"Many companies refuse to use GPL code because of its viral nature."
This would explain why BSD is so much more popular than Linux then.
What about Mac OS X? Most of the userspace might be closed-source, but it's definitely BSD, and poses a very serious threat to Microsoft at its current rate of growth.
There are also a handful of networking components in Windows that are derived from BSD.
It doesn't end there. zlib, which is offered under a BSD-like license, is nearly ubiquitous in modern operating systems.
Some of the new Bank of America ATMs will scan your checks at the machine, allowing you to make instant deposits without a slip at any hour of the day.
IMO, this is a pretty darn cool feature.
Their use of the Windows default sounds, though, is indeed maddening.
Not to ruin your comparison, but the southern coast of Alaska also actually has its own wind current keeping it warm in the winter.
Believe it or not, Anchorage isn't much colder than Chicago.
That all said, it's already cold enough that a few degrees change won't make terribly much difference (apart from screwing up fisheries and agriculture)
To say that the cancellation of the LHC hurt a lot is a gross understatement.
The cancellation of the SSC cost particle physics at least 20 years, and would have completely eliminated the need for the LHC, and possibly even its hypothetical successor.
I believe this is why the acceptable term has now become 'climate change' rather than 'global warming'
Not to turn this about a debate about CC/GW, but I feel that Climate Change is indeed a more accurate term, for purely non-political reasons.
Many of the predictions associated with global warming show most of the globe becoming warmer, with a small number of areas becoming colder. 'Climate Change' encompasses this quite easily, while 'Global Warming' does not.
In particular, anything affecting the North Atlantic Current will make most of Europe a good bit colder.
....if you're doing that with 2 gauge, it's going to take a hell of a lot of solder and heatshrink to hold it together.
Seriously. If you're working with cables that carry enough power to mandate a conductor with a 1/4" diameter, let the pros take care of it. You'd also likely want something a bit thicker than heatshrink to insulate it.
There'd be no need for a Beowulf-type cluster in this case.
Have a bunch of machines running identical instances of Apache, and randomly fire requests at them individually. This balances the load, and ensures that the servers themselves aren't a single point of failure.
It's quite a bit more complicated than this in reality, although you should get the basic idea.
Beowulf is typically used for clusters that seek to emulate a supercomputer (usually for scientific number-crunching), rather than a server. For this reason, something like Google's setup would more typically be referred to as a "server farm"
Most of the physics grad students I've known have been fairly self-reliant (especially compared to other fields of study).
Physics isn't a field you go into if you want an easy life or lots of money.
Don't get me wrong.... most reasonably sympathetic parents do help out their children, who happen to be slaving away for criminally-low wages to help pay for food that isn't Ramen, etc. However, I've never really seen much beyond that.
(Still, though... $14k is awfully low, even for the lowest-level of Physics grad students. I feel your pain)
It'll be even cooler when Google are able to automatically detect things like citations and references, and add hyperlinks as appropriate.
It still sort of bugs me that scientific papers are written in LaTeX, and not hypertext, especially considering that the web (in its current form) originated at CERN.
Why aren't any racketeering/trustbusting laws coming into play here? The actions of the RIAA/MPAA are increasingly resembling those of a band of criminals.
There's a very important distinction between blindly throwing money at a problem, and making an educated investment.
Something leads me to believe that the Republicans have been doing the former, while the Democrats are more concerned with the latter.
By global standards, the current round of Democrats are among the most conservative political parties out there.
I'm not going to let the Democrats completely off the hook, though the Republicans seem to have this continually misplaced notion that any sort of (increased) spending is inherently bad.
So, they can port flash to PPC and ARM, but they won't port it to x86_64.
Something seems funny to me...
Whoa there. The PS3 is definitely *not* a PPC. One of its cores is architecturally *similar* to a PowerPC, which makes it easy to support PPC code. However, calling it a PowerPC is a misnomer.
I say this, as there has never been a Linux_PPC port of Flash. x86-64 users have had the "luxury" of being able to use a wrapper to get 64-bit flash by using the 32-bit legacy version. It's not particularly elegant, but it works.
Remember how long it took the PS2 to build up a solid library of titles?
Sure, there were dozens of titles at launch, but it took ages for it to build up its now-formidable library, while Microsoft rested on its laurels with Halo.
One of the most interesting things to note about Soyuz is in fact the Launch Escape System.
It's been used twice, and both times, the cosmonauts were pretty pissed off afterward (nobody likes 21gs), but were able to walk away from the incident.
Both incidents were pretty remarkable. The first occurred after the vehicle caught fire on the pad, with the LES (manually) activating two seconds before the vehicle literally exploded on the pad.
The second occurred mid-way through launch, after one of the stages failed to separate. In this case, the LES activated while the rocket was pointing down toward the earth. The capsule then landed on the side of a snow-covered mountain near the Chinese border, and rolled 500 yards before coming to a halt. (The Russians somehow anticipated this sort of situation, and there was cold-weather gear stored on-board for the cosmonauts).
I stress, once again that despite these "worst case scenario" failures, the crew were relatively unharmed, which is a pretty strong testament to the inherent safety of a very simplistic (by rocket science standards) system such as Soyuz.
Because of the time required to charge vehicles, we'd need a cord station at pretty much every parking space everywhere for widespread use of pure electrics to be tenable.
This is already done in Fairbanks, Alaska as well as other particularly cold locales in Canada, Norway, Russia, etc.
The reasoning up there is a bit different -- the cars up there need to keep a block heater running 24/7 to prevent the various fluids in their engines from freezing.
I'm not sure what it costs, but as long as you specify such a plan alongside new construction, I don't think it's particularly unattainable.
This will be somewhat more difficult in places such as New York City, which have ancient, outdated power grids (Con Edison *just* discontinued DC service to its customers 2 years ago). However, these places will more than likely require a massive revamp of their grid anyways. Building in extra capacity is sort of a no-brainer.
Oh, and at some point 16 EiB won't be enough anymore
I wouldn't be too sure of that.
From Wikipedia:
Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 litre of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information.[10] A fully populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2128 blocks = 2137 bytes = 2140 bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2140 bits) / (1031 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg. To operate at the 1031 bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mcÂ, the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x1028 J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x1021 kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x106 J/kg * 1.4x1021 kg = 3.4x1027 J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.
Slashdot Mirror
"Many companies refuse to use GPL code because of its viral nature."
This would explain why BSD is so much more popular than Linux then.
What about Mac OS X? Most of the userspace might be closed-source, but it's definitely BSD, and poses a very serious threat to Microsoft at its current rate of growth.
There are also a handful of networking components in Windows that are derived from BSD.
It doesn't end there. zlib, which is offered under a BSD-like license, is nearly ubiquitous in modern operating systems.
sudo !!
Repeats your previous command as the root user.
Very useful if you typed out a big long command, but forgot to run it as root.
Except that this doesn't necessarily just cover IT. I'd consider it as being more of a "science advisory" position.
Also consider that the development of technology has an incredibly profound effect on healthcare, education, the military, and the economy.
So, yeah. It's important. Whomever gets chosen should be talking with the President on a daily basis.
Some of the new Bank of America ATMs will scan your checks at the machine, allowing you to make instant deposits without a slip at any hour of the day.
IMO, this is a pretty darn cool feature.
Their use of the Windows default sounds, though, is indeed maddening.
Not to ruin your comparison, but the southern coast of Alaska also actually has its own wind current keeping it warm in the winter.
Believe it or not, Anchorage isn't much colder than Chicago.
That all said, it's already cold enough that a few degrees change won't make terribly much difference (apart from screwing up fisheries and agriculture)
To say that the cancellation of the LHC hurt a lot is a gross understatement.
The cancellation of the SSC cost particle physics at least 20 years, and would have completely eliminated the need for the LHC, and possibly even its hypothetical successor.
Instead, we funded the ISS. Sigh.
I believe this is why the acceptable term has now become 'climate change' rather than 'global warming'
Not to turn this about a debate about CC/GW, but I feel that Climate Change is indeed a more accurate term, for purely non-political reasons.
Many of the predictions associated with global warming show most of the globe becoming warmer, with a small number of areas becoming colder. 'Climate Change' encompasses this quite easily, while 'Global Warming' does not.
In particular, anything affecting the North Atlantic Current will make most of Europe a good bit colder.
....if you're doing that with 2 gauge, it's going to take a hell of a lot of solder and heatshrink to hold it together.
Seriously. If you're working with cables that carry enough power to mandate a conductor with a 1/4" diameter, let the pros take care of it. You'd also likely want something a bit thicker than heatshrink to insulate it.
(A typical extension cord is ~14AWG = 0.06")
There'd be no need for a Beowulf-type cluster in this case.
Have a bunch of machines running identical instances of Apache, and randomly fire requests at them individually. This balances the load, and ensures that the servers themselves aren't a single point of failure.
It's quite a bit more complicated than this in reality, although you should get the basic idea.
Beowulf is typically used for clusters that seek to emulate a supercomputer (usually for scientific number-crunching), rather than a server. For this reason, something like Google's setup would more typically be referred to as a "server farm"
Funny. You could almost say the exact same thing about vi.
Most of the physics grad students I've known have been fairly self-reliant (especially compared to other fields of study).
Physics isn't a field you go into if you want an easy life or lots of money.
Don't get me wrong.... most reasonably sympathetic parents do help out their children, who happen to be slaving away for criminally-low wages to help pay for food that isn't Ramen, etc. However, I've never really seen much beyond that.
(Still, though... $14k is awfully low, even for the lowest-level of Physics grad students. I feel your pain)
It'll be even cooler when Google are able to automatically detect things like citations and references, and add hyperlinks as appropriate.
It still sort of bugs me that scientific papers are written in LaTeX, and not hypertext, especially considering that the web (in its current form) originated at CERN.
They'll continue to sue.
Nothing will stop them.
The DoJ or Supreme Court certainly could.
Why aren't any racketeering/trustbusting laws coming into play here? The actions of the RIAA/MPAA are increasingly resembling those of a band of criminals.
Deregulation has never been a problem - it's always been irresponsibility.
Which is exactly why we have laws.
There's a very important distinction between blindly throwing money at a problem, and making an educated investment.
Something leads me to believe that the Republicans have been doing the former, while the Democrats are more concerned with the latter.
By global standards, the current round of Democrats are among the most conservative political parties out there.
I'm not going to let the Democrats completely off the hook, though the Republicans seem to have this continually misplaced notion that any sort of (increased) spending is inherently bad.
So, they can port flash to PPC and ARM, but they won't port it to x86_64.
Something seems funny to me...
Whoa there. The PS3 is definitely *not* a PPC. One of its cores is architecturally *similar* to a PowerPC, which makes it easy to support PPC code. However, calling it a PowerPC is a misnomer.
I say this, as there has never been a Linux_PPC port of Flash. x86-64 users have had the "luxury" of being able to use a wrapper to get 64-bit flash by using the 32-bit legacy version. It's not particularly elegant, but it works.
Alternatively, they may be trying to convince the world that they MAY have a quantum computer.
Fixed that for you. When it comes to Quantum, you can never be too certain.
To get it running on the PS3, Sony ended up customizing a separate Flash implementation that was provided to it by Adobe.'"
Most users of Linux on non-x86 platforms should be twitching violently from reading that quote.
Adobe have consistently refused to give their code to anyone. They wouldn't even give it to Apple for use on the iPhone.
I wonder what changed. Are Adobe and Sony both members of the Evil League of Evil?
If you don't agree with the parent poster, go read (or better yet, see a live performance of) "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller.
Gosh, how things have changed since the 1600s.....oh, wait.
Remember how long it took the PS2 to build up a solid library of titles?
Sure, there were dozens of titles at launch, but it took ages for it to build up its now-formidable library, while Microsoft rested on its laurels with Halo.
One of the most interesting things to note about Soyuz is in fact the Launch Escape System.
It's been used twice, and both times, the cosmonauts were pretty pissed off afterward (nobody likes 21gs), but were able to walk away from the incident.
Both incidents were pretty remarkable. The first occurred after the vehicle caught fire on the pad, with the LES (manually) activating two seconds before the vehicle literally exploded on the pad.
The second occurred mid-way through launch, after one of the stages failed to separate. In this case, the LES activated while the rocket was pointing down toward the earth. The capsule then landed on the side of a snow-covered mountain near the Chinese border, and rolled 500 yards before coming to a halt. (The Russians somehow anticipated this sort of situation, and there was cold-weather gear stored on-board for the cosmonauts).
I stress, once again that despite these "worst case scenario" failures, the crew were relatively unharmed, which is a pretty strong testament to the inherent safety of a very simplistic (by rocket science standards) system such as Soyuz.
Because of the time required to charge vehicles, we'd need a cord station at pretty much every parking space everywhere for widespread use of pure electrics to be tenable.
This is already done in Fairbanks, Alaska as well as other particularly cold locales in Canada, Norway, Russia, etc.
The reasoning up there is a bit different -- the cars up there need to keep a block heater running 24/7 to prevent the various fluids in their engines from freezing.
I'm not sure what it costs, but as long as you specify such a plan alongside new construction, I don't think it's particularly unattainable.
This will be somewhat more difficult in places such as New York City, which have ancient, outdated power grids (Con Edison *just* discontinued DC service to its customers 2 years ago). However, these places will more than likely require a massive revamp of their grid anyways. Building in extra capacity is sort of a no-brainer.
Yep, I just said that a beer didn't taste bad, and then went on to say that all beer tastes bad.
Ah. I guess that means you're drunk :-P
What next, über-realistic?
They've gone to plaid!
Oh, and at some point 16 EiB won't be enough anymore
I wouldn't be too sure of that.
From Wikipedia:
Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 litre of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information.[10] A fully populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2128 blocks = 2137 bytes = 2140 bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2140 bits) / (1031 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg. To operate at the 1031 bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mcÂ, the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x1028 J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x1021 kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x106 J/kg * 1.4x1021 kg = 3.4x1027 J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.