I don't know if SATA has a separate address
line or if that takes away from the data
speed.
SATA doesn't have any separate lines,
thus the "serial" part of it. You could
conceivably do it over a mere two wires, though
in practice it has three ground lines, and two (transmit and receive) differential signal
pairs. I say "conceivably" becase at 1.5Gbps,
those suckers act more like antennas than wires, and good luck to the poor bastard who's manager
tells him to make it work with a single wire
pair.
I would take the increased "visibility" of end
caps with a grain of sand...
maybe for impulse-buy items like candy,
they work well. But if I go into a store looking
for a particular product, well, 90% of the time
I need to ask staff for help finding something,
they direct me to an endcap that I'd walked
right past a dozen times in my search.
People look for widgets in the aisle labelled "widgets, knicknacks, and doodads". Not in that
aisle? Ask for help, or more often, leave the
store widgetless.
Overall, I consider your comment one of the most insightful I've
ever read on Slashdot.
If they had cross-bar latch-based systems they wouldn't be
have been using transistors in the first place.
We still use vacuum tubes and electromechanical relays alongside
transistors. Perhaps crossbar latch technology simple can't handle
large enough currents to interface well with the macroscopic world,
so the aliens needed to use transistors to switch relatively
massive currents up into the microamps...;-)
So, no doubt in another 50 years, we'll find another layer of alien
tech we have finally reached the manufacturing capability of making
use of, and we can get down to using some cool property of the d orbital
geometry as stressed in negative Scandium ions. No doubt the NSA's xenoassimilatory researchers missed this at the present time, since
they considered it a mere impurity in the semiconductor substrate.
Once we figure out the basics, it is going
to transform the way we computer simply out of
the sheer computing power we'll be able to
throw at things.
No, it won't.
Quantum computing (which has very little to do
with the parent article) will change the way we think
about computationally "hard" problems. Things like
prime factorization, things like NP-completeness,
things like cryptography.
But quantum computing will not replace
the general-purpose Turing-complete model of
computation we currently use. We will more
likely see the idea of a quantum-coprocessor,
something that you can interact with through
a conventional CPU.
The problem with quantum computing involves
the complexity of doing simple tasks...
Yeah, it can factor absolutely mind-boggling
numbers in one unit of time. It also takes
that same one unit of time to figure out
1 + 1 = 2. The problem there involves the
length of that unit of time - Between loading
a state onto a set of qubits, them almost
instantanously solving the problem, then
reading the state off of them, you could
have done potentially billions of cycles of
normal CPU ops (no, I don't have a time-scale
to quote for this, but I would consider it
exceedingly optimistic to hope we eventually
get it down to the millisecond level).
This development has so much potential because it
points to a very, very major leap in the size of
what we would currently consider a transistor...
From 90nm, used by Intel and AMD's absolute
latest mass-production facilities, down to a few
nanometers. This means lower power requirements,
faster CPU clocks, and much better areal density
of functional units (getting down into the range
of a few dozen atoms per switch, rather than hundreds
of thousands at 90nm). The linked article also
vaguely alludes to easier manufacturing techniques,
but skimps on that one.
During the first execution this program shows
the list of applications which already have this
flag set.
I have DEP set to protect "essential Windows
programs and services only"...
Yet, running this util, the list of programs
looks nothing like a list of "essential"
Windows programs. In fact, I honestly don't
recognize any of the programs listed, and
I say that as someone that knows what a normal
Windows XP SP2 install "should" have running,
even down to the device-driver level.
So what gives? Has Microsoft pulled the
DRM-wool over us all in the form of DEP, and
it has nothing to do with "security" at all?
Okay, call me paranoid, but, something looks
not quite right here (and I don't even mean the
possibility of an exploit, I mean the uses of
DEP itself, working or not).
Talk with your kids. Make sure they know what
Kazaa-Lite is and how to use it. Make sure they
know about encryption and how to use it.
Oh, puh-lease. A decade ago, I had to
teach my parents how to properly and
safely download... er... "material of questionable
legality".
We always hear about "the" uncomfortable
father-son (or mother-daughter) talk about sex,
but the reverse case feels even wierder...
"Uh... Dad, I found some interesting files
on your computer."
"Oh, er, uh, those must have come from...
uh... one of those pop-up trap pages"
"Dad, we all look at porn. But these
lame 30-second video clips? Sigh. C'mere.
Let me introduce you to USENet... Here, add
all these groups... Check here to only show
complete posts... Click here to watch the first
part to see if you want the whole thing, and
keep in mind that you can't always trust what
the subject says... Now, if you like it, highlight
the whole list with that same subject line, and
download it. There you go, a full-length 15
minute feature."
The problem with your implication is that,
over the long term, security and prosperity
are inextricably linked with freedom and
democracy.
Er... No. Cute idealistic philosophy, but about
as incorrect as you can possibly get.
They have nothing to do with one
another.
The most secure and prosperous level of
"freedom"? A police state.
The most efficient government? A
monarchy/dictatorship.
The most "fair" government? Communism.
Now, I'll bet for that last one you said, "Wait
a minute, look at the former Soviet Union - Do
you consider that fair???". And you have
a good point, that I'll bounce right back to you.
Communism works as a theory. In reality,
corrup individuals rise to power and stay there,
benefitting from the work of the people. Well,
that applies exactly the same in a democracy.
In theory, everyone has an equal voice in the
government. In reality, people form cliques
and power aggregates to those who join together
to force their common interest on everyone
else.
Or to look at it another way, this planet has only
ever seen one "true" democracy (and even that fell
a bit short, since not everyone counted as a full
citizen). And look at its freedom and prosperity
today! What, you mean Athens doesn't count as a
world superpower, having fallen to an oligarchy
a few thousand years ago?
Copyright expiration? Copyrights don't expire.
Congress extends them again every 20 years. And
they'll keep doing so, forever, since the Supreme
Court ruled that it was perfectly okay!
Ah, you missed the implied context of that
150-years-from-now comment...
Insert the phrase "once we've rebuilt society
enough that historians can once again engage in
research to figure out just what went wrong back
in Neilvember of 2004 and Jennauary of 2005 that
lead to the collapse of civilization".
Then it will all make sense.
On a less depressing note, I really don't see
a problem with decoding existing cryptosystems
in even the not-too-distant future. Quantum
computing will make the entire concept of
public key cryptography moot. Of course, once
we start using quantum cryptography, we may
have to come back to this topic. For now,
though, I have 100% confidence that, barring
a cataclysmic event that makes decoding info
from the past a moot point, in even 20 years
time anything currently in use will decode as
easily as if we'd made it using a super spiffy
Cracker Jacks code ring.
The fact that it hasn't is CRIMINALLY
IRRESPONSIBLE and typical of an industry that
just doesn't get it.
Er... No. Bluetooth more-or-less works as
intended. Short-range RF-based communication.
Check.
The "criminally irresponsible" part comes from
automobile designers (or cell-phone designers,
or PDA designers, etc) allowing a possibly
untrusted source of input to do anything
to onboard computers.
As an aside, to those who've mentioned that, at
"worst" an attacker could mess with the climate
control system - Consider that from the POV of
someone in a cold environment (such as New England
today)... Wait for the car to get nice and toasty,
put the air on recirc, and direct mildly warm air
toward the floor. Watch some poor bastard
crash when his windows become opaque from fogging
over as he beats the hell out of his console trying
desperately to get the defroster to work.
Giganews and other big name vendors will
gladly sell you Usenet service and best yet
you can change the port in which you connect
with; say port 80 and AOL cant block as they
cant figure out if your using HTTP or NTP
Alternately, you could just RTFA... "The ISP's
pop-up message advises subscribers that newsgroup
services are available from third-party providers."
They don't care if AOL subscribers access
USENet. They just don't want to provide it as a
free service anymore. And, even as an
old-timer (from waaaaay back inn'a win'ner of
'91) that still reads and posts to USENet, I can
appreciate (and in fact, applaud, if it will cut
down on clueless AOL users on USENet) their stance.
95% of people haven't even heard of NNTP,
4.999% use it to suck down massive amounts of
copyright-infringing material, and the remaining
0.001% probably has the ability to find an alternate
source (such as GigaNews).
Personally, I have to wonder why people even still
use AOL. Once upon a time, in the early days of the
'net, AOL actually had aquite a lot of content that
you couldn't access without an account. But now?
Nothing but a web-browser-with-training-wheels that
charges you for the "service" of treating you like
an intellectual toddler.
You don't stretch yor hands to do it - you
just use two hands
No mod points at the moment, but +5 insightful!
Unless trying to type one-handed (On the phone,
ya pervs!), I use two hands for any key
combination. Even "easy" ones like
{Ctrl,Shift,Alt}-{A,S,Z,X,C}.
But then again, I peck (no "hunt-and-" involved
after this many years of use) somewhere over
80WPM. "Home" position? Sure, those little
dots on the "F" and "J" (yes, I had to look down
to get those letters - I know where to move my
fingers to get to any key from the two dots, but
not actually where those dots reside) make it
easier to get your bearings when typing in the
dark, but aside from that?
So, to make this on-topic, what keyboard layout works
best? I can give a nice, simple answer - The one that
I will most likely encounter when sitting down at a
computer (in the US, in my case). That currently means
QWERTY. Which means that, when I need to replace
a keyboard, I will replace it with the one I know
in my sleep - QWERTY. Perhaps I could type
10% faster on a Dvorak or other "ergonomic" layout,
if I took the time to learn it, and learned to type
the old-fashioned way (see my comment on the home
position). But does 10% faster on 1% of machines
make up for needing to go back to hunting-and-pecking
at around 5WPM on the other 99% of machines make
sense? IMO, not even close.
There's a sizeable difference between
being able to do it and being able to do
it legally.
...Not for most of us.
In the corporate world, "doing it legally"
means the same as "doing it" (unless you can
afford to abuse accounting rules to screw
thousands of people out of billions of
dollars, of course). There, your point
holds true.
In the "real" world, though, most people couldn't
even tell you whether or not they have a
legal copy of their OS, nevermind whether or
not their preferred music player has all its
ducks in a row regarding patent royalties.
Hell, I've written audio (de)compression
code, and couldn't tell you whether or not I've
infringed on a patent!
But most importantly... I don't particularly
care if I have. I don't care if
FooBar2000 (my audio player on Windows) has
paid the Fraunhoffer tax. Grandmothers
everywhere don't even blink at the thought
of running an unlicensed copy of Windows.
So does that much of a difference exist?
Sure, we'd all prefer to keep our
machines legal, but not too many people lose
sleep over the issue...
Simple example - Have you paid your SCO tax to run
a Linux box? As unlikely as we may consider it, SCO
could eventually attain some sort of (partial)
victory. So do you see a big difference between
having Linux, and having it legally?
I worked as a firmware engineed for 8 years.
Fast-paced, I learned a lot, and for a while,
I enjoyed it. That time working put me through
college, and I consider it the "learning" phase
of my life (not that I ever plan to stop
learning, but at the moment, it has taken a
backseat the to "ready to settle in for a decade
or two" phase).
Almost 30, combined salary over $100k, don't know
if I want to work as a code-monkey for the rest of
my life.
So, I moved "away from it all", found a job at
a family-owned mid-sized company, and currently
work as one of just a handful of IT people, and
love my job. I work about 1/3rd general IT,
1/3rd coding on "real" projects, and 1/3rd on
random activities - Enough variation to keep even
such mundane tasks as replacing printer toner from
getting overly boring. And, even a little time (yeah,
I know, I already listed 100%) for truly "personal"
projects that just happen to benefit the company,
such as open source work on anything even remotely
network admin related. And, while once-upon-a-time
I couldn't even calculate the distance between
me and the CEO (frequent reorganizations and a high
turnover rate approaching that of a fast food restaurant
didn't help), Now I have only two people between
myself and the owner, with whom I can speak freely
and casually (rather than having a CEO known only as
a name, with an "open door policy", meaning "walk
through my office door, and security will open the
front door on your way out for the last time").
Do enough such jobs exist for everyone? I'd say
not. But quite a few do exist - In the
present world, every company, whether IT
related or not (I work at a very non-technical
manufacturing facility) needs roughly
one IT person per 50 or so employees. That means
that, even ignoring dedicated software houses,
the current job market should theoretically
support roughly 2% of the population working in
jobs similar to my own.
Will these vanish as the technology improves
and gets easier to use? Once upon a time, I
would have said "yes, absolutely, my future
looks bleak". But now, with a bit more experience
with the human side of technology, rather
than having a terminal as my primary source of
interaction with the world 8 hours a day?
No shot. You simply cannot underestimate the
masses of computer users. Job security for life,
baby!
I can't afford to part with 160 GB of space just
for noise reasons, but I'm sure a lot of other people
could.
You might want to take the same approach to this problem
that I used...
Set yourself up a cheap Linux box as a fileserver, throw
your big, cheap, noisy drives in there, and keep it in a
room you don't use (guest bedroom?).
Then on your "real" machine(s), you don't need a huge
drive... I currently use a 40GB, just because you can't
even get smaller ones anymore (well, you can, but
you don't actually pay less for them). That way, you
can spend your upgrade budget on performance and low
noise, rather than size.
Intel has released very few architectural
details of the Centrino line. From what little
the public actually knows about it, it does seem
more similar to a PIII than a P4, but by
all (credible) accounts, it uses a complete
core redesign, optimized based on different
criteria than most desktop CPUs. As a result,
it consumes a reasonable amount of power, and
the performance seems like almost an unintended
perk.
the front side bus speed is the biggest
limiting factor on Pentium M processors.
Thank you... So far, I consider this the only
"insightful" comment in this entire topic.
In terms of raw performance, though, Anand and
Tom (of which you mention the latter) have both
done "real world" tests that don't include the
GPU as the bottlenext, and found that, for heavily
CPU-bound tasks (such as compression, which also
eats memory but mostly just CPU), the Pentium-M
(Dothan, in particular) holds its own against
both the Prescott (P4) and the Athlon 64.
On some tasks any of those three would take the
lead, though the Dothan does only take
2nd or 3rd most of the time (but still beats the
Athlon XP and the Northwood P4).
For second best, and less than a quarter of the
power consumption (less than a tenth when idle)
for comparable performance, I fully plan to get
a Pentium M as my next desktop upgrade. I care
about raw performance, but I also care about
my electric bill and about having something
that sounds like a jet engine three feet from
my head (lower power = less cooling needed =
quieter).
PLUS they do the stupid thing here and put in
DDR-2 which does little for performance but increases
system costs.
Strange opinion... Yes, it increases the system
cost a tad, but consider it from two POVs...First,
since the Centrino line primarily targets laptops,
2.5V vs 1.8V means significantly lower power consumption
(and correspondingly less need for active cooling, making
battery life even better). And second - DDR2 picks up
where DDR stops, FSB-wise... You could just as well say
the original P4s did nothing for performance over the
best-of-breed PIIIs, but after three core gens and a
doubling of the clock speed, no one would now claim a
"modern" PIII will outperform a modern P4.
and user-added extended LISP syntax is virtually
indistinguishable in style and functionality from
the built-in elements of the language.
...You call that a good thing?
No offense, I actually do like Lisp (well,
Scheme anyway; haven't done much in pure
Lisp), but I consider its "style" one of its
biggest drawbacks - Reading Lisp feels remarkably
like trying to beat a 2 year old child at the
game of "why?".
What benefit comes from saying that "women
are worse at spacial orientation tasks"?
What benefit comes from studying macroevolution?
To the extent that it affects us, it already
happened, and just causes heated arguments among
those who irrationally chose to argue against
it.
What benefit comes from exploring space, beyond
LEOs for putting communications satellites in
orbit?
What benefit comes from studying any
aspect of geology, when the major events it
deals with either (again) already happened,
or it can't predict them (ie, earthquakes and
volcanos)) to any useful degree?
What to most of us seems like a totally useless
collection of trivia, may some day make a HUGE
difference.
What could you do with that information
other than use it to either justify less women
working in an industry that involves spacial
reasoning (or to justify lower pay)?
In some cases, that difference does
matter. We can chat all we want about nice
abstract principles of equal pay, from our safe,
warm, comfy chairs in front of a computer, with
our well-fed bellies (probably a bit bigger than
we like this soon after our annual materialism
festivals), but on rare occasions, the real world
comes knocking.
Spatial orientation doesn't readily
lead to good examples (jokes about driving,
which ironically females do better than
males, aside), but how about firefighters?
Females, on average, form quite a lot less
muscle mass than males, simply as a result
of the magic hormone "testosterone". Yes,
hard-core bodybuilder females could certainly
crush me like a soda can. But if you compare,
on average, a mostly sedentary male even to a
casually-fit female (aerobics two or three
times a week, for example), the male can
absolutely trounce the female in any
test of raw strength.
So... Role-playing time. You find yourself
with two broken legs in a burning building,
and two firefighters walk up to you, one male
and one female. With mere seconds to spare
before a beam above you splits and crushes
you, and absolutely no prior information about
these two people, which do you trust your life
to? Or, on the flip side (a bit more far-fetched),
while visiting a foreign country, a mad dictator
kidnaps you and holds a gun to your head. It picks
a random male and a random female off the street (of
the same apparent socio economic class), and has them
each read a complex passage of classic literature.
You have a choice - Pick the one that explains it
better, and live; pick wrong, and die painfully.
Which do you pick? In both situations, do you consider
mean muscle mass or mean linguistic ability, respectively,
a "relevant" factor?
So, for 99.9% of situations, such trivia matters
not even a little. For the purposes of social,
legal, and economic equality, such trivia should
not come into play. But for that remaining 0.1%
of the time... Keep in mind that "the house always
wins" on similar margins.
So for this to be relevant you'd have to show
that this made a difference in intelligence
You assume, incorrectly, that I had the intent of
showing females as somehow inferior to males.
I did not. I presented a statistical "fact", and said
absolutely nothing about the implications thereof.
Note the problem here - Summers did basically the
same thing. He presented a statistical fact (though
he did have the intent to shock his audience,
he didn't suggest females as inherently
"inferior" as a result), and will end up crucified
over it. THAT has caused the outcry from the
anti-PC crowd. Yes, you can misuse statistics. But
you can't pretend that true statements somehow
fail just because they might have implications that
violate your belief system.
Parallel processing could actually mean that more
things are being processed quickly
Actually, I mentioned that one specifically to balance
out my post from making me sound like I randomly collect
misogynistic facts - Females do perform better on
linguistic tasks. That, however, as with relative math
performance, we can't easily separate from cultural issues.
Regions of brain activity during a task, we can
objectively measure.
They will take your generalist and possibly
truthful statements... to mean that all men are
better at 3d spatial orientation tasks than all
men.
Now that would misuse the statistics
presented. As someone else posted on this
topic, general trends such as males having
(to pick something I don't think anyone would
contest) more muscle mass than females, on
average do not preclude the possibility
that any given female may well count as the
most buff human of either gender, on the
planet. Same with math performance, and any
other category with at least some overlap
(as opposed to "bearing children", where no
overlap occurs, and no male can possibly
"outperform" any female in such a category).
I hope I did not make it sound like I
meant that no overlap occurs in the specific
categories I mentioned; if so, consider this
a correction.
I'd be interested to see what peer-reviewed,
repeatable research there exists on actual
gender differences.
I lack links to peer reviewed studies (since most
journals rightly fear that the internet will
eventually drive them out of business) to back
these up, but I can provide a few examples that
a quick Googling will verify...
1) Female brains weight roughly 200g less than
male brains.
2) Females use both hemispheres of their brains
(five separate locii, IIRC) for language tasks,
while males use only one hemisphere and (again,
IIRC) two locii.
3) Males perform significantly (in the rigid
statistical sense) better at 3d spatial
orientation tasks than females do.
And, of course, the one that caused this entire
argument, 4) Males score DRASTICALLY higher on
tests of abstract and symbolic logic (ie, math).
I don't even know why that counts as controvertial
anymore. That particular horse died so long ago,
we can't even beat the carcass, just sort of stir
up the dust.
First of all, "speed", either compilation-wise
or runtime-wise, has nothing to do with why you
should use header files.
I too disliked header files, long ago, in my
early days of programming C. It seemed pointless,
to have two files (or rarely, as many as four),
when one would do just as well.
For small projects, I'll still use one
large monolithic source file. In that aspect,
it makes sense to skip breaking out your data
and function definitions.
But when you get to the "real" world... Imagine
even a "small" serious project, with perhaps
10k lines of code. Try to find a single
function in that file - I hope you feel
on good terms with your IDE's search
capabilities!
So, break that out into a dozen files - You have
your network code in one file, your UI code in
another, your file I/O in another, perhaps some
database interaction in another, and so on.
Okay, that works well... But wait, your network
code, your file I/O, and your database code, all
make use of the same checksum algorithm! So,
you have the same exact code duplicated three
times.
That would work, because each file will compile
to a module with its own namespace (in most
languages). But it wastes space, both in the source
and in the compiled code. It also wastes time
and can very easily introduce bugs - For example, if
you decide you need to switch from MD5 for SHA1 as
your checksumming algorithm, you now need to
change three places instead of one. If
you miss one of those, but use them to compare
results between the three different uses, you
have a very serious bug that may drive you batty
trying to track it down.
So, the obvious solution, break out all your
common functions into a toolkit-like source
file. Now, you could just #include that in
every other file that needs it, but WOW
would that cause some serious bloat in the
compiled code - In my experience, shared code
files frequently end up as the single largest
source file in the entire project.
So, use a header file. That way, you don't
end up with massive duplication of code, you
have the advantage of a logical breakout of
your code into similar-purpose files, and you
can still make changes to only one file to
modify one function.
Incidentally, the above chain of thinking
more-or-less describes the evolution of
standard libraries... Would your professor
actually suggest that you shouldn't
"#include<stdio.h>", but instead should
manually pull the code for each function you use
into your source file? Because, in the
degenerative case, he has told you
exactly that.
I keep my entire CD collection on disk
as FLAC, and then transcode to the lossy
format
Same here... I began a search last year for a
Vorbis CD player, and found that they simply do
not exist (I've heard rumors of a few available
only in random SouthEast Asian countries, but
that doesn't really do me a whole lot of
good).
So rather than either transcode my OGGs to MP3s,
or rip my CD collection again (for the third
time... Boy did I every choose poorly to pick
VQF the first time) to MP3 to keep alongside
my OGGs (wasting twice as much room), I decided
to just go for lossless.
Now, I can reencode to MP3 for portable devices.
I can reencode to Vorbis for putting on a DVD
to take to work or a friend's house (or anywhere
I can use a PC to listen to it). I could encode
to AAC to listen on an iPod, if I had one. And
in an absolute worst-case scenario, I can create
a bitwise-exact duplicate of my original CD if,
for example, the dog eats it.
Disk space has grown cheap enough that, when
I stopped to think about it, it looked like a
no-brainer. It takes literally weeks to
rip a largish collection of audio CDs. A 200GB
HDD costs under $100. So, I ripped one last time
to lossless, and will never need to touch those
CDs again.
I have about 30 entries in the Processes
tab. I think you must mean the Applications
tab
Ummm... I'll quote myself here:
Open up Task Manager.
Click on the "Applications" tab.
Now click on the "Processes" tab.
We appear not to disagree, but it would
seem that you somehow skipped over reading
the second step.:-)
Though I suppose it might have read a bit better
if I reversed the order in which I mentioned
TaskMan's tabs, I only intended to demonstrate
the difference between "processes" and "programs"
from the point of view of Windows XP.
If the standard windows build was limited to
just 3 apps it wouldn't even start up so how are
"programs" classified?
Open up Task Manager.
Click on the "Applications" tab.
Now click on the "Processes" tab.
There you go.
For a slightly more technical answer, download
SysInternals' Process Explorer, which expands
process trees for you rather than just listing
them linearly. From that, you can determine that
an "application" means anything that runs as a
direct child of Explorer (the GUI, not MSIE),
with one exception - Anything without its own
window that minimizes itself to the system tray,
will not show up in the Applications list.
Which, interestinly enough, means that you could
conceivably start Mozilla, WinAmp (set to minimize
to the system tray), and Wordpad; minimize WinAmp
(which removes it from the list of running
applications), open Paint, then restore WinAmp.
This would presumeably result in four running
"programs", since the "fourth" program has already
started itself.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if SATA has a separate address line or if that takes away from the data speed.
SATA doesn't have any separate lines, thus the "serial" part of it. You could conceivably do it over a mere two wires, though in practice it has three ground lines, and two (transmit and receive) differential signal pairs. I say "conceivably" becase at 1.5Gbps, those suckers act more like antennas than wires, and good luck to the poor bastard who's manager tells him to make it work with a single wire pair.
more if we wanted a highly visible end spot
I would take the increased "visibility" of end caps with a grain of sand...
maybe for impulse-buy items like candy, they work well. But if I go into a store looking for a particular product, well, 90% of the time I need to ask staff for help finding something, they direct me to an endcap that I'd walked right past a dozen times in my search.
People look for widgets in the aisle labelled "widgets, knicknacks, and doodads". Not in that aisle? Ask for help, or more often, leave the store widgetless.
Overall, I consider your comment one of the most insightful I've ever read on Slashdot.
;-)
If they had cross-bar latch-based systems they wouldn't be have been using transistors in the first place.
We still use vacuum tubes and electromechanical relays alongside transistors. Perhaps crossbar latch technology simple can't handle large enough currents to interface well with the macroscopic world, so the aliens needed to use transistors to switch relatively massive currents up into the microamps...
So, no doubt in another 50 years, we'll find another layer of alien tech we have finally reached the manufacturing capability of making use of, and we can get down to using some cool property of the d orbital geometry as stressed in negative Scandium ions. No doubt the NSA's xenoassimilatory researchers missed this at the present time, since they considered it a mere impurity in the semiconductor substrate.
Once we figure out the basics, it is going to transform the way we computer simply out of the sheer computing power we'll be able to throw at things.
No, it won't.
Quantum computing (which has very little to do with the parent article) will change the way we think about computationally "hard" problems. Things like prime factorization, things like NP-completeness, things like cryptography.
But quantum computing will not replace the general-purpose Turing-complete model of computation we currently use. We will more likely see the idea of a quantum-coprocessor, something that you can interact with through a conventional CPU.
The problem with quantum computing involves the complexity of doing simple tasks... Yeah, it can factor absolutely mind-boggling numbers in one unit of time. It also takes that same one unit of time to figure out 1 + 1 = 2. The problem there involves the length of that unit of time - Between loading a state onto a set of qubits, them almost instantanously solving the problem, then reading the state off of them, you could have done potentially billions of cycles of normal CPU ops (no, I don't have a time-scale to quote for this, but I would consider it exceedingly optimistic to hope we eventually get it down to the millisecond level).
This development has so much potential because it points to a very, very major leap in the size of what we would currently consider a transistor... From 90nm, used by Intel and AMD's absolute latest mass-production facilities, down to a few nanometers. This means lower power requirements, faster CPU clocks, and much better areal density of functional units (getting down into the range of a few dozen atoms per switch, rather than hundreds of thousands at 90nm). The linked article also vaguely alludes to easier manufacturing techniques, but skimps on that one.
Err... Anyone else notice something funny here?
During the first execution this program shows the list of applications which already have this flag set.
I have DEP set to protect "essential Windows programs and services only"...
Yet, running this util, the list of programs looks nothing like a list of "essential" Windows programs. In fact, I honestly don't recognize any of the programs listed, and I say that as someone that knows what a normal Windows XP SP2 install "should" have running, even down to the device-driver level.
So what gives? Has Microsoft pulled the DRM-wool over us all in the form of DEP, and it has nothing to do with "security" at all? Okay, call me paranoid, but, something looks not quite right here (and I don't even mean the possibility of an exploit, I mean the uses of DEP itself, working or not).
Talk with your kids. Make sure they know what Kazaa-Lite is and how to use it. Make sure they know about encryption and how to use it.
Oh, puh-lease. A decade ago, I had to teach my parents how to properly and safely download... er... "material of questionable legality".
We always hear about "the" uncomfortable father-son (or mother-daughter) talk about sex, but the reverse case feels even wierder...
"Uh... Dad, I found some interesting files on your computer."
"Oh, er, uh, those must have come from... uh... one of those pop-up trap pages"
"Dad, we all look at porn. But these lame 30-second video clips? Sigh. C'mere. Let me introduce you to USENet... Here, add all these groups... Check here to only show complete posts... Click here to watch the first part to see if you want the whole thing, and keep in mind that you can't always trust what the subject says... Now, if you like it, highlight the whole list with that same subject line, and download it. There you go, a full-length 15 minute feature."
The problem with your implication is that, over the long term, security and prosperity are inextricably linked with freedom and democracy.
Er... No. Cute idealistic philosophy, but about as incorrect as you can possibly get.
They have nothing to do with one another.
The most secure and prosperous level of "freedom"? A police state.
The most efficient government? A monarchy/dictatorship.
The most "fair" government? Communism.
Now, I'll bet for that last one you said, "Wait a minute, look at the former Soviet Union - Do you consider that fair???". And you have a good point, that I'll bounce right back to you. Communism works as a theory. In reality, corrup individuals rise to power and stay there, benefitting from the work of the people. Well, that applies exactly the same in a democracy. In theory, everyone has an equal voice in the government. In reality, people form cliques and power aggregates to those who join together to force their common interest on everyone else.
Or to look at it another way, this planet has only ever seen one "true" democracy (and even that fell a bit short, since not everyone counted as a full citizen). And look at its freedom and prosperity today! What, you mean Athens doesn't count as a world superpower, having fallen to an oligarchy a few thousand years ago?
Copyright expiration? Copyrights don't expire. Congress extends them again every 20 years. And they'll keep doing so, forever, since the Supreme Court ruled that it was perfectly okay!
Ah, you missed the implied context of that 150-years-from-now comment...
Insert the phrase "once we've rebuilt society enough that historians can once again engage in research to figure out just what went wrong back in Neilvember of 2004 and Jennauary of 2005 that lead to the collapse of civilization".
Then it will all make sense.
On a less depressing note, I really don't see a problem with decoding existing cryptosystems in even the not-too-distant future. Quantum computing will make the entire concept of public key cryptography moot. Of course, once we start using quantum cryptography, we may have to come back to this topic. For now, though, I have 100% confidence that, barring a cataclysmic event that makes decoding info from the past a moot point, in even 20 years time anything currently in use will decode as easily as if we'd made it using a super spiffy Cracker Jacks code ring.
The fact that it hasn't is CRIMINALLY IRRESPONSIBLE and typical of an industry that just doesn't get it.
Er... No. Bluetooth more-or-less works as intended. Short-range RF-based communication. Check.
The "criminally irresponsible" part comes from automobile designers (or cell-phone designers, or PDA designers, etc) allowing a possibly untrusted source of input to do anything to onboard computers.
As an aside, to those who've mentioned that, at "worst" an attacker could mess with the climate control system - Consider that from the POV of someone in a cold environment (such as New England today)... Wait for the car to get nice and toasty, put the air on recirc, and direct mildly warm air toward the floor. Watch some poor bastard crash when his windows become opaque from fogging over as he beats the hell out of his console trying desperately to get the defroster to work.
Giganews and other big name vendors will gladly sell you Usenet service and best yet you can change the port in which you connect with; say port 80 and AOL cant block as they cant figure out if your using HTTP or NTP
Alternately, you could just RTFA... "The ISP's pop-up message advises subscribers that newsgroup services are available from third-party providers."
They don't care if AOL subscribers access USENet. They just don't want to provide it as a free service anymore. And, even as an old-timer (from waaaaay back inn'a win'ner of '91) that still reads and posts to USENet, I can appreciate (and in fact, applaud, if it will cut down on clueless AOL users on USENet) their stance. 95% of people haven't even heard of NNTP, 4.999% use it to suck down massive amounts of copyright-infringing material, and the remaining 0.001% probably has the ability to find an alternate source (such as GigaNews).
Personally, I have to wonder why people even still use AOL. Once upon a time, in the early days of the 'net, AOL actually had aquite a lot of content that you couldn't access without an account. But now? Nothing but a web-browser-with-training-wheels that charges you for the "service" of treating you like an intellectual toddler.
You don't stretch yor hands to do it - you just use two hands
No mod points at the moment, but +5 insightful!
Unless trying to type one-handed (On the phone, ya pervs!), I use two hands for any key combination. Even "easy" ones like {Ctrl,Shift,Alt}-{A,S,Z,X,C}.
But then again, I peck (no "hunt-and-" involved after this many years of use) somewhere over 80WPM. "Home" position? Sure, those little dots on the "F" and "J" (yes, I had to look down to get those letters - I know where to move my fingers to get to any key from the two dots, but not actually where those dots reside) make it easier to get your bearings when typing in the dark, but aside from that?
So, to make this on-topic, what keyboard layout works best? I can give a nice, simple answer - The one that I will most likely encounter when sitting down at a computer (in the US, in my case). That currently means QWERTY. Which means that, when I need to replace a keyboard, I will replace it with the one I know in my sleep - QWERTY. Perhaps I could type 10% faster on a Dvorak or other "ergonomic" layout, if I took the time to learn it, and learned to type the old-fashioned way (see my comment on the home position). But does 10% faster on 1% of machines make up for needing to go back to hunting-and-pecking at around 5WPM on the other 99% of machines make sense? IMO, not even close.
There's a sizeable difference between being able to do it and being able to do it legally.
...Not for most of us.
In the corporate world, "doing it legally" means the same as "doing it" (unless you can afford to abuse accounting rules to screw thousands of people out of billions of dollars, of course). There, your point holds true.
In the "real" world, though, most people couldn't even tell you whether or not they have a legal copy of their OS, nevermind whether or not their preferred music player has all its ducks in a row regarding patent royalties.
Hell, I've written audio (de)compression code, and couldn't tell you whether or not I've infringed on a patent!
But most importantly... I don't particularly care if I have. I don't care if FooBar2000 (my audio player on Windows) has paid the Fraunhoffer tax. Grandmothers everywhere don't even blink at the thought of running an unlicensed copy of Windows.
So does that much of a difference exist? Sure, we'd all prefer to keep our machines legal, but not too many people lose sleep over the issue...
Simple example - Have you paid your SCO tax to run a Linux box? As unlikely as we may consider it, SCO could eventually attain some sort of (partial) victory. So do you see a big difference between having Linux, and having it legally?
I worked as a firmware engineed for 8 years. Fast-paced, I learned a lot, and for a while, I enjoyed it. That time working put me through college, and I consider it the "learning" phase of my life (not that I ever plan to stop learning, but at the moment, it has taken a backseat the to "ready to settle in for a decade or two" phase).
Almost 30, combined salary over $100k, don't know if I want to work as a code-monkey for the rest of my life.
So, I moved "away from it all", found a job at a family-owned mid-sized company, and currently work as one of just a handful of IT people, and love my job. I work about 1/3rd general IT, 1/3rd coding on "real" projects, and 1/3rd on random activities - Enough variation to keep even such mundane tasks as replacing printer toner from getting overly boring. And, even a little time (yeah, I know, I already listed 100%) for truly "personal" projects that just happen to benefit the company, such as open source work on anything even remotely network admin related. And, while once-upon-a-time I couldn't even calculate the distance between me and the CEO (frequent reorganizations and a high turnover rate approaching that of a fast food restaurant didn't help), Now I have only two people between myself and the owner, with whom I can speak freely and casually (rather than having a CEO known only as a name, with an "open door policy", meaning "walk through my office door, and security will open the front door on your way out for the last time").
Do enough such jobs exist for everyone? I'd say not. But quite a few do exist - In the present world, every company, whether IT related or not (I work at a very non-technical manufacturing facility) needs roughly one IT person per 50 or so employees. That means that, even ignoring dedicated software houses, the current job market should theoretically support roughly 2% of the population working in jobs similar to my own.
Will these vanish as the technology improves and gets easier to use? Once upon a time, I would have said "yes, absolutely, my future looks bleak". But now, with a bit more experience with the human side of technology, rather than having a terminal as my primary source of interaction with the world 8 hours a day?
No shot. You simply cannot underestimate the masses of computer users. Job security for life, baby!
I can't afford to part with 160 GB of space just for noise reasons, but I'm sure a lot of other people could.
You might want to take the same approach to this problem that I used...
Set yourself up a cheap Linux box as a fileserver, throw your big, cheap, noisy drives in there, and keep it in a room you don't use (guest bedroom?).
Then on your "real" machine(s), you don't need a huge drive... I currently use a 40GB, just because you can't even get smaller ones anymore (well, you can, but you don't actually pay less for them). That way, you can spend your upgrade budget on performance and low noise, rather than size.
Isn't the Pentium-M based off the PIII core?
No. Or at least, not proveably so.
Intel has released very few architectural details of the Centrino line. From what little the public actually knows about it, it does seem more similar to a PIII than a P4, but by all (credible) accounts, it uses a complete core redesign, optimized based on different criteria than most desktop CPUs. As a result, it consumes a reasonable amount of power, and the performance seems like almost an unintended perk.
the front side bus speed is the biggest limiting factor on Pentium M processors.
Thank you... So far, I consider this the only "insightful" comment in this entire topic.
In terms of raw performance, though, Anand and Tom (of which you mention the latter) have both done "real world" tests that don't include the GPU as the bottlenext, and found that, for heavily CPU-bound tasks (such as compression, which also eats memory but mostly just CPU), the Pentium-M (Dothan, in particular) holds its own against both the Prescott (P4) and the Athlon 64. On some tasks any of those three would take the lead, though the Dothan does only take 2nd or 3rd most of the time (but still beats the Athlon XP and the Northwood P4).
For second best, and less than a quarter of the power consumption (less than a tenth when idle) for comparable performance, I fully plan to get a Pentium M as my next desktop upgrade. I care about raw performance, but I also care about my electric bill and about having something that sounds like a jet engine three feet from my head (lower power = less cooling needed = quieter).
PLUS they do the stupid thing here and put in DDR-2 which does little for performance but increases system costs.
Strange opinion... Yes, it increases the system cost a tad, but consider it from two POVs...First, since the Centrino line primarily targets laptops, 2.5V vs 1.8V means significantly lower power consumption (and correspondingly less need for active cooling, making battery life even better). And second - DDR2 picks up where DDR stops, FSB-wise... You could just as well say the original P4s did nothing for performance over the best-of-breed PIIIs, but after three core gens and a doubling of the clock speed, no one would now claim a "modern" PIII will outperform a modern P4.
and user-added extended LISP syntax is virtually indistinguishable in style and functionality from the built-in elements of the language.
...You call that a good thing?
No offense, I actually do like Lisp (well, Scheme anyway; haven't done much in pure Lisp), but I consider its "style" one of its biggest drawbacks - Reading Lisp feels remarkably like trying to beat a 2 year old child at the game of "why?".
What benefit comes from saying that "women are worse at spacial orientation tasks"?
What benefit comes from studying macroevolution? To the extent that it affects us, it already happened, and just causes heated arguments among those who irrationally chose to argue against it.
What benefit comes from exploring space, beyond LEOs for putting communications satellites in orbit?
What benefit comes from studying any aspect of geology, when the major events it deals with either (again) already happened, or it can't predict them (ie, earthquakes and volcanos)) to any useful degree?
What to most of us seems like a totally useless collection of trivia, may some day make a HUGE difference.
What could you do with that information other than use it to either justify less women working in an industry that involves spacial reasoning (or to justify lower pay)?
In some cases, that difference does matter. We can chat all we want about nice abstract principles of equal pay, from our safe, warm, comfy chairs in front of a computer, with our well-fed bellies (probably a bit bigger than we like this soon after our annual materialism festivals), but on rare occasions, the real world comes knocking.
Spatial orientation doesn't readily lead to good examples (jokes about driving, which ironically females do better than males, aside), but how about firefighters? Females, on average, form quite a lot less muscle mass than males, simply as a result of the magic hormone "testosterone". Yes, hard-core bodybuilder females could certainly crush me like a soda can. But if you compare, on average, a mostly sedentary male even to a casually-fit female (aerobics two or three times a week, for example), the male can absolutely trounce the female in any test of raw strength.
So... Role-playing time. You find yourself with two broken legs in a burning building, and two firefighters walk up to you, one male and one female. With mere seconds to spare before a beam above you splits and crushes you, and absolutely no prior information about these two people, which do you trust your life to? Or, on the flip side (a bit more far-fetched), while visiting a foreign country, a mad dictator kidnaps you and holds a gun to your head. It picks a random male and a random female off the street (of the same apparent socio economic class), and has them each read a complex passage of classic literature. You have a choice - Pick the one that explains it better, and live; pick wrong, and die painfully. Which do you pick? In both situations, do you consider mean muscle mass or mean linguistic ability, respectively, a "relevant" factor?
So, for 99.9% of situations, such trivia matters not even a little. For the purposes of social, legal, and economic equality, such trivia should not come into play. But for that remaining 0.1% of the time... Keep in mind that "the house always wins" on similar margins.
So for this to be relevant you'd have to show that this made a difference in intelligence
You assume, incorrectly, that I had the intent of showing females as somehow inferior to males.
I did not. I presented a statistical "fact", and said absolutely nothing about the implications thereof.
Note the problem here - Summers did basically the same thing. He presented a statistical fact (though he did have the intent to shock his audience, he didn't suggest females as inherently "inferior" as a result), and will end up crucified over it. THAT has caused the outcry from the anti-PC crowd. Yes, you can misuse statistics. But you can't pretend that true statements somehow fail just because they might have implications that violate your belief system.
Parallel processing could actually mean that more things are being processed quickly
Actually, I mentioned that one specifically to balance out my post from making me sound like I randomly collect misogynistic facts - Females do perform better on linguistic tasks. That, however, as with relative math performance, we can't easily separate from cultural issues. Regions of brain activity during a task, we can objectively measure.
They will take your generalist and possibly truthful statements ... to mean that all men are
better at 3d spatial orientation tasks than all
men.
Now that would misuse the statistics presented. As someone else posted on this topic, general trends such as males having (to pick something I don't think anyone would contest) more muscle mass than females, on average do not preclude the possibility that any given female may well count as the most buff human of either gender, on the planet. Same with math performance, and any other category with at least some overlap (as opposed to "bearing children", where no overlap occurs, and no male can possibly "outperform" any female in such a category).
I hope I did not make it sound like I meant that no overlap occurs in the specific categories I mentioned; if so, consider this a correction.
I'd be interested to see what peer-reviewed, repeatable research there exists on actual gender differences.
I lack links to peer reviewed studies (since most journals rightly fear that the internet will eventually drive them out of business) to back these up, but I can provide a few examples that a quick Googling will verify...
1) Female brains weight roughly 200g less than male brains.
2) Females use both hemispheres of their brains (five separate locii, IIRC) for language tasks, while males use only one hemisphere and (again, IIRC) two locii.
3) Males perform significantly (in the rigid statistical sense) better at 3d spatial orientation tasks than females do.
And, of course, the one that caused this entire argument, 4) Males score DRASTICALLY higher on tests of abstract and symbolic logic (ie, math). I don't even know why that counts as controvertial anymore. That particular horse died so long ago, we can't even beat the carcass, just sort of stir up the dust.
First of all, "speed", either compilation-wise or runtime-wise, has nothing to do with why you should use header files.
I too disliked header files, long ago, in my early days of programming C. It seemed pointless, to have two files (or rarely, as many as four), when one would do just as well.
For small projects, I'll still use one large monolithic source file. In that aspect, it makes sense to skip breaking out your data and function definitions.
But when you get to the "real" world... Imagine even a "small" serious project, with perhaps 10k lines of code. Try to find a single function in that file - I hope you feel on good terms with your IDE's search capabilities!
So, break that out into a dozen files - You have your network code in one file, your UI code in another, your file I/O in another, perhaps some database interaction in another, and so on. Okay, that works well... But wait, your network code, your file I/O, and your database code, all make use of the same checksum algorithm! So, you have the same exact code duplicated three times.
That would work, because each file will compile to a module with its own namespace (in most languages). But it wastes space, both in the source and in the compiled code. It also wastes time and can very easily introduce bugs - For example, if you decide you need to switch from MD5 for SHA1 as your checksumming algorithm, you now need to change three places instead of one. If you miss one of those, but use them to compare results between the three different uses, you have a very serious bug that may drive you batty trying to track it down.
So, the obvious solution, break out all your common functions into a toolkit-like source file. Now, you could just #include that in every other file that needs it, but WOW would that cause some serious bloat in the compiled code - In my experience, shared code files frequently end up as the single largest source file in the entire project.
So, use a header file. That way, you don't end up with massive duplication of code, you have the advantage of a logical breakout of your code into similar-purpose files, and you can still make changes to only one file to modify one function.
Incidentally, the above chain of thinking more-or-less describes the evolution of standard libraries... Would your professor actually suggest that you shouldn't "#include<stdio.h>", but instead should manually pull the code for each function you use into your source file? Because, in the degenerative case, he has told you exactly that.
I keep my entire CD collection on disk as FLAC, and then transcode to the lossy format
Same here... I began a search last year for a Vorbis CD player, and found that they simply do not exist (I've heard rumors of a few available only in random SouthEast Asian countries, but that doesn't really do me a whole lot of good).
So rather than either transcode my OGGs to MP3s, or rip my CD collection again (for the third time... Boy did I every choose poorly to pick VQF the first time) to MP3 to keep alongside my OGGs (wasting twice as much room), I decided to just go for lossless.
Now, I can reencode to MP3 for portable devices. I can reencode to Vorbis for putting on a DVD to take to work or a friend's house (or anywhere I can use a PC to listen to it). I could encode to AAC to listen on an iPod, if I had one. And in an absolute worst-case scenario, I can create a bitwise-exact duplicate of my original CD if, for example, the dog eats it.
Disk space has grown cheap enough that, when I stopped to think about it, it looked like a no-brainer. It takes literally weeks to rip a largish collection of audio CDs. A 200GB HDD costs under $100. So, I ripped one last time to lossless, and will never need to touch those CDs again.
Ummm... I'll quote myself here:
We appear not to disagree, but it would seem that you somehow skipped over reading the second step.
Though I suppose it might have read a bit better if I reversed the order in which I mentioned TaskMan's tabs, I only intended to demonstrate the difference between "processes" and "programs" from the point of view of Windows XP.
If the standard windows build was limited to just 3 apps it wouldn't even start up so how are "programs" classified?
Open up Task Manager.
Click on the "Applications" tab.
Now click on the "Processes" tab.
There you go.
For a slightly more technical answer, download SysInternals' Process Explorer, which expands process trees for you rather than just listing them linearly. From that, you can determine that an "application" means anything that runs as a direct child of Explorer (the GUI, not MSIE), with one exception - Anything without its own window that minimizes itself to the system tray, will not show up in the Applications list.
Which, interestinly enough, means that you could conceivably start Mozilla, WinAmp (set to minimize to the system tray), and Wordpad; minimize WinAmp (which removes it from the list of running applications), open Paint, then restore WinAmp. This would presumeably result in four running "programs", since the "fourth" program has already started itself.