But I've put a lot of thought into this, myself. On the other hand, I've got an appointment in a few minutes, so this is going to be somewhat disjointed.
Environmentally friendly heating and cooling. This will depend on your location, to some extent, but includes Geothermal for heating and hot water, subterranean air conditioning, solar water heat, evaporative cooling, self-tinting windows, and adaptive exterior walls to adjust for light and temperature conditions. Also an insulated thermal mass that can be used to store waste heat in the day and be extracted at night.
Exterior: An asymmetric roof, tilted towards the south (in the norther hemisphere). Lots of solar panels; connected to the aforementioned thermal mass to capture excess heat. If you live in an appropriate part of the world, add non-directional wind turbines on the northern edge of the roof. Under the solar panels, copper or stainless steel roofing tiles.
Gutters designed to feed into an underground storage pool for grey water. Use the (cleaned) grey water for your heat exchange.
Interior: Doors and interior walls designed so sections of the house can be made environmentally independent, with environmental controls that are at least that specific. Interior ductwork for HVAC. All wiring done via conduit with regularly placed, pre-placed pull strings. Every room on its own electric circuit (if not more frequently). Extra-deep outlet boxes, so adding future tech will be easier. Outlets every 6-8 feet. USB power outlets in every room..Wired ethernet in every room, with a switch panel near the circuit panel. Coax pulled to every room. (Well, the maybe not bathrooms for the last 2).
Wallboard and paint that doesn't significantly interfere with radio frequencies. (Fuck you, Horsehair plaster).
Doors and passageways that all meet ADA standards. At least 2 entrances to the ground floor that do not have stairs or significant thresholds. Extra closets placed on every floor such that they could be converted into an elevator should there be need. (that is, one on top of another).
All plumbing done at least 8" from an exterior wall and inside an insulated, interior wall or bulkhead (fuck you, burst pipes).
Mixed height work surfaces in the kitchen. Main-floor or bedroom-floor washer and drier. Open floorplans. Exterior door in/very near the kitchen. Composter near the kitchen's exterior door. a yard that is wheelchair/stroller accessible. Raised growing beds near the kitchen for vegetables.
There's certainly more, but I got to run to the doctors.
Given the number of comments made so far, the odds that the OP will see this (or more than a handful of people, for that matter) is vanishingly small. That said, I laude you for your creativity and insight to do such a thing for your daughter. You might want to do something similar for your wife, as well; I expect she will want to hear encouragement from you, even after you're gone.
My father passed just under a year ago, due to complications from stage-4 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. There was about 10 days between his diagnosis and when he died; he didn't have a chance to make any specific goodbyes. Admittedly, my situation is different -- I'm cis-male and my father died well after I became a (nominal) adult. However, I can offer suggestions based on what I would have liked to know, and never had the chance to ask. I can also offer some advice based on the efforts my brother and I have had to go through to deal with his papers and documents.
I'd like to have had more records of my extended family and those who came before. My father was a first-generation American, the child of Holocaust Survivors. I don't know that much in the way of specific stories about my family from Europe, or the struggles of leaving, my grandparent's emigration, or similar. I know my father (and uncle) had stories told to him by his parents, though. Few, if any, ever made it past that; I hope my uncle will pass on the verbal record as he best can.
I'd like to have known more about my father's life and who he was. In going through his papers, I've found letters of commendation from Under-Secretary (US Cabinet) level offices about subject I had no idea he had any expertise. I never realized how many patents he had gotten over the years (none of which were software, FWIW), or some of the weird adventures he had. I know he was a prankster when he was in college, but I didn't realize the extent until I found a letter from a college friend that read like an indictment. =)
I'd like to have known more about things he wish he could have done and any regrets he might have had. I know he never visited Israel and wanted to, but little else. I can't right any mistakes he made, but maybe I can make some sort of amends or do things in his memory.
I would like to know what he would have thought of any kids my wife and I might have. I personally regret not telling him that we plan on having kids -- I think he died thinking that my brother and I were the last of our line (My brother has no intention on having kids, only cats).
Give whatever advice you think best. You know your daughter, and while she will change over the years, the best you can do is to be honest and frank. Inevitably she's going to fall; give her your advice on how, somedays, the best thing is to get up and fight back and others it is to eat a pint of ice cream and fight the battle a different day. Someday, someone is going to violate her trust; give advice on both how to rebuild that trust and how to walk away.
Perhaps my strongest piece of advice is don't make videos for specific events. Make videos for types of events, and maybe for different ages. She may or may not ever marry, graduate high school or college, or have children; make videos for days of celebration. She may or may not ever lose a partner or close friend, have a divorce, get into a car accident, or fail a class. Make videos to cheer her up after a bad day and encourage her for future endeavors.
Regardless, make sure you let your personality come through; don't get so caught in the effort that you miss the most important message.
Some advice on the non-video aspects, though. Go through your papers (or files or whatever) and trim them down to what is important and what isn't. I didn't need to find 2 dozen copies of my father's Thesis, or his college notes, much less his stacks of punch cards (... which were unnumbered. There's a special kind of hell for people who don't number their punch card stacks). Nor did I need his collection of square-dancing ribbo
Windows Server and Windows Desktop don't use the same OS? What definition of Operating System are you using here?
They have the same system libraries. They have the same kernel, albeit optimized and configured differently. They support the same APIs, run the same applications, use the same drivers, support the authentication engine, support the same UIs and shells, and use the same package delivery systems. There are differences, but I've yet to see any technical reason why you couldn't turn a Server edition into a Desktop release or vice versa.
As a counterpoint, the Ford Mondeo (4-door/5-door midsized vehicle) uses the same platform as a Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. They have the same frame, many of the same components, and otherwise take advantage of factory line construction and economies of scale. However, in this case, you could at least argue that they have different 'Operating Systems' -- they have some differences which are arguably just optimizations and tuning changes (handling characteristics, consoles, etc.) but others that are physical differences (Seats, load/capacity, etc.). You don't see Ford running out to split the Platform, though. Why? Because it doesn't make sense. There are more things in common at the core than are different, and they can make more products at a lower cost by sharing the core of the car platform. Ford has a dozen or so active car platforms, used by different models across their various brands; most other car makers do similarly.
The author is making one of several possible basic errors. 1) They don't really understand the definition of a Linux distribution (e.g. RHEL v CentOS v TurnKey v XUbuntu v Arch v etc.) 2) They don't really understand the differences between Windows Server and Windows Desktop 3) They don't really understand the definitions of the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, and the Linux OS 4) They don't really have a grasp of how software is made or how source code is shared 5) They weren't loved enough as a child and are desperately seeking attention.
This is like saying we need to create different compilers for AMD and Intel chips, as they have different architectures. It lacks understanding of the problem and understanding of how to address a solution.
I don't want to buy a new OS. I don't want to give Microsoft money for a OS that I don't want to use and am locked into because one software package I use is Windows-only. I certainly don't want to be forced to get new hardware in order to pay money for something I don't want to use.
While my CPU and GPU aren't breaking any records (Intel Q9550, GeForce 9400GT) and I may have other minor issues[1], I'm also not feeling any need to upgrade. I don't do high end games, my primary OS is a Linux flavor, my compiler works fine for my development work, and except for when an application goes rogue and eats CPU or RAM, my 4 VMs run fine with 4G Ram. One of those VMs is Windows (XP 64bit), running on a license I happened to get with my hardware. I use the windows VM for 2 reasons -- one, for a decent OCR package[2], and two, one of the media servers I use is a Windows-only package[3].
If these ran well under WINE, I'd ditch windows in a heart beat
Would I like to be using Windows 7 rather than XP? Sure. If a license fell into my lap, I'd upgrade. However, I look at my windows partition in much the same way I look at dental work -- of course, I would rather getting Novocaine before dental surgery, it is a nicer option than not, but I'd rather not have to have dental work in the first place.
[1] - In particular, I'm rather annoyed that while my CPU supports it, the motherboard doesn't do VT-d, [2] - I spent over 2 months trying to train Tesseract and Cuneiform to a workable state. I re-wrote significant parts of a UI front-end to make them play nice together and to select the best recognition from either engine. Best I could get was a recognition accuracy on my bank statements of 75% by _character_, much less word or line. And there still isn't an reasonable way to do document formatting replication in the recognized text. [3] Yes, yes, I use closed-source software. I am a Bad Geek. Can we please move on?
I've got a Canon GS-50, and over the past month have made the transition from huge amounts of papers to everything digitized.
My solution for multi feeds and jams? Notice, recover, and rescan. It honestly doesn't take that much longer. You will want to keep a quick eye on every page, anyways, in case of poor scans, off-perpendicular feeds, OCR-recognition failures (not so much the accuracy of the text, but the analysis confusing a block of text with graphics), and to trim blank or excess pages (page 8 of a 7-page duplex document, or page 2 of my financial statements which are the exact same notices 10 years running). Fire and forget would be lovely, but it doesn't happen.
It isn't like I only have a few things to scan, either. I have more than 15 kilos (33lbs) of documents to shred, plus the ~4 kilos (9lbs) I've already shredded and about another 10 kilos (22lbs) of scanned papers that don't need to be shredded before recycling (e.g. college club annuals). For the record, there are about 100 pages of standard 8.5x11 paper to the lbs (220 pages to the kilo -- equal to about 6500 sheets -- although many of the pages were significantly smaller like checks and the 'keep for your records' portion of bills).
It took less than a month at a couple hours a day to handle approximately 12,000 page-faces (lots of duplex pages, and the total sheet count is closer to 9,000 given how many were undersized pages).
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Is it worth keeping old records? That depends. Some of these documents (e.g. my mother's living will, my house's deed) I need to keep a physical copy around regardless. Although this leaves me a copy on hand and I can put the original in a safe-deposit box. Some of these documents have limited lifespans (did I really need to scan the bank statements escrow account for my former tenant who moved out years ago? Probably not). Others are good to have forever -- I've looked up phone numbers from phone bills 15 years old, to get back in touch with someone. I need to keep many of my investments receipts so I can deal with taxes when they are sold.
For me, it is much easier to be a pack-rat of electronic files that fit onto a USB key, than to have stacks of papers around the house. If you don't have that much paperwork, don't need to store it indefinitely, or don't have the MustKeepEverything instinct, it probably isn't worth it to scan everything.
There are plenty of science museums throughout the country. The Association of Science - Technology Centers (ASTC) has more specific information, including a search engine, at http://www.astc.org/sciencecenters/find.php These museums run a range from natural history (Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly), science museums for the general public (Boston's Museum of Science), Planetariums (Barlow Planetarium at UW Fox Valley), harder science museums (Harvard museum of Natural History, Woods Hole Oceanographic, National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO), Transportation (North Carolina Transportation Museum), Aerospace (Virginia Air & Space Center), Medicine (International Museum of Surgical Science), botanical garden (Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in Florida), and even a Presidential Library (McKinley's in Canton OH).
Similarly, it may be worth checking out the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which other than having the obvious members, has a number of science centers included (Boston's MoS, California Science Center, etc.).
Beyond those, there are some obvious choices. The Smithsonian and other DC museums have plenty of geek options. 'Air and Space' (including the annex at Dulles) and Natural History are the 2 obvious ones. International Spy Museum is another. In Boston, you could include a campus tour of MIT along with the various local museums and the Mapparium. Any of the various NASA visitor centers across the country (Houston or Cape Canaveral are probably the best options of those). For just impressive engineering, the Hoover Damn, and the CN Tower (Yeah, technically Canada. Although if you're going from Boston or NYC to Chicago, that can be on the route). Also the Golden Gate, Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), and Empire State Building, as well.
If you are interested in anatomy and physiology, you could look up where Body Worlds or Bodies: The Exhibition (or one of the competitors) is being exhibited.
Depending on when and where you go, you can also have the trip coincide with major SF/Fantasy conventions (Dragon*Con, PAX, GenCon, etc.).
Add in UCB Berkeley's Cyclotron, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Spaceport America or Mojave Air and Space Port, an atomic museum (National Museum of Nuclear Science and History or Los Almos Historical Museum), and a pilgrimage to a Silicon Valley site (the Apple Museum?), and it should be fairly complete.
I'll admit, I couldn't find a high-res image on the FBI seal in the 2 minutes I spent searching there, but the seal isn't overly complex, doesn't have micro text or any other anti-counterfeiting features.
However, this image, http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/fbiseal/images/fbiseal-02-02.gif, is a fairly decent image and can easily be used to produce a better, larger image. (The image is slightly obfuscated by the web page dis-allowing right clicks. Good going, guys. Security by obscurity for the Win. I mean Lose.)
A high resolution image of an FBI badge. Yeah. They're concerned that a web image of their seal can be used illegally, but a badge? That's nothing to worry about. Move along.
Is there a federal exemption to search and seizure of property of a journalist? no.
Is there a state exemption in California to search and seizure of property of a journalist? Yes.
Was the search warrant executed a warrant issued by a federal bench? No.
Read the article and the response; the response cites California state law by statute. A simple web search will confirm that the quoted law is, in fact, accurate.
To me, an educated layman, it seems obvious that the warrant was invalid. There may be new case law since 2006 that changes the legal precedent, but without that, the warrant is not valid, prima facia.
This is especially interesting to me, given the US adoption of more serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
Well, first, it is more than the past few years. Settlers of Catan was one of the earliest BIG cross over games. I was playing it since college, means the cross over started about a decade ago.
Secondly, I get the distinct impression that the original audience doesn't take these games nearly as seriously as US players. Settlers says on the packaging that its running time is about 1-2 hours (If I recall correctly, my original packaging has been lost to the sands of time), yet my games regularly run 3 or more hours, as trades and debates and discussions of beat-the-current-leader happens. This ratio of about twice-as-long seems to be consistent with most of the German Board Games my group plays/played.
(On the other hand, it could just be false advertising. Witness the order of the Stick game that takes ages to play, despite the packaging).
And I STILL can't find anyonre to play Kingmaker with me, and very few who play Magic Realm.
Even if you assume that the Prius has a 300,000 lifespan that puts its energy price per mile at $1.08 - far in excess of the Scion that is mentioned in the article that has a normal gasoline engine.
Well, actually, you can't simply divide-by-three. The Gasoline costs for that extra 200k miles runs you (assuming 50mpg and 2.50$/gallon) another 40,000$ dollars. So, total cost of ownership goes up to at least 364k$. or 1.21$ per mile. Plus additional repair costs, oil changes & filters, etc.
I'm still very curious as to how the numbers were found.
100k Miles in gas at US prices is about 20,000$. Even assuming some inflation, and that costs for maintenance runs the same as the gas costs, that's only a 50 - 60k$ premium on purchase price. That's only around 100,000$ for a Prius, all told. Where is the extra 200k$ cost coming from?
(Yes, I understand cost-of-ownership and cost-of-energy aren't the same thing, but someone is making a profit along the way. if the cost-of-energy is MORE than the cost of ownership, someone is losing money when I buy gas, or get an oil change.)
How is it different from the pioneers getting 40 acres and a mule?
First, a history lesson. '40 Acres and a Mule' wasn't a pioneer issue. What it is true that during the western rushes, various federal lands were put up for auction or claim by pioneers. The lands were not, however, specified to be 40 acres, but varied in size based on the territory and the specific land grant. For that matter, according to one of my HS Social Studies teachers (a dozen years ago), there were still federal lands for claim in parts of Alaska. That teacher was known to embellish the truth, so I won't put any varacity statement with that.
'40 acres and a mule' were reparations for slaves in the south. They were instituted by a Northern (Union) general, during the aftermath of the civil war, and were later reveresed by an presidential executive order.
So, in short, your parellel falls a little short. If the ICANN were to pass a ruling granting johnny-come-latelies names from vast corporate pools, that would be comprable.
So, what's wrong with cybersquatting: Well, with the federal land grants, if you occupied and developed the federal lands for a specified period of time, they became yours. You could sell or otherwise use them as you wished. Here, cybersqquatters either are taking a developed item (debatably property) and using its good will and value for an interest contrary to the orginal owners. Which would be a violation of the land grants, so thats one point where your analogy fails.
The other type of cybersquatter (who speculates on names or misspellings) is also abusing the good will of the originator, but may be a valid comparison. It is, however, annoying, to get redirected away from what you wanted because of a typo, and from the other side, a squatter who is taking an otherwise useful resource and making it near-useless is neither providing a valid service or generating good will.
This is not, however, a 'break' in RSA. There is neither a theoretical flaw in RSA (or other factoring-based encryption methods), nor has factoring been shown to be an P problem.
This is an increase in algorithmic speed. Its a jump on moore's law, but this is hardly unexpected.
In order for there to be a break of RSA or another factoring-based algorithm, the there needs to be a flaw shown in the algorithm, that makes solving it easier than factoring large primes, or factoring primes needs to be shown to be a low-cost non-hard problem.
Small vocabulary recognizers are of the sort that have grammars in the range of dozens or, possibly, hundreds of utterances in grammar. The DTMF-replacement recognizers are small vocabulary recognizers ("press or say 1", for instance).
While 'large' isn't overly descriptive, all off the recognizers I mentioned can handle grammars in the thousands of possible utterances. Not as large as dictatioin recognizers, but the theory of operation is vastly different.
Dragon, ViaVoice, etc. are dictation recognizers. They work by analyzing the speech data, and attempting to do phoneme matching to generate words, from a huge dictionary, and then do word matching.
This isn't an overly exciting model for different reasons. Large vocabulary recognizers have been around for 8-10 years. Nuance, SpeechWorks, Philips, and Temic end up being the big four in this market, allthough there is also a large vocabulary implementation of ViaVoice and others.
These products take a fixed grammar set, compile them in an speaker-indepedant manner, and can be used to recognize the compiled grammar. Without getting overly techincal, it is a very different speech recognition method than the dictation recognizers, as they aren't trying to recognize everything out of a dictionary, but simply out of what the known grammar is. The flexiblity in how the user can phrase the requests is small, but for relatively simple tasks, its a fine trade off.
Look at SprintPCS's VoiceCommand for example. (I was one of the writters of the product -- not the handset based recognition, but the serverside voice activated dialing solution). The idea is very similar, but we handle the concept a little differently.
This type of device is just waiting to happen. With VoiceXML designing tools like this will be standardized, but its not anything new, just a use of existing technology.
An open question:
My familiarity with this field is week, but I acknowledge the need to maintain an accurate history free from marketting hype. It was my understanding that the Amiga with the early VideoToaster cards was the first consumer-targetted machine with video editting capabilities, and that the capabilities of Video Toaster was well beyond anything QT could do for several version.
I couldn't find the exact dates on the Video Toaster inception, in my brief search, but I know the amiga was circa '85. Is it that the Toaster isn't considered a consumer-grade video editting tool, or that it is hardware as opposed to QT, or that it came out after 1991 or that the amiga is simply forgetting in a corner of modern computer history?
The NeXT failed for a lot of different reasons. Mostly economic.
While the NeXT was revolutionary, its cost per performance was iffy. The magnesium cases were way cool, but they cost a lot. As did the rest of the NeXT hardware. As other posters have said, the other workstations of the era (Sun 1+?, Apollo 3k&4k, Cybers, etc.) were as fast, or faster, and cost less. NeXTStep had the software down, but it was aimed at educational institutions. Which is all well, and good, but its hard to maintain a company on edu discount sold machines. The return from the discount is years off, and it doesn't sell enough units toi remain afloat long.
There are other issues; the NeXT used display postscript, instead of X, as the GUI. there were X servers for NeXTStep, but they were slower than a native server would have been, and the other native apps being 'like'; but not always the same as other platform equivelents hurt the platform.
It was also the era where, for whatever reason, Sun was king. it was the default platform to develop for, and a lot of 'cross compatable' software was really SunOS only (much like a lot of platform compatable software now only natively compiles on Linux, but thats neither here nor there).
NeXT was also slow to innovate. In its lifetime, there were only a handful of different models made, they were slow on the release cycle and were behind the pace - other manifactures would come out with their bigger and better machines first.
Another kicker is that while the NeXT was a cool as beans desktop machine, as a remote system it was nothing out of the ordinary. it was almost a standard unix shell, which lost to Apollo as Domain/OS was very spiffy in ways that unix can only dream about now, and to Sun on the cost and compatablity issue.
Eventually, NeXT stopped producing their own hardware, and went just to working on the OS. Hardware is expensive and has low margins, comparatibvely, but, at least IMO, no company can support themselves based on an OS alone. Be, for example, is viable now, but they lost a lot of momentum when they gave up the BeBoxes (and I'm not convinced they will last, either). The OS petered around for a few years, and NeXT made semi-regular releases for a while, but a lot of what they had that was unique, besides the GUI look-and-feel, was done elsewhere, nearly as good, for free OSes(or effectively free, if its the OS the machine shipped with).
So, there are a number of reasons NeXT failed. A poor long term business plan, a loss of momentum after the hardware branch was dropped, slow to meet new technologies. Probably other reasons, as well.
But in reality, it sounds like a closed-circuit TV thing, not really something to worry about
Where there are electronics, there can be a jammer. I doubt it will be common, but someone could screw with the electronics somehow. A problem, but someone can take your mirrors, with the same affect.
I'd think more about the relibility, and wether the camera and lcd system would work as well at night -- I think headlights might wash it out, and you probably want to be able to adjust the brightness on those LCDs.
Headlights are a pain, whether it is in a standard mirror, or these cameras. Washout might be more significant here, but what's worse, the washout or being unable to look at the mirror because it is too bright?
I assume there is some kind of filter to handle all but the worst of lights. And there still is a traditional rear view, I think, in the middle of the window.
(As an asside, re-locating the side view mirrors has been something that has been done before. My mother regales me with fond-remembered stories of her pugeot(sp?) which had side view mirrors located on the hood of her car. She loved them; sounds weird to me.
What makes you so sure that SCO customers would immediately migrate to linux? SCO isn't/wasn't the only high-end mucho-money Unix out there, you know. They'll probably dribble over to Solaris, or AIX, or something else expensive, proprietary and closed, unless they're running a very small installation, in which case linux's cheapness might buy it a slice.
But don't think this is going to be some huge linux windfall, 'cause it ain't.
If SCO was on specialized hardware, I'd agree with you; if SGI stopped making IRIX boxes, or HP stopped making HPUX systems, there would be no garuntee of a Linux windfall; companies and individuals using specialized platforms would probably migrate to other similar platforms.
However, SCO was a UNIX for the x86 architecture, and people who have existing systems are not going to want to replace those systems. Getting a new OS is cheap; getting new hardware (while still relatively inexpensive, compared to employees and other business expenses) is still fairly costly. Furthermore, the windfall is not just in systems in use, but programmers who know UNIX on the x86 platform, and in that outside vendors who have support for only one x86 unix platform (Dialogic, for instance, who produce t1 telephony cards, or any of several dozen other vendors) will have to increase their support for other x86 unicies, as they can no longer say that SCO is a viable option.
How, exactly, are you defining 'pop-American'? Dogma's premise challenges blind faith; it encourages an active participation within a search for personal direction and religious theory. It certainly isn't Kafka's The Castle, or essay on organized religion by Lenin, but it certainly hits topics most of pop-American culture would shy away from. Challenging blind adherence to church dogma? Unheard of in this fairly close minded popular culture.
American Movie is another, very un pop-culture film. Quirky and touching, it has a human feel that the blair witch project could only have hoped for, and has a much more watchable plot (not to mention camera work.)
Failing to have seen it yet, or even a preview, I can;t realkly comment on it, but Being John Malcovich's plot, alone, seems quite distinct from typical 'pop-American' films, requiring some thought and interest by the viewers.
You seem to be dismissing some of these films, out of hand, and without any really strong arguyments. Geek films, I can't say, but some of them are quite intersting, and distinct from,typical pop culture.
THere is a lot a-like in today's RISC and CISC chip designs, true, but there is still a lot that is different.
The major difference between your two designs include how they interact with memory; RISC's still take three instructions to load, alter, and store memory alterations, CISC load and store does it in one instruction. There are differences in instruction size; where RISC design knows that each instruction is 16/32/64 bits long, CISC allow variable length instructions and fancy footwork/chp design to allow read ahead buffers to work well. The most significant example of this is in the x86 chip series, which still has 8 bit instructions on the legacy registers, but with prefixes and extensions can have 100+ bit instructions, as well. THe system needs, effectively, a parser before feeding the instructions to the actual CPU. And while my background on CISC design is lacking, I can only imagine the design acrobatics to do superscalar/pipelined design for instructions that can do so much.
While not strictly a RISC/CISC issue, there is also the use of registers. In gross generalities, RISC design is much more apt to use general purpose registers than CISC. There are definitive advantages to each design.
Yes, this is all 'under the hood' items, but they have a large effect on design; compilers that know of, for instance, the legacy registers from the 8088/8086 and use them primarily, have nice small instructions, and can get the most out of the x86 instruction preloading. THis has been less and less significant with newer x86's (P IIs, P IIIs) but it is still present.
Rs/6000 have been running LinuxPPC for a while
on
RS/6000 Linux Box
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· Score: 3
While I'm happy to see support from IBM on this, RS/6k's running Linux are not new. Lower end models have been capable of running LinuxPPC (and possibly hiTech pacific's and YellowDog Linux's versions, which are based on LinuxPPC) for quite a while -- at least since last September, when I started to care about LinuxPPC as I purchased a mac, and probably long before. According to linuxppc.com, the following RS/6k models are supported: IBM RS6000 (PowerPC-based), 830, 850, 40P, Nobis, INDI
Additionally, PReP, CHRP, an dBeBoxen are supported.
Slashdot Mirror
But I've put a lot of thought into this, myself. On the other hand, I've got an appointment in a few minutes, so this is going to be somewhat disjointed.
Environmentally friendly heating and cooling. This will depend on your location, to some extent, but includes Geothermal for heating and hot water, subterranean air conditioning, solar water heat, evaporative cooling, self-tinting windows, and adaptive exterior walls to adjust for light and temperature conditions. Also an insulated thermal mass that can be used to store waste heat in the day and be extracted at night.
Exterior:
An asymmetric roof, tilted towards the south (in the norther hemisphere). Lots of solar panels; connected to the aforementioned thermal mass to capture excess heat. If you live in an appropriate part of the world, add non-directional wind turbines on the northern edge of the roof. Under the solar panels, copper or stainless steel roofing tiles.
Gutters designed to feed into an underground storage pool for grey water. Use the (cleaned) grey water for your heat exchange.
Interior: .Wired ethernet in every room, with a switch panel near the circuit panel. Coax pulled to every room. (Well, the maybe not bathrooms for the last 2).
Doors and interior walls designed so sections of the house can be made environmentally independent, with environmental controls that are at least that specific. Interior ductwork for HVAC. All wiring done via conduit with regularly placed, pre-placed pull strings. Every room on its own electric circuit (if not more frequently). Extra-deep outlet boxes, so adding future tech will be easier. Outlets every 6-8 feet. USB power outlets in every room.
Wallboard and paint that doesn't significantly interfere with radio frequencies. (Fuck you, Horsehair plaster).
Doors and passageways that all meet ADA standards. At least 2 entrances to the ground floor that do not have stairs or significant thresholds. Extra closets placed on every floor such that they could be converted into an elevator should there be need. (that is, one on top of another).
All plumbing done at least 8" from an exterior wall and inside an insulated, interior wall or bulkhead (fuck you, burst pipes).
Mixed height work surfaces in the kitchen. Main-floor or bedroom-floor washer and drier. Open floorplans. Exterior door in/very near the kitchen. Composter near the kitchen's exterior door. a yard that is wheelchair/stroller accessible. Raised growing beds near the kitchen for vegetables.
There's certainly more, but I got to run to the doctors.
Given the number of comments made so far, the odds that the OP will see this (or more than a handful of people, for that matter) is vanishingly small. That said, I laude you for your creativity and insight to do such a thing for your daughter. You might want to do something similar for your wife, as well; I expect she will want to hear encouragement from you, even after you're gone.
My father passed just under a year ago, due to complications from stage-4 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. There was about 10 days between his diagnosis and when he died; he didn't have a chance to make any specific goodbyes. Admittedly, my situation is different -- I'm cis-male and my father died well after I became a (nominal) adult. However, I can offer suggestions based on what I would have liked to know, and never had the chance to ask. I can also offer some advice based on the efforts my brother and I have had to go through to deal with his papers and documents.
I'd like to have had more records of my extended family and those who came before. My father was a first-generation American, the child of Holocaust Survivors. I don't know that much in the way of specific stories about my family from Europe, or the struggles of leaving, my grandparent's emigration, or similar. I know my father (and uncle) had stories told to him by his parents, though. Few, if any, ever made it past that; I hope my uncle will pass on the verbal record as he best can.
I'd like to have known more about my father's life and who he was. In going through his papers, I've found letters of commendation from Under-Secretary (US Cabinet) level offices about subject I had no idea he had any expertise. I never realized how many patents he had gotten over the years (none of which were software, FWIW), or some of the weird adventures he had. I know he was a prankster when he was in college, but I didn't realize the extent until I found a letter from a college friend that read like an indictment. =)
I'd like to have known more about things he wish he could have done and any regrets he might have had. I know he never visited Israel and wanted to, but little else. I can't right any mistakes he made, but maybe I can make some sort of amends or do things in his memory.
I would like to know what he would have thought of any kids my wife and I might have. I personally regret not telling him that we plan on having kids -- I think he died thinking that my brother and I were the last of our line (My brother has no intention on having kids, only cats).
Give whatever advice you think best. You know your daughter, and while she will change over the years, the best you can do is to be honest and frank. Inevitably she's going to fall; give her your advice on how, somedays, the best thing is to get up and fight back and others it is to eat a pint of ice cream and fight the battle a different day. Someday, someone is going to violate her trust; give advice on both how to rebuild that trust and how to walk away.
Perhaps my strongest piece of advice is don't make videos for specific events. Make videos for types of events, and maybe for different ages. She may or may not ever marry, graduate high school or college, or have children; make videos for days of celebration. She may or may not ever lose a partner or close friend, have a divorce, get into a car accident, or fail a class. Make videos to cheer her up after a bad day and encourage her for future endeavors.
Regardless, make sure you let your personality come through; don't get so caught in the effort that you miss the most important message.
Some advice on the non-video aspects, though. Go through your papers (or files or whatever) and trim them down to what is important and what isn't. I didn't need to find 2 dozen copies of my father's Thesis, or his college notes, much less his stacks of punch cards (... which were unnumbered. There's a special kind of hell for people who don't number their punch card stacks). Nor did I need his collection of square-dancing ribbo
Windows Server and Windows Desktop don't use the same OS? What definition of Operating System are you using here?
They have the same system libraries. They have the same kernel, albeit optimized and configured differently. They support the same APIs, run the same applications, use the same drivers, support the authentication engine, support the same UIs and shells, and use the same package delivery systems. There are differences, but I've yet to see any technical reason why you couldn't turn a Server edition into a Desktop release or vice versa.
As a counterpoint, the Ford Mondeo (4-door/5-door midsized vehicle) uses the same platform as a Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. They have the same frame, many of the same components, and otherwise take advantage of factory line construction and economies of scale. However, in this case, you could at least argue that they have different 'Operating Systems' -- they have some differences which are arguably just optimizations and tuning changes (handling characteristics, consoles, etc.) but others that are physical differences (Seats, load/capacity, etc.). You don't see Ford running out to split the Platform, though. Why? Because it doesn't make sense. There are more things in common at the core than are different, and they can make more products at a lower cost by sharing the core of the car platform. Ford has a dozen or so active car platforms, used by different models across their various brands; most other car makers do similarly.
The author is making one of several possible basic errors.
1) They don't really understand the definition of a Linux distribution (e.g. RHEL v CentOS v TurnKey v XUbuntu v Arch v etc.)
2) They don't really understand the differences between Windows Server and Windows Desktop
3) They don't really understand the definitions of the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, and the Linux OS
4) They don't really have a grasp of how software is made or how source code is shared
5) They weren't loved enough as a child and are desperately seeking attention.
This is like saying we need to create different compilers for AMD and Intel chips, as they have different architectures. It lacks understanding of the problem and understanding of how to address a solution.
I think you may be missing the point.
I don't want to buy a new OS. I don't want to give Microsoft money for a OS that I don't want to use and am locked into because one software package I use is Windows-only. I certainly don't want to be forced to get new hardware in order to pay money for something I don't want to use.
While my CPU and GPU aren't breaking any records (Intel Q9550, GeForce 9400GT) and I may have other minor issues[1], I'm also not feeling any need to upgrade. I don't do high end games, my primary OS is a Linux flavor, my compiler works fine for my development work, and except for when an application goes rogue and eats CPU or RAM, my 4 VMs run fine with 4G Ram. One of those VMs is Windows (XP 64bit), running on a license I happened to get with my hardware. I use the windows VM for 2 reasons -- one, for a decent OCR package[2], and two, one of the media servers I use is a Windows-only package[3].
If these ran well under WINE, I'd ditch windows in a heart beat
Would I like to be using Windows 7 rather than XP? Sure. If a license fell into my lap, I'd upgrade. However, I look at my windows partition in much the same way I look at dental work -- of course, I would rather getting Novocaine before dental surgery, it is a nicer option than not, but I'd rather not have to have dental work in the first place.
[1] - In particular, I'm rather annoyed that while my CPU supports it, the motherboard doesn't do VT-d,
[2] - I spent over 2 months trying to train Tesseract and Cuneiform to a workable state. I re-wrote significant parts of a UI front-end to make them play nice together and to select the best recognition from either engine. Best I could get was a recognition accuracy on my bank statements of 75% by _character_, much less word or line. And there still isn't an reasonable way to do document formatting replication in the recognized text.
[3] Yes, yes, I use closed-source software. I am a Bad Geek. Can we please move on?
I've got a Canon GS-50, and over the past month have made the transition from huge amounts of papers to everything digitized.
My solution for multi feeds and jams? Notice, recover, and rescan. It honestly doesn't take that much longer. You will want to keep a quick eye on every page, anyways, in case of poor scans, off-perpendicular feeds, OCR-recognition failures (not so much the accuracy of the text, but the analysis confusing a block of text with graphics), and to trim blank or excess pages (page 8 of a 7-page duplex document, or page 2 of my financial statements which are the exact same notices 10 years running). Fire and forget would be lovely, but it doesn't happen.
It isn't like I only have a few things to scan, either. I have more than 15 kilos (33lbs) of documents to shred, plus the ~4 kilos (9lbs) I've already shredded and about another 10 kilos (22lbs) of scanned papers that don't need to be shredded before recycling (e.g. college club annuals). For the record, there are about 100 pages of standard 8.5x11 paper to the lbs (220 pages to the kilo -- equal to about 6500 sheets -- although many of the pages were significantly smaller like checks and the 'keep for your records' portion of bills).
It took less than a month at a couple hours a day to handle approximately 12,000 page-faces (lots of duplex pages, and the total sheet count is closer to 9,000 given how many were undersized pages).
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Is it worth keeping old records? That depends. Some of these documents (e.g. my mother's living will, my house's deed) I need to keep a physical copy around regardless. Although this leaves me a copy on hand and I can put the original in a safe-deposit box. Some of these documents have limited lifespans (did I really need to scan the bank statements escrow account for my former tenant who moved out years ago? Probably not). Others are good to have forever -- I've looked up phone numbers from phone bills 15 years old, to get back in touch with someone. I need to keep many of my investments receipts so I can deal with taxes when they are sold.
For me, it is much easier to be a pack-rat of electronic files that fit onto a USB key, than to have stacks of papers around the house. If you don't have that much paperwork, don't need to store it indefinitely, or don't have the MustKeepEverything instinct, it probably isn't worth it to scan everything.
There are plenty of science museums throughout the country. The Association of Science - Technology Centers (ASTC) has more specific information, including a search engine, at http://www.astc.org/sciencecenters/find.php
These museums run a range from natural history (Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly), science museums for the general public (Boston's Museum of Science), Planetariums (Barlow Planetarium at UW Fox Valley), harder science museums (Harvard museum of Natural History, Woods Hole Oceanographic, National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO), Transportation (North Carolina Transportation Museum), Aerospace (Virginia Air & Space Center), Medicine (International Museum of Surgical Science), botanical garden (Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in Florida), and even a Presidential Library (McKinley's in Canton OH).
Similarly, it may be worth checking out the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which other than having the obvious members, has a number of science centers included (Boston's MoS, California Science Center, etc.).
Beyond those, there are some obvious choices. The Smithsonian and other DC museums have plenty of geek options. 'Air and Space' (including the annex at Dulles) and Natural History are the 2 obvious ones. International Spy Museum is another. In Boston, you could include a campus tour of MIT along with the various local museums and the Mapparium. Any of the various NASA visitor centers across the country (Houston or Cape Canaveral are probably the best options of those). For just impressive engineering, the Hoover Damn, and the CN Tower (Yeah, technically Canada. Although if you're going from Boston or NYC to Chicago, that can be on the route). Also the Golden Gate, Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), and Empire State Building, as well.
If you are interested in anatomy and physiology, you could look up where Body Worlds or Bodies: The Exhibition (or one of the competitors) is being exhibited.
Depending on when and where you go, you can also have the trip coincide with major SF/Fantasy conventions (Dragon*Con, PAX, GenCon, etc.).
Add in UCB Berkeley's Cyclotron, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Spaceport America or Mojave Air and Space Port, an atomic museum (National Museum of Nuclear Science and History or Los Almos Historical Museum), and a pilgrimage to a Silicon Valley site (the Apple Museum?), and it should be fairly complete.
I'll admit, I couldn't find a high-res image on the FBI seal in the 2 minutes I spent searching there, but the seal isn't overly complex, doesn't have micro text or any other anti-counterfeiting features.
However, this image, http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/fbiseal/images/fbiseal-02-02.gif, is a fairly decent image and can easily be used to produce a better, larger image. (The image is slightly obfuscated by the web page dis-allowing right clicks. Good going, guys. Security by obscurity for the Win. I mean Lose.)
However, more interesting to me is this high-res image: http://www.fbi.gov/multimedia/images/equipment/badge&gun.jpg
A high resolution image of an FBI badge. Yeah. They're concerned that a web image of their seal can be used illegally, but a badge? That's nothing to worry about. Move along.
Is there a federal exemption to search and seizure of property of a journalist? no.
Is there a state exemption in California to search and seizure of property of a journalist? Yes.
Was the search warrant executed a warrant issued by a federal bench? No.
Read the article and the response; the response cites California state law by statute. A simple web search will confirm that the quoted law is, in fact, accurate.
To me, an educated layman, it seems obvious that the warrant was invalid. There may be new case law since 2006 that changes the legal precedent, but without that, the warrant is not valid, prima facia.
This is especially interesting to me, given the US adoption of more serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
Well, first, it is more than the past few years. Settlers of Catan was one of the earliest BIG cross over games. I was playing it since college, means the cross over started about a decade ago.
Secondly, I get the distinct impression that the original audience doesn't take these games nearly as seriously as US players. Settlers says on the packaging that its running time is about 1-2 hours (If I recall correctly, my original packaging has been lost to the sands of time), yet my games regularly run 3 or more hours, as trades and debates and discussions of beat-the-current-leader happens. This ratio of about twice-as-long seems to be consistent with most of the German Board Games my group plays/played.
(On the other hand, it could just be false advertising. Witness the order of the Stick game that takes ages to play, despite the packaging).
And I STILL can't find anyonre to play Kingmaker with me, and very few who play Magic Realm.
Even if you assume that the Prius has a 300,000 lifespan that puts its energy price per mile at $1.08 - far in excess of the Scion that is mentioned in the article that has a normal gasoline engine.
Well, actually, you can't simply divide-by-three. The Gasoline costs for that extra 200k miles runs you (assuming 50mpg and 2.50$/gallon) another 40,000$ dollars. So, total cost of ownership goes up to at least 364k$. or 1.21$ per mile. Plus additional repair costs, oil changes & filters, etc.
I'm still very curious as to how the numbers were found.
100k Miles in gas at US prices is about 20,000$. Even assuming some inflation, and that costs for maintenance runs the same as the gas costs, that's only a 50 - 60k$ premium on purchase price. That's only around 100,000$ for a Prius, all told. Where is the extra 200k$ cost coming from?
(Yes, I understand cost-of-ownership and cost-of-energy aren't the same thing, but someone is making a profit along the way. if the cost-of-energy is MORE than the cost of ownership, someone is losing money when I buy gas, or get an oil change.)
How is it different from the pioneers getting 40 acres and a mule?
First, a history lesson. '40 Acres and a Mule' wasn't a pioneer issue. What it is true that during the western rushes, various federal lands were put up for auction or claim by pioneers. The lands were not, however, specified to be 40 acres, but varied in size based on the territory and the specific land grant. For that matter, according to one of my HS Social Studies teachers (a dozen years ago), there were still federal lands for claim in parts of Alaska. That teacher was known to embellish the truth, so I won't put any varacity statement with that.
'40 acres and a mule' were reparations for slaves in the south. They were instituted by a Northern (Union) general, during the aftermath of the civil war, and were later reveresed by an presidential executive order.
So, in short, your parellel falls a little short. If the ICANN were to pass a ruling granting johnny-come-latelies names from vast corporate pools, that would be comprable.
So, what's wrong with cybersquatting: Well, with the federal land grants, if you occupied and developed the federal lands for a specified period of time, they became yours. You could sell or otherwise use them as you wished. Here, cybersqquatters either are taking a developed item (debatably property) and using its good will and value for an interest contrary to the orginal owners. Which would be a violation of the land grants, so thats one point where your analogy fails.
The other type of cybersquatter (who speculates on names or misspellings) is also abusing the good will of the originator, but may be a valid comparison. It is, however, annoying, to get redirected away from what you wanted because of a typo, and from the other side, a squatter who is taking an otherwise useful resource and making it near-useless is neither providing a valid service or generating good will.
This is a "news" article from the , a US Supermarket tabloid. Its also several weeks old.
As I've not seen this story carried by any other media outlet, I find the accuracy a little suspect.
This is not, however, a 'break' in RSA. There is neither a theoretical flaw in RSA (or other factoring-based encryption methods), nor has factoring been shown to be an P problem.
This is an increase in algorithmic speed. Its a jump on moore's law, but this is hardly unexpected.
In order for there to be a break of RSA or another factoring-based algorithm, the there needs to be a flaw shown in the algorithm, that makes solving it easier than factoring large primes, or factoring primes needs to be shown to be a low-cost non-hard problem.
No, I meant large.
Small vocabulary recognizers are of the sort that have grammars in the range of dozens or, possibly, hundreds of utterances in grammar. The DTMF-replacement recognizers are small vocabulary recognizers ("press or say 1", for instance).
While 'large' isn't overly descriptive, all off the recognizers I mentioned can handle grammars in the thousands of possible utterances. Not as large as dictatioin recognizers, but the theory of operation is vastly different.
ACtually, I work in this field.
Dragon, ViaVoice, etc. are dictation recognizers. They work by analyzing the speech data, and attempting to do phoneme matching to generate words, from a huge dictionary, and then do word matching.
This isn't an overly exciting model for different reasons. Large vocabulary recognizers have been around for 8-10 years. Nuance, SpeechWorks, Philips, and Temic end up being the big four in this market, allthough there is also a large vocabulary implementation of ViaVoice and others.
These products take a fixed grammar set, compile them in an speaker-indepedant manner, and can be used to recognize the compiled grammar. Without getting overly techincal, it is a very different speech recognition method than the dictation recognizers, as they aren't trying to recognize everything out of a dictionary, but simply out of what the known grammar is. The flexiblity in how the user can phrase the requests is small, but for relatively simple tasks, its a fine trade off.
Look at SprintPCS's VoiceCommand for example. (I was one of the writters of the product -- not the handset based recognition, but the serverside voice activated dialing solution). The idea is very similar, but we handle the concept a little differently.
This type of device is just waiting to happen. With VoiceXML designing tools like this will be standardized, but its not anything new, just a use of existing technology.
An open question:
My familiarity with this field is week, but I acknowledge the need to maintain an accurate history free from marketting hype. It was my understanding that the Amiga with the early VideoToaster cards was the first consumer-targetted machine with video editting capabilities, and that the capabilities of Video Toaster was well beyond anything QT could do for several version.
I couldn't find the exact dates on the Video Toaster inception, in my brief search, but I know the amiga was circa '85. Is it that the Toaster isn't considered a consumer-grade video editting tool, or that it is hardware as opposed to QT, or that it came out after 1991 or that the amiga is simply forgetting in a corner of modern computer history?
The NeXT failed for a lot of different reasons. Mostly economic.
While the NeXT was revolutionary, its cost per performance was iffy. The magnesium cases were way cool, but they cost a lot. As did the rest of the NeXT hardware. As other posters have said, the other workstations of the era (Sun 1+?, Apollo 3k&4k, Cybers, etc.) were as fast, or faster, and cost less. NeXTStep had the software down, but it was aimed at educational institutions. Which is all well, and good, but its hard to maintain a company on edu discount sold machines. The return from the discount is years off, and it doesn't sell enough units toi remain afloat long.
There are other issues; the NeXT used display postscript, instead of X, as the GUI. there were X servers for NeXTStep, but they were slower than a native server would have been, and the other native apps being 'like'; but not always the same as other platform equivelents hurt the platform.
It was also the era where, for whatever reason, Sun was king. it was the default platform to develop for, and a lot of 'cross compatable' software was really SunOS only (much like a lot of platform compatable software now only natively compiles on Linux, but thats neither here nor there).
NeXT was also slow to innovate. In its lifetime, there were only a handful of different models made, they were slow on the release cycle and were behind the pace - other manifactures would come out with their bigger and better machines first.
Another kicker is that while the NeXT was a cool as beans desktop machine, as a remote system it was nothing out of the ordinary. it was almost a standard unix shell, which lost to Apollo as Domain/OS was very spiffy in ways that unix can only dream about now, and to Sun on the cost and compatablity issue.
Eventually, NeXT stopped producing their own hardware, and went just to working on the OS. Hardware is expensive and has low margins, comparatibvely, but, at least IMO, no company can support themselves based on an OS alone. Be, for example, is viable now, but they lost a lot of momentum when they gave up the BeBoxes (and I'm not convinced they will last, either). The OS petered around for a few years, and NeXT made semi-regular releases for a while, but a lot of what they had that was unique, besides the GUI look-and-feel, was done elsewhere, nearly as good, for free OSes(or effectively free, if its the OS the machine shipped with).
So, there are a number of reasons NeXT failed. A poor long term business plan, a loss of momentum after the hardware branch was dropped, slow to meet new technologies. Probably other reasons, as well.
But in reality, it sounds like a closed-circuit TV thing, not really something to worry about
Where there are electronics, there can be a jammer. I doubt it will be common, but someone could screw with the electronics somehow. A problem, but someone can take your mirrors, with the same affect.
I'd think more about the relibility, and wether the camera and lcd system would work as well at night -- I think headlights might wash it out, and you probably want to be able to adjust the brightness on those LCDs.
Headlights are a pain, whether it is in a standard mirror, or these cameras. Washout might be more significant here, but what's worse, the washout or being unable to look at the mirror because it is too bright?
I assume there is some kind of filter to handle all but the worst of lights. And there still is a traditional rear view, I think, in the middle of the window.
(As an asside, re-locating the side view mirrors has been something that has been done before. My mother regales me with fond-remembered stories of her pugeot(sp?) which had side view mirrors located on the hood of her car. She loved them; sounds weird to me.
What makes you so sure that SCO customers would immediately migrate to linux? SCO isn't/wasn't the only high-end mucho-money Unix out there, you know. They'll probably dribble over to Solaris, or AIX, or something else expensive, proprietary and closed, unless they're running a very small installation, in which case linux's cheapness might buy it a slice.
But don't think this is going to be some huge linux windfall, 'cause it ain't.
If SCO was on specialized hardware, I'd agree with you; if SGI stopped making IRIX boxes, or HP stopped making HPUX systems, there would be no garuntee of a Linux windfall; companies and individuals using specialized platforms would probably migrate to other similar platforms.
However, SCO was a UNIX for the x86 architecture, and people who have existing systems are not going to want to replace those systems. Getting a new OS is cheap; getting new hardware (while still relatively inexpensive, compared to employees and other business expenses) is still fairly costly. Furthermore, the windfall is not just in systems in use, but programmers who know UNIX on the x86 platform, and in that outside vendors who have support for only one x86 unix platform (Dialogic, for instance, who produce t1 telephony cards, or any of several dozen other vendors) will have to increase their support for other x86 unicies, as they can no longer say that SCO is a viable option.
How, exactly, are you defining 'pop-American'?
Dogma's premise challenges blind faith; it encourages an active participation within a search for personal direction and religious theory. It certainly isn't Kafka's The Castle, or essay on organized religion by Lenin, but it certainly hits topics most of pop-American culture would shy away from. Challenging blind adherence to church dogma? Unheard of in this fairly close minded popular culture.
American Movie is another, very un pop-culture film. Quirky and touching, it has a human feel that the blair witch project could only have hoped for, and has a much more watchable plot (not to mention camera work.)
Failing to have seen it yet, or even a preview, I can;t realkly comment on it, but Being John Malcovich's plot, alone, seems quite distinct from typical 'pop-American' films, requiring some thought and interest by the viewers.
You seem to be dismissing some of these films, out of hand, and without any really strong arguyments. Geek films, I can't say, but some of them are quite intersting, and distinct from,typical pop culture.
THere is a lot a-like in today's RISC and CISC chip designs, true, but there is still a lot that is different.
The major difference between your two designs include how they interact with memory; RISC's still take three instructions to load, alter, and store memory alterations, CISC load and store does it in one instruction. There are differences in instruction size; where RISC design knows that each instruction is 16/32/64 bits long, CISC allow variable length instructions and fancy footwork/chp design to allow read ahead buffers to work well. The most significant example of this is in the x86 chip series, which still has 8 bit instructions on the legacy registers, but with prefixes and extensions can have 100+ bit instructions, as well. THe system needs, effectively, a parser before feeding the instructions to the actual CPU. And while my background on CISC design is lacking, I can only imagine the design acrobatics to do superscalar/pipelined design for instructions that can do so much.
While not strictly a RISC/CISC issue, there is also the use of registers. In gross generalities, RISC design is much more apt to use general purpose registers than CISC. There are definitive advantages to each design.
Yes, this is all 'under the hood' items, but they have a large effect on design; compilers that know of, for instance, the legacy registers from the 8088/8086 and use them primarily, have nice small instructions, and can get the most out of the x86 instruction preloading. THis has been less and less significant with newer x86's (P IIs, P IIIs) but it is still present.
While I'm happy to see support from IBM on this, RS/6k's running Linux are not new. Lower end models have been capable of running LinuxPPC (and possibly hiTech pacific's and YellowDog Linux's versions, which are based on LinuxPPC) for quite a while -- at least since last September, when I started to care about LinuxPPC as I purchased a mac, and probably long before. According to linuxppc.com, the following RS/6k models are supported:
IBM
RS6000 (PowerPC-based), 830, 850, 40P, Nobis, INDI
Additionally, PReP, CHRP, an dBeBoxen are supported.