Actually the support for Rage Theatre 200 based cards is in the works. Bogdan Diaconescu and Matt Mercer have both worked with it.
Right now the stumbling block is to upload DSP microcode using VIP bus FIFO. For some reason how to do this was obvious to ATI folks (as docs don't mention much of it) but very hard to accomplish in practice.
Zed initially indicated that he was now charging for windows binaries because of all of the work involved when compiling for windows. He said it took too long, was frustrating, and he wouldn't do it anymore for free. I started a thread that suggested he slow down the windows binary release cycle, to half pace. Release windows binaries every other major release, and you have half the work. It seems his real reason for going shareware is money, not time spent (although they are related, of course).
I can sympathize with Zed. Each time I have to make a binary for Windows it takes a lot of effort, even when I try to keep the code as generic as possible.
The suggestion to increase the release cycle won't work - you still need to catch up to 6 months of changes to port to Windows. It is not simply the matter of compiling things - you run into slightly differing C library issues, MS interfaces that are not generic enough, etc.
Also, I think he has a fair point - the code is available, people who need it can go and do the port themselves. Or they can go and use a platform which is easy to develop for (like Linux).
In other words, Windows is a commercial platform,
sold for much money and charging for packaging service of add-on application is entirely appropriate.
Of course, I do agree that the issue with contributed code needs to be resolved.
Lastly, I think that maintaining a forked Windows port is a rather thankless job.
GPL does help with code forking - it gives you the freedom to do with the fork as you please.
As opposed to buying forked software (say Mac OS X) and then having to wait for the developer to fix bugs in the portions of code that are binary only.
In other words, the help is not in prevention of forks, but rather in making it easy to merge them back.
First of all there is an interpretation where you are right - see my other post (posted as a correction to the one we are discussing).
Secondly, geometrical quantization is a mathematical construction (or description) of both quantum and classical systems in such a way that classical system is a limit of quantum one
when h approaches 0 and the symmetry properties are preserved.
It is called "geometrical" because geometry can be studied from the point of view of a set of points and a symmetry group acting on it - this approach was started by Klein about 100 years ago.
I realize this all sounds very dry, but this is not the fault of this science - I am squeezing a somewhat large body of knowledge in a few sentences without pictures. It is really quite beautiful and does not require much calculation.
Perhaps, I should make a toy game or something to play with.. Might be fun:)
From the Georgia State University Physics website: "The property called electron spin must be considered to be a quantum concept without detailed classical analogy"
There is something called "geometrical quantization" which actually shows that quantum spin *is* the right analog of classical spin.
The reason this is not mentioned is that it is easier to teach undergraduates how to calculate using spin rather than give understanding of it.
The "usual" behaviour you are accustomed to happens because the particles have weakly interacting spins and are unordered.
Sorry, this is not right. Usual behaviour is due more to particles changing positions than to remnants of quantum behaviour.
So your point would hold if we restrict ourselves to considering only spinning that is due to bodies rotating one around another.
My point would hold if we allow idealization of solid body - i.e. an object with an intrinsic spin.
For example, you could consider a ball as multitude of molecules changing positions around each other.
Or we can consider it as idealized object (sphere) with an axis of rotation - I usually think of it this way. (So throwing a ball is composed of two parts - imparting linear movement and spinning the ball around with fingers. Note that usage of "spinning" as independent of movement.)
Quantum spin is the right generalization of intrinsic spin at the quantum level.
What do you mean by nothing is spinning ? What does it mean to be spinning ?
I can tell when a ball spins because I can see it. But does Earth spin ? I can't see the rotation but I can infer it with tools.
Do small pieces of matter (like dust) spin ? Maybe.
Now it turns out when you look at very small pieces of matter (like particles) then the laws of nature we are accustomed to change. This is simply because we do not teach quantum mechanics in kindergarten.
One that is aware of quantum mechanics see its manifestations on macro scale - they are just commonly perceived as separate phenomena (like electricity).
Now classical rotation corresponds precisely to quantum spin.
When you consider two quantum particles (with spins J1 and J2) as a single system the result is
a tensor product of spins - so you get a direct sum of representations between |J1-J2| and |J1+J2|.
When you have a lot of particles comprising a ball you can still describe it on a quantum mechanical level - it would be a direct sum of representations of SU(2) with numbers between 0 or 1/2 and N/2 (where N is the number of particles).
The "usual" behaviour you are accustomed to happens because the particles have weakly interacting spins and are unordered.
The quantum part can manifest in macroscopic situations, albeit in (so far) very restricted circumstance - for example quantum Hall effect.
My point is that you can start at very small with quantum notion of spin and then as you increase the number of particles in your system you will gradually reach the situation where classical notions of spin are a *very* good approximation.
Usual 3 dimensional spin is characterized by speed (revolutions per second) and the axis the object is spinning about.
Flipping spin means reversing the axis - i.e. changing the direction of rotation.
This is precisely what happens.
Imagine a pool of water with a ball inside it.
The ball is weighted so that it has the same specific weight as water - so it is inside it.
Spin the ball so that the rotation axis is perpendicular to the still water. (How you do this is not relevant, but you could use an ultrasound controlled gyroscope inside the ball.)
Now what is possible in quantum world is to reverse the direction of rotation while preserving the speed by sending waves in the water.
The quantum nature manifests in "preserving the speed" part - quantization condition for electron spin requests that it is always at maximum possible rotation speed in some direction.
The ability to reverse the spin is not quantum per se, but is due to the electric field using transversal waves (and its interaction with electron) versus waves in water (i.e. sound) being longitudinal waves.
You see electron spin space is a two dimensional complex space. It is tied to usual 3 dimensional real space via representation of SU(2) - so it is hard to say which direction corresponds to which.
However, if one fixes a basis in usual space
one can use it to fix a particular representation of SU(2).
Furthermore, one of the basis vectors will have a particularly simple Pauli matrix corresponding to it - the direction of this vector is usually called "quantization axis".
Often this vector corresponds to "z" axis. The "up" spin is then defined as (1,0) and the "down" spin is (0,1). So flipping the spin upside down is just switching components.
Another justification for talking about "up" and "down" is that spin vectors are usually written as columns so there is an upper entry and the lower entry.
I wonder if Baystar is now in position to pull a short squeeze.
I.e. they lend others theirs shares to short and buy them up simultaneously.
Then when the time is up to return the shares Baystar is the only game in town and they sell their shares (which they have 2x or more of)
at a profit. The actual shares they are left with are then irrelevant.
One million golf balls do not take that much space. In fact they should fit comfortably into
3m cube (assuming the diameter of a golf ball is 3cm or not much bigger than that).
Do not get carried away by the fact that weapons
are used to inflict violence. If anything this fact is a commentary on the current human nature which can turn even fun things (like football) into violence.
The fact is that even without armies or wars weapons would still be made.
The reason is that a weapon makes a good intermediate scientific goal - deliver and release large amount of energy to a small remote location.
People who experienced the delight of making something go "Boom" (however small) on command will understand what I am talking about. (Explosives not required - compressed air will do just fine..)
What happens is that there are several theories
(supersymmetry for one) that predict WIMPs, but those particles are similar to neutrinos - they interact, but very rarely (for example, one of the candidates is a supersymmetric double of neutrinos).
The good thing about those theories is that they can be tested with present technologies.
So the experiment we are discussing will allow to rule out or at least constrain parameters in such theories.
However, I was talking about my home network. An enterprise network is different - but then there are usually people paid to administer it.
So the only hole that affected me personally was the one in OpenSSL libraries.
The point I was trying to make is that in Linux you can examine yourself all pieces of software that you trust - i.e. networking code, firewall, ssh client.
If you find a hole or just think the coding is bad you can discard that piece.
With Windows there is a single point of trust - Microsoft. Either you trust Microsoft or you don't.
Because we cannot directly observe mass. What we can observe is an influence of a particle on other matter which we can track.
For example, proton that is flying by will influence other particles by its electromagnetic field and also with strong force - if its bumps into another particle.
Thus in a babble chamber you will see a track from the photon since it will ionize other particles during its fly-by and they will serve as starting points for bubbles.
Also if one makes a big block lead and cools it down one would be able to observe the increase in temperature if the proton hits a lead nucleus.
(this assumes that the proton is fast enough..)
WIMP means weakly interacting massive particle. Since it interacts very weakly with matter (like neutrino) it is very hard to observe.
Linux distributions do not have major security problems as often as Microsoft (I can remember a single occasion when a hole was found in SSL libraries and I had to upgrade fast).
Also, on a Linux system there is no problem finding out what exactly runs, what it does and
one can check the code quality.
In contrast, I have never even heard of the "subsystem" that is being used by this worm.
On a free system no one *has* to fix bugs for you, but you have the freedom to do it yourself
(and configure the system anyway you like, so that, if you are not comfortable running sendmail, you use other software like exim or postfix).
On a black box system like Windows the company that makes it is responsible for getting each and every detail right because they do not let anyone else touch the contents.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now the stumbling block is to upload DSP microcode using VIP bus FIFO. For some reason how to do this was obvious to ATI folks (as docs don't mention much of it) but very hard to accomplish in practice.
I can sympathize with Zed. Each time I have to make a binary for Windows it takes a lot of effort, even when I try to keep the code as generic as possible.
The suggestion to increase the release cycle won't work - you still need to catch up to 6 months of changes to port to Windows. It is not simply the matter of compiling things - you run into slightly differing C library issues, MS interfaces that are not generic enough, etc.
Also, I think he has a fair point - the code is available, people who need it can go and do the port themselves. Or they can go and use a platform which is easy to develop for (like Linux).
In other words, Windows is a commercial platform, sold for much money and charging for packaging service of add-on application is entirely appropriate.
Of course, I do agree that the issue with contributed code needs to be resolved.
Lastly, I think that maintaining a forked Windows port is a rather thankless job.
See Linux DVD+R/W page and search for "Book type".
In my case setting book type to DVD-R for a DVD+R dvd allowed it to play fine in a drive that would not accept plain DVD+R disk.
As opposed to buying forked software (say Mac OS X) and then having to wait for the developer to fix bugs in the portions of code that are binary only.
In other words, the help is not in prevention of forks, but rather in making it easy to merge them back.
Just install Cygwin - about as close as you can get to Linux development environment while still producing Win32 binaries.
2. Not all SUV's are fuel hogs - I have Subaru Forester and it is pretty fuel efficient, at least as well as many "plain" midsize cars.
So if you want to use your car for anything besides commute a minivan or SUV are very good choices.
Secondly, geometrical quantization is a mathematical construction (or description) of both quantum and classical systems in such a way that classical system is a limit of quantum one when h approaches 0 and the symmetry properties are preserved.
It is called "geometrical" because geometry can be studied from the point of view of a set of points and a symmetry group acting on it - this approach was started by Klein about 100 years ago.
I realize this all sounds very dry, but this is not the fault of this science - I am squeezing a somewhat large body of knowledge in a few sentences without pictures. It is really quite beautiful and does not require much calculation.
Perhaps, I should make a toy game or something to play with.. Might be fun :)
There is something called "geometrical quantization" which actually shows that quantum spin *is* the right analog of classical spin.
The reason this is not mentioned is that it is easier to teach undergraduates how to calculate using spin rather than give understanding of it.
Sorry, this is not right. Usual behaviour is due more to particles changing positions than to remnants of quantum behaviour.
So your point would hold if we restrict ourselves to considering only spinning that is due to bodies rotating one around another.
My point would hold if we allow idealization of solid body - i.e. an object with an intrinsic spin.
For example, you could consider a ball as multitude of molecules changing positions around each other.
Or we can consider it as idealized object (sphere) with an axis of rotation - I usually think of it this way. (So throwing a ball is composed of two parts - imparting linear movement and spinning the ball around with fingers. Note that usage of "spinning" as independent of movement.)
Quantum spin is the right generalization of intrinsic spin at the quantum level.
Just for fun let me continue.. :)
What do you mean by nothing is spinning ? What does it mean to be spinning ?
I can tell when a ball spins because I can see it. But does Earth spin ? I can't see the rotation but I can infer it with tools.
Do small pieces of matter (like dust) spin ? Maybe.
Now it turns out when you look at very small pieces of matter (like particles) then the laws of nature we are accustomed to change. This is simply because we do not teach quantum mechanics in kindergarten.
One that is aware of quantum mechanics see its manifestations on macro scale - they are just commonly perceived as separate phenomena (like electricity).
Now classical rotation corresponds precisely to quantum spin.
When you consider two quantum particles (with spins J1 and J2) as a single system the result is a tensor product of spins - so you get a direct sum of representations between |J1-J2| and |J1+J2|.
When you have a lot of particles comprising a ball you can still describe it on a quantum mechanical level - it would be a direct sum of representations of SU(2) with numbers between 0 or 1/2 and N/2 (where N is the number of particles).
The "usual" behaviour you are accustomed to happens because the particles have weakly interacting spins and are unordered.
The quantum part can manifest in macroscopic situations, albeit in (so far) very restricted circumstance - for example quantum Hall effect.
My point is that you can start at very small with quantum notion of spin and then as you increase the number of particles in your system you will gradually reach the situation where classical notions of spin are a *very* good approximation.
Usual 3 dimensional spin is characterized by speed (revolutions per second) and the axis the object is spinning about.
Flipping spin means reversing the axis - i.e. changing the direction of rotation.
This is precisely what happens.
Imagine a pool of water with a ball inside it. The ball is weighted so that it has the same specific weight as water - so it is inside it.
Spin the ball so that the rotation axis is perpendicular to the still water. (How you do this is not relevant, but you could use an ultrasound controlled gyroscope inside the ball.)
Now what is possible in quantum world is to reverse the direction of rotation while preserving the speed by sending waves in the water.
The quantum nature manifests in "preserving the speed" part - quantization condition for electron spin requests that it is always at maximum possible rotation speed in some direction.
The ability to reverse the spin is not quantum per se, but is due to the electric field using transversal waves (and its interaction with electron) versus waves in water (i.e. sound) being longitudinal waves.
You see electron spin space is a two dimensional complex space. It is tied to usual 3 dimensional real space via representation of SU(2) - so it is hard to say which direction corresponds to which.
However, if one fixes a basis in usual space one can use it to fix a particular representation of SU(2).
Furthermore, one of the basis vectors will have a particularly simple Pauli matrix corresponding to it - the direction of this vector is usually called "quantization axis".
Often this vector corresponds to "z" axis. The "up" spin is then defined as (1,0) and the "down" spin is (0,1). So flipping the spin upside down is just switching components.
Another justification for talking about "up" and "down" is that spin vectors are usually written as columns so there is an upper entry and the lower entry.
As I understand the article Cornice makes 1" drives only (small enough to fit into MP3 player) and Seagate does not produce such drives at all.
If Cornice infringes Seagate patents and Seagate wins they would squashing a manufacturer with a completely different niche.
Say a $100 box that can fit 5 IDE drives - would be perfect for bulk data storage.
It is not the business success of the company that we are cheering about, but the great product they produce.
I.e. they lend others theirs shares to short and buy them up simultaneously.
Then when the time is up to return the shares Baystar is the only game in town and they sell their shares (which they have 2x or more of) at a profit. The actual shares they are left with are then irrelevant.
ESR used to do this, but it looks like he is looking for a replacement
9 cubic meters will fit easily in a truck.
The fact is that even without armies or wars weapons would still be made.
The reason is that a weapon makes a good intermediate scientific goal - deliver and release large amount of energy to a small remote location.
People who experienced the delight of making something go "Boom" (however small) on command will understand what I am talking about. (Explosives not required - compressed air will do just fine..)
Does this mean that marketing folks at Intel can only count using one hand ? :)
What happens is that there are several theories (supersymmetry for one) that predict WIMPs, but those particles are similar to neutrinos - they interact, but very rarely (for example, one of the candidates is a supersymmetric double of neutrinos).
The good thing about those theories is that they can be tested with present technologies.
So the experiment we are discussing will allow to rule out or at least constrain parameters in such theories.
However, I was talking about my home network. An enterprise network is different - but then there are usually people paid to administer it.
So the only hole that affected me personally was the one in OpenSSL libraries.
The point I was trying to make is that in Linux you can examine yourself all pieces of software that you trust - i.e. networking code, firewall, ssh client.
If you find a hole or just think the coding is bad you can discard that piece.
With Windows there is a single point of trust - Microsoft. Either you trust Microsoft or you don't.
Because we cannot directly observe mass. What we can observe is an influence of a particle on other matter which we can track.
For example, proton that is flying by will influence other particles by its electromagnetic field and also with strong force - if its bumps into another particle.
Thus in a babble chamber you will see a track from the photon since it will ionize other particles during its fly-by and they will serve as starting points for bubbles.
Also if one makes a big block lead and cools it down one would be able to observe the increase in temperature if the proton hits a lead nucleus. (this assumes that the proton is fast enough..)
WIMP means weakly interacting massive particle. Since it interacts very weakly with matter (like neutrino) it is very hard to observe.
1 MiniDV cassette (1 hour - SP mode) translates into approximately 13Gb of video files.
So, if you want to edit home movies comfortably your disk space should better be measured in 0.1Tb units.
Also, on a Linux system there is no problem finding out what exactly runs, what it does and one can check the code quality.
In contrast, I have never even heard of the "subsystem" that is being used by this worm.
On a free system no one *has* to fix bugs for you, but you have the freedom to do it yourself (and configure the system anyway you like, so that, if you are not comfortable running sendmail, you use other software like exim or postfix).
On a black box system like Windows the company that makes it is responsible for getting each and every detail right because they do not let anyone else touch the contents.