Surpass: To be or go beyond, as in degree or quality; exceed.
Ah, the real answer is the big-time criminals have found cybercrime so lucrative, they're leaving or ignoring the drug trade. Thus, they bypass it.
If that were so, there would be an undersupply of drugs, and junkies may have to withdraw. A reduced demand may further weaken the idea that drugs are worth dabbling in.
maybe the TSA's airport security is one of the stupidest things to ever be seen
Well, airport security doesn't have a good track record, this short a time after the anniversary of 9-11.
But if anyone had anything to hide in their reading material, it would be best embedded in some innocent looking stuff, so from now on, forewarned is forearmed and those who look too innocent ought to be the most suspected.
Also the sheer volume of things that could be a threat makes security checks mind bending. The lack of stupidity would be abnormal. It may be best to keep guards fresh by having them work shorter shifts and increase the number of guards, as well as make them take frequent drills on actual hazards so that these scream out RED FLAG ox - ox - ox (:-), happy birthday to the smiley) while everything else won't dull their mind by overscrutiny.
Yes, they do. The Brits would know that one of their lords, Conrad Black, was caught on camera taking evidence against a court order. A lot of people will think twice about hidden cameras.
The amount of stuff available for smash and grab or just grab has risen significantly over the last twenty years, but it isn't just good upbringing that's deterring a whole generation of shoplifters. We all know that a good number of these youngsters wouldn't think twice about ripping someone off given the chance, as one can see from the bald-faced filesharing that industry is essentially paying lip service to stemming the upstoppable tide. Only the most desperate or the most ignorant people risk physical crime. Technology has made it much too difficult--the real deterrence is the combination of camera and the willingness to prosecute.
Properity and temptation abound, and many people ski down the slippery slope of selfish ends justifying any means. The next time you're out and about and haven't been brained by someone disguised in a suit, you have to thank technology for cameras that prevent that person from being victimized by some 1 hoodlum in 1000 people, and thereby becoming a soulless predator after having lost faith in humanity and civilization, and for nonnegotiables encoded in plastic.
Still, it is strange that 10,000 cameras are said to make little difference. That's easily said, but was there much suspicious activity seen on video, or was the halo effect in effect? The halo effect is an attitude that a driver might have when he sees a police car--the driver will do everything right, like a little angel, until he believes there's no more chance of observation, and then it's back to speeding and rolling through stop signs.
Multitudes of cameras have this numbing effect. People might behave woodenly by habit when they're outside but take out the stress inside by commiting even more devious or out-of-control acts just to keep themselves from totally falling apart. The cameras would be accepted more easily if they were known to help catch very frightening criminals. But it all depends on the type of people being surveiled. Were they upstanding people before the cameras were in place?
The concept of using an array of cameras to track someone in real-time would be difficult over a large area. Such an array in a casino works when all areas are visible. A much larger area requires many more cameras. As technology improves these cameras might have rapidly oscillating focus and zoom as well as quick swivel, much like a lawn sprinker or the eyes of a driver. If hundreds of millions are available to play with, this is the kind of technology that will pop up.
Once the technology is deemed good enough, it will be deployed to troubled areas like Baghdad. One may firmly believe a lot of funding will be put on this technology.
What's to stop a member of the MacGyver clan from taking apart some microwave ovens and aiming the beams at a satellite dish to make a long range toaster? It's frightful in the hands of people who want to cause pain or even start fires, jam communications, or heat things that ought to be kept cool. Keep an eye out for roving satellite dishes, especially the ones you can't see inside vans and trucks.
A pain ray is practically noiseless and can likely be shot around a corner with a mirror. Aren't there some religions that regard mirrors as effective tools against evil spirits? They might be used to construct shields on buildings.
Little detectors may be scattered about, and they'll sound an alarm if some twit is playing with a ray gun.
Over the next billion years, the sun will expand a bit, maybe enough to roast us. And numerous other bad things in the interim will prompt us to blow this popsicle stand. None to soon to be building better spacecraft.
And so we should have Moore's Sliding Window: Moore's Law to fail in 10-15 years, renewable annually.
Vegas might want to give odds on Moore's Law failing after a certain time, payable well after the fact.
It does get harder and harder to uphold the law. AMD is in dire straits, as its new quad core is failing to turn enough heads while a massive amount of debt needs to be repaid. If consumers care to keep Intel pricing at bay and to encourage more research, they should buy some AMD-equipped computers. The price level of a "good-enough" computer keeps falling though. Software isn't doing anything that makes people want faster hardware immediately, other than adding bloat. Even web pages are so loaded with junk that they take too long to load--there should be a "junk off" option, and web developers should delimit what is the interesting part and what is the crap so that browsers can slice a page apart. The situation seems so counterintuitive and pathetic.
So what might really be the limit to Moore's Law? Consider the human brain. It consumes less power than a CPU but can do amazing thinking, although not long, quick sequences of arithmetic. A billion-core CPU might easily be achieved in the near future. The cores wouldn't be too impressive by themselves but still individually capable of long, quick sequences of arithmetic, and put all together can rival a human brain. Where's the software? Is that what's really holding back hardware development?
CPU design is somewhat easier than software design, I suppose, since a CPU just has to achieve a general-purpose functionality. Software has to be better with each generation, and suit specific desires, while following longer and longer pathways.
the average home break thug won't use the computer - they probably won't even turn it on, they'll sell it for drug money
who's worried about the average thief taking something? These days, if someone breaks in, they'll knock you over the head, tie you up, give you a spanking, tear up your stuff, and then look for high-priced items. Any bold enough to come into your home is zany enough to take offense at the slightest defense.
That being said, what you do on a computer is bound to be highly confidential. Laptops are our personal supercomputers. If you lose one, it's hard to rebuild without backups.
Note that it is quite easy to write a tiny program to determine your computer's IP address, as seen by the outside world, and e-mail that address to yourself on a public e-mail account like Hotmail. If you have that program running as a service, then provided a thief actually connects to the Internet, you might find out something. It's a long shot though since if you are worried about data falling into the wrong hands, those hands wouldn't let you sniff them too easily.
My favorite laptop tracker is my own eyes. Away from home, I don't let strangers get too close. A further theft deterrence is reduced laptop pricing. It's likely I could leave my laptop unattended in a restaurant for an hour or two without anyone bothering to touch it, as long as they have some clue I'm still in the building. Not worth stealing to some people, but a dork might push it off the table or under a glass of water.
Reductions in laptop pricing also create more theft though, so beware. More and more people have computers, and if someone had their computer stolen, they could pilfer yours for a replacement.
. It really hurts someone like me when Microsoft decides to get rabies w.r.t. AutoPatcher
As the saying goes, "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" At least we hope Redmond is friendly.
Well, we all need patches. Bugs are a fact of computers. And as for Microsoft software going nutso, it's your finger that hit the button when it was time to say Decline.
I wonder what would happen if people hit Decline a few times before hitting Accept. Would Microsoft be notified? Can't hurt your computer, right?
Still, do what I do, while we're all still able - take a drive image immediately after updating.
Another point is, if you're installing all those 123 patches, you would have consentually installed whatever patch that did not require consent. We're all so enslaved to our machines.
Oil has just hit $80 a barrel. A fuel bomb might cost more than the property its blowing up. Also, the enemy might try to intercept it just to steal the fuel.
invent a way to stop the ultra-intelligent machines from destroying the inferior human race
It appears that homo superior does quite a bit of rampant destruction of homo inferior, and the superior side of each of our selves is always attempting to slay the inferior half.
Even if the intelligence of a person has a limit, the intellectual results of the population exceed the results of any one person. The intelligence of a person is nothing to sneeze at, though. There are many who can solve problems that no one has solved before, thus increasing the output of the whole, and still no one is able to solve all unsolved problems. Individuals are inferior to the population, but the population makes no attempts to destroy its members (yet).
A machine does not have to be the smartest cookie to be able to design a better machine. After all, if humans are so inferior and yet still capable designers, it is likely that even an inferior machine with enough intelligence can be used to design a machine with superior intelligence. For starters, a machine with intelligence can think of a better version by adding more of everything like memory and processing units. The software for processing knowledge and making choices can be enhanced.
Suppose a machine of intelligence greater than that of one person has been made. It would have more of every desirable quality, say, perhaps like the child you always wished you had, a real hero. Imagine if this machine were not only replicated by the thousand but even better versions come swiftly after and they take over every aspect of work. Many problems become solved. Many more problems that were never in our awareness appear, and some of them become solved but all the unsolved ones are beyond the reach of even the entire human populace.
In time, any one person could log on to the Internet and observe problems and solutions that are so big that it would take a person decades or centuries just to list the details of, while a machine requires milliseconds. However, a person with full trust might take the fruits of this knowledge and apply it a few steps farther, listlessly perhaps, without anything to worry about, as there may well be no pain left in the world. Will this be fun or boring? What if it was?
Consider the corporation. It behaves and is regarded as a person with greater powers than one person. It consumes vast resources and produces enormous output. In a world with super-intelligent machines, the machines will take charge of resources since they have the best ideas. If resources are limited, people may be content to huddle together in a big stinking mass in order for the machines to have all the required means of production.
What if this machine was not built? In time, corporation will become the super-intelligent machines, though driven with warm bodies. Mankind will still wind up huddling in big stinking masses like third world countries if resources become scarce. Is oil running out? Gasoline prices are at Katrina levels. It's been two years - hasn't the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes been fixed yet? I live in an oil producing area. Wells are being drilled at a far greater pace today than that of a few years ago just to maintain the level of output.
It's our standard of living at stake due to reduced resources. What we need is to channel these resources to the best results, or our fate will be sealed. In a few decades, we basically have to face the music, take our medicine, unless we come up with either solutions or a change in lifestyle.
The destruction of humanity by machines is quite possible. However, the immediate threat is machines designed for war rather than for intelligence. These days, approaching the anniversary of 9/11, it's not so hard to imagine the hijacking of a powerful device and turning it against peaceful citizens. One day the only way to stop terrorism may be to use powerful machines of our own. In times of peace, the mere existence of these machines will be enough to make us wonder what t
Thanks god the bomber in question did not do any test firing
Test with a live warhead or not, how would the button pusher know whether the device is the real deal? Is there any special circuitry that says THIS ACTION REQUIRES THE HIGHEST AUTHORIZATION?
I suppose this is a bit of a wake-up call, like 9/11 - bad things can happen, and it's about time to overreact a little.
Hah. I bought an 8 Mb stick for $500 once. That was a real bargain at the time. At that time, a real fast computer of the same dimensions would have been equivalent to a 300 MHz P3 at best...
What shocks me is there is only one hard disk. I would imagine 1 drive per motherboard.
Sounds crappy. Let's say you expose some important misdeed. You're likely to be edited out by an army of paid staff who keeps an eye on the 'net
Nope. If you post one misdeed and that gets edited out, such is life but shouldn't affect your credibility that much because everyone is always getting edited out a few times in the long run.
However, if you edit hundreds or thousands of different articles and people leave you alone, o great guru, you're good.
Wikipedia's ultimate strength depends on the community's desire for good information, readiness to stomp on crap, and will to contribute. Conversely, Wikipedia would decay if people didn't give a rat's ass about Wikipedia and let it go to ruin like an unweeded garden. This mechanism of quality control needs to be applied down the hierarchy of categories, subcategories, and articles. It's understandable that certain areas will have more pristine content overall while other areas will be populated with childish and wanton ideas. Thus, a contributor evaluation program can be tested.
Huh? It's really more difficult to tell whether you have free will than whether heaven/hell exists
Well, it used to be debated whether we can find heaven and hell, but now that this large void has been found -- it has to be heaven, as in the sinners of history never stood a chance.
how big were the chips? How big are the chips now?
Do the math indeed.
I have filled my hard disks and they're always sitting nearly full - that will reduce the number of available bits for rewriting. But I don't rewrite every single file. Some files are updated a lot for a span of weeks, but as my focus is on these files the other files just sit. If there's enough Flash memory, files that I know will almost never require rewriting should be made candidates for shifting around. That would make even more bits available for rewriting. Otherwise if the disk is always near full, it will be the free bits ready for rewriting over and over, and these will wear out.
Look for reviews that test with almost full drives, and speculate a file shifting mechanism may become available.
If the drive is almost empty, even if I swap big time every day, and that would be ultra painful because it seems that if I use more than the available RAM on my Vista, the swapping chews up my computer and makes it so slow that everything crawls - it's like hundreds of Megs are swapped and swapped and swapped for what I don't know - even so, that's about writing 10 times a day, 3650 times a year, which is much much less than 1,000,000. If the disk is an itty bitty 20 Gb, and wear leveling scatters 1 Gb of swap daily, it's an average of 0.1 writes per day for the whole disk and only 36.5 times a year.
I say let me swap on one of these because the rotating disk is a bitch to swap on. But by the time I can get to swap on such a drive, I'll get a computer with more RAM I hope, and I'll try to force that machine to its knees too.
Come to think of it, if the swap if fast, what will happen to the RAM market? Some people don't need gazigabytes and if the hard drive is a cheap RAM alternative, will RAM makers reduce R&D? Also, having less RAM equals having more swap -- good for making you replace your hard drive. The truth of the matter is that I don't need to use so much RAM at any one time. If I'm typing that takes very little memory. However, I manipulate the occasional image on MS Paint and have noticed that on the biggest files more than 1 Gb of RAM is consumed to work on a 100 Mb file. Even this little RAM eater would be ok with swapping to a Flash memory. Having 2 Gb of RAM with such a fast swap would be good enough for most people as long as the swap space expands with technology and is significantly less expensive. We may also hope that more R&D will be spent on Flash to remove the rewrite limit as well as speed up access.
The instant you're out of cache, you want to chuck the whole thing out the window. Fortunately to save power, there's something called power off.
In fact, if the disk isn't spinning constantly, boost its speed to 30,000 RPM or add 10x more platters.
On my laptop, I'm limited to having one hard disk internally, so having a big cache that would store the programs is desirable - and 4Gb or more seems minimal for now thanks to Vista. An external USB drive has been really useful for handling disk intense stuff so I don't have to slow down with the occasional swap.
Well, a big cache and a rotating drive would act as a two-drive system. The rotating drive has to be fast. Besides, the rotating drive would likely have to backup the flash (and perhaps vice versa to a limited amount due to space confines).
THen Why not ordinary RAM on top of a normal drive?
When I first bought a hard drive it had less capacity than all the RAM on this computer, and it was a big drive. The salesperson laughed at me thinking there was no way to fill it. And I paid more for the drive than I paid for this RAM by a factor of 2 or 3.
UPS + RAM + disk drive - cache all the stuff you use a lot in RAM, and it's all good. I suppose even Flash can be used for the Program Files and Windows folders.
Well, if anyone wants to do so, it's easily done. Ergo, if a company wants to sneak around, it can quickly gain bad publicity. However, any company can also find itself discussed in an undeservedly positive or negative way due to the public nature of Wikipedia.
Perhaps Wikipedia entries should have some reserved space that companies can use to make statements. Then we can really judge.
Hear, hear. I wouldn't want to be a sucker for the wrong format either. It's so strange, having two different competitors that are incompatible with an outcome where one will just disappear, especially today when before you know it, both formats will be totally obsolete. Maybe that's why it's not so strange... there's no great urgency and it can be treated as an interim technology while the next generation simply blows away this silliness.
I use Vista on my new computer. Faster computer boots slower than my slower XP computer!
Oh well. I also like it for some of the things that I do, and not worrying as much about security as I used to, but I also avoid many of the things that are potential security risks, so still worried:(
Worried about installing software too, and I just use the computer for what it's best at.
That's what keeps me using Vista. If you keep trying to optimize and make it what you want, you will become increasingly frustrated to the point where it is not worth keeping. Really a sad statement. Of course it's a good business strategy. Vista is bad like Windows 3.1 was bad? If so, the next version will make people want to upgrade, as long as the beta reviews are positive. Did anyone dump ME for XP? If Microsoft didn't build a new Windows, XP is still good enough even now, so there's no point for Microsoft to actually make Vista better. Why compete against yourself? Vista is a new concept and is expected to have problems. Good enough to sell, and earn something to develop the next version, which we hope will turn things around. Work hard, Microsoft. Vista sucks and I want to replace it. But we're on to you too so it'll have to be a real step up, or else it'll be relegated to a virtual machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Bypass: A means of circumvention.
Surpass: To be or go beyond, as in degree or quality; exceed.
Ah, the real answer is the big-time criminals have found cybercrime so lucrative, they're leaving or ignoring the drug trade. Thus, they bypass it.
If that were so, there would be an undersupply of drugs, and junkies may have to withdraw. A reduced demand may further weaken the idea that drugs are worth dabbling in.
maybe the TSA's airport security is one of the stupidest things to ever be seen
:-), happy birthday to the smiley) while everything else won't dull their mind by overscrutiny.
Well, airport security doesn't have a good track record, this short a time after the anniversary of 9-11.
But if anyone had anything to hide in their reading material, it would be best embedded in some innocent looking stuff, so from now on, forewarned is forearmed and those who look too innocent ought to be the most suspected.
Also the sheer volume of things that could be a threat makes security checks mind bending. The lack of stupidity would be abnormal. It may be best to keep guards fresh by having them work shorter shifts and increase the number of guards, as well as make them take frequent drills on actual hazards so that these scream out RED FLAG ox - ox - ox (
cameras don't deter criminals
Yes, they do. The Brits would know that one of their lords, Conrad Black, was caught on camera taking evidence against a court order. A lot of people will think twice about hidden cameras.
The amount of stuff available for smash and grab or just grab has risen significantly over the last twenty years, but it isn't just good upbringing that's deterring a whole generation of shoplifters. We all know that a good number of these youngsters wouldn't think twice about ripping someone off given the chance, as one can see from the bald-faced filesharing that industry is essentially paying lip service to stemming the upstoppable tide. Only the most desperate or the most ignorant people risk physical crime. Technology has made it much too difficult--the real deterrence is the combination of camera and the willingness to prosecute.
Properity and temptation abound, and many people ski down the slippery slope of selfish ends justifying any means. The next time you're out and about and haven't been brained by someone disguised in a suit, you have to thank technology for cameras that prevent that person from being victimized by some 1 hoodlum in 1000 people, and thereby becoming a soulless predator after having lost faith in humanity and civilization, and for nonnegotiables encoded in plastic.
Still, it is strange that 10,000 cameras are said to make little difference. That's easily said, but was there much suspicious activity seen on video, or was the halo effect in effect? The halo effect is an attitude that a driver might have when he sees a police car--the driver will do everything right, like a little angel, until he believes there's no more chance of observation, and then it's back to speeding and rolling through stop signs.
Multitudes of cameras have this numbing effect. People might behave woodenly by habit when they're outside but take out the stress inside by commiting even more devious or out-of-control acts just to keep themselves from totally falling apart. The cameras would be accepted more easily if they were known to help catch very frightening criminals. But it all depends on the type of people being surveiled. Were they upstanding people before the cameras were in place?
The concept of using an array of cameras to track someone in real-time would be difficult over a large area. Such an array in a casino works when all areas are visible. A much larger area requires many more cameras. As technology improves these cameras might have rapidly oscillating focus and zoom as well as quick swivel, much like a lawn sprinker or the eyes of a driver. If hundreds of millions are available to play with, this is the kind of technology that will pop up.
Once the technology is deemed good enough, it will be deployed to troubled areas like Baghdad. One may firmly believe a lot of funding will be put on this technology.
leaked into the public
What's to stop a member of the MacGyver clan from taking apart some microwave ovens and aiming the beams at a satellite dish to make a long range toaster? It's frightful in the hands of people who want to cause pain or even start fires, jam communications, or heat things that ought to be kept cool. Keep an eye out for roving satellite dishes, especially the ones you can't see inside vans and trucks.
A pain ray is practically noiseless and can likely be shot around a corner with a mirror. Aren't there some religions that regard mirrors as effective tools against evil spirits? They might be used to construct shields on buildings.
Little detectors may be scattered about, and they'll sound an alarm if some twit is playing with a ray gun.
hell in a handbasket
Over the next billion years, the sun will expand a bit, maybe enough to roast us. And numerous other bad things in the interim will prompt us to blow this popsicle stand. None to soon to be building better spacecraft.
but he predicted that end before, and failed
And so we should have Moore's Sliding Window: Moore's Law to fail in 10-15 years, renewable annually.
Vegas might want to give odds on Moore's Law failing after a certain time, payable well after the fact.
It does get harder and harder to uphold the law. AMD is in dire straits, as its new quad core is failing to turn enough heads while a massive amount of debt needs to be repaid. If consumers care to keep Intel pricing at bay and to encourage more research, they should buy some AMD-equipped computers. The price level of a "good-enough" computer keeps falling though. Software isn't doing anything that makes people want faster hardware immediately, other than adding bloat. Even web pages are so loaded with junk that they take too long to load--there should be a "junk off" option, and web developers should delimit what is the interesting part and what is the crap so that browsers can slice a page apart. The situation seems so counterintuitive and pathetic.
So what might really be the limit to Moore's Law? Consider the human brain. It consumes less power than a CPU but can do amazing thinking, although not long, quick sequences of arithmetic. A billion-core CPU might easily be achieved in the near future. The cores wouldn't be too impressive by themselves but still individually capable of long, quick sequences of arithmetic, and put all together can rival a human brain. Where's the software? Is that what's really holding back hardware development?
CPU design is somewhat easier than software design, I suppose, since a CPU just has to achieve a general-purpose functionality. Software has to be better with each generation, and suit specific desires, while following longer and longer pathways.
the average home break thug won't use the computer - they probably won't even turn it on, they'll sell it for drug money
who's worried about the average thief taking something? These days, if someone breaks in, they'll knock you over the head, tie you up, give you a spanking, tear up your stuff, and then look for high-priced items. Any bold enough to come into your home is zany enough to take offense at the slightest defense.
That being said, what you do on a computer is bound to be highly confidential. Laptops are our personal supercomputers. If you lose one, it's hard to rebuild without backups.
Note that it is quite easy to write a tiny program to determine your computer's IP address, as seen by the outside world, and e-mail that address to yourself on a public e-mail account like Hotmail. If you have that program running as a service, then provided a thief actually connects to the Internet, you might find out something. It's a long shot though since if you are worried about data falling into the wrong hands, those hands wouldn't let you sniff them too easily.
My favorite laptop tracker is my own eyes. Away from home, I don't let strangers get too close. A further theft deterrence is reduced laptop pricing. It's likely I could leave my laptop unattended in a restaurant for an hour or two without anyone bothering to touch it, as long as they have some clue I'm still in the building. Not worth stealing to some people, but a dork might push it off the table or under a glass of water.
Reductions in laptop pricing also create more theft though, so beware. More and more people have computers, and if someone had their computer stolen, they could pilfer yours for a replacement.
You have to give them points for being creative...
. It really hurts someone like me when Microsoft decides to get rabies w.r.t. AutoPatcher
As the saying goes, "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" At least we hope Redmond is friendly.
Well, we all need patches. Bugs are a fact of computers. And as for Microsoft software going nutso, it's your finger that hit the button when it was time to say Decline.
I wonder what would happen if people hit Decline a few times before hitting Accept. Would Microsoft be notified? Can't hurt your computer, right?
Still, do what I do, while we're all still able - take a drive image immediately after updating.
Another point is, if you're installing all those 123 patches, you would have consentually installed whatever patch that did not require consent. We're all so enslaved to our machines.
Oil has just hit $80 a barrel. A fuel bomb might cost more than the property its blowing up. Also, the enemy might try to intercept it just to steal the fuel.
invent a way to stop the ultra-intelligent machines from destroying the inferior human race
It appears that homo superior does quite a bit of rampant destruction of homo inferior, and the superior side of each of our selves is always attempting to slay the inferior half.
Even if the intelligence of a person has a limit, the intellectual results of the population exceed the results of any one person. The intelligence of a person is nothing to sneeze at, though. There are many who can solve problems that no one has solved before, thus increasing the output of the whole, and still no one is able to solve all unsolved problems. Individuals are inferior to the population, but the population makes no attempts to destroy its members (yet).
A machine does not have to be the smartest cookie to be able to design a better machine. After all, if humans are so inferior and yet still capable designers, it is likely that even an inferior machine with enough intelligence can be used to design a machine with superior intelligence. For starters, a machine with intelligence can think of a better version by adding more of everything like memory and processing units. The software for processing knowledge and making choices can be enhanced.
Suppose a machine of intelligence greater than that of one person has been made. It would have more of every desirable quality, say, perhaps like the child you always wished you had, a real hero. Imagine if this machine were not only replicated by the thousand but even better versions come swiftly after and they take over every aspect of work. Many problems become solved. Many more problems that were never in our awareness appear, and some of them become solved but all the unsolved ones are beyond the reach of even the entire human populace.
In time, any one person could log on to the Internet and observe problems and solutions that are so big that it would take a person decades or centuries just to list the details of, while a machine requires milliseconds. However, a person with full trust might take the fruits of this knowledge and apply it a few steps farther, listlessly perhaps, without anything to worry about, as there may well be no pain left in the world. Will this be fun or boring? What if it was?
Consider the corporation. It behaves and is regarded as a person with greater powers than one person. It consumes vast resources and produces enormous output. In a world with super-intelligent machines, the machines will take charge of resources since they have the best ideas. If resources are limited, people may be content to huddle together in a big stinking mass in order for the machines to have all the required means of production.
What if this machine was not built? In time, corporation will become the super-intelligent machines, though driven with warm bodies. Mankind will still wind up huddling in big stinking masses like third world countries if resources become scarce. Is oil running out? Gasoline prices are at Katrina levels. It's been two years - hasn't the infrastructure damaged by the hurricanes been fixed yet? I live in an oil producing area. Wells are being drilled at a far greater pace today than that of a few years ago just to maintain the level of output.
It's our standard of living at stake due to reduced resources. What we need is to channel these resources to the best results, or our fate will be sealed. In a few decades, we basically have to face the music, take our medicine, unless we come up with either solutions or a change in lifestyle.
The destruction of humanity by machines is quite possible. However, the immediate threat is machines designed for war rather than for intelligence. These days, approaching the anniversary of 9/11, it's not so hard to imagine the hijacking of a powerful device and turning it against peaceful citizens. One day the only way to stop terrorism may be to use powerful machines of our own. In times of peace, the mere existence of these machines will be enough to make us wonder what t
Thanks god the bomber in question did not do any test firing
Test with a live warhead or not, how would the button pusher know whether the device is the real deal? Is there any special circuitry that says THIS ACTION REQUIRES THE HIGHEST AUTHORIZATION?
I suppose this is a bit of a wake-up call, like 9/11 - bad things can happen, and it's about time to overreact a little.
Oh yes. On the roadmap is the technology to help us dance on the heads of pins.
Main Memory: Kingston DDR2-667 1GByte RAM $48.49 * 8 + $4.99sh = $392.91
...
Hah. I bought an 8 Mb stick for $500 once. That was a real bargain at the time. At that time, a real fast computer of the same dimensions would have been equivalent to a 300 MHz P3 at best
What shocks me is there is only one hard disk. I would imagine 1 drive per motherboard.
Sounds crappy. Let's say you expose some important misdeed. You're likely to be edited out by an army of paid staff who keeps an eye on the 'net
Nope. If you post one misdeed and that gets edited out, such is life but shouldn't affect your credibility that much because everyone is always getting edited out a few times in the long run.
However, if you edit hundreds or thousands of different articles and people leave you alone, o great guru, you're good.
Wikipedia's ultimate strength depends on the community's desire for good information, readiness to stomp on crap, and will to contribute. Conversely, Wikipedia would decay if people didn't give a rat's ass about Wikipedia and let it go to ruin like an unweeded garden. This mechanism of quality control needs to be applied down the hierarchy of categories, subcategories, and articles. It's understandable that certain areas will have more pristine content overall while other areas will be populated with childish and wanton ideas. Thus, a contributor evaluation program can be tested.
With the mod points investd in me, I hereby label your post flamebait!
But I really wouldn't
muhammad a while back
Even more recently, Jesus with a cigarette had a newspaper in trouble. Wonder if Opus is messing around with this story?
My bet for what can cause such a void is a set of slow moving black holes spiraling like a big drill. Wouldn't try this at home...
Huh? It's really more difficult to tell whether you have free will than whether heaven/hell exists
Well, it used to be debated whether we can find heaven and hell, but now that this large void has been found -- it has to be heaven, as in the sinners of history never stood a chance.
how big were the chips? How big are the chips now?
Do the math indeed.
I have filled my hard disks and they're always sitting nearly full - that will reduce the number of available bits for rewriting. But I don't rewrite every single file. Some files are updated a lot for a span of weeks, but as my focus is on these files the other files just sit. If there's enough Flash memory, files that I know will almost never require rewriting should be made candidates for shifting around. That would make even more bits available for rewriting. Otherwise if the disk is always near full, it will be the free bits ready for rewriting over and over, and these will wear out.
Look for reviews that test with almost full drives, and speculate a file shifting mechanism may become available.
If the drive is almost empty, even if I swap big time every day, and that would be ultra painful because it seems that if I use more than the available RAM on my Vista, the swapping chews up my computer and makes it so slow that everything crawls - it's like hundreds of Megs are swapped and swapped and swapped for what I don't know - even so, that's about writing 10 times a day, 3650 times a year, which is much much less than 1,000,000. If the disk is an itty bitty 20 Gb, and wear leveling scatters 1 Gb of swap daily, it's an average of 0.1 writes per day for the whole disk and only 36.5 times a year.
I say let me swap on one of these because the rotating disk is a bitch to swap on. But by the time I can get to swap on such a drive, I'll get a computer with more RAM I hope, and I'll try to force that machine to its knees too.
Come to think of it, if the swap if fast, what will happen to the RAM market? Some people don't need gazigabytes and if the hard drive is a cheap RAM alternative, will RAM makers reduce R&D? Also, having less RAM equals having more swap -- good for making you replace your hard drive. The truth of the matter is that I don't need to use so much RAM at any one time. If I'm typing that takes very little memory. However, I manipulate the occasional image on MS Paint and have noticed that on the biggest files more than 1 Gb of RAM is consumed to work on a 100 Mb file. Even this little RAM eater would be ok with swapping to a Flash memory. Having 2 Gb of RAM with such a fast swap would be good enough for most people as long as the swap space expands with technology and is significantly less expensive. We may also hope that more R&D will be spent on Flash to remove the rewrite limit as well as speed up access.
300 RPM etc.
Insane.
The instant you're out of cache, you want to chuck the whole thing out the window. Fortunately to save power, there's something called power off.
In fact, if the disk isn't spinning constantly, boost its speed to 30,000 RPM or add 10x more platters.
On my laptop, I'm limited to having one hard disk internally, so having a big cache that would store the programs is desirable - and 4Gb or more seems minimal for now thanks to Vista. An external USB drive has been really useful for handling disk intense stuff so I don't have to slow down with the occasional swap.
Well, a big cache and a rotating drive would act as a two-drive system. The rotating drive has to be fast. Besides, the rotating drive would likely have to backup the flash (and perhaps vice versa to a limited amount due to space confines).
Flash memory can die?
THen Why not ordinary RAM on top of a normal drive?
When I first bought a hard drive it had less capacity than all the RAM on this computer, and it was a big drive. The salesperson laughed at me thinking there was no way to fill it. And I paid more for the drive than I paid for this RAM by a factor of 2 or 3.
UPS + RAM + disk drive - cache all the stuff you use a lot in RAM, and it's all good. I suppose even Flash can be used for the Program Files and Windows folders.
should be posted clearly
Well, if anyone wants to do so, it's easily done. Ergo, if a company wants to sneak around, it can quickly gain bad publicity. However, any company can also find itself discussed in an undeservedly positive or negative way due to the public nature of Wikipedia.
Perhaps Wikipedia entries should have some reserved space that companies can use to make statements. Then we can really judge.
Holding off
... there's no great urgency and it can be treated as an interim technology while the next generation simply blows away this silliness.
Hear, hear. I wouldn't want to be a sucker for the wrong format either. It's so strange, having two different competitors that are incompatible with an outcome where one will just disappear, especially today when before you know it, both formats will be totally obsolete. Maybe that's why it's not so strange
it's because the OS is a resource hog.
:(
I use Vista on my new computer. Faster computer boots slower than my slower XP computer!
Oh well. I also like it for some of the things that I do, and not worrying as much about security as I used to, but I also avoid many of the things that are potential security risks, so still worried
Worried about installing software too, and I just use the computer for what it's best at.
That's what keeps me using Vista. If you keep trying to optimize and make it what you want, you will become increasingly frustrated to the point where it is not worth keeping. Really a sad statement. Of course it's a good business strategy. Vista is bad like Windows 3.1 was bad? If so, the next version will make people want to upgrade, as long as the beta reviews are positive. Did anyone dump ME for XP? If Microsoft didn't build a new Windows, XP is still good enough even now, so there's no point for Microsoft to actually make Vista better. Why compete against yourself? Vista is a new concept and is expected to have problems. Good enough to sell, and earn something to develop the next version, which we hope will turn things around. Work hard, Microsoft. Vista sucks and I want to replace it. But we're on to you too so it'll have to be a real step up, or else it'll be relegated to a virtual machine.