``We can potentially get the computational power of 100 workstations on the size of a grain of sand.''
This remind anyone of computing 50 years ago?: "Well, possibly by the end of the millenium, computers will be so small, that you could fit them in to a *single room*, with room left over for a chair, and possibly even a teletype!"
And what the hell is this?: "They will need far less power than current computers and may be able to hold vast amounts of data permanently, doing away with the need to erase files, and perhaps also be immune to computer viruses, crashes and other glitches."
Where did that come from? Doesn't it just yank your chain when a journalist just throws crap like this in. Why must people prattle on about stuff they don't know?!
Man, rather than being prejudiced against a whole nation, I can always be guaranteed to be able to sit back and let the assholes find their way to me. You guys just seem to breed like, well, assholes. You'll probably grow up, get married and beat your wife too.
OK, let me get this straight, if we don't count all of the black people in the US, then the crime rate is lower than those found in Europe. So what are you saying? Black people don't count? It's all black people's fault?
This kind of statement exactly illustrates that "Arrogant Yankee Attitude". I know all Americans aren't like this, I go to school with a large number of US citizens in Canada, but it only takes a small group with loud, blustering voices to ruin the reputation of the rest.
To answer your question, Canada takes its character and heritage from numerous different sources, the US and europe being the primary influences. There is much less crime, fewer bible beating fanatics, and a much more relaxed attitude towards subjects like gun control. We tend not to have the same intolerance for anti-national sentiment, and are a little more open minded to change. That said, we do have our fare share of psychos, fanatics, lobby groups, and the like, not to mention the cultural tension between French and English Canada.
I think what sums up my attitude are the feelings I get whenever I visit the US. In the less developed areas: hopeless, lonely, oppression. And in the better developed areas: self centered, arrogant, superiority.
Now if that isn't flamebait I don't know what is;), but let me put a rider on this. Canada is a small country, in the shadow of a very big country, many of us DO resent the unthinkingly superiour attitude that Americans take with other countries. And we do have our problems too, like the fact that our highest payed citizens lose over half of what they make to income taxes alone, and the fact that the French and English can't seem to just get along. But at least the majority of us admit, examine, and try to correct our faults, rather than carrying on with the unbending opinion that we live in the "greatest nation in the world", and that nothing will convince us otherwise.
By the way, I don't think the Internet should have centrally administered laws and taxes.
I could have done the same thing at six. I'm sure most of us here could have as well. The difference is, most of us wouldn't do such a thing. Proof of grand intelligence, this event is not. But it does prove that he has guts and cunning, and though I may wish I had had the courage to do something like that, I'm rather glad I have a much more sharply honed sense of self preservation:)
I don't know how this works in the US, but in Canada we have a law about this sort of thing (though not a well known law, for obvious reasons).
Here's how it works. Columbia House calls and you pick up. To legally prevent them from ever calling again, EVER, get a tape recorder and the conversation should proceed like this:
You: Hello? CH: Hi! This is Columbia House! We know you are a former member, but we'd like to try to get you back by telling... You: I'm officially informing you that this conversation is being recorded for legal purposes. CH: Excuse me?
You: I am requesting that you, a designated representative of Columbia House, remove my number from your dialing list immediatly. If you call this number again, I will be forced to take legal action, do you understand? CH: Yes sir.
I have done this. It works! If you request that a corporation remove your number from their lists, they legally have to do it! I hope for your sake that the states have similar laws.
No no no, time scale doesn't work here. He's talking about an arbitrary set of states, chosen by microsoft for testing purposes, like "on" or "off" or "upsidedown". But since he says %99.9 of computer situations, it means he must have tested every possible set of situations a computer could be in, like, "underwater, on jupiter while the sun is exploding." But wait, I guess that wouldn't be a "computing" situation. So what does he mean by that? Well, why would you want to use a computer in microsoft? Hmm, that's a tough one. Let's say 50% of computing situations at MS involve solitaire. Well, I've never had a problem playing solitaire, so that's 50% covered. Another ~50% would be devoted to consuming idle cycles while the coders, go to the washroom, eat lunch, spin in their chairs, etc. If there's one thing windows does extremely well, it's consume idle cycles, so that's ~100% covered. So the final 0.01% must be the rare time someone actually tries to code, or compile a kernel, or open a menu, or do WORK. There, that's all cleared up now.
in some circumstances. MS Windows is the most commonly used OS because it has a monopoly and the majority of games and applications are tied to it. LotR is not an OS with a strangle hold on a cornered market, it's a series of books. You don't need one special book to read all the other books of the same type, unless you count a series;) The opinion of the masses DOES make something "worthy", either directly as with popular books, or indirectly through "experts", who's opinion's the public value. Like I said in a lower post, people who say that "people don't appreciate something because they are uninformed, or stupid, or ignorant" are full of shit. If you think something is worth believing in, then stop whining on the sidelines and convince other people that it is too! Educate them, or make them believe in you, and through you the work that you value will be valued by them! Hey, isn't that how Linux got started?;)
Well, all of this is subjective opinion. None of us is capable of rendering a final decision on weather Tolkein is a literature class writer. But as far as I'm concerned this statement is nonsense: "I'm willing to bet that most of the great works of history have been lost, or aren't remembered by more than a handful of people." IMO, something is a "great work" when enough people say it is. The value and quality of something is subjective, and so it takes mass opinion to establish something as "worthy". And don't give me that standard elite crap that "the masses are too stupid or uninformed to understand". The masses are what make something "worthy", whether by direct indorsement (ie. LotR), or by deferral to acknowledged experts (ie. Shakespear). So when you ask "Just because his works will be around in 100 years, does that make them good?", I answer, well, yes, obviously, otherwise, why are they still around?
In a later interview with the Outer Orbital Objects Association (pronounced oowhaa!), spokes comet CM-342 assured earthlings that "we have no intention whatsoever of impacting the surface of your planet. I mean, really, there's no need to get your knickers in a knot. Most of the members don't even like orbiting close to the sun; to hot, much to hot."
The Liberation Coalition for Free Floating Asteroids (LCFFA) denied any future plans for impact. "As long as we all respect each other's soverenty, and territory, there'd be no reason for anything... unfortunate... to happen, see?"
Interstellar gasses could not be reached for comment.
Friend of mine at UofT is working on that project. He's doing the grunt work; laying out DNA strands between conductors and running a current. Not having much luck so far, but here's hoping...:)
That may be true for UCLA (though I'd like to see the papers), but many universities participate in non-disclosable research (military, corporate, etc), in return for money/goods and the chance to attain data that they may not have been able to generate themselves.
I wasn't saying that there was anything wrong with his behaviour, or that it is wrong for him to engage in research on behalf of an outside firm. The man is one of the most brilliant profs we have, and I'm glad he's stayed with the university rather than going out to make the millions I'm very sure he could.
Besides, my first guess is that the people at UCLA are simply completing their research so as not to make any premature announcements (ie. Cold fusion, etc.) Don't get your knickers in a knot.;)
the idea is technically sound, if a bit goofy. There are thousands of things we do every day that could be tapped for energy. How about putting a solenoid on the toilet seat? Or weighted pendulums to the outsides of our knees? I hope this guy and Compaq don't end up making any real money off of this, cause if they do, I can see a huge explosion of silly patents in our near future. Not that there's not already a preponderance of silly patents:)
I go to school with an engineering scientist who did his thesis on quantum computing. What these people are looking at doing, is producing a new method of doing the same old thing, building ever smaller and smaller transistors to cobble together into a CPU.
Quantum computing chucks the transistor out the window and works directly with molecules and electrons and probability and stuff. I'm just a computer engineer, I understand transistors and circuits and things with stuff and the resistance. All this new fangled probability computing scares me;)
Actually, it's really cool, nano tech will make it much more practical to produce quantum computers, so we can abandon the transistor model, and get on with some serious parallel computing!
Why is it like that? Chips are created NOW with a chemical process. It's just a different one. What do you think lithography is?
If you're referring to us retracing our steps to branch into a new field, well, yes. Every application of a technology has its functional limits. And I hope we're well on our way to developing a new computer tech before we reach the limits of the old one.
We don't know anything about the tech. There's no reason for the gates to run hot. A superconducting pentium II would run at just above room temperature, if it existed:). So before we know any more about the substances and their characteristics, we can't say anything about them.
It's not just UCLA, HP labs is involved as well. They are possibly running with HP funding and therefore under HP Non-Disclosure. I do research at UofT, and while Canadian Universities are less dependent upon corporate grants than American Universities (That's changing, unfortunatly), there is still a strong relationship between any lab and it's corporate sponsor.
In fact, during a VLSI course this year, a professor at UofT was speaking about transistor sizes in chips and was giving us rough sizes like "Poly lines can be, oh around.2 microns wide, and the N-doped wells about, oh.4 microns wide, etc." So someone in the class, frustrated with these vague numbers asked for the exact numbers. And the guy gives her this pained look and says, "Uh, well, I'm actually doing some development right now with a die fab (chip manufacturing firm) and I can't release the numbers, I can't even tell you what firm I'm working for."
Pretty spooky for an "open academic institution" eh?
Also, it is just possible that they're not sure of their numbers yet. The scientific community is merciless with those who release numbers that aren't rock solid. They're probably just covering their asses. I would.;)
I suppose you're right. I seem to forget that the average american moviegoer needs to have things spoon fed to them in very small, well chewed, bite sized chunks. Anything they'd have to cut with their own knife and fork are just tossed out as too big to swallow.
Like the Dungeon Keeper's Advisor says, "Never eat anything bigger than you're own head, keeper."
Yes! Why go to all this matrix trouble for heat alone? Using the "untapped portions of our brains" for processing power makes much more sense. Else, why the huge hindbrain plug?
Anyway, this idea was used by Dan Simmons in the Hyperion series. I think this would make a great sequal, and make the AI even more sinister.
then why do the bots even bother using humans? Don't you think it's a lot of trouble to build this hugely complex virtual world for human beings if ANY warm source would do? Why not cows? A big virtual field with lots of vitual grass seems to be a whole lot less trouble. I mean, humans have a history of being shitty slaves, we're always rebelling and whining and stuff. Now cows, cows would be perfect, they digest, create LOTS of heat, and never bother at all with philosophy or uprisings and such.
But seriously, I must agree that that premise was a little weak, though the movie rocked. If anyone has ever read the hyperion series by Dan Simmons, they'll remember the "evil" AI's in that story. The AI's feed off of humanity by using our unused brainpower for their processing needs without our knowledge. That would be more plausible. By the way, that series was one of the BEST pieces of literature (not just sci-fi) that I have ever read. I'd recommend it to anyone.
I'm not sure what you mean by not really, but I'll take it that you are going against the statement that objects are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them. I'd just like to point out that your diatribe on imperfect info. markets contradicts that stance. You have three tickets, you know one of them is worth $300, the others, $0. You try to sell them, but because of risk and uncertainty, others are unwilling to pay even $100 for one of them. So to them, the items are worth much less than they are to you. So, items are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them.
Uh, I think that's clear, like mud. Anyway, you see what I mean:)
Hey, lighten up! The guy is right, the core Kernel code is getting larger. The core Kernel size has grown since the last revision, and a little of that is bloat, but most of it is speed optimization. Sometimes greater speed = complex code, and that's OK. You need to relax and adjust your flame valve.
I must respectfully and most definitly disagree! As soon as one introduces boundaries as to what ideas can and cannot be discussed/attacked/defended, we loose free speech. It's as simple as that. Labelling something as appropriate or not is the same thing. In a free and open forum of discussion, ANYTHING is appropriate. Who are you or anyone else to decide what is mature, intelligent, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
``We can potentially get the computational power of 100 workstations on the size of a grain of sand.''
This remind anyone of computing 50 years ago?:
"Well, possibly by the end of the millenium, computers will be so small, that you could fit them in to a *single room*, with room left over for a chair, and possibly even a teletype!"
And what the hell is this?:
"They will need far less power than current computers and may be able to hold vast amounts of data permanently, doing away with the need to erase files, and perhaps also be immune to computer viruses, crashes and other glitches."
Where did that come from? Doesn't it just yank your chain when a journalist just throws crap like this in. Why must people prattle on about stuff they don't know?!
Sigh...
Man, rather than being prejudiced against a whole nation, I can always be guaranteed to be able to sit back and let the assholes find their way to me. You guys just seem to breed like, well, assholes. You'll probably grow up, get married and beat your wife too.
Jerk.
I wish everyone would knock it off aboot Terence and Philip. I mean, Canada is aboot more than just T&P! We have other stuff too, eh. Relax man.
;)
P.S. Yes, I am Canadian, and god damn but SouthPark was funny.
Argh!!! Must...control...fist...of...death...
OK, let me get this straight, if we don't count all of the black people in the US, then the crime rate is lower than those found in Europe. So what are you saying? Black people don't count? It's all black people's fault?
This kind of statement exactly illustrates that "Arrogant Yankee Attitude". I know all Americans aren't like this, I go to school with a large number of US citizens in Canada, but it only takes a small group with loud, blustering voices to ruin the reputation of the rest.
Please, for all our sakes, think before you type.
To answer your question, Canada takes its character and heritage from numerous different sources, the US and europe being the primary influences. There is much less crime, fewer bible beating fanatics, and a much more relaxed attitude towards subjects like gun control. We tend not to have the same intolerance for anti-national sentiment, and are a little more open minded to change. That said, we do have our fare share of psychos, fanatics, lobby groups, and the like, not to mention the cultural tension between French and English Canada.
;), but let me put a rider on this. Canada is a small country, in the shadow of a very big country, many of us DO resent the unthinkingly superiour attitude that Americans take with other countries. And we do have our problems too, like the fact that our highest payed citizens lose over half of what they make to income taxes alone, and the fact that the French and English can't seem to just get along. But at least the majority of us admit, examine, and try to correct our faults, rather than carrying on with the unbending opinion that we live in the "greatest nation in the world", and that nothing will convince us otherwise.
I think what sums up my attitude are the feelings I get whenever I visit the US. In the less developed areas: hopeless, lonely, oppression. And in the better developed areas: self centered, arrogant, superiority.
Now if that isn't flamebait I don't know what is
By the way, I don't think the Internet should have centrally administered laws and taxes.
I could have done the same thing at six. I'm sure most of us here could have as well. The difference is, most of us wouldn't do such a thing. Proof of grand intelligence, this event is not. But it does prove that he has guts and cunning, and though I may wish I had had the courage to do something like that, I'm rather glad I have a much more sharply honed sense of self preservation :)
I don't know how this works in the US, but in Canada we have a law about this sort of thing (though not a well known law, for obvious reasons).
...
Here's how it works. Columbia House calls and you pick up. To legally prevent them from ever calling again, EVER, get a tape recorder and the conversation should proceed like this:
You: Hello?
CH: Hi! This is Columbia House! We know you are a former member, but we'd like to try to get you back by telling
You: I'm officially informing you that this conversation is being recorded for legal purposes.
CH: Excuse me?
You: I am requesting that you, a designated representative of Columbia House, remove my number from your dialing list immediatly. If you call this number again, I will be forced to take legal action, do you understand?
CH: Yes sir.
I have done this. It works! If you request that a corporation remove your number from their lists, they legally have to do it! I hope for your sake that the states have similar laws.
No no no, time scale doesn't work here. He's talking about an arbitrary set of states, chosen by microsoft for testing purposes, like "on" or "off" or "upsidedown". But since he says %99.9 of computer situations, it means he must have tested every possible set of situations a computer could be in, like, "underwater, on jupiter while the sun is exploding."
But wait, I guess that wouldn't be a "computing" situation. So what does he mean by that? Well, why would you want to use a computer in microsoft? Hmm, that's a tough one. Let's say 50% of computing situations at MS involve solitaire. Well, I've never had a problem playing solitaire, so that's 50% covered. Another ~50% would be devoted to consuming idle cycles while the coders, go to the washroom, eat lunch, spin in their chairs, etc. If there's one thing windows does extremely well, it's consume idle cycles, so that's ~100% covered. So the final 0.01% must be the rare time someone actually tries to code, or compile a kernel, or open a menu, or do WORK.
There, that's all cleared up now.
in some circumstances. MS Windows is the most commonly used OS because it has a monopoly and the majority of games and applications are tied to it. ;) ;)
LotR is not an OS with a strangle hold on a cornered market, it's a series of books. You don't need one special book to read all the other books of the same type, unless you count a series
The opinion of the masses DOES make something "worthy", either directly as with popular books, or indirectly through "experts", who's opinion's the public value. Like I said in a lower post, people who say that "people don't appreciate something because they are uninformed, or stupid, or ignorant" are full of shit. If you think something is worth believing in, then stop whining on the sidelines and convince other people that it is too! Educate them, or make them believe in you, and through you the work that you value will be valued by them!
Hey, isn't that how Linux got started?
Rant rant rant...whew, done.
Well, all of this is subjective opinion. None of us is capable of rendering a final decision on weather Tolkein is a literature class writer. But as far as I'm concerned this statement is nonsense:
"I'm willing to bet that most of the great works of history have been lost, or aren't remembered by more than a handful of people."
IMO, something is a "great work" when enough people say it is. The value and quality of something is subjective, and so it takes mass opinion to establish something as "worthy". And don't give me that standard elite crap that "the masses are too stupid or uninformed to understand". The masses are what make something "worthy", whether by direct indorsement (ie. LotR), or by deferral to acknowledged experts (ie. Shakespear).
So when you ask "Just because his works will be around in 100 years, does that make them good?", I answer, well, yes, obviously, otherwise, why are they still around?
In a later interview with the Outer Orbital Objects Association (pronounced oowhaa!), spokes comet CM-342 assured earthlings that "we have no intention whatsoever of impacting the surface of your planet. I mean, really, there's no need to get your knickers in a knot. Most of the members don't even like orbiting close to the sun; to hot, much to hot."
... unfortunate ... to happen, see?"
The Liberation Coalition for Free Floating Asteroids (LCFFA) denied any future plans for impact. "As long as we all respect each other's soverenty, and territory, there'd be no reason for anything
Interstellar gasses could not be reached for comment.
;)
Friend of mine at UofT is working on that project. He's doing the grunt work; laying out DNA strands between conductors and running a current. Not having much luck so far, but here's hoping... :)
That may be true for UCLA (though I'd like to see the papers), but many universities participate in non-disclosable research (military, corporate, etc), in return for money/goods and the chance to attain data that they may not have been able to generate themselves.
;)
I wasn't saying that there was anything wrong with his behaviour, or that it is wrong for him to engage in research on behalf of an outside firm. The man is one of the most brilliant profs we have, and I'm glad he's stayed with the university rather than going out to make the millions I'm very sure he could.
Besides, my first guess is that the people at UCLA are simply completing their research so as not to make any premature announcements (ie. Cold fusion, etc.) Don't get your knickers in a knot.
the idea is technically sound, if a bit goofy. There are thousands of things we do every day that could be tapped for energy. How about putting a solenoid on the toilet seat? Or weighted pendulums to the outsides of our knees? I hope this guy and Compaq don't end up making any real money off of this, cause if they do, I can see a huge explosion of silly patents in our near future. Not that there's not already a preponderance of silly patents :)
I go to school with an engineering scientist who did his thesis on quantum computing. What these people are looking at doing, is producing a new method of doing the same old thing, building ever smaller and smaller transistors to cobble together into a CPU.
;)
Quantum computing chucks the transistor out the window and works directly with molecules and electrons and probability and stuff. I'm just a computer engineer, I understand transistors and circuits and things with stuff and the resistance. All this new fangled probability computing scares me
Actually, it's really cool, nano tech will make it much more practical to produce quantum computers, so we can abandon the transistor model, and get on with some serious parallel computing!
Why is it like that? Chips are created NOW with a chemical process. It's just a different one. What do you think lithography is?
If you're referring to us retracing our steps to branch into a new field, well, yes. Every application of a technology has its functional limits. And I hope we're well on our way to developing a new computer tech before we reach the limits of the old one.
We don't know anything about the tech. There's no reason for the gates to run hot. A superconducting pentium II would run at just above room temperature, if it existed :). So before we know any more about the substances and their characteristics, we can't say anything about them.
It's not just UCLA, HP labs is involved as well. They are possibly running with HP funding and therefore under HP Non-Disclosure. I do research at UofT, and while Canadian Universities are less dependent upon corporate grants than American Universities (That's changing, unfortunatly), there is still a strong relationship between any lab and it's corporate sponsor.
.2 microns wide, and the N-doped wells about, oh .4 microns wide, etc." So someone in the class, frustrated with these vague numbers asked for the exact numbers. And the guy gives her this pained look and says, "Uh, well, I'm actually doing some development right now with a die fab (chip manufacturing firm) and I can't release the numbers, I can't even tell you what firm I'm working for."
;)
In fact, during a VLSI course this year, a professor at UofT was speaking about transistor sizes in chips and was giving us rough sizes like "Poly lines can be, oh around
Pretty spooky for an "open academic institution" eh?
Also, it is just possible that they're not sure of their numbers yet. The scientific community is merciless with those who release numbers that aren't rock solid. They're probably just covering their asses. I would.
I suppose you're right. I seem to forget that the average american moviegoer needs to have things spoon fed to them in very small, well chewed, bite sized chunks. Anything they'd have to cut with their own knife and fork are just tossed out as too big to swallow.
Like the Dungeon Keeper's Advisor says,
"Never eat anything bigger than you're own head, keeper."
Written stuff about the Matrix? Where is this written stuff? I would love to see it because the battery thing has always bugged me.
Yes! Why go to all this matrix trouble for heat alone? Using the "untapped portions of our brains" for processing power makes much more sense. Else, why the huge hindbrain plug?
Anyway, this idea was used by Dan Simmons in the Hyperion series. I think this would make a great sequal, and make the AI even more sinister.
then why do the bots even bother using humans? Don't you think it's a lot of trouble to build this hugely complex virtual world for human beings if ANY warm source would do? Why not cows? A big virtual field with lots of vitual grass seems to be a whole lot less trouble. I mean, humans have a history of being shitty slaves, we're always rebelling and whining and stuff. Now cows, cows would be perfect, they digest, create LOTS of heat, and never bother at all with philosophy or uprisings and such.
But seriously, I must agree that that premise was a little weak, though the movie rocked. If anyone has ever read the hyperion series by Dan Simmons, they'll remember the "evil" AI's in that story. The AI's feed off of humanity by using our unused brainpower for their processing needs without our knowledge. That would be more plausible. By the way, that series was one of the BEST pieces of literature (not just sci-fi) that I have ever read. I'd recommend it to anyone.
I'm not sure what you mean by not really, but I'll take it that you are going against the statement that objects are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them.
:)
I'd just like to point out that your diatribe on imperfect info. markets contradicts that stance. You have three tickets, you know one of them is worth $300, the others, $0. You try to sell them, but because of risk and uncertainty, others are unwilling to pay even $100 for one of them. So to them, the items are worth much less than they are to you. So, items are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them.
Uh, I think that's clear, like mud. Anyway, you see what I mean
Hey, lighten up! The guy is right, the core Kernel code is getting larger. The core Kernel size has grown since the last revision, and a little of that is bloat, but most of it is speed optimization. Sometimes greater speed = complex code, and that's OK.
You need to relax and adjust your flame valve.
I must respectfully and most definitly disagree! As soon as one introduces boundaries as to what ideas can and cannot be discussed/attacked/defended, we loose free speech. It's as simple as that. Labelling something as appropriate or not is the same thing. In a free and open forum of discussion, ANYTHING is appropriate. Who are you or anyone else to decide what is mature, intelligent, etc...