Pure H2O does carry a current, just not anywhere
near as well as tap-water does.
I really doubt that you can make an average
computer work in liquid N2 or O2. The physical
stress may be too much.
Not to mention other effects.
Superconductivity? No way. However, you do get a
lower resistance at lower temperatures, generally
speaking.
On the other hand, using vaporization enthalpy
is much more efficient than just cooling.
(in laymans terms: compare how long it takes to
bring a kettle to a boil to how long it takes for
all the water to evaporate)
A good candidate would be dichloromethane, which
boils at 40 C (104 F) and carries off a good 3/4
of the energy as the same amound of water.
With a little work you could get a good system
for condensation and recirculation going and
keep your CPU at a pleasant 40 C.
That the thing still functions at 77 Kelvin.
Incredible that the motherboard doesn't break, at that low
temperature, the resin should undergo a phase transition and become very, very brittle.
(Some notes for all those D.I.Y.ers out there:
Liquid nitrogen is cheaper than milk.
Short-circuits can't occur, N2 doesn't conduct.)
Although why he used nitrogen and not dry ice, which is cheaper, easier to handle, and probably
better for these purposes, beats me.
The X-files is ooold. Old in the sense that it's
out of touch with the trends. Government conspiracies were all the rage back in the early
ninties (Oliver Stone's J.F.K. for example),
but it doesn't feel very fresh today.
I think in 20 years people will look back on 'X-files' as a typical ninties show,
like "Cheers" for the 80's, "M*A*S*H" for the 70s,
etc..
In reply to all those "Software is IMPOSSIBLE to secure" posts:
By comparison, so are pharmaceuticals.
(intravenous drugs for example: it only takes a few bacteria to cause a potentially lethal infection in the patients)
Yet scandals are rare. Why? Because of control.
Everything is controlled in incredible detail. Look at the production lines in the pharma industry (I've personally visited a few), and you'll immediately become aware of the safety.
Saftey starts *long* before production, even before the factory is built they're planning and designing for product safety. The routines of the staff are tightly controlled. Quality assurance staff are everywhere, continuously probing production. Basically, safety is a fixation, it permeates the industry from the start to the end.
Why? Because they have to. It's the most tightly regulated business in the world, if the ventilation in that clean room isn't up to code, (which means replacing the air completely in 2 minutes) the FDA will shut 'em down immediately.
Now I doubt we need this kind of regulation for software, after all, Microsofts customers don't die when MS screws up. (Thank god- what a holocaust that'd be.)
But they definetly need to get security into their heads. As usual, money provides the best incentive. Hold 'em liable.
As for OSS companies, heck, I thought Quality Management was what they did? When I buy RedHat Linux, I want a kernel that is stable and safe, packages that work together, etc. That's why I'm paying for it isn't it?
If they support a product, they should take full responsiblity for it.
Ah, you're right. But my point is still valid,
since the chemical effects are actually even worse for electron beams. The charge on the electron make them much more reactive.
(That's why they don't penetrate, and in this sense alpha and beta radiation is worse than gamma)
There is cause for concern; true, anyone worried about their mail turning radioactive is misguided:
things don't become radioactive by being irradiated.
(except if it's fast neutron radiation, in which case radioactivity may be induced)
On the other hand there is cause for concern when it comes to the chemistry.
When organic compounds get hit by gamma radiation, radicals are formed,
chemical bonds are broken, etc. It's a big mess,
and given the huge diversity of substances being irradiated, it's far to early to tell if
dangerous compounds are formed or not. (probably mostly:not)
One example is that gamma radiation can cause oxygen to form ozone, which is poisonous.
I mean, how many people actually check for the 'compact disc -digital audio'
logo before buying a record at the record store?
You could argument that record stores may refuse
to sell CD:s without the logo, but given the tight
bonds between the recording industry and record stores, I for one doubt it.
Following this logic (virii is not a word in english since it is not a word in latin,
despite that it is used)..
We must conclude that "Windows" is not a word, since the word "window" is from the norse "vindauge" ("winds-eye", the smoke-hole in the roof of cabins)
Since the plural of vindauge is NOT vindauges, the plural of window cannot be windows.
The reprecussions of this for OS nomenclature cannot be underestimated.:-)
In fact, free speech is still controversial around the world. On/., Europeans have actually argued that free speech is a bad idea because it "encourages" "hate groups".
Free speech is not controversial in europe. All western european nations do have protection of free speech in their constitutions.
Some of them even had it before the USA.
True, some countries do have restrictions concerning hate propaganda.
(notably Germany: and given their past, who can blame them?)
But on the whole, free speech is no more controversial in many parts of the world than it is in the USA. (although what parts of speech that is considered 'controversial' differs quite a lot.)
Yeah, well that was the joke. Pi is an irrational number.
Here's another "compression algorithm", e, which
can be simply expressed as:
sum of: 1/n! , n = 0 to infinity
The digits of an irrational number are random per se but it doesn't mean you can get any
useful kind of compression out of them.
Another example would be expressing your data as a number, (say "BCDEF" -> 2.3456) and since any
rational number can be expressed as a fraction of
two integers: find these integers.
If you're lucky you'll have small integers and can recive great compression.
Actually there are quite a few mathematical formulae to calculate pi,
series expansions being the most common method,
The problem in this case is not finding pi, the problem is that the index into pi will in most cases be a number larger than your data!
(except for lucky cases like 314159265)
Here in Sweden, the results of research and other IP:s are -personal- property of the researchers.
The university has no claim to it. This, of course has led to a lot of university professors starting their own businesses on the side, to capitalize from their research.
Of course, the universities here want a system more like the US.
..started during the early nineties, during which Finland was in it's deepest depression since the '30s. Didn't stop Linus. And it won't stop scores of other hobby OSS developers either.
However, less corperate funding may retard development, but hey: in a recession everything else slows down too.
the weakness of using an application (and a single one at that) as a hardware benchmark.
ATI shouldn't be bashed just for optimizing it's drivers. Ok, so it's a software optimization,
and it's geared toward a single application (albeit a popular one). It's still no different from what a lot of
manufacturers are already doing with winmodems and other pieces of hardware 'optimized for windows'.
The solution is obvious: Stop using single applications/OSes/etc. as benchmarks,
use real benchmark applications or at the very least, a battery of different apps.
This clockless thing must be caching on fast..
on
Clockless Chips
·
· Score: 4, Redundant
.. otherwise people would've noticed this has been
posted before (sept 15)
Slashdot Mirror
Pure H2O does carry a current, just not anywhere
near as well as tap-water does.
I really doubt that you can make an average
computer work in liquid N2 or O2. The physical
stress may be too much.
Not to mention other effects.
Superconductivity? No way. However, you do get a
lower resistance at lower temperatures, generally
speaking.
On the other hand, using vaporization enthalpy
is much more efficient than just cooling.
(in laymans terms: compare how long it takes to
bring a kettle to a boil to how long it takes for
all the water to evaporate)
A good candidate would be dichloromethane, which
boils at 40 C (104 F) and carries off a good 3/4
of the energy as the same amound of water.
With a little work you could get a good system
for condensation and recirculation going and
keep your CPU at a pleasant 40 C.
That the thing still functions at 77 Kelvin.
Incredible that the motherboard doesn't break, at that low
temperature, the resin should undergo a phase transition and become very, very brittle.
(Some notes for all those D.I.Y.ers out there:
Liquid nitrogen is cheaper than milk.
Short-circuits can't occur, N2 doesn't conduct.)
Although why he used nitrogen and not dry ice, which is cheaper, easier to handle, and probably
better for these purposes, beats me.
The X-files is ooold. Old in the sense that it's
out of touch with the trends. Government conspiracies were all the rage back in the early
ninties (Oliver Stone's J.F.K. for example),
but it doesn't feel very fresh today.
I think in 20 years people will look back on 'X-files' as a typical ninties show,
like "Cheers" for the 80's, "M*A*S*H" for the 70s,
etc..
Mr. Dalke seems to have a good point, trashing
publicly funded research for the sake of the GPL
isn't helping.
However, I can't seem to see what would be wrong
with requiring all *new*, publicly funded research
software projects to be open-source.
We know the answer: Keep it proprietary, so the
researchers and universities can cash in on the
publics investment.
In reply to all those "Software is IMPOSSIBLE to secure" posts:
By comparison, so are pharmaceuticals.
(intravenous drugs for example: it only takes a few bacteria to cause a potentially lethal infection in the patients)
Yet scandals are rare. Why? Because of control.
Everything is controlled in incredible detail. Look at the production lines in the pharma industry (I've personally visited a few), and you'll immediately become aware of the safety.
Saftey starts *long* before production, even before the factory is built they're planning and designing for product safety. The routines of the staff are tightly controlled. Quality assurance staff are everywhere, continuously probing production. Basically, safety is a fixation, it permeates the industry from the start to the end.
Why? Because they have to. It's the most tightly regulated business in the world, if the ventilation in that clean room isn't up to code, (which means replacing the air completely in 2 minutes) the FDA will shut 'em down immediately.
Now I doubt we need this kind of regulation for software, after all, Microsofts customers don't die when MS screws up. (Thank god- what a holocaust that'd be.)
But they definetly need to get security into their heads. As usual, money provides the best incentive. Hold 'em liable.
As for OSS companies, heck, I thought Quality Management was what they did? When I buy RedHat Linux, I want a kernel that is stable and safe, packages that work together, etc. That's why I'm paying for it isn't it?
If they support a product, they should take full responsiblity for it.
Well, the vowels are the long germanic-type,
so, approximately: lah-gohm.
Swedes want everything to be 'lagom',
the call themselves the 'lagom-nation'..
Seriously though, the article does raise some important points. And I agree.
Ah, you're right. But my point is still valid,
since the chemical effects are actually even worse for electron beams. The charge on the electron make them much more reactive.
(That's why they don't penetrate, and in this sense alpha and beta radiation is worse than gamma)
There is cause for concern; true, anyone worried about their mail turning radioactive is misguided:
things don't become radioactive by being irradiated.
(except if it's fast neutron radiation, in which case radioactivity may be induced)
On the other hand there is cause for concern when it comes to the chemistry.
When organic compounds get hit by gamma radiation, radicals are formed,
chemical bonds are broken, etc. It's a big mess,
and given the huge diversity of substances being irradiated, it's far to early to tell if
dangerous compounds are formed or not. (probably mostly:not)
One example is that gamma radiation can cause oxygen to form ozone, which is poisonous.
..for me, being a chemist. (almost, 1 semester 'till I get my M.S.)
:-)
This is what chemistry is all about: finding new materials, and then finding ways to make them explode.
So what if Philips says no-go on the logo?
I mean, how many people actually check for the 'compact disc -digital audio'
logo before buying a record at the record store?
You could argument that record stores may refuse
to sell CD:s without the logo, but given the tight
bonds between the recording industry and record stores, I for one doubt it.
Following this logic (virii is not a word in english since it is not a word in latin,
:-)
despite that it is used)..
We must conclude that "Windows" is not a word, since the word "window" is from the norse "vindauge" ("winds-eye", the smoke-hole in the roof of cabins)
Since the plural of vindauge is NOT vindauges, the plural of window cannot be windows.
The reprecussions of this for OS nomenclature cannot be underestimated.
Sounds like the vaporware phenomenon has extended to virii.
Another industry group getting together to invent
:)
a watered-down-compromise-type copy-protection scheme
How long 'till this one's broken?
Oh.. it's been done already..
In fact, free speech is still controversial around the world. On /., Europeans have actually argued that free speech is a bad idea because it "encourages" "hate groups".
Free speech is not controversial in europe. All western european nations do have protection of free speech in their constitutions.
Some of them even had it before the USA.
True, some countries do have restrictions concerning hate propaganda.
(notably Germany: and given their past, who can blame them?)
But on the whole, free speech is no more controversial in many parts of the world than it is in the USA. (although what parts of speech that is considered 'controversial' differs quite a lot.)
Yeah, well that was the joke. Pi is an irrational number.
Here's another "compression algorithm", e, which
can be simply expressed as:
sum of: 1/n! , n = 0 to infinity
The digits of an irrational number are random per se but it doesn't mean you can get any
useful kind of compression out of them.
Another example would be expressing your data as a number, (say "BCDEF" -> 2.3456) and since any
rational number can be expressed as a fraction of
two integers: find these integers.
If you're lucky you'll have small integers and can recive great compression.
This won't happen often though.
Actually there are quite a few mathematical formulae to calculate pi,
series expansions being the most common method,
The problem in this case is not finding pi, the problem is that the index into pi will in most cases be a number larger than your data!
(except for lucky cases like 314159265)
I just compressed an infinite set of nonrepeating numbers into a simple mathematical equation!!
data = d/r
Where d = diameter of circle and r = radius
This gives the incredible compression ratio of
infinity:1.. how about that!
Here in Sweden, the results of research and other IP:s are -personal- property of the researchers.
The university has no claim to it. This, of course has led to a lot of university professors starting their own businesses on the side, to capitalize from their research.
Of course, the universities here want a system more like the US.
..started during the early nineties, during which Finland was in it's deepest depression since the '30s. Didn't stop Linus. And it won't stop scores of other hobby OSS developers either.
However, less corperate funding may retard development, but hey: in a recession everything else slows down too.
is a good and open-source DSP emulator,
which may be useful for the emulation of other hardware as well. (sound cards?)
I hope someone gets busy with it.
Are still around, I know a mainframe guy who still does a little PL/1..
COBOL is still around.. let it die as soon as possible.
ADA is still used by the DoD, a telltale sign of a defense contractor
is if they advertise for ADA programmers.
the weakness of using an application (and a single one at that) as a hardware benchmark.
ATI shouldn't be bashed just for optimizing it's drivers. Ok, so it's a software optimization,
and it's geared toward a single application (albeit a popular one). It's still no different from what a lot of
manufacturers are already doing with winmodems and other pieces of hardware 'optimized for windows'.
The solution is obvious: Stop using single applications/OSes/etc. as benchmarks,
use real benchmark applications or at the very least, a battery of different apps.
.. otherwise people would've noticed this has been
posted before (sept 15)
144 Petabytes should be enough for everyone!
Hmm.. wait a second...