For university users, people who access the majority of telecommunications through on site corporate access, and the techno-illmunati, telecom has improved greatly ( 100Mbit ethernet, ATM, etc. )
But, for the average user, not much has changed. When you consider dialup connections, the speed goes up, but the size of the stuff we try to push down the line gets bigger.
As far as I can tell, there's no real difference in the speed of the user experience using Linux, Netscape 4 and a 56k connection and a 2400 baud modem used to connect to classic Prodigy on an IBM PS1 six or seven years ago, or the 14.4 on the 486 with Win3.1 and IE2.
Telecom has a long way to go, not so much in the high end connections on the back bone, but in proliferating technology to the low end, sub-1000 dollar pc kind of folks.
this doesn't have anything to do with the bible, or with God. If you want to eat mutated chicken, go for it, but I'd just assume eat food that hasn't been messed with.
Genetically engineered food might one day be acceptable, but I don't want it anymore than I will eat meat or dairy products produced by hormone enhanced antibiotic abused cattle. Andrew Gardner
1. The reason they can't manufacture it and demo it is because they don't have a fab, and they don't have money to contract with an existing fab. Insisting that they have it in silicon is simply not realistic.
2. They have several Verilog descriptions. One of them is extremely high level, logicly. One is relatively midlevel, and one is RTL, as in Register Transfer Level, I believe. This means they're read to send it to the fab soon.
3. I understand the anger at not being able to see it, but it might not be FUD. This isn't vaporware that no one ever intends to release, this a processor thats been sitting around for years because they can't afford to produce them, and they've had years to work towards the goal of getting it to were it is now, not having 18 months to turn out a product that just barely works, and isn't particularly good, but it works.
As far as mainstream articles go, this one is a pretty level headed, and seemingly well-informed for the mainstream.
This is a pretty cool deal. But I've got one problem. As much as I can tolerate different pronunciations of daemon, FAQ, Linux, etc., I will never be able to say "guh-nome" like the article says it should be pronounced. I know it might be right, but I can never bring myself to do it.
Spam doesn't stalk you. It doesn't stand on your lawn at 3am and scream at you. It doesn't walk up behind you and kick you in the head. Those are all physical crimes which are dealt with by other statutes.
Does spam waste CPU cycles. Yes. Does it waste network bandwidth? Does it bring even the best mail servers to their knees on occaison, why yes it does. But so does porn. And most people in this forum would rather die than see the CDA pass again in any form because you recognize pornography as free speech.
Isn't it a little maddening that commercial speech is the greater evil here?
Second, the whole point is that my first amendment rights don't end when I start to make you unconfortable or start to say things that don't make you warm and fuzzy inside. I still have the right to say those things.
Your inbox is yours. So are your ears. I can say things that make you unhappy, and whether I email them to you or I send snail mail, or I whisper them in your ear, they MAY be protected speech.
If I email you something that the Supreme Court has set up as speech that is not protected, and the governmental autority under which we live has regulated that speech, then you have legal reprucussions. Otherwise, you don't have any rights that are being infringed on.
Oh yes it is. Commercial speech is just another form of speech. It might be unpleasant, stupid, ill-informed, and mentally deficient, but than again so are most political commentators whose right to free speech is as real as yours or mine.
How many time have we heard, on these very pages, the screams of terror at even the smallest infringement on the rights and privileges of free speech, and online speech specifically? How many times?
The real test of one's devotion to the ideal of constitutionally protected speech (sorry to be US-centric for a moment) is when we must defend free speech even when its purpose, medium, or presentation is not exactly what we'd like.
If you want free speech, and you want it defended, and you want unpopular ideas to still be legal thoughts in your head and legal words in your mouth, than you must defend constitutionally protected free speech even when it comes in the form of spam.
There is no test for constitutionally protected free speech that spam infringes on. Mindless loads of commercial email, while not happy, pretty, or nice, are not fighting words, they do not present clear or present danger, they rarely insight real physical violence.
Most of you don't want free speech, you want to have unlimited personal rights and freedoms and to restrict those same rights and priviledges to people you don't like or disagree with.
Now, I understand that the government should be involved in as few things as possible, but a libertarian understanding of this situation is inadequate to fully describe it. If this technology can be used to bring about an age in which there is virtually no privacy in internet transactions, then government intervention is necessary if you believe in the ideal of internet privacy. As far as the free market determining these things, that relies upon fundamental assumptions that are lacking in this case.
We assume the public must be well informed enough to make intelligent decisions, but the general public doesn't know anything about encryption, serial numbers in IP packets, or anything else. The general public uses AOL and Microsoft products. Web servers run NT and IIS. People are obviously uninformed.
The free market functions only when the vast majority of people are operating under the same set of assumptions, under the same of information that is closely correlated to the truth. That isn't happening.
If we nerds (the only people with the information to make decisions like these) are to abdicate our role as leaders in favor of a libertarian, free market system full of people who don't have the fundamental understanding of these situations, we are guarenteed that whoever has the most money to market their ideas will win, regardless of cost, technical merit, or any other consideration.
Tell me what I don't see here. The slashdot community is in general having hissy fits over the idea of people being able to track everything you ever do on your computer by the identification number you'd get in a Pentium III. And the slashdot community is in general tired of American governments doing stupid things.
So when a state government stands up for internet privacy rights even though there are two HUGE Intel facilities in Arizona, including at least one design center and a fab, what do you do? You complain! I don't get it.
We all know that the news.com story was badly worded and that news.com is not meant as a site for people that now the difference between the serial number etched on chip, a serial number in eprom, or Intel's indentification serial number scheme. Just for once, can we be happy? Just once?
Slashdot Mirror
For university users, people who access the majority of telecommunications through on site corporate access, and the techno-illmunati, telecom has improved greatly ( 100Mbit ethernet, ATM, etc. )
But, for the average user, not much has changed. When you consider dialup connections, the speed goes up, but the size of the stuff we try to push down the line gets bigger.
As far as I can tell, there's no real difference in the speed of the user experience using Linux,
Netscape 4 and a 56k connection and a 2400 baud modem used to connect to classic Prodigy on an IBM PS1 six or seven years ago, or the 14.4 on the 486 with Win3.1 and IE2.
Telecom has a long way to go, not so much in the high end connections on the back bone, but in proliferating technology to the low end, sub-1000 dollar pc kind of folks.
Andrew Gardner
this doesn't have anything to do with the bible, or with God. If you want to eat mutated chicken, go for it, but I'd just assume eat food that hasn't been messed with.
Genetically engineered food might one day be acceptable, but I don't want it anymore than I will eat meat or dairy products produced by hormone enhanced antibiotic abused cattle.
Andrew Gardner
Yet Another Mirror.
o v
http://lanefour.res.cmu.edu/starwars/trailer2.m
10Mbit, very few computers on this subnet. Pittsburgh.
Andrew Gardner
1. The reason they can't manufacture it and demo it is because they don't have a fab, and they don't have money to contract with an existing fab. Insisting that they have it in silicon is simply not realistic.
2. They have several Verilog descriptions. One of them is extremely high level, logicly. One is relatively midlevel, and one is RTL, as in Register Transfer Level, I believe. This means they're read to send it to the fab soon.
3. I understand the anger at not being able to see it, but it might not be FUD. This isn't vaporware that no one ever intends to release, this a processor thats been sitting around for years because they can't afford to produce them, and they've had years to work towards the goal of getting it to were it is now, not having 18 months to turn out a product that just barely works, and isn't particularly good, but it works.
Andrew Gardner
As far as mainstream articles go, this one is a pretty level headed, and seemingly well-informed for the mainstream.
This is a pretty cool deal. But I've got one problem. As much as I can tolerate different pronunciations of daemon, FAQ, Linux, etc., I will never be able to say "guh-nome" like the article says it should be pronounced. I know it might be right, but I can never bring myself to do it.
Andrew Gardner
Two things.
Spam doesn't stalk you. It doesn't stand on your lawn at 3am and scream at you. It doesn't walk up behind you and kick you in the head. Those are all physical crimes which are dealt with by other statutes.
Does spam waste CPU cycles. Yes. Does it waste network bandwidth? Does it bring even the best mail servers to their knees on occaison, why yes it does. But so does porn. And most people in this forum would rather die than see the CDA pass again in any form because you recognize pornography as free speech.
Isn't it a little maddening that commercial speech is the greater evil here?
Second, the whole point is that my first amendment rights don't end when I start to make you unconfortable or start to say things that don't make you warm and fuzzy inside. I still have the right to say those things.
Your inbox is yours. So are your ears. I can say things that make you unhappy, and whether I email them to you or I send snail mail, or I whisper them in your ear, they MAY be protected speech.
If I email you something that the Supreme Court has set up as speech that is not protected, and the governmental autority under which we live has regulated that speech, then you have legal reprucussions. Otherwise, you don't have any rights that are being infringed on.
Andrew Gardner
Oh yes it is. Commercial speech is just another form of speech. It might be unpleasant, stupid, ill-informed, and mentally deficient, but than again so are most political commentators whose right to free speech is as real as yours or mine.
Andrew Gardner
How many time have we heard, on these very pages, the screams of terror at even the smallest infringement on the rights and privileges of free speech, and online speech specifically? How many times?
The real test of one's devotion to the ideal of constitutionally protected speech (sorry to be US-centric for a moment) is when we must defend free speech even when its purpose, medium, or presentation is not exactly what we'd like.
If you want free speech, and you want it defended, and you want unpopular ideas to still be legal thoughts in your head and legal words in your mouth, than you must defend constitutionally protected free speech even when it comes in the form of spam.
There is no test for constitutionally protected free speech that spam infringes on. Mindless loads of commercial email, while not happy, pretty, or nice, are not fighting words, they do not present clear or present danger, they rarely insight real physical violence.
Most of you don't want free speech, you want to have unlimited personal rights and freedoms and to restrict those same rights and priviledges to people you don't like or disagree with.
The irony is shocking, and it makes me laugh.
Andrew Gardner
Electrical insulators are just semiconductors with high energy gaps. Just like semiconductors are insulators with low energy gaps.
Andrew Gardner
Now, I understand that the government should be involved in as few things as possible, but a libertarian understanding of this situation is inadequate to fully describe it. If this technology can be used to bring about an age in which there is virtually no privacy in internet transactions, then government intervention is necessary if you believe in the ideal of internet privacy. As far as the free market determining these things, that relies upon fundamental assumptions that are lacking in this case.
We assume the public must be well informed enough to make intelligent decisions, but the general public doesn't know anything about encryption, serial numbers in IP packets, or anything else. The general public uses AOL and Microsoft products. Web servers run NT and IIS. People are obviously uninformed.
The free market functions only when the vast majority of people are operating under the same set of assumptions, under the same of information that is closely correlated to the truth. That isn't happening.
If we nerds (the only people with the information to make decisions like these) are to abdicate our role as leaders in favor of a libertarian, free market system full of people who don't have the fundamental understanding of these situations, we are guarenteed that whoever has the most money to market their ideas will win, regardless of cost, technical merit, or any other consideration.
Andrew Gardner
Tell me what I don't see here. The slashdot community is in general having hissy fits over the idea of people being able to track everything you ever do on your computer by the identification number you'd get in a Pentium III. And the slashdot community is in general tired of American governments doing stupid things.
So when a state government stands up for internet privacy rights even though there are two HUGE Intel facilities in Arizona, including at least one design center and a fab, what do you do? You complain! I don't get it.
We all know that the news.com story was badly worded and that news.com is not meant as a site for people that now the difference between the serial number etched on chip, a serial number in eprom, or Intel's indentification serial number scheme. Just for once, can we be happy? Just once?
Andrew Gardner