We also know some things about the orbit of the planet that we did not know from previous observations. I think they can compute the inclination of the orbit to the line-of-sight or something.
The European Space Agency, was, and, as far as I know, still is, considering a mission on these lines for sometime around 2010. Their mission involves six probes, two at each corner of an equilateral triangle with sides 5 million kilomters long, orbiting the Sun well away from the Earth and Moon. They would continuously measure the distance between the probes to an accuracy of a small fraction of a wavelength of light (something like one part in 10^16 of the distance). The technical challenges of this, are, of course, immense, but it would go far beyond LIGO in both seinsitivity and the range of frequencies of gravitational radiation that it could detect, allowing it study much less violent, but neaer and commoner events than those LIGO can spot.
I don't pretend to understand US government properly, but the WH is head of the executive isn't it? So I can imagine two possible reasons for WH involvement:
1. As the DoJ's bosses -- this is a big issue, so is dealt with at the highest level
2. Because many possible remedies would involve some part of the executive supervising M$'s future behaviour and there needs to be input on what would be feasible and who would be the right people to do it.
In the UK I would certainly expect something like this to go up to cabinet level, which is the nearest equivalent.
Steve
bits not bytes -- assorted comments
on
Penny-Sized CDs
·
· Score: 2
The original article said 400 Gigabits/sq in, and 180 Gigabits on a penny-sized disk, not Bytes as reported in the/. article. Still pretty remarkable, especially for what could eventually be a cheap mass-production technology.
Note, however, that the state of the art in hrd disks is now up to c 50 Gigabits/sq in (what a nasty unit that is) so the advance is not that huge.
I have heard of rewritable technologies along these lines. A short burst of electrical current from the AFM tip is used to melt a but, which then cools flat. The same AFM tips are used to scratch new pits.
An interesting side question -- what is the smallest reasonable size for a removable data medium assuming that you have plenty of capacity for your purposes: credit-card sized? large coin sized (UK 50p or £1, US quarter)? Small coin sized (US dime, UK 5p or even Netherlands dime)?
It has been observed that exponential-time algorithms (requiring, say 2^n steps on input of size n) can be executed in linear time by the following procedure:
Wait 1.5*n years, while the speed of computers increases by 2^n. Execute the algorithm in unit time.
Remember the Halloween Documents? In them Microsoft identified an agressive IBM adoption of Linux as their "nightmare scenario". They observed that IBM was ideally placed to make money from Linux in all the various ways -- by selling hardware, intregrated solutions, support, etc. They thought that IBM wouldn't do it, because of IBM's huge investment in other OSs. Looks like they may have been being wishful.
I think there may just be a distortion due to timing. The reformaters of press releases will always get their stuff out first. The serious investigative reporters will come along later.
Take this a little further and . . .
on
Smart Dust
·
· Score: 2
This stuff is still not real nanomachinery (the first M imn MEMS stands for micro).
Some years ago I used to read sci.nanotech and a couple of guys there had an idea they called "utility fog". It started out as a design for a really effective nanotech seat-belt and then developed other applications to the point where it was practially the only machine you would ever need.
The idea is to build really small general-purpose nanobots, each (say) 5 um on a side, but with 4 reasonably strong arms capable of reaching out about 50um. They can fly easily by flapping the arms suitably, so you fill your surroundings with a grid of these things spaces 100um apart (replacing 0.01% of the air). Normally they have their arms mostly folded, and are a hardly noticeable dust in the air, but when needed, they can join arms and form a diamond-like grid, which would be very strong. Used as a seatbelt, they would grab each other, or your body (including the insides of your lungs) and lock everything solid, while crumpling from the outside to absorb incoming impacts. They might even be able to double as an ejector seat to throw you clear (and then turn into a parachute!).
If you could do this, the fog would have an incredible number of other applications -- tent, umbrella, clothing, personal digital assistant, furniture, diving suit and air-hose....
Speculating about this struff is great fun, but I never saw the thermodynamic problems addressed -- how do you get power in and waste heat out? Also the idea of someone hacking into your personal fog cloud is frankly terrifying.
I have seen (a couple of years ago) a serious article in some technical journal suggesting that it would be better to treat the very fast static RAM technology now used for highest-level cache as main memory and treat the dynamic RAM as a first-level paging device.
This would require some technical changes to allow [suitably priveleged] software to control cache behaviour -- for example locking key kernel pages in cache, but might gain performance thereby. One example of a possible gain would be allowing SMP systems to avoid cache coherence where it's not actually needed, another would be pre-loading pages that a task is known to be likely to need.
You say: Is this sort of like "Buy this monitor and get a free G4?"
The obvious next question is do I have to take the G4? if I give/throw away the Mac, can I attach the monitor to something else? My Linux box for instance?
There are some direct advantages , especially if you're working with (for instance) bitmaps, because you can grab twice as much data at a time, put it all inone register and (eg) xor it with a mask in one operation. Also you get bigger integers without needing special software.
The main advantage is being able to handle more memory. 32 bit architectures are (basically) limited to 4GB, which is not very much by todays standards.
Finally, since this chip is a complete redesign, Intel get the chance to do a lot of things differently/better than they were done in IA32.
The poster asks: "In a few years, will there really be much difference between a "game machine" and a "home" computer?"
At the present rate of progress the game machine will be faster and with a much better graphics engine.
I once saw an advertisment, dating from the early years of this century for a wonderful device: "The Home Electric Motor" It came in various sizes, needed only a modicum of regular weekly and annual maintenance and had a fabulous range of attachments for carbet-beating, egg-whisking, clothes washing, etc. etc.
I rather feel that the present "home computer" is a comparable beast, and will eventually go the same way -- absorbed into single-function appliances -- sealed for life and maintenance free.
In twenty years, our homes will be full of computers, but we will interact with none of them directly.
I configure our big multi-user compute servers, and I am a firm believer in giving them lots of swap. There are three ways it can be used:
1. to swap out all the inactive daemons, etc when a user process(es) comes close to using all of physical RAM. This can use up to 30M or s of swap on a typical system,
2. for large stopped jobs (or interactive jobs waiting for input) -- it is sometimes nice to be able to have thee or four processes as large as physical RAM, even if only one of them can execute sensibly
3. For the very rare user with a LOT of time and a problem that won;t fit in physical memory
You only actually need to choke the users down to what they've paid for when there is actual contention. If you let them have the full capabilities of the hardware the rest of the time, it costs you nothing and can only make them happier.
I can't compile 2.2.1 on my RH 5.2 system. I have had various "can't redefine" error messages ( I can change which ones I get by changing the config) such as
Slashdot Mirror
We also know some things about the orbit of the planet that we did not know from previous observations. I think they can compute the inclination of the orbit to the line-of-sight or something.
The European Space Agency, was, and, as far as I know, still is, considering a mission on these lines for sometime around 2010. Their mission involves six probes, two at each corner of an equilateral triangle with sides 5 million kilomters long, orbiting the Sun well away from the Earth and Moon. They would continuously measure the distance between the probes to an accuracy of a small fraction of a wavelength of light (something like one part in 10^16 of the distance). The technical challenges of this, are, of course, immense, but it would go far beyond LIGO in both seinsitivity and the range of frequencies of gravitational radiation that it could detect, allowing it study much less violent, but neaer and commoner events than those LIGO can spot.
Steve
I don't pretend to understand US government properly, but the WH is head of the executive isn't it? So I can imagine two possible reasons for WH involvement:
1. As the DoJ's bosses -- this is a big issue, so
is dealt with at the highest level
2. Because many possible remedies would involve some part of the executive supervising M$'s future behaviour and there needs to be input on what would be feasible and who would be the right people to do it.
In the UK I would certainly expect something like this to go up to cabinet level, which is the nearest equivalent.
Steve
The original article said 400 Gigabits/sq in, and 180 Gigabits on a penny-sized disk, not Bytes as reported in the /. article. Still pretty remarkable, especially for what could eventually be a cheap mass-production technology.
Note, however, that the state of the art in hrd disks is now up to c 50 Gigabits/sq in (what a nasty unit that is) so the advance is not that huge.
I have heard of rewritable technologies along these lines. A short burst of electrical current from the AFM tip is used to melt a but, which then cools flat. The same AFM tips are used to scratch new pits.
An interesting side question -- what is the smallest reasonable size for a removable data medium assuming that you have plenty of capacity for your purposes: credit-card sized? large coin sized (UK 50p or £1, US quarter)? Small coin sized (US dime, UK 5p or even Netherlands dime)?
Steve
It has been observed that exponential-time algorithms (requiring, say 2^n steps on input of size n) can be executed in linear time by the following procedure:
Wait 1.5*n years, while the speed of computers increases by 2^n. Execute the algorithm in unit time.
Remember the Halloween Documents? In them Microsoft identified an agressive IBM adoption of Linux as their "nightmare scenario". They observed that IBM was ideally placed to make money from Linux in all the various ways -- by selling hardware, intregrated solutions, support, etc. They thought that IBM wouldn't do it, because of IBM's huge investment in other OSs. Looks like they may have been being wishful.
I think there may just be a distortion due to timing. The reformaters of press releases will always get their stuff out first. The serious investigative reporters will come along later.
This stuff is still not real nanomachinery (the first M imn MEMS stands for micro).
Some years ago I used to read sci.nanotech and a couple of guys there had an idea they called "utility fog". It started out as a design for a really effective nanotech seat-belt and then developed other applications to the point where it was practially the only machine you would ever need.
The idea is to build really small general-purpose nanobots, each (say) 5 um on a side, but with 4 reasonably strong arms capable of reaching out about 50um. They can fly easily by flapping the arms suitably, so you fill your surroundings with a grid of these things spaces 100um apart (replacing 0.01% of the air). Normally they have their arms mostly folded, and are a hardly noticeable dust in the air, but when needed, they can join arms and form a diamond-like grid, which would be very strong. Used as a seatbelt, they would grab each other, or your body (including the insides of your lungs) and lock everything solid, while crumpling from the outside to absorb incoming impacts. They might even be able to double as an ejector seat to throw you clear (and then turn into a parachute!).
If you could do this, the fog would have an incredible number of other applications -- tent, umbrella, clothing, personal digital assistant, furniture, diving suit and air-hose....
Speculating about this struff is great fun, but I never saw the thermodynamic problems addressed -- how do you get power in and waste heat out? Also the idea of someone hacking into your personal fog cloud is frankly terrifying.
Steve
I have seen (a couple of years ago) a serious article in some technical journal suggesting that it would be better to treat the very fast static RAM technology now used for highest-level cache as main memory and treat the dynamic RAM as a first-level paging device.
This would require some technical changes to allow [suitably priveleged] software to control cache behaviour -- for example locking key kernel pages in cache, but might gain performance thereby. One example of a possible gain would be allowing SMP systems to avoid cache coherence where it's not actually needed, another would be pre-loading pages that a task is known to be likely to need.
You say: Is this sort of like "Buy this monitor and get a free G4?"
The obvious next question is do I have to take the G4? if I give/throw away the Mac, can I attach the monitor to something else? My Linux box for instance?
If so, can I get XF86 drivers?
There are some direct advantages , especially if you're working with (for instance) bitmaps, because you can grab twice as much data at a time, put it all inone register and (eg) xor it with a mask in one operation. Also you get bigger integers without needing special software.
The main advantage is being able to handle more memory. 32 bit architectures are (basically) limited to 4GB, which is not very much by todays standards.
Finally, since this chip is a complete redesign, Intel get the chance to do a lot of things differently/better than they were done in IA32.
The poster asks: "In a few years, will there really be much difference between a "game machine" and a "home" computer?"
At the present rate of progress the game machine will be faster and with a much better graphics engine.
I once saw an advertisment, dating from the early years of this century for a wonderful device: "The Home Electric Motor" It came in various sizes, needed only a modicum of regular weekly and annual maintenance and had a fabulous range of attachments for carbet-beating, egg-whisking, clothes washing, etc. etc.
I rather feel that the present "home computer" is a comparable beast, and will eventually go the same way -- absorbed into single-function appliances -- sealed for life and maintenance free.
In twenty years, our homes will be full of computers, but we will interact with none of them directly.
I configure our big multi-user compute servers, and I am a firm believer in giving them lots of swap. There are three ways it can be used:
1. to swap out all the inactive daemons, etc when a user process(es) comes close to using all of
physical RAM. This can use up to 30M or s of swap on a typical system,
2. for large stopped jobs (or interactive jobs waiting for input) -- it is sometimes nice to be able to have thee or four processes as large as physical RAM, even if only one of them can execute sensibly
3. For the very rare user with a LOT of time and a problem that won;t fit in physical memory
and no we can't buy more memory -- it won't fit.
You only actually need to choke the users down to what they've paid for when there is actual contention. If you let them have the full capabilities of the hardware the rest of the time, it costs you nothing and can only make them happier.
I can't compile 2.2.1 on my RH 5.2 system. I have had various "can't redefine" error messages ( I can change which ones I get by changing the config) such as
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/lib'
gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -m486 -malign-loops=2 -malign-jumps=2 -malign-functions=2 -DCPU=686 -c -o checksum.o checksum.c
checksum.c:200: redefinition of `csum_partial_copy'
checksum.c:105: `csum_partial_copy' previously defined here
{standard input}: Assembler messages:
{standard input}:188: Fatal error: Symbol csum_partial_copy already defined.
make[2]: *** [checksum.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/lib'
make[1]: *** [first_rule] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/lib'
make: *** [_dir_arch/i386/lib] Error 2
Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?
Steve