According to the article, it is not a problem with the motherboard at all. The problem is "the operating system is creating coherency problems within the system by creating cacheable translation to AGP GART-mapped physical memory." That means it's a problem with the OS, not with the motherboard or processor.
In truth, we should probably say it is a combination of a problem with the OS and a problem with the processor. After all, Intel processors don't have the same problem, simply because they work differently. So while it may not technically be the CPU's fault, the CPU does play a part.
It's hard to believe so many respectable publications ran the perpetual motion story, but we shouldn't be surprised; there have always been gullible people.
In fact, check out this guy's website: he's selling a book he wrote that explains the secrets of a true perpetual motion machine!
So this guy claims to have made a perpetual motion machine? Here are some examples of other "revolutionary" perpetual motion machines--which of course don't work. (from the website of Professor R.P. Feynman.)
If this turns out to be true, it would be a remarkable find. But as the article points out, this is only a preliminary report, and "the team has so far published little." They will need to carry out extensive tests and publish a lot more research before anything conclusive can be determined.
It is interesting, but I wish researchers wouldn't jump the gun and announce "findings" before research is complete. (Cold fusion, anyone?)
Not sure what license their using, but...Do whay O'Reilly does with their Open Book [oreilly.com] program.
According to their website, when you sign a contract with O'Reilly you give them "the exclusive right to print, publish, distribute, and sell copies of the book, and works derived from the book, in printed form and in electronic media such as CD-ROM, and to license others to do so, for the duration of the copyright in the book, in all languages, throughout the world."
That isn't open or free by any stretch of the imagination, so if you want your book to be freely available, O'Reilly isn't your best bet.
There doesn't seem to be much precedent for writing "open source" books, per se. My suggestion is that you contact a publisher and work out a contract that allows them to exclusively produce and publish the written form of the book, but that also allows the book to be freely available online. Maybe you could also work out an agreement that the publisher would give up all rights to the book after 5 years or so. You probably won't make any money on the book (but that's not your aim, right?) but as far as I see, that's probably the only way you are going to get the book published in paper form. (You can always distribute it in electronic form online by yourself, but it helps to have a paper edition.)
Why the hell does using DDR memory even the results? The Pentium 4 was designed for RDRAM for God's sake.
Not entirely true. Although at first the only motherboards you could get for the Pentium 4 supported only RDRAM, but now Intel has released chipsets that support DDR RAM as well. You can check out the chipsets on Intel's website: the 850 chipset supports RDRAM, and the 845 chipset supports DDR RAM and PC133 RAM.
For these comparisons to really be valid they should base them on price : i.e. "We have $2000 to spend on each platform"
That's a good idea if you are comparing the options for the general user looking to buy a computer. In this case, they are reviewing the top-of-the-line processors (which people on a budget won't be buying anyway.) Only those with a large budget will be buying a machine with one of these processors anyway, so price shouldn't be an issue.
Also, their decision to use DDR RAM for both platforms is misguided. Those who pay the big bucks for the fastest processors won't skimp on the rest of the PC, so the comparison really should be done using the RD RAM the Pentium 4 is designed for. Instead of trying to artificially force the platforms to be as similar as possible, they should compare real-world hardware configurations.
My question is, does it matter? If I want to host a major website, I want a.com or maybe a.org, possibly a.net if nothing else is available, but I'll never get a.tv domain. And if I just want a domain name to play around with, I'm going to buy whichever is cheapest.
So it all comes down to this question: how much will a.tv cost me?
The MIT Media Lab has apparently always aimed a little high--for example, the article states that their building was designed by I.M. Pei. The world's most famous architect? For a Media Lab? It seems they could spend their money more frugally. They may be hurting from the dot-com bust and the economic slowdown, but that's to be expected--everyone is hurting. The MIT Media Lab is hurting more because they've spent money unwisely in the past.
Of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong.
I don't know about effects on one's health, but radio frequency interference can be a real problem. For example, I have a set of cordless headphones that I use so I can roam my room listening to music and not bother anyone else. However, my neighbor's cordless phone uses the same frequency (approximately 900MHz, in case you're interested.) I can tell when he's using the phone because the static interrupts my music. If I tune my headphones carefully, I can even hear his conversation.
Banning wireless technology entirely (as the article describes them doing in Mendocino) is probably not a good solution, but I think there should be regulations and standards enforced to make ensure better cooperation between wireless devices, to prevent interference.
It's an interesting idea, but the real problem is not storing the 100 TB of data, it's figuring out how to search through it to find what you're looking for. Now, apparently they write a lot of their own software, but it might be better if they could team up with Google and have Google index their sites on a special database. We'd have www.google.com for regular searches, and wayback.google.com for the Wayback Machine's sites.
Something else I found interesting: according to the article, they "use as much open source software as [they] can." That makes sense when they've got between 300 and 400 computers, and with the number growing all the time. Licensing all those with a non-open OS would be quite expensive.
I'm looking forward to "Indiana Jones 4", but I am worried by the recent example of "Crocodile Dundee in LA"--the original Crocodile Dundee was great, but the recent movie wasn't worth seeing.
Now, I imagine Steven Spielberg will do a better job with Indiana Jones than was done with Crocodile Dundee, but it's something to keep in mind. I hope the new movie introduces a new aspect of Indiana Jones--after all, Harrison Ford is quite a bit older now, so we can't expect the exact same stuff as before. He still has to be Indiana Jones, but just a little changed over the years.
Why do you suppose the post office is advertising for Microsoft? Is it a conspiracy designed to kill Linux?
No, the truth is, Microsoft can advertise Windows XP because they have a large advertising budget. Linux doesn't get advertised nearly as much because Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Slackware, etc. are all operating on a very thin profit margin and can't afford the kind of advertising that Microsoft can.
Now, the question as to whether the US Postal System should endorse or provide a venue for the promotion of Windows XP is another issue altogether. But it is important to realize that without Microsoft's advertising budget, this wouldn't ever have happened.
According to the article, this sort of thing is not entirely new: "The UK government's intelligence headquarters, GCHQ, issued ac hallenge to job hunters in January 2000."
However, this was the first time that a university staged such a contest with scholarship money as a prize. And the University of Lethbridge's puzzle was a bit easier than GHCQ's puzzle, apparently.
I wish my university would give away scholarship money like this--I could sure use the money, and I'd like the challenge.
I can understand how the popularity of pinball dropped in favor of video arcade games, but it is unfortunate that the manufacturers are no longer producing spare parts. I guess there just isn't any profit in it.
Here's an idea: buy a couple old pinball machines that no longer work and strip them for the parts. Go online to http://www.xmission.com/daina/pinball.html, which (as the article mentioned) has "334 parts for sale ads, but more than 1200 parts wanted ads", and sell replacement parts. If you can get the broken pinball machines cheap, you can make some money and make a lot of people happy. I might do this myself if I had the money--but unfortunately, I spent everything on university tuition.
According to the article, one of the reasons Red Hat might gain market share outside of the United States is because "a desktop vendor in Latin America or especially China, if they can save 50 to 60 bucks on a PC that's a big deal." Having lived overseas (the Philippines) I can say from personal experience that at least some of the desktop vendors do not pay for the copies of Windows they install on new systems. So a free OS may not be that big an incentive. (And I don't believe for a minute that the Windows XP registration will put a stop to this sort of piracy--it will only stop the casual home piracy.)
It seems to me that Palm is doing this to hedge their bets against Microsoft. This way, they can split the company--if Microsoft kills Palm OS, the hardware division of the company will survive, and vice versa.
The reason they are doing this may be because their market has become saturated. As the Yahoo! article mentioned, "demand for organizers has ebbed," and "unlike Microsoft, Palm does not have a multibillion-dollar product like Windows to fall back on." So it looks like this move is Palm's way of trying to ensure their survival as they do business against Microsoft.
This games (from the description) reminds be a bit of the old Gobliins. For example, the site says the gameplay involves controlling multiple characters, and "the different characters you can control will each have different skills and specialties." You have to know your characters' strengths and weaknesses--just like in the old Sierra game Gobliins. In Gobliins, you have three characters--one is incredibly strong but stupid, one can cast some magic spells, and I forget what the third one can do (it's been a long time since I played the game.)
Well, this Farscape games sounds like it could be even better. You have 6 characters to choose from, with a correspondingly greater complexity. I look forward to testing out the game myself.
This sounds like an interesting idea, but there are some issues to work out. For instance, how large a space can a message take up? Should all messages be limited to a set amount of space, say a circle 10 meters in diameter, or could individual message sizes be tailored to match the requirements of each message? And how are overlapping messages going to be resolved? Does the first message posted get priority, the latest message posted, or could the user choose from a menu to see all of them?
Furthermore, the issue of time limits needs to be addressed--I don't want messages from three years ago clogging up the system. Perhaps each message should be limited to a month or two, maybe more or less depending on how popular the service gets.
Apparently, Invader ZIM won an Emmy for animation work. (Specifically, Kyle Menke got the Emmy for his storyboarding work.) Too bad it's being cancelled--it really is a quality show.
According to the article, it isn't being axed immediately--next season there will be only six episodes instead of 20, which means there will still be 16 more new episodes to wait for.
However, it is still disappointing. I've only seen Invader Zim a couple times (my cable company doesn't carry that channel) but it was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. Unfortunately, I believe Nickelodeon marketed it to the wrong audience: it should have been aimed at teenagers and adults. Most young children don't appreciate it enough.
Perhaps if Invader Zim had been on another network, one that doesn't focus on children's entertainment, it would have fared better.
If this is indeed a breakthrough, I hope the National Science Foundation (who is funding the research) decides to make the information free for anyone to use. The last thing we need is for them to kill the technology by attempting to retain control of it through copyrights, patents, and controlled licensing. Research like this should be published and given freely to the world community, not licensed to corporations to try to make a buck.
The truth of the matter is, more people are willing to pay extra to get quality. Case in point: my first online purchase (2 years ago) was a CD burner, and I bought it from the retailer who had the cheapest price. Three months later, still without my CD burner, the company (TheBigStore.com) was out of business, and my $200 was gone.
Now when I buy online, I don't even bother looking for the cheapest price, because I want to know I will recieve my product. I order from reputable big-name companies such as Amazon and WalMart.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the article, it is not a problem with the motherboard at all. The problem is "the operating system is creating coherency problems within the system by creating cacheable translation to AGP GART-mapped physical memory." That means it's a problem with the OS, not with the motherboard or processor.
In truth, we should probably say it is a combination of a problem with the OS and a problem with the processor. After all, Intel processors don't have the same problem, simply because they work differently. So while it may not technically be the CPU's fault, the CPU does play a part.
It's hard to believe so many respectable publications ran the perpetual motion story, but we shouldn't be surprised; there have always been gullible people.
In fact, check out this guy's website: he's selling a book he wrote that explains the secrets of a true perpetual motion machine!
Fortunately, there are some sane people in the world too. Check out Professor Hibbert's Perpetual Motion Page, as well as Eric's History of Perpetual Motion and Free Energy Machines and Prof. R.P. Feynman's Perpetual Motion Page
So this guy claims to have made a perpetual motion machine? Here are some examples of other "revolutionary" perpetual motion machines--which of course don't work. (from the website of Professor R.P. Feynman.)
The underwater spinning donut
A pulley-based system
and a piston-based machine
According to the article: ...a patent application seen by New Scientist shows the team has carried out extensive experiments.
This means the patent holders can charge an arm and a leg, literally!
If this turns out to be true, it would be a remarkable find. But as the article points out, this is only a preliminary report, and "the team has so far published little." They will need to carry out extensive tests and publish a lot more research before anything conclusive can be determined.
It is interesting, but I wish researchers wouldn't jump the gun and announce "findings" before research is complete. (Cold fusion, anyone?)
According to their website, when you sign a contract with O'Reilly you give them "the exclusive right to print, publish, distribute, and sell copies of the book, and works derived from the book, in printed form and in electronic media such as CD-ROM, and to license others to do so, for the duration of the copyright in the book, in all languages, throughout the world."
That isn't open or free by any stretch of the imagination, so if you want your book to be freely available, O'Reilly isn't your best bet.
There doesn't seem to be much precedent for writing "open source" books, per se. My suggestion is that you contact a publisher and work out a contract that allows them to exclusively produce and publish the written form of the book, but that also allows the book to be freely available online. Maybe you could also work out an agreement that the publisher would give up all rights to the book after 5 years or so. You probably won't make any money on the book (but that's not your aim, right?) but as far as I see, that's probably the only way you are going to get the book published in paper form. (You can always distribute it in electronic form online by yourself, but it helps to have a paper edition.)
Not entirely true. Although at first the only motherboards you could get for the Pentium 4 supported only RDRAM, but now Intel has released chipsets that support DDR RAM as well. You can check out the chipsets on Intel's website: the 850 chipset supports RDRAM, and the 845 chipset supports DDR RAM and PC133 RAM.
That's a good idea if you are comparing the options for the general user looking to buy a computer. In this case, they are reviewing the top-of-the-line processors (which people on a budget won't be buying anyway.) Only those with a large budget will be buying a machine with one of these processors anyway, so price shouldn't be an issue.
Also, their decision to use DDR RAM for both platforms is misguided. Those who pay the big bucks for the fastest processors won't skimp on the rest of the PC, so the comparison really should be done using the RD RAM the Pentium 4 is designed for. Instead of trying to artificially force the platforms to be as similar as possible, they should compare real-world hardware configurations.
My question is, does it matter? If I want to host a major website, I want a .com or maybe a .org, possibly a .net if nothing else is available, but I'll never get a .tv domain. And if I just want a domain name to play around with, I'm going to buy whichever is cheapest.
.tv cost me?
So it all comes down to this question: how much will a
The MIT Media Lab has apparently always aimed a little high--for example, the article states that their building was designed by I.M. Pei. The world's most famous architect? For a Media Lab? It seems they could spend their money more frugally. They may be hurting from the dot-com bust and the economic slowdown, but that's to be expected--everyone is hurting. The MIT Media Lab is hurting more because they've spent money unwisely in the past.
Of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong.
I don't know about effects on one's health, but radio frequency interference can be a real problem. For example, I have a set of cordless headphones that I use so I can roam my room listening to music and not bother anyone else. However, my neighbor's cordless phone uses the same frequency (approximately 900MHz, in case you're interested.) I can tell when he's using the phone because the static interrupts my music. If I tune my headphones carefully, I can even hear his conversation.
Banning wireless technology entirely (as the article describes them doing in Mendocino) is probably not a good solution, but I think there should be regulations and standards enforced to make ensure better cooperation between wireless devices, to prevent interference.
It's an interesting idea, but the real problem is not storing the 100 TB of data, it's figuring out how to search through it to find what you're looking for. Now, apparently they write a lot of their own software, but it might be better if they could team up with Google and have Google index their sites on a special database. We'd have www.google.com for regular searches, and wayback.google.com for the Wayback Machine's sites.
Something else I found interesting: according to the article, they "use as much open source software as [they] can." That makes sense when they've got between 300 and 400 computers, and with the number growing all the time. Licensing all those with a non-open OS would be quite expensive.
I'm looking forward to "Indiana Jones 4", but I am worried by the recent example of "Crocodile Dundee in LA"--the original Crocodile Dundee was great, but the recent movie wasn't worth seeing.
Now, I imagine Steven Spielberg will do a better job with Indiana Jones than was done with Crocodile Dundee, but it's something to keep in mind. I hope the new movie introduces a new aspect of Indiana Jones--after all, Harrison Ford is quite a bit older now, so we can't expect the exact same stuff as before. He still has to be Indiana Jones, but just a little changed over the years.
Why do you suppose the post office is advertising for Microsoft? Is it a conspiracy designed to kill Linux?
No, the truth is, Microsoft can advertise Windows XP because they have a large advertising budget. Linux doesn't get advertised nearly as much because Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Slackware, etc. are all operating on a very thin profit margin and can't afford the kind of advertising that Microsoft can.
Now, the question as to whether the US Postal System should endorse or provide a venue for the promotion of Windows XP is another issue altogether. But it is important to realize that without Microsoft's advertising budget, this wouldn't ever have happened.
According to the article, this sort of thing is not entirely new: "The UK government's intelligence headquarters, GCHQ, issued ac hallenge to job hunters in January 2000."
However, this was the first time that a university staged such a contest with scholarship money as a prize. And the University of Lethbridge's puzzle was a bit easier than GHCQ's puzzle, apparently.
I wish my university would give away scholarship money like this--I could sure use the money, and I'd like the challenge.
I can understand how the popularity of pinball dropped in favor of video arcade games, but it is unfortunate that the manufacturers are no longer producing spare parts. I guess there just isn't any profit in it.
Here's an idea: buy a couple old pinball machines that no longer work and strip them for the parts. Go online to http://www.xmission.com/daina/pinball.html, which (as the article mentioned) has "334 parts for sale ads, but more than 1200 parts wanted ads", and sell replacement parts. If you can get the broken pinball machines cheap, you can make some money and make a lot of people happy. I might do this myself if I had the money--but unfortunately, I spent everything on university tuition.
According to the article, one of the reasons Red Hat might gain market share outside of the United States is because "a desktop vendor in Latin America or especially China, if they can save 50 to 60 bucks on a PC that's a big deal." Having lived overseas (the Philippines) I can say from personal experience that at least some of the desktop vendors do not pay for the copies of Windows they install on new systems. So a free OS may not be that big an incentive. (And I don't believe for a minute that the Windows XP registration will put a stop to this sort of piracy--it will only stop the casual home piracy.)
It seems to me that Palm is doing this to hedge their bets against Microsoft. This way, they can split the company--if Microsoft kills Palm OS, the hardware division of the company will survive, and vice versa.
The reason they are doing this may be because their market has become saturated. As the Yahoo! article mentioned, "demand for organizers has ebbed," and "unlike Microsoft, Palm does not have a multibillion-dollar product like Windows to fall back on." So it looks like this move is Palm's way of trying to ensure their survival as they do business against Microsoft.
This games (from the description) reminds be a bit of the old Gobliins. For example, the site says the gameplay involves controlling multiple characters, and "the different characters you can control will each have different skills and specialties." You have to know your characters' strengths and weaknesses--just like in the old Sierra game Gobliins. In Gobliins, you have three characters--one is incredibly strong but stupid, one can cast some magic spells, and I forget what the third one can do (it's been a long time since I played the game.)
Well, this Farscape games sounds like it could be even better. You have 6 characters to choose from, with a correspondingly greater complexity. I look forward to testing out the game myself.
This sounds like an interesting idea, but there are some issues to work out. For instance, how large a space can a message take up? Should all messages be limited to a set amount of space, say a circle 10 meters in diameter, or could individual message sizes be tailored to match the requirements of each message? And how are overlapping messages going to be resolved? Does the first message posted get priority, the latest message posted, or could the user choose from a menu to see all of them?
Furthermore, the issue of time limits needs to be addressed--I don't want messages from three years ago clogging up the system. Perhaps each message should be limited to a month or two, maybe more or less depending on how popular the service gets.
Apparently, Invader ZIM won an Emmy for animation work. (Specifically, Kyle Menke got the Emmy for his storyboarding work.) Too bad it's being cancelled--it really is a quality show.
According to the article, it isn't being axed immediately--next season there will be only six episodes instead of 20, which means there will still be 16 more new episodes to wait for.
However, it is still disappointing. I've only seen Invader Zim a couple times (my cable company doesn't carry that channel) but it was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. Unfortunately, I believe Nickelodeon marketed it to the wrong audience: it should have been aimed at teenagers and adults. Most young children don't appreciate it enough.
Perhaps if Invader Zim had been on another network, one that doesn't focus on children's entertainment, it would have fared better.
If this is indeed a breakthrough, I hope the National Science Foundation (who is funding the research) decides to make the information free for anyone to use. The last thing we need is for them to kill the technology by attempting to retain control of it through copyrights, patents, and controlled licensing. Research like this should be published and given freely to the world community, not licensed to corporations to try to make a buck.
The truth of the matter is, more people are willing to pay extra to get quality. Case in point: my first online purchase (2 years ago) was a CD burner, and I bought it from the retailer who had the cheapest price. Three months later, still without my CD burner, the company (TheBigStore.com) was out of business, and my $200 was gone.
Now when I buy online, I don't even bother looking for the cheapest price, because I want to know I will recieve my product. I order from reputable big-name companies such as Amazon and WalMart.