Re:Please consider the power shortage
on
World Wide Cluster
·
· Score: 1
Coincidentally or not, January PC PRO magazine just continued this same argument on its Letters-column. In a summary, "...it's air travel. More than the average CO2 emission per Briton, per year is chucked out of a Boeing 747 for every passenger on board before it's reached sunny Spain. Each Comdex alone generates more CO2 emission than a third-world country does in a year".
So, all things in perspective. And who knows if a future distributed project might help us to find more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to travel or simulate the effects of global warming - even if being able to scratch that expensive flight to a cancer-clinic doesn't interest you.
Maybe. However, if it is packaged up as something "sexy", like, say... Searching for aliens. Now that sounds like a big magnet for the masses. Throw in some undecipherable science-babble, few supporting TV-series, a goal that won't be achieved in our lifetime and nifty put pointless graphics that beat the flying windows, and there you have it!
In the end, people will and should contribute to such projects that mean something to them personally. It would be interesting to see what propotion of SETI@home contributors are also X-Files fans, for example. On the other hand people whose relatives are dying of cancer, or even AIDS, might be predisposed to such research. And as the life-expectancy of people keeps growing, this kind of research seems like a sure winner in the long run.
MojoNation sorta promises to do this, altough their infrastructure can't handle it currently. See the earlier Slashdot article on MojoNation
If the distributed work is carried out by Java apps, using the standard security precautions, you don't need to get so many grey hairs over that - as long as you're willing to exchange lots of processing power for it. I've always felt the correct language for distributed computing is assembler, at least for the core things. GIMPS and Distributed.net are model examples of this.
"but still, when there is nothing that will comprimise security, it's better to get it out than to have the paranoids running around feeling that you are hiding something"
Great philosophy. And then when you do have something that will compromise security, watch the paranoids running wacko... The first key to security is treat everything as confidential, so the really secret stuff doesn't stand out obivious.
Altough this is just a general comment; in many cases the governments do held up non-critical stuff that would have real scientific significance at the time, while othentimes what those not in the known call "not secret" is among the most secret issues out there.
It also bears stressing that all modern CPU's, and that does include Intel, have extensive "microcode" layer to actually drive the chip. It's perhaps something of a simplification, perhaps a bit nit-picky, but "uses elaborate software instructions rather than hardware" is quite misleading.
They BOTH use elaborative software instructions on top of hardware, but the hardware on a Crusoe chip is more advanced allowing many tricks the Intel chips couldn't dream of. And Intel provides a kludgy way to fix the CPU microcode through BIOS-loaded "patches" of which they've released quite a few to BIOS-authors already.
This could ofcourse be just the reporter not being that technologically knowledgeable and buying the Transmeta hype about "software processor" instead of bias, as well.
There's still some confusion. The "Laws of Robotics" were <a href="http://www.evansville.net/~bob/robots/laws.h tml>three (Later, four) laws that robots were bound to obey</a> in Asimov's science-fiction book "I, Robot".
It has since became a staple reference of SciFi and philosophical discussions on the "dangers of technology". Therefore, the obivious reason the "Laws of robotics" are inappropriate for this situation are, <a href="http://www.sfwriter.com/rmasilaw.htm">that war-robots break the first</a> (and zeroth) "law of robotics" by definition!
Besides of which, the Asimov "Laws of Robotics" only make sense to highly advanced artificial intelligences capable of realizing their actual meaning - which we don't have yet. A more layman interpretation of Asimov's fiction in question has been that people just shouldn't build robots for the specific intent of killing people, which is probably what the original author meant by his Asimov reference.
There's been some confusion on this point, and what the reference meant. For those not versed in traditional SciFi philosophy...
What Asimov (A famous SciFi writer) had to say about the peaceful co-existence of robots and humans: http://www.evansville.net/~bob/robots/laws.html
Ofcourse one should note that an author rarely writes for what is or what they think is the optimal solution, but create their own fantasy. Short look to why these "Laws" are not relevant, or difficult to implement in reality: http://www.sfwriter.com/rmasilaw.htm
One of the questions raised by the Asimov reference is where you draw the line of robotics. Ever since weapons started being used in warfare, it could be argued that wardare was 'out of human hands'. When long-range weapons came into play, first symptoms of this development could already be seen: Even if enemys surrender was accepted, there was no way to stop ammunition already in air.
In some ways todays intelligent missiles are step into better direction, as it is at least theoretically possible to interrupt the action. On the other hand many tanks and other war-machinery already have active defenses and automation to the level that the soldiers inside are little more than along for the ride.
"What asimov would think" is funnily reminiscent of "What would Jesus do?", but I assume that's just my twisted humor...
However, I believe the main intent of this reference can be none other than pointing to Asimov's "Laws of Robotics", an idea oft quoted in the SciFi realm. Robots in Asimov's world were equipped with specific rules that prohibited them from ever harming humans.
The use of robots in warfare runs diretly contrary to this thinking, and does indeed carry the real possibility of something along the lines of the technology-phobic visions like Terminator series "SkyNet" (If in lesser scale and less sci-fi;) happening. A robot could not do the reasoning to handle many non-obivious situations - own forces and refugees in disguise, enemy injured beyond being a threat etc. and a mistake in either direction could be fatal. Thenagain, neither could many normal soldiers.
I don't think there's a rela big reason to discount CVS right off the start, especially if you had original interest in it... I wouldn't say that it is bad with large files, but it definitely is with binary-files - it's only intended for ASCII files.
So the solution is, quite simply, to write "filters" to translate between the binary representation and some deterministic ASCII representation. uuencode, naturally, is not the perfect solution - you need to find a structure which quarantees there's minimal change to the rest of the lines when one part changes.
The trivial solution is to record every data-item (Byte?) on separate ASCII document line, but I'm sure you can do better than that, since the extra newlines add unneeded complexity. The tirck to the optimal solution would be to group the data on lines so, that the average change affects minimu number of lines.
There are surely other solutions, many which have advantages over the CVS version, but I believe quite a few of them would rely on commercial, properietary software or require rolling your own completely.
Assuming, ofcourse, you happened to be covered by that satellite in question... Scandinavia is generally out of reach of any of the major satellites, which would likely be placed over USA only, central Europe at most. As a result it would in the end probably mean slower and poorer deliveries to Scandinavia. Not to mention "Just a minute... we're having atmospheric interference... Screening wwill continue in about 2 hours."
Slashdot Mirror
So, all things in perspective. And who knows if a future distributed project might help us to find more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to travel or simulate the effects of global warming - even if being able to scratch that expensive flight to a cancer-clinic doesn't interest you.
In the end, people will and should contribute to such projects that mean something to them personally. It would be interesting to see what propotion of SETI@home contributors are also X-Files fans, for example. On the other hand people whose relatives are dying of cancer, or even AIDS, might be predisposed to such research. And as the life-expectancy of people keeps growing, this kind of research seems like a sure winner in the long run.
If the distributed work is carried out by Java apps, using the standard security precautions, you don't need to get so many grey hairs over that - as long as you're willing to exchange lots of processing power for it. I've always felt the correct language for distributed computing is assembler, at least for the core things. GIMPS and Distributed.net are model examples of this.
Great philosophy. And then when you do have something that will compromise security, watch the paranoids running wacko... The first key to security is treat everything as confidential, so the really secret stuff doesn't stand out obivious.
Altough this is just a general comment; in many cases the governments do held up non-critical stuff that would have real scientific significance at the time, while othentimes what those not in the known call "not secret" is among the most secret issues out there.
It also bears stressing that all modern CPU's, and that does include Intel, have extensive "microcode" layer to actually drive the chip. It's perhaps something of a simplification, perhaps a bit nit-picky, but "uses elaborate software instructions rather than hardware" is quite misleading.
They BOTH use elaborative software instructions on top of hardware, but the hardware on a Crusoe chip is more advanced allowing many tricks the Intel chips couldn't dream of. And Intel provides a kludgy way to fix the CPU microcode through BIOS-loaded "patches" of which they've released quite a few to BIOS-authors already.
This could ofcourse be just the reporter not being that technologically knowledgeable and buying the Transmeta hype about "software processor" instead of bias, as well.
There's still some confusion. The "Laws of Robotics" were <a href="http://www.evansville.net/~bob/robots/laws.h tml>three (Later, four) laws that robots were bound to obey</a> in Asimov's science-fiction book "I, Robot".
It has since became a staple reference of SciFi and philosophical discussions on the "dangers of technology". Therefore, the obivious reason the "Laws of robotics" are inappropriate for this situation are, <a href="http://www.sfwriter.com/rmasilaw.htm">that war-robots break the first</a> (and zeroth) "law of robotics" by definition!
Besides of which, the Asimov "Laws of Robotics" only make sense to highly advanced artificial intelligences capable of realizing their actual meaning - which we don't have yet. A more layman interpretation of Asimov's fiction in question has been that people just shouldn't build robots for the specific intent of killing people, which is probably what the original author meant by his Asimov reference.
There's been some confusion on this point, and what the reference meant. For those not versed in traditional SciFi philosophy...
What Asimov (A famous SciFi writer) had to say about the peaceful co-existence of robots and humans: http://www.evansville.net/~bob/robots/laws.html
Ofcourse one should note that an author rarely writes for what is or what they think is the optimal solution, but create their own fantasy. Short look to why these "Laws" are not relevant, or difficult to implement in reality: http://www.sfwriter.com/rmasilaw.htm
One of the questions raised by the Asimov reference is where you draw the line of robotics. Ever since weapons started being used in warfare, it could be argued that wardare was 'out of human hands'. When long-range weapons came into play, first symptoms of this development could already be seen: Even if enemys surrender was accepted, there was no way to stop ammunition already in air.
In some ways todays intelligent missiles are step into better direction, as it is at least theoretically possible to interrupt the action. On the other hand many tanks and other war-machinery already have active defenses and automation to the level that the soldiers inside are little more than along for the ride.
"What asimov would think" is funnily reminiscent of "What would Jesus do?", but I assume that's just my twisted humor...
However, I believe the main intent of this reference can be none other than pointing to Asimov's "Laws of Robotics", an idea oft quoted in the SciFi realm. Robots in Asimov's world were equipped with specific rules that prohibited them from ever harming humans.
The use of robots in warfare runs diretly contrary to this thinking, and does indeed carry the real possibility of something along the lines of the technology-phobic visions like Terminator series "SkyNet" (If in lesser scale and less sci-fi;) happening. A robot could not do the reasoning to handle many non-obivious situations - own forces and refugees in disguise, enemy injured beyond being a threat etc. and a mistake in either direction could be fatal. Thenagain, neither could many normal soldiers.
I don't think there's a rela big reason to discount CVS right off the start, especially if you had original interest in it... I wouldn't say that it is bad with large files, but it definitely is with binary-files - it's only intended for ASCII files.
So the solution is, quite simply, to write "filters" to translate between the binary representation and some deterministic ASCII representation. uuencode, naturally, is not the perfect solution - you need to find a structure which quarantees there's minimal change to the rest of the lines when one part changes.
The trivial solution is to record every data-item (Byte?) on separate ASCII document line, but I'm sure you can do better than that, since the extra newlines add unneeded complexity. The tirck to the optimal solution would be to group the data on lines so, that the average change affects minimu number of lines.
There are surely other solutions, many which have advantages over the CVS version, but I believe quite a few of them would rely on commercial, properietary software or require rolling your own completely.
Assuming, ofcourse, you happened to be covered by that satellite in question... Scandinavia is generally out of reach of any of the major satellites, which would likely be placed over USA only, central Europe at most. As a result it would in the end probably mean slower and poorer deliveries to Scandinavia. Not to mention "Just a minute... we're having atmospheric interference... Screening wwill continue in about 2 hours."
-Donwulff