
Just Talking out my ass here, but havent we been hearing great things every now and then about holographic crystal storage? Didn't they want those out within 5 years? I can't remeber.
As a second note, with faster/cheaper/denser ram comming all the time, ram based static hard drives might come to replay magnetic media. (might) I know I want one.:)
Hmm, its June 3, your a senior in highschool, and you are starting your large research project now? Let me guess, A) You screwed around during the school year and were told "do this huge project and you'll pass".
or
B) You aready failed, and are in summer school, so you can do the same.
Now, I'm not meaning to be negative, (in high school I ended up in categorey A a few times, in college, categorey B) but what you need to do is "impress" the person grading your paper. So, make their head spin. Do some research on the "neo-tribal"* theorys, and write it up good and scary, guaranted "A+".
* "neo-tribal theory" The idea that with the proliferation of massive information (and the joint proliferation of filtering software and "portal" sites) viewers see only what they wish to see, and social sub-groups become more and more insular. ex. White power nuts go only to white power web pages, now for ALL their news, so they have no challenge to their perspective.
Okay, I admit my arguments were a bit (very) sloppy In my first post, but the point I was trying to make was NOT that the film was bad (I saw it twice), was NOT that an idea must be original (Else I woulnd't watch movies at all), but that Mr Katz's warm fuzzy soliloquy about the matrix and its influence was overdone and mistargeted. Information presented in new ways is nice, but information presented for the first time will make a bigger impact, and I was arguing that geeks have seen these ideas before (the general ideas, not there antecedants), generaly many times before, where as the hipsters and teenie boppers who went for the visual effects have NOT, and so I expect the Matrix to have a much larger impact on them, because they have never had those thoughts before IN ANY FORM.
The Matrix has the _least_ influence on actual card carrying geeks and hackers, because we've read the literature, we've seen the prototypes, The only true GEE-WIZ factor left is that the movie was pretty.
It breaks down into two basic plot lines: 1) AI rebelion/war (ala Terminator) 2) "The Caverns of Socrates" the idea that the world you see is an illusion.
Now, The first idea is so old, it has hair on it, and any geek has seen/read so many books/movies about it that it is now rather boring, but non-geeks have avoided that "sci-fi trash" and the Matrix (with its pretty special effects) has lured many of them into the fold, and the Idea is new to them.
THe second Idea, that the world around you is fake, Has also been done a few times in sci-fi, though not as often as the AI thing. However it is based (stolen) on one of Socrates thought experiments, and for the geeks of the world, it is also not a new concept. But for all the non-geeks, and proto-geeks out there, this is world-shattering strangeness.
The *Real* Matrix test of Geeknees, is whether a person was annoyed at the innacuracys of the film, not if they were impressed. A true geek would only be impressed by the film's special effects, because the ideas the film puts forth are old hat.
As for the Star Wars referance, WTF? The movies are not meant to be competitors, this nonsense about cyberspace, there wasn't any in episodes 3,4,5 why expect it in episode 1?
The article pretty much states that it is only a breader reactor, and as such, only makes plutonium. Now, I am not a physics major myself, but I know a few and my dorm did some research on this about a decade ago, (the cia was not amussed), and many schools have small experimental breaders for research purposes. Those reactors need fuel, and no mention was made of the grade. Ass for detection, spectographic analysis, or chemical detectors are both more than adequate for the purpose of detecting even VERY small ammounts of plutonium.
Look ahead at the implications of this project. SOny has produced a viable musculo/skeltal system for a consumer robot. This is the important thing. Not whether it is voice activated, it will be. Not whether it is programable, it will be. This thing was the last step impeeding REAL consumer robotics, the rest is just evolutionary.
Imagine, a pet that is also your pda/phone/secretary. Project the project for the nice man boy! C'Mon, this stuff is gonna rule, and it won't be SF anymore, this will happen in a handful of years!
Personaly, I want a small dragon, with nice titanium scales, that I can have perched on my shoulder, to light my cigarettes.
Well, most people here are UNIX nuts right? So who has time to learn a toy language like Java-Script? Yeah, we "could" just guess, but it would be more fun to just read it out of the program. And since it is in java script and not a cgi form, we cant force it easily. so, I guess I have to learn javascript tonight. sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure how to phrase this, but, well, what is the status of O'Reilley and marketing books to schools and colleges for use as textbooks. Our textbooks suck, and if there textbook versions of ya'lls books it would rock.
-Crutcher
it would be easier to upgrade your computer by pouring sand into it, then zapping it with lightning.
-Crutcher
For our FASTEST computers, we cannot go with pure optical computers, because there are a conditions in which an optical switch is going to be SLOWER than an elctrical one, and have to work on higher energy levels. And If we reach the level where we NEED 3d chips, that will be a liability.
On Cooling, silicon based chips could still be built 3d, if one laid a lattice of a VERY heat conductive material through them (like gold or platinum) and posibliy dunked them in some nitrogen.
In short, lets get some hairy golf balls into our computers.
-Crutcher
First, A disclaimer:
The comments I am going to make are not about what we will need in 5 or in 10 years, but what we will need at some unnamed future time when we finally need it. And they are not about the raw archetecture, but about archetectures that follow its general theory.
And Yes, I want quantum computers, but lets leave them out of this discusion.
End Disclaimer
We need this type of chip, because, realy, our current chip archetectures can only scale so far. They have internal bottlenecks, and IO bottlenecks, and though we keep squeezeing more and more out of them, WE CANT KEEP IT UP FOREVER.
So, what is the best archetecture theory we have? What is the most we can squeeze into and out of a processor of a given size?
Well, ultimatly, that is a question of IO. Personaly, I think this form of chip is the best 2D approach (though maybe some wacky fractal aproach might be better), but even it is limited by it's own IO, and keeping all the processor units busy becomes harder and harder with each row and collumn you add (at a damn fast rate).
So, what I am ranting about is that we need this, but we need it to have (at some future time when we can build such a thing) Depth as well, so that we have a smaller bottle-neck, because the area/perimiter ratio is much worse than the volume/surface ratio.
ex:
a square processor with 1,000,000 cells has 3,996 External cells for IO, though the 4 cells in the corners only pipe to other external cells, and aren't really useful (though you leave them in, just in case)
a cubic processor with 1,000,000 cells has 58,808 external cells for IO, with 8 corner cells.
The average distance between cells is also MUCH smaller, allowing for more efficient internal communication.
which one is going to have an easier time connecting to the outside world?
my $0.02
-Crutcher
The Real Trojan Horse was left outside TROY, they were at war with some italians.
-Crutcher
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Science FUD.
Your fears of "what if it makes a **super** bacteria" are, and I am not exagerating, exactly as likely as saying "exposure to twinkies will cause a **super** bacteria to mutate".
Here's Why:
1) Anything which causes chemical damage to DNA is technicaly a "mutagen".
2) Almost everything is a "mutagen". (well, thats an exageration, but lots and lots and lots of stuff is a mutagen).
3) Because of this, everything (especialy things with **short** life cycles like bacteria) is constantly mutating.
4) The vast majority (read 999,999 out of 1,000,000) of mutations are **HARMFUL** to the life form. (Imagine, what is the likelyhood that smacking my computer with a hammer will make it work **better**?)
5) Air Bourne Bacteria is almost always in spore form (low water contenet, almost no chemical activity), and damage to bacterial spores makes it rather hard for them to reinstate, but thats okay for the bacteria, because they produce so MANY spores.
6) Evolution is pushed by small changes, (ie. many little benificial mutations **in**a**row**) so to get a **super**bacteria** from a radiation stream, you would basicaly be asking the hammer that you just hit your desktop computer with to produce a Cray out of the ruble.
Remember boys and girls, evolution needs TWO things, a mutation source, and a selector (this one survives better than that one AND has more kids), and randomly blasting out radiation WILL increase the rate of mutation, but it wont DIRECT it. This is why we dont have flying cats, despit all the fun chemical mutagens that we expose ourselves and our pets to every single day. (like caffine) and all the fun energy ones weve been exposed to for ages (UV radiation, physical stress (like being slapped), strong temperature gradients, etc.)
But for anyone who doesn't believe me, go get your Junior Quack Scientist Memebership Card(tm) and go off and study ball lightning and bigfoot.
-Crutcher
I am not a layer, consult yours!
Okay, this question (of weather pics that **appear** to be children are treated identicaly to pics which **are** of children) has been raised a few times here before. As I recall, the legal concensus was that any **image** that sufficiently emulates children is technically covered by the child porn laws. Now in some cases (where there is a REAL model) this can be defended in court, (see your honor, she looks young, but she is ACTUALLY 20, etc.) But if there is no **real** model, I imagine the law will treat it **exactly** like kiddie porn.
-Crutcher
I've been waiting N years to get one of these bad boys, I wan't permanently implanted HUDs, why would I want to take it off?
On a more serious note, the **same** problems were reported when television was introduced, when monitors were introduced, and especialy when 3d games were introduced. It is the result of a strange learning morphism in the way your brain sees things, but the good news is, you learn to **switch** modes pretty fast, which is why you can play quake and the get up and walk.
-Crutcher
Everyone remembers the massive change that came fall of '95, as the web hit mainstream. Well, almost everyone. It seems that the nature of the Internet and related technologys tends to engender a peculiar type of forgetfulness. Most people seem to have forgotten how they worked/played before it all went down, but thats because most people didnt see it comming, and weren't watching their own opinions change.
/without/ the neighborhood Webvan Guy bringing home the bacon for you.
Well, here we have a chance to watch it again. True Ubiqitious Online shopping will require a company like this to actualy go mainstream, and in a year and a half, it will be difficult to remember a world
-Crutcher
It seems that ESR's recent writing are both volumous and comprehensive, and If he is taking suggestions for after-the-fact mods, perhaps we are beginning to see an era in which we "open source" our documentation, theory, and text-books. Yeah, I know, books are open, you can read them. But I am talking about development projects, where the original author throws up a basic outline of the work, with a few sections filled in, and then manages the submissions. So I want to propose the _YALS_ project, standing for "Yet Another Love Story", we need some web space, and a few core developers, and we'll be ready to go. The basic outline will be:
1) Character_One Meets Character_Two
2) Character_One Loses Character_Two
3) Character_One Gets Character_Two We should try to flesh the plot out by August 20th, Aiming for a Version 0.1 publication by January 1st. Check The site at http://taz.eng.ua.edu:1138/crutcher/yals
-Crutcher
Okay, the palm is neat and all, but what I want is the following:
Small, folding form-factor, that could easily be shoved in a pocket (roughly palm sized when folded) with a screen and keyboard. Small (64K?) memory, ROM burned OS, terminal emulator maried to PCS phone technology. It would need almost no processor power, minimal long term storage (to keep config info) and with modern batteries could have a LONG battery life. If connected to the PCS net properly, it would have little bandwidth, and that could be made CHEAP.
For sysadmins like myself, this thing would be heavenly. Imagine ALWAYS being at a terminal. Imagine all the down time you could pick up (waiting in line at stores, eating lunch) without the need for all that bulky crap that comes with a laptop, or the cutesy crap that is imbedded in most PDAs.
But because I represent a VERY marginal section of the market, I doubt it would be made. (a pda with no OS? horrors!!)
-Crutcher
This sounds a bit shady.
Does anyone remember last year when e-paper started in the media? The process we have already heard about, it was suposedly developed by a Kid at MIT, who now is involved with the E-Ink company, WHO ARE ALREADY SELLING IT! There was a slashdot article awhile back that linked to the publicity anouncement.
So, the question is, is Xerox trying to steal the e-paper industry from E-Ink? If they have been working on this stuff, why didn't we hear from them when e-paper was last getting a big hype-push?
I am suspicious, but thats just me.
-Crutcher
Just Talking out my ass here, but havent we been hearing great things every now and then about holographic crystal storage? Didn't they want those out within 5 years? I can't remeber.
:)
As a second note, with faster/cheaper/denser ram comming all the time, ram based static hard drives might come to replay magnetic media. (might) I know I want one.
-Crutcher
Hmm, its June 3, your a senior in highschool, and you are starting your large research project now? Let me guess,
A) You screwed around during the school year and were told "do this huge project and you'll pass".
or
B) You aready failed, and are in summer school, so you can do the same.
Now, I'm not meaning to be negative, (in high school I ended up in categorey A a few times, in college, categorey B) but what you need to do is "impress" the person grading your paper.
So, make their head spin. Do some research on the "neo-tribal"* theorys, and write it up good and scary, guaranted "A+".
* "neo-tribal theory"
The idea that with the proliferation of massive information (and the joint proliferation of filtering software and "portal" sites) viewers see only what they wish to see, and social sub-groups become more and more insular.
ex. White power nuts go only to white power web pages, now for ALL their news, so they have no challenge to their perspective.
Just a Thougt.
Okay, I admit my arguments were a bit (very) sloppy In my first post, but the point I was trying to make was NOT that the film was bad (I saw it twice), was NOT that an idea must be original (Else I woulnd't watch movies at all), but that Mr Katz's warm fuzzy soliloquy about the matrix and its influence was overdone and mistargeted. Information presented in new ways is nice, but information presented for the first time will make a bigger impact, and I was arguing that geeks have seen these ideas before (the general ideas, not there antecedants), generaly many times before, where as the hipsters and teenie boppers who went for the visual effects have NOT, and so I expect the Matrix to have a much larger impact on them, because they have never had those thoughts before IN ANY FORM.
"I am the Chosen One, Dude."
The Matrix has the _least_ influence on actual card carrying geeks and hackers, because we've read the literature, we've seen the prototypes, The only true GEE-WIZ factor left is that the movie was pretty.
It breaks down into two basic plot lines:
1) AI rebelion/war (ala Terminator)
2) "The Caverns of Socrates" the idea that the world you see is an illusion.
Now, The first idea is so old, it has hair on it, and any geek has seen/read so many books/movies about it that it is now rather boring, but non-geeks have avoided that "sci-fi trash" and the Matrix (with its pretty special effects) has lured many of them into the fold, and the Idea is new to them.
THe second Idea, that the world around you is fake, Has also been done a few times in sci-fi, though not as often as the AI thing. However it is based (stolen) on one of Socrates thought experiments, and for the geeks of the world, it is also not a new concept. But for all the non-geeks, and proto-geeks out there, this is world-shattering strangeness.
The *Real* Matrix test of Geeknees, is whether a person was annoyed at the innacuracys of the film, not if they were impressed. A true geek would only be impressed by the film's special effects, because the ideas the film puts forth are old hat.
As for the Star Wars referance, WTF? The movies are not meant to be competitors, this nonsense about cyberspace, there wasn't any in episodes 3,4,5 why expect it in episode 1?
The article pretty much states that it is only a breader reactor, and as such, only makes plutonium. Now, I am not a physics major myself, but I know a few and my dorm did some research on this about a decade ago, (the cia was not amussed), and many schools have small experimental breaders for research purposes. Those reactors need fuel, and no mention was made of the grade. Ass for detection, spectographic analysis, or chemical detectors are both more than adequate for the purpose of detecting even VERY small ammounts of plutonium.
Oh YEAH!
Look ahead at the implications of this project.
SOny has produced a viable musculo/skeltal system for a consumer robot. This is the important thing.
Not whether it is voice activated, it will be. Not whether it is programable, it will be. This thing was the last step impeeding REAL consumer robotics, the rest is just evolutionary.
Imagine, a pet that is also your pda/phone/secretary. Project the project for the nice man boy! C'Mon, this stuff is gonna rule, and it won't be SF anymore, this will happen in a handful of years!
Personaly, I want a small dragon, with nice titanium scales, that I can have perched on my shoulder, to light my cigarettes.
Well, most people here are UNIX nuts right?
So who has time to learn a toy language like
Java-Script? Yeah, we "could" just guess, but it
would be more fun to just read it out of the program. And since it is in java script and not a cgi form, we cant force it easily. so, I guess I have to learn javascript tonight. sigh.