You've obviously never heard of spontaneous pair production, have you.
You've oviously never read my posting, where I wrote:
In fact for very short times it is unsure enough to allow the creation of virtual particles, like an electron positron pair,
Further you write
current theory proposes that the vacuum of space can be thought of as quantum harmonic oscillators
That is the field theoretic view of a quantum field like the electromagnetic field (2nd quantization). Current theory? This idea is even older: Max Planck derived his famous law by treating the black body radiation this way in 1900, thereby starting quantum theory (QM ~ everything where the Plack constant h shows up)
I could tell you even more weird stuff like that a charged particle is surounded by a polarized cloud of virtual particles, thus we never "see" a naked electron but rather measure the mass of this complex object. Or the Casimir effect, or..
Why people do not wish to use something slightly more accessable and reasonable on resources, such as mp3's is beyond me.
It is a shame that most broadcast companies seem to stick with the proprietary Real format. Especially, if it is a public funded one, like the BBC World Service.
One of the few counter examples I know of is the dance/techno oriented HR XXL station, by the public broadcasting service of the federal state of Hessen. They offer this MP3 stream. I would love to hear from more stations.
Re:Damn. Realplayer G2 no longer offered on Linux
on
Matt Welsh on NPR
·
· Score: 1
Well like the small number of us who actually use Linux as a movie platform, we found out that RealNetworks dropped the Realplayer G2 for Linux.
How did you find out? Is there some press release by RealNetworks? The page with the first alpha version was still up, yesterday. But it is no good (expired).
It is also bad, because some radio broadcasts seem to use a G2 only format. If it was an open standard, one could try to implement one's own client - a good example why this proprietary stuff if a Bad Thing.
I would love to, but my copy of the G2 alpha for Linux expired yesterday and I can't spot a new one on the Real web site. Unfortunately this is the only player that works on my system right now (FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT).
The latest good trick in the area of reverse engineering I noticed was the use of entropy (the entropy from information theory) to spot interesting parts of an executable, in this case the location of a hidden cryptographic key.
Could be useful in other areas too, like embedded hidden compressed code.
So while over long times the energy at a given empty volume in space is zero, for short times you are not sure. In fact for very short times it is unsure enough to allow the creation of virtual particles, like an electron positron pair, that "borrow" their energy from the vacuum, and annihilate after a short time, giving back the energy.
Zero Point Energy
Nope, that term describes the fact, that the lowest possible energy state for a harmonic oscillator in quantumn mechanics is non zero.
They can be configured to handle a single task MUCH faster than a single (or a bunch) of pentiums ever could. Thats why the crypto box can crack codes in under a second, it can't do much else mind you but it can crack DES in a fraction of the time 1 or even 100 pentiums could.
But who designs that configuration? Those "des brute force crackers" or "chess chips" or "graphics processors" are all logic designs done by experienced human designers.
While I think it is possible to write configuration compilers that analyze an application and produce some logic configuration to implement it, I don't believe that those results can rival the abovementioned special designs in quality.
Given a DES cracking software as input, it must come up with something that rivals the Deep Crack design.. unlikely.
Rollback can be very useful when pipelining instructions because there is no guarantee of precisely where a fault issued from.
Are we talking of rather seldom events here (what the name trap suggests), or of some quite often occuring speculative execution attempts, where one has to rollback invalid branches (thus the ones that will not be executed) by oneselve, and not by support from the speculative execution hardware?
you start with instruction set specific code and meta-compile it into custom hardware that is dynamically reconfigurable, resulting in very fast execution on hardware that is essentially optimized for each particular application.
Sure, and I use that state-of-the-art parallelizing compiler on my 8-fold XEON SMP system to get a blazing fast application.. oh, sorry, there is no such compiler that turns a random program efficiently into a parallelized one? Oops.
So please tell me why the engineers at Intel or AMD don't fire on their logic optimizers to implement the processor instructions in such an optimal manner?
This allows for instruction ROLLBACK. Want a journeling filesystem? How about a journeling processor?
That idea is not convincing.
If you view a relational database as a processor for SQL statements, a rollback just ensures the SQL statements being atomic. Thus you end up with the state before that SQL statement was issued, and not in some mess that is left from some error during the processing.
Similiar holds for file system commands that translate into complicated block operations, where a rollback would ensure atomic fs commands.
CPU instructions aren't that complex, they are fairly atomic by themselves. Can't think of a situation (except for processor bugs like the F00F one), where the processor hangs in mid of some instruction, stumbled over some microcode gone crazy.
So I simply see no benefit of a rollback of an instruction, sorry.
This is a device for assisting in processor emulation: I believe it will hold commands in memory until it knows that they will execute without error. Quite a good idea.
Good idea, yes. But how many folks will need such a device? Doesn't sound like such a product could keep more than a couple of engineers in bread and butter.
looks like a cpu which read foreign instruction sets and then translates them into its own set and execs them in a highly parallel manner to produces a faster execution than the original processor.
We are building reprogrammable chips. And the software that reprograms thems. This makes 'em faster (like how a 3d card is faster at graphics, but sucks at spreadsheets) not by being faster buy by reconfiguring on the fly and acting like dedicated hardware.
I am sceptical. Reminds me of the dilemma with parallelizing compilers.
Because the dedicated hardware design, like that of a graphics card, is the result of careful human analysis of a special problem. So you would need a very intelligent "reconfiguration compiler" that analyses a given assembler program and translates it into an optimized logic gate configuration.
For the shortest programs, the assembler instructions, the processor designers did this optimal casting into logic, when they implemented the instruction set.
In contrast a reconfiguration compiler could have a larger window, including some dozen of instructions, and might squeeze out some extra cycles.
I have no clue if that would yield remarkable speed improvements. Anyone tested such ideas on emulated reconfigurable hardware?
I don't get that emulation bit. Why not code an efficient x86 CPU directly?
Is it maybe some kind of CISC to RISC compilation to improve speed? (Analogon to Java JITs?)
Or do they want to create a non-x86 platform with exceptional x86 emulation? (Like an alpha CPU based system that could fall back to run x86 software very fast)
with Linux becoming more and more a second x86 binary standard, do you think there will be more binary releases and network centric applications in the future leading to less software released as open source?
Free will, as most people define it, is about making free choices; that is, being able to choose one alternative over another.
But where do the choices come from? Is it a result based on some physical states somewhere (like a computer program that takes a certain decision given a certain input) then it is determined, the opposite seems to be something truly random, so we can't speak of a decision anymore. Does not fit into logic, in my opinion.
In the sense of Hofstadter I would say that we have no chance to solve these issues until we understand what a "self" is and find some mathematical (thus logically consistent) model for it.
For all you know, G-d might have some way of looking at things that doesn't involve bouncing light off them.
What is looking? Some process that gives you information on the object you look at. On the physical level this exchange of information turns down to an fundamental interaction. And those change the state of the observer and the object.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this true? No OpenBSD exploit?
Impressive.
You've oviously never read my posting, where I wrote:
In fact for very short times it is unsure enough to allow the creation of virtual particles, like an electron positron pair,
Further you write
current theory proposes that the vacuum of space can be thought of as quantum harmonic oscillators
That is the field theoretic view of a quantum field like the electromagnetic field (2nd quantization).
Current theory? This idea is even older: Max Planck derived his famous law by treating the black body radiation this way in 1900, thereby starting quantum theory (QM ~ everything where the Plack constant h shows up)
I could tell you even more weird stuff like that a charged particle is surounded by a polarized cloud of virtual particles, thus we never "see" a naked electron but rather measure the mass of this complex object. Or the Casimir effect, or..
It is a shame that most broadcast companies seem to stick with the proprietary Real format. Especially, if it is a public funded one, like the BBC World Service.
One of the few counter examples I know of is the dance/techno oriented HR XXL station, by the public broadcasting service of the federal state of Hessen. They offer this MP3 stream. I would love to hear from more stations.
How did you find out? Is there some press release by RealNetworks? The page with the first alpha version was still up, yesterday. But it is no good (expired).
It is also bad, because some radio broadcasts seem to use a G2 only format. If it was an open standard, one could try to implement one's own client - a good example why this proprietary stuff if a Bad Thing.
I would love to, but my copy of the G2 alpha for Linux expired yesterday and I can't spot a new one on the Real web site. Unfortunately this is the only player that works on my system right now (FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT).
Anyone knows what Real is up to with this player?
Anyone wrote a codec for that? :-)
Could be useful in other areas too, like embedded hidden compressed code.
Read this article for more.
So while over long times the energy at a given empty volume in space is zero, for short times you are not sure. In fact for very short times it is unsure enough to allow the creation of virtual particles, like an electron positron pair, that "borrow" their energy from the vacuum, and annihilate after a short time, giving back the energy.
Zero Point Energy
Nope, that term describes the fact, that the lowest possible energy state for a harmonic oscillator in quantumn mechanics is non zero.
But who designs that configuration? Those "des brute force crackers" or "chess chips" or "graphics processors" are all logic designs done by experienced human designers.
While I think it is possible to write configuration compilers that analyze an application and produce some logic configuration to implement it, I don't believe that those results can rival the abovementioned special designs in quality.
Given a DES cracking software as input, it must come up with something that rivals the Deep Crack design.. unlikely.
Are we talking of rather seldom events here (what the name trap suggests), or of some quite often occuring speculative execution attempts, where one has to rollback invalid branches (thus the ones that will not be executed) by oneselve, and not by support from the speculative execution hardware?
Sure, and I use that state-of-the-art parallelizing compiler on my 8-fold XEON SMP system to get a blazing fast application.. oh, sorry, there is no such compiler that turns a random program efficiently into a parallelized one? Oops.
So please tell me why the engineers at Intel or AMD don't fire on their logic optimizers to implement the processor instructions in such an optimal manner?
I doubt that the operation leading to a BSOD consists just of a couple of processor instructions, whose rollback would resolve the situation.
That idea is not convincing.
If you view a relational database as a processor for SQL statements, a rollback just ensures the SQL statements being atomic. Thus you end up with the state before that SQL statement was issued, and not in some mess that is left from some error during the processing.
Similiar holds for file system commands that translate into complicated block operations, where a rollback would ensure atomic fs commands.
CPU instructions aren't that complex, they are fairly atomic by themselves. Can't think of a situation (except for processor bugs like the F00F one), where the processor hangs in mid of some instruction, stumbled over some microcode gone crazy.
So I simply see no benefit of a rollback of an instruction, sorry.
Good idea, yes. But how many folks will need such a device? Doesn't sound like such a product could keep more than a couple of engineers in bread and butter.
TRANSlatingMETAprocessor?
But for that I don't need to mess with different instruction sets etc.
I am sceptical. Reminds me of the dilemma with parallelizing compilers.
Because the dedicated hardware design, like that of a graphics card, is the result of careful human analysis of a special problem. So you would need a very intelligent "reconfiguration compiler" that analyses a given assembler program and translates it into an optimized logic gate configuration.
For the shortest programs, the assembler instructions, the processor designers did this optimal casting into logic, when they implemented the instruction set.
In contrast a reconfiguration compiler could have a larger window, including some dozen of instructions, and might squeeze out some extra cycles.
I have no clue if that would yield remarkable speed improvements.
Anyone tested such ideas on emulated reconfigurable hardware?
Is it maybe some kind of CISC to RISC compilation to improve speed? (Analogon to Java JITs?)
Or do they want to create a non-x86 platform with exceptional x86 emulation? (Like an alpha CPU based system that could fall back to run x86 software very fast)
Why don't they open source OS/2? In a manner similiar to the initial Mozilla source release.
This would be a graceful end for that operating system
Read this nice article from PlanetQuake on fillrate, pixels and texels.
Here is another graphics.
The page is nice to read too, by the way.
with Linux becoming more and more a second x86 binary standard, do you think there will be more binary releases and network centric applications in the future leading to less software released as open source?
and: :-)
Have you ever tried out FreeBSD?
But where do the choices come from? Is it a result based on some physical states somewhere (like a computer program that takes a certain decision given a certain input) then it is determined, the opposite seems to be something truly random, so we can't speak of a decision anymore. Does not fit into logic, in my opinion.
In the sense of Hofstadter I would say that we have no chance to solve these issues until we understand what a "self" is and find some mathematical (thus logically consistent) model for it.
What is looking? Some process that gives you information on the object you look at. On the physical level this exchange of information turns down to an fundamental interaction. And those change the state of the observer and the object.