Newegg.com sells them mail-order. They also sell the Aopen i855 motherboard. Just do a search on their website for "dothan"
Re:Engineering within limits brings great results
on
Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
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· Score: 1
These days software shops assume the user has a 1.5Ghz machine and at least 512M of ram and a seperate GPU and video ram as well. Makes them value efficiency and graceful code far less, in my opinion.
I used to think that it was the size and speed of modern processors that led to bloatware, but no more.
Now I think it's because people believe in Moore's law.
Why make a program 20% faster and 20% smaller, when in a year the machine will be 40% faster and have 40% more memory? It's not cost effective to optimize - much better to work on something else.
You still see tight code in systems that can't grow - embedded controllers and such.
I predict that when Moore's law stops (or at least, slows down enough) then bloatware will end.
These AMD processors are most likely to be revision E0 core Athlon 64s. The E0 core is said to reduce power consumption by 25% over the D0 core. If processors have a 25W TDP already in the A64M range, then AMD should easily be able to get it down to 20W to compete with the Pentium M.
If A64M had a 25W TDP even after the 25% reduction, I'd be extremely surprised. Maybe it draws that when in sleep mode...
Also, the 533MHz Dothan processor, until recently, had a 27W TDP figure, because of the faster bus.
I think you mean the 2.0 GHz Dothan with it's 533MHz bus.
Although I applaud low power efforts, the 1.1 Ghz low voltage Dothan is suposedly under 7W, which beats the hell out of basically everything if all you are calculating is bogomips per watt.
How much music can one listen to, and how many movies can one possibly watch?
Possible? One could easily watch 8 hours a day, for 70 years, hold down a job and raise a family About 200,000 hours of video. Assuming 500MB an hour, that's 100 Terabytes, or 200 of these drives. 8 hours a day is four times the national average though, so 50 drives would probably be enough for most people.
But if storage was cheap enough, we'd record every channel 24/7 and watch everything time delayed. Go on vaction for a week, and you fill several of these drives.
Hell, just archiving star trek (classic, next-gen, voyager, DS9, and the movies) would require more storage than this drive has.
A typical laser will have a beam spread of 1.5 mRad. As a rule of thumb this is about 1.5 millimeters spread to each meter
Laser light can be focused into a nearly parallel beam http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/miscon4.html But it can't be done perfectly (wave nature of light prevents perfection) and it's rarely done well.
Still, 1.5 mRad sounds high to me. For a high quality optical communication laser, it would be more like 0.0015 mRad.
Grabbing my pocket laser pointer, and a ruler, I can measure a spot of about 3mm at a distance of 1 meter, and 5 mm at a distance of about 15 meters. Granted I could easily be off by 2mm, that's still no where near 20mm.
Measuring laser 'dot' size is a simple experiment that I urge anyone who thinks lasers don't spread to try.
Being that our bodies can't do much without the brain telling them to do something...
Yes, but the "brain" isn't necessarily thinking about the most important consequence.
Suppose a beer company tests two ads in two different cities and decides to run the ad that increases their sales the most. Then it turns out that the reason it increases sales is because it encourages teenagers to buy beer illegally.
If Walmart tries two policies regardling barcodes, and one makes them more money, do you think anyone bothers to check if it's because they're now ripping off customers?
Lack of intent might be a necessary criterion for escaping blame, but it's not a sufficient one.
How is swapping bar codes to get a lower price any different than "accidentally" entering a higher price for a particular barcode into the database?
Aristotle described the core of the distinction long ago: intention. If you as a customer swap barcodes in a store your goal is clearly (usually) to sneak a higher price item for a lower price. You are misrepresenting the transaction to get take advantage of someone/thing else. If some retailer makes an error in pricing they are not necessarily intentionally misrepresenting the transaction; they are still acting in "good faith."
So if you act without thinking you shouldn't be held accountable?
IIRC, due to the wave nature of light, visible light (even from a laser) spreads out approximately 10 cm per kilometer.
At at typical crusing altitude, the "spot" from a normal laser pointer on the ground would be bigger than your head, and so dim you couldn't even see it, much less be blinded by it.
I don't want my password to be stored on a computer. If I did, I would want it to be my computer. If I didn't want it to be my computer, I wouldn't want it to be on a computer I had to pay for. And even if I were willing to pay for the inconvience of having someone else be in control of my passwords, I wouldn't want that person to be Microsoft.
Passport was based on a flaw premise; The reason we don't provide personal information to every site that asks for it isn't because it's too hard to type it in.
Why is it that when governments enforce copyright laws, people piss and moan about the other more important things they should be focusing on, but then cheer when the government focuses on something as trivial as spam?
When it's easier to imagine yourself as the victim than the villian, then the law seems just. When it's not, it doesn't.
Most get spam and don't make it. Very few make CDs, many copy them.
if you factor into account that many of the spammers sort messages by host and send multiples per connection, it easily jumps much higher.
And if you factor in that many spammers retry from different IPs if the first connect is blocked, it's much lower.
Which effect is greater is left as an exercise for the reader. (Hint - greylisting blocks 97%, but only reduces spam by 85%)
98% of the invalid users are spam and virus mail.
Even though most would consider 2% false positives unacceptably high, I'm very impressed. All the RBLs I've tested that blocked more than 80% had much higher false positive rates.
Any reasonably useful photovoltaic system is going to need about 1kW output under typical conditions. So with this material, for around $1000 you can generate maybe 50 cents worth of electicity each day. Obviously you aren't going to get rich by selling power back to the grid with a scheme like this but 1kW of totally free power would be kind of nice to have.
There are two key price points; Cheaper than a consumer can buy electricity, and cheaper than the electric company can make electricity.
From the fine article, I see that they are projecting 1 euro per watt if they go into full scale production. Not so cheap that it's obviously better than grid power, but cheap enough to be interesting.
I always thought that a cool thing to do would be to use the excess electricity from PV cells to crack water and make Hydrogen gas rather than goofing around with expensive batteries.
Personally, I like the idea of a solar powered air conditioner.
Your typical postal worker is unlikely to be able to recall you from their uncle 29 days and thousands of customers later.
Should there then be a memory quiz and anyone who remembers too well can't be hired? Probably should outlaw note paper too, so the clerk can't take notes...
The point is, you aren't "anonymous" when you buy stamps from a human either. Machines are better at remembering than people are, but it's just a question of degree, not a fundamental prinicple.
* People throwing around each other's true names (witness the girl talking to Ged).
In the book, before he was given his true name, he was called Duny. Then his spoken name became was Sparrow Hawk, and his true name was Ged. In the mini-series, his true name was Sparrow Hawk, his spoken name was Ged, and there was no child name. (Or perhap, it started after he'd been given his true name).
On the one hand, changing the names of the characters make little difference to the story. On the other hand, their's no good reason to do so. It made me feel like the person who created the screen play didn't bother to read the book.
Maybe we can solicit an "Ask Slashdot" question about alternatives to the TLD problem? What alternatives do you see as being feasible, practicable, and easy on the average end user?
All patents grant the holder a monopoly on an idea. The purpose of that monopoly is impeeding manufacture. It has been argued that the means (monopoly) are justified by the ends (increased innovation) but never the less, all patents have this kernel of badness within them.
Money men didn't get to be money men by making stupid decisions.
If they think that "the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales" maybe it's because the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales. </devil's advocate>
Matabolizing a pound of fat releases 3500 Calories, but it contains over 4000. It requires much more than 4000 for your body to make one, even assuming that all the Calories would be stored rather than excreted. Might as well assume that you're adding muscle - that's under 2000 Calories a pound.
A list of skeptical objections to the hypothesis that human CO2 emissions are changing the climate, and that this is a bad thing. I don't really mind how loopy or paranoid your objections are: whatever reason you use to claim that it's nonsense, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Well, there's the big one - you need to prove that the earth is getting warmer. I haven't heard much argument against that lately, but I'll mention some old ones; Data taken from weather stations doesn't correlate with data from other sources. Sea level isn't rising.
The arguments against the amount of warming that is being caused by CO2. That would include every other green house gas emission - volcanic emissions, methane from termites and cows. I suppose you could include any non CO2 gasses that humans produce as well. (I'd really like to see a chart that shows how much each gas contributes.)
Arguments that the CO2 is not the result of human action. i.e. perhaps "natural" CO2 production is the cause of most of it. Decomposing forests, oceanic CO2 formation, space bourn CO2. (I'd like to know the amount of CO2 creation/reduction that's "natural"
the amount that isn't, and the total concentrations over time.)
Arguements that warming the earth isn't that big a deal; In the article "More pollution please" (Analog Oct 1986) George Harper argued that our we could stop making pollution a lot easier than we can create the infrastructure necessary to make it. I'd also include the "narrow band of habitation" idea here - warmer temperatures just means we move away from the equator.
As others have pointed out, it's probably better to argue positively instead of negatively. I.e. supply proof that the earth is getting warmer, that it's mostly due to increases in CO2, that humans are the primary producers of CO2, and finally that we're all doomed if trend continues.
Slashdot Mirror
Newegg.com sells them mail-order.
They also sell the Aopen i855 motherboard.
Just do a search on their website for "dothan"
I used to think that it was the size and speed of modern processors that led to bloatware, but no more.
Now I think it's because people believe in Moore's law.
Why make a program 20% faster and 20% smaller, when in a year the machine will be 40% faster and have 40% more memory?
It's not cost effective to optimize - much better to work on something else.
You still see tight code in systems that can't grow - embedded controllers and such.
I predict that when Moore's law stops (or at least, slows down enough) then bloatware will end.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
If A64M had a 25W TDP even after the 25% reduction, I'd be extremely surprised.
Maybe it draws that when in sleep mode...
I think you mean the 2.0 GHz Dothan with it's 533MHz bus.
Although I applaud low power efforts, the 1.1 Ghz low voltage Dothan is suposedly under 7W, which beats the hell out of basically everything if all you are calculating is bogomips per watt.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Possible? One could easily watch 8 hours a day, for 70 years, hold down a job and raise a family
About 200,000 hours of video.
Assuming 500MB an hour, that's 100 Terabytes, or 200 of these drives.
8 hours a day is four times the national average though, so 50 drives would probably be enough for most people.
But if storage was cheap enough, we'd record every channel 24/7 and watch everything time delayed.
Go on vaction for a week, and you fill several of these drives.
Hell, just archiving star trek (classic, next-gen, voyager, DS9, and the movies) would require more storage than this drive has.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Sadly, I think you are right - history has taught many to assume guilt even before the act.
Sort of like, "if you buy a tape, you must intend to copy music illegally with it."
Laser light can be focused into a nearly parallel beam http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/miscon4.html
But it can't be done perfectly (wave nature of light prevents perfection) and it's rarely done well.
Still, 1.5 mRad sounds high to me.
For a high quality optical communication laser, it would be more like 0.0015 mRad.
Grabbing my pocket laser pointer, and a ruler, I can measure a spot of about 3mm at a distance of 1 meter, and 5 mm at a distance of about 15 meters.
Granted I could easily be off by 2mm, that's still no where near 20mm.
Measuring laser 'dot' size is a simple experiment that I urge anyone who thinks lasers don't spread to try.
-- should you believe authority without question.
Yes, but the "brain" isn't necessarily thinking about the most important consequence.
Suppose a beer company tests two ads in two different cities and decides to run the ad that increases their sales the most.
Then it turns out that the reason it increases sales is because it encourages teenagers to buy beer illegally.
If Walmart tries two policies regardling barcodes, and one makes them more money,
do you think anyone bothers to check if it's because they're now ripping off customers?
Lack of intent might be a necessary criterion for escaping blame, but it's not a sufficient one.
So if you act without thinking you shouldn't be held accountable?
Why?
In particular, why is it better than having my personal computer do the authentication?
-- Should you believe authority without question?
IIRC, due to the wave nature of light, visible light (even from a laser) spreads out approximately 10 cm per kilometer.
At at typical crusing altitude, the "spot" from a normal laser pointer on the ground would be bigger than your head, and so dim you couldn't even see it, much less be blinded by it.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
I don't want my password to be stored on a computer.
If I did, I would want it to be my computer.
If I didn't want it to be my computer, I wouldn't want it to be on a computer I had to pay for.
And even if I were willing to pay for the inconvience of having someone else be in control of my passwords, I wouldn't want that person to be Microsoft.
Passport was based on a flaw premise;
The reason we don't provide personal information to every site that asks for it isn't because it's too hard to type it in.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
When it's easier to imagine yourself as the victim than the villian, then the law seems just.
When it's not, it doesn't.
Most get spam and don't make it.
Very few make CDs, many copy them.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Where do you think Genetic Savings and Clone got the idea?
And when you have that many cryogenic freezers to run, it's much cheaper to locate somewhere really cold.
And if you factor in that many spammers retry from different IPs if the first connect is blocked, it's much lower.
Which effect is greater is left as an exercise for the reader.
(Hint - greylisting blocks 97%, but only reduces spam by 85%)
Even though most would consider 2% false positives unacceptably high, I'm very impressed.
All the RBLs I've tested that blocked more than 80% had much higher false positive rates.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Almost all contracts are valid if both parties agree to it.
And yes, that includes verbal contracts, though there are other exceptions.
But proving the other party agreed is a whole lot simpler when you have a signed and notarized contract.
For example, suppose I claim that I never clicked on the "accept" button.
Could you prove that I did so in a court of law?
-- Should you believe authority without question?
There are two key price points;
Cheaper than a consumer can buy electricity,
and cheaper than the electric company can make electricity.
From the fine article, I see that they are projecting 1 euro per watt if they go into full scale production.
Not so cheap that it's obviously better than grid power, but cheap enough to be interesting.
Personally, I like the idea of a solar powered air conditioner.
-- should you believe authority without question?
I disagree.
The only things proven are incompetence and failure to fulfill contractual obligations.
But the issue is a lot broader than that.
I'd say an investigation is in order because of the possibility of election tampering, and yes, even treason.
-- should you believe authority without question?
Should there then be a memory quiz and anyone who remembers too well can't be hired?
Probably should outlaw note paper too, so the clerk can't take notes...
The point is, you aren't "anonymous" when you buy stamps from a human either.
Machines are better at remembering than people are, but it's just a question of degree, not a fundamental prinicple.
In the book, before he was given his true name, he was called Duny.
Then his spoken name became was Sparrow Hawk, and his true name was Ged.
In the mini-series, his true name was Sparrow Hawk, his spoken name was Ged, and there was no child name.
(Or perhap, it started after he'd been given his true name).
On the one hand, changing the names of the characters make little difference to the story.
On the other hand, their's no good reason to do so.
It made me feel like the person who created the screen play didn't bother to read the book.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
If you buy stamps from a human, do you insist that they forget what you look like?
Or perhaps you'd insist that their eyes be poked out?
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Brad Templeton has written a lot on the subject http://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/
-- Should you believe authority without question?
All patents grant the holder a monopoly on an idea.
The purpose of that monopoly is impeeding manufacture.
It has been argued that the means (monopoly) are justified by the ends (increased innovation) but never the less, all patents have this kernel of badness within them.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Money men didn't get to be money men by making stupid decisions.
If they think that "the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales" maybe it's because the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales.
</devil's advocate>
-- should you believe authority without question?
Matabolizing a pound of fat releases 3500 Calories, but it contains over 4000.
It requires much more than 4000 for your body to make one, even assuming that all the Calories would be stored rather than excreted.
Might as well assume that you're adding muscle - that's under 2000 Calories a pound.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Well, there's the big one - you need to prove that the earth is getting warmer.
I haven't heard much argument against that lately, but I'll mention some old ones;
Data taken from weather stations doesn't correlate with data from other sources.
Sea level isn't rising.
The arguments against the amount of warming that is being caused by CO2.
That would include every other green house gas emission -
volcanic emissions, methane from termites and cows.
I suppose you could include any non CO2 gasses that humans produce as well.
(I'd really like to see a chart that shows how much each gas contributes.)
Arguments that the CO2 is not the result of human action.
i.e. perhaps "natural" CO2 production is the cause of most of it.
Decomposing forests, oceanic CO2 formation, space bourn CO2.
(I'd like to know the amount of CO2 creation/reduction that's "natural"
the amount that isn't, and the total concentrations over time.)
Arguements that warming the earth isn't that big a deal;
In the article "More pollution please" (Analog Oct 1986)
George Harper argued that our we could stop making pollution
a lot easier than we can create the infrastructure necessary to make it.
I'd also include the "narrow band of habitation" idea here -
warmer temperatures just means we move away from the equator.
As others have pointed out, it's probably better to argue positively instead
of negatively. I.e. supply proof that the earth is getting warmer,
that it's mostly due to increases in CO2, that humans are the primary producers
of CO2, and finally that we're all doomed if trend continues.
-- should you believe authority without question?