Well, yeah - but by your definition, a "normal" person could buy a Beowulf cluster like IBM put together recently - wasn't that in the range of $150,000 - $200,000 (about the price of a good house nowadays)?
Just because someone can buy it - above all else (I would rather have the house), doesn't make it a personal computer.
What color is it (the case)? And what kind of keys does it have? If it is grey, and uses regular keys (not chiclet rubber keys) then it is pretty old - probably a Coco 1 with 4K (date - around 1981-82). If it is white, it is newer...
That's pretty old - I think only something like that or an Apple IIe or something will win - forget about an Altair or any computer like that...
of our own bodies - for some reason, for some people, seeing the human body - whether it be naked or chopped up, dead or alive - makes them think it is wrong, and no one should see such things.
Personally, I don't have a problem seeing any human body in any form. I can't say I have personally observed a dead, chopped up person "in the flesh" (and therefore, I may have a different reaction toward such a situation), but I know nakedness doesn't offend me, and sex (between consenting individuals) doesn't offend me either.
"pole" AND "position" NOT "sex" NOT "girls" NOT "slut"
This would bring back quite a lot on the game, and hardly anything having to do with sex. Furthermore, on every search engine I know of, you can READ the descriptions - and while there might be a few "offensive" words (and heck, if you get upset at a few words - you should be shot for contamination of the gene pool), your brain (if you have one) can figure out which ones are likely to contain porn!
It seems like people haven't got any clue on how to use simple search engines. It also seems like that if a person has to type something (in what is basically a CLI style syntax), their brain shuts down.
Hell no - do you know how many people are out there building their own players (most of them using Linux)? If they can do it, so can I - and I would bet there are many other people here on/. that can do the same. We will just "open-source" a hardware MP3 player - maybe someone else will even come up with a kit (with custom molded case!) or a fully assembled version for the masses, perhaps? Or what happens when the "hardware" player is that new nifty P1GHZ palm computer with 256MB running Linux? You know the thing will have sound built in, of course...
I have used and seen the NT BSOD - it is bold much help in determining the cause of the crash. I haven't worked with Linux much, but I know that it didn't crash on me - it exited gracefully with a system shutdown - giving a proper error log (which I also imagine might have been saved on the drive - not sure though).
"incentivize"? What the hell kind of word is that?
[flipping through the dictionary]
I don't see it...
NitpickMode = 0;
Hmm - it seemed that the article hinted that in some manner new CD's would be encoded in such a fashion that even after ripping, a decoder (presumably a new one, properly programmed - hold on to all your old MP3 enc/dec code, everyone!) would be able to figure out this, and display a warning message. I don't quite know how this could possibly work given the constraints of the format (mainly the fact that it is lossy in various ways imperceptible to the human ear - perhaps this will be the key to the whole sceme, though).
With the new SDMI format, it would be easy to do, since the format would allow for it. Either/or, I don't put it past the RIAA to get something to work, esp. when the head of the SDMI is largely responsible for MPEG.
But I have faith that a way around all the schemes will be created - these kinds of locks are always broken - this "new" one will be no different.
>show me something that Linux can do that other OS's can't
OK - I am a Linux newbie - struggling to break the bonds from M$. My first install happened to be on a laptop over a network connection to my Win95 machine. I had installed extra memory, and at the time I didn't know it, but the laptop was bad, and the extra memory would cause it to crash randomly (remove the memory, no more crashes - and it wasn't the memory, because I had the same memory installed in a different laptop, and it works fine). I began to _install_ Linux using a boot floppy - the install was going great, then the machine dumped - did the Linux based installer die? NO - it gracefully exited, giving me numerous (too numerous) information on why it exited, and shut down the system (very similar to the "shutdown -h now" command sequence) - the message was good enough for me to diagnose what had happened.
I can only imagine what would have happened had it been Windoze (can you say blue screen?)...
So what is the one thing that Linux can do that other OS's can't? Simple:
It can't crash.
Seriously - do I really think Linux can't crash? No - any OS on any machine CAN crash. Do I think that Linux crashes often (as often as my Win95 box)? Hell no! My own experiences and anecdotal stories refutes that!
I am pretty much a Linux newbie, but from what i understand, a piece of software must be specifically written (or patched) in order to work effectively with Beowulf. Mosix seems to allow any process (regardless of how it was written) to effectively use the distributed resources of the system. IMO, this would make a MOSIX cluster easier to work with (from a coding standpoint). Is this correct, or am I reading things wrong?
The article (more like a blurb) seems to make it out to only work with this certain superconducter operating at low temperatures. What low temperature? Liquid nitrogen? Liquid helium? What? Until it works at room temp (or at least 0 degrees celcius), don't expect it on the desktop any time soon...
I remember seeing on Ebay a while back an item that was truely "one of a kind". It was a little robot (fully programmable) not much bigger than a dime. I can't remember who made it (Sony or Tomy? Maybe some other company), but the shell was silver (real silver), and only a very few were made (for visiting dignitaries or some crap). It ended up selling on Ebay for around $5000 - if I had the money to blow, I would have got it myself...
I think I will wait about 10-12 years, then troll Ebay and buy one for $200 or so. the way I see it, this is just like the Omnibot 2000 was back in the mid-80's. That thing cost around $2000 at the time - I just recently got one for the trade of an old 486!
I am still trying to figure out the locomotion of the Aibo. Does it use wheels, or real walking? Or a combo of the two? It seems like the latter...
There was a book a while back (mid 70's or early 80's I think) called "Build Your Own Robot Pet", or something like that, put out by TAB Books - I suggest you build your own pet - it would be cheaper in the long run. A few Stamps with an IR link, all connected to a cheap toy tank and covered with some fake fur wouldn't be too hard to craft.
If they made the thing cuter (closer to a Furby and less like a tank), it would sell better over here. The price problem still gets in the way.
I think they could have made this thing a lot simpler if they tried - maybe Tiger Toys should step in and make the Furby Pet Dog or somthing...
Hey - someone should go in with a wearable set up with wireless ethernet and a camera and BROADCAST the thing to the internet.
This sounds naive - I don't think it could be done for a few reasons:
1. They wouldn't let you in.
2. The quality would suck.
3. The/. effect of people trying to view the stream would kill whatever server(s) it was on.
I am not going to see it - I am going to wait until the lines get smaller, or when the re-run it at the theater again. That, or go in the middle of a Thursday a few weeks after its release or something. I am not willing to get a crappy seat for a movie like this - and I am not willing to take time off (already doing it for two days this month) for a movie. It is, after all, just a movie...
If complex emergent behavior, esp. behavior that wasn't programmed in initially, is supposed to arise from a multitude of simpler components, could we theorise that AI might emerge from the underworkings of the internet?
Do I really believe this? No - but it is interesting to think about...
I always thought the Robodyne stuff - while far-fetched in its current form - was, ultimately, feasible. When I first came upon the idea of fractal robotics, my first thought was "Wow! Conway's Life in 3D!". After looking into how Robodyne was trying to achieve it, it just didn't look like something that would work - at least on the scale he was trying. I do think that once the mechanics of keeping the blocks together (while also allowing them to move) are worked out to the point that something could actually be built, some form of a computer could be slapped in with a power supply and comm links to the other "blocks". Right now, the whole thing looks silly - the problem arises from how the blocks should work (heck, do they have to be blocks?). Once that problem is solved, such a robot could be built.
This hardware, called "TWINKLE" (which stands for The Weizmann INstitute Key Locating Engine), is an electro-optical sieving device which will execute sieve-based factoring algorithms approximately two to three orders of magnitude as fast as a conventional fast PC.
It runs at a very high clock rate (10 GHz), must trigger LEDs at precise intervals of time, and uses wafer-scale technology.
What the hell is this thing?
Sounds like an ultra small, ultra high speed punch card machine of some type! The statement of it being "electro-optical" seems to point to either that, or it being some form of an optical computer.
I am thinking more on the latter - the former seems like a bad April Fools Day joke!
I have always thought it would be fun to do what you have done. I am sure I could do it if I put the time in, but since I haven't had any real problems since HS, I just can't convince myself to do it (and take away from my coding time?)...
I am happy to see that someone has done it. I know when I was in HS I had larger friends who would help me in bad situations - the kind of guys who drifted between the jocks and geeks and kinda made life easier.
Tell me, are some peopleborn gay, or do they become gay?
That depends on who you ask, I personally believe that some are born that way (or are at least nurtured that way from an early age), and others do it out of choice.
Tell me, are some people born heterosexual, or do they become heterosexual?
This all sounds like drivel I have heard from various people like, "Ooooo... How can he/she love/have sex with/etc. another man/woman?"
I mean, really - people who are gay have the same lack of attraction to the opposite sex as those who are heterosexual have to those of the same sex. Why do heterosexuals insist on trying to figure out homosexuals, when they (the heterosexuals) can't even figure out themselves? Really - I have thought long and hard (no pun intended) about why I am a heterosexual - and I haven't a clue why. I don't dare presume to try and figure out homosexuals.
I'll tell you something - when I was in high school, I had to be the one of the biggest geeks there.
I had my moments before in junior high and grade school - getting pantsed, thrown in the trash dumpster, spit on, etc - though one time in grade school I got back at a bully who was tormenting me:
My friend Jesus (hey-soose), my mexican compadre, big as shit, held this kid down while I beat the kid with a big trucker belt buckle behind a school building - never got caught, and didn't have a problem from that asshole ever again.
However, in high school I was "the big geek" - wearing Dockers, T-shirts with funny slogans/look, big backpack (carried on both shoulders!), glasses, braces, pimples - everything. I tried to excel as best I could in all of my classes - maintained around a 3.8-4.0 GPA without serious studying. I also tried to fit in as best I could in PE - when we did weight lifting, while I wasn't good at bench pressing (had trouble with the BAR!), I was able to squat around 450 lbs - earning a bit of respect from the jocks. One other thing I did was to be really nice to everyone - so if I had to fuck somebody up, in a covert fashion, no one would believe it was me. CIP:
One day at PE this guy came up to me and punched me in the shoulder for no reason - after hearing in the locker how he had injured his leg, I of course struck him back there, HARD! He screamed like the prig he was - the teacher came, asked him what had happened - the guy said what I did - and would you believe this (I still don't, but it happenned!): The teacher told the guy "I wish we had more kids like (my name) in this class." - and walked off. By then I was ROTFL.
These are the only two times I remember being particularly vengeful - there were days I was sent to the office for various fights, etc. There were many times I came home upset. Most of the time, I came home pretty blah. But I survived it. It chills me to think about the knee-jerk reactions people have had for what happened. I keep in touch with the one good friend I had in school (everyone thought we were gay - we were just great friends) - and most of the people we hung around with (an outsider kind of group) all turned out happy, if not successful. The popular kids - those that I know of aren't doing shit - and to be honest, those that I don't know about, I really don't care.
It has almost been ten years since HS. Since then, I have gotten a GF, a great apartment, an excellent job, a truck, more computers and shit than I could imagine, and I have dropped the geeky look (thanks to my GF - BTW, lose the glasses, get contacts if you can - I wish I had done it in HS!), wearing good clothes (most of the time - I still have some geek stuff), and getting some bulk on my bones (though still no muscle - though I could if I wanted).
Even so, the posts here and the tragedy in CO brought back a lot of pain and thought of "the old days". If anything Katz has done, it is make us really think about our lives - thanks, Jon.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah - but by your definition, a "normal" person could buy a Beowulf cluster like IBM put together recently - wasn't that in the range of $150,000 - $200,000 (about the price of a good house nowadays)?
Just because someone can buy it - above all else (I would rather have the house), doesn't make it a personal computer.
What color is it (the case)? And what kind of keys does it have? If it is grey, and uses regular keys (not chiclet rubber keys) then it is pretty old - probably a Coco 1 with 4K (date - around 1981-82). If it is white, it is newer...
That's pretty old - I think only something like that or an Apple IIe or something will win - forget about an Altair or any computer like that...
of our own bodies - for some reason, for some people, seeing the human body - whether it be naked or chopped up, dead or alive - makes them think it is wrong, and no one should see such things.
Personally, I don't have a problem seeing any human body in any form. I can't say I have personally observed a dead, chopped up person "in the flesh" (and therefore, I may have a different reaction toward such a situation), but I know nakedness doesn't offend me, and sex (between consenting individuals) doesn't offend me either.
Uh, ever heard of boolean operators?
"pole" AND "position" NOT "sex" NOT "girls" NOT "slut"
This would bring back quite a lot on the game, and hardly anything having to do with sex. Furthermore, on every search engine I know of, you can READ the descriptions - and while there might be a few "offensive" words (and heck, if you get upset at a few words - you should be shot for contamination of the gene pool), your brain (if you have one) can figure out which ones are likely to contain porn!
It seems like people haven't got any clue on how to use simple search engines. It also seems like that if a person has to type something (in what is basically a CLI style syntax), their brain shuts down.
Hell no - do you know how many people are out there building their own players (most of them using Linux)? If they can do it, so can I - and I would bet there are many other people here on /. that can do the same. We will just "open-source" a hardware MP3 player - maybe someone else will even come up with a kit (with custom molded case!) or a fully assembled version for the masses, perhaps? Or what happens when the "hardware" player is that new nifty P1GHZ palm computer with 256MB running Linux? You know the thing will have sound built in, of course...
Ok - perhaps...
I really didn't care that much about that particular word - it just didn't sound right to me...
However, the rest of my comment still stands (anyone wish to comment on it?)...
I went to the Blinkenlights site - Wow!
I want one of those paperclip computers!
I have to find that book!
That should be "it is not much help..."
Just to set the record straight:
I have used and seen the NT BSOD - it is bold much help in determining the cause of the crash. I haven't worked with Linux much, but I know that it didn't crash on me - it exited gracefully with a system shutdown - giving a proper error log (which I also imagine might have been saved on the drive - not sure though).
"incentivize"? What the hell kind of word is that?
[flipping through the dictionary]
I don't see it...
NitpickMode = 0;
Hmm - it seemed that the article hinted that in some manner new CD's would be encoded in such a fashion that even after ripping, a decoder (presumably a new one, properly programmed - hold on to all your old MP3 enc/dec code, everyone!) would be able to figure out this, and display a warning message. I don't quite know how this could possibly work given the constraints of the format (mainly the fact that it is lossy in various ways imperceptible to the human ear - perhaps this will be the key to the whole sceme, though).
With the new SDMI format, it would be easy to do, since the format would allow for it. Either/or, I don't put it past the RIAA to get something to work, esp. when the head of the SDMI is largely responsible for MPEG.
But I have faith that a way around all the schemes will be created - these kinds of locks are always broken - this "new" one will be no different.
>show me something that Linux can do that other OS's can't
OK - I am a Linux newbie - struggling to break the bonds from M$. My first install happened to be on a laptop over a network connection to my Win95 machine. I had installed extra memory, and at the time I didn't know it, but the laptop was bad, and the extra memory would cause it to crash randomly (remove the memory, no more crashes - and it wasn't the memory, because I had the same memory installed in a different laptop, and it works fine). I began to _install_ Linux using a boot floppy - the install was going great, then the machine dumped - did the Linux based installer die? NO - it gracefully exited, giving me numerous (too numerous) information on why it exited, and shut down the system (very similar to the "shutdown -h now" command sequence) - the message was good enough for me to diagnose what had happened.
I can only imagine what would have happened had it been Windoze (can you say blue screen?)...
So what is the one thing that Linux can do that other OS's can't? Simple:
It can't crash.
Seriously - do I really think Linux can't crash? No - any OS on any machine CAN crash. Do I think that Linux crashes often (as often as my Win95 box)? Hell no! My own experiences and anecdotal stories refutes that!
Just another Linux Newbie...
I am pretty much a Linux newbie, but from what i understand, a piece of software must be specifically written (or patched) in order to work effectively with Beowulf. Mosix seems to allow any process (regardless of how it was written) to effectively use the distributed resources of the system. IMO, this would make a MOSIX cluster easier to work with (from a coding standpoint). Is this correct, or am I reading things wrong?
The article (more like a blurb) seems to make it out to only work with this certain superconducter operating at low temperatures. What low temperature? Liquid nitrogen? Liquid helium? What? Until it works at room temp (or at least 0 degrees celcius), don't expect it on the desktop any time soon...
Speaking of limited editions...
I remember seeing on Ebay a while back an item that was truely "one of a kind". It was a little robot (fully programmable) not much bigger than a dime. I can't remember who made it (Sony or Tomy? Maybe some other company), but the shell was silver (real silver), and only a very few were made (for visiting dignitaries or some crap). It ended up selling on Ebay for around $5000 - if I had the money to blow, I would have got it myself...
There is always the Honda robot - closest thing to a real android I have seen yet!
I think I will wait about 10-12 years, then troll Ebay and buy one for $200 or so. the way I see it, this is just like the Omnibot 2000 was back in the mid-80's. That thing cost around $2000 at the time - I just recently got one for the trade of an old 486!
I am still trying to figure out the locomotion of the Aibo. Does it use wheels, or real walking? Or a combo of the two? It seems like the latter...
There was a book a while back (mid 70's or early 80's I think) called "Build Your Own Robot Pet", or something like that, put out by TAB Books - I suggest you build your own pet - it would be cheaper in the long run. A few Stamps with an IR link, all connected to a cheap toy tank and covered with some fake fur wouldn't be too hard to craft.
If they made the thing cuter (closer to a Furby and less like a tank), it would sell better over here. The price problem still gets in the way.
I think they could have made this thing a lot simpler if they tried - maybe Tiger Toys should step in and make the Furby Pet Dog or somthing...
Hey - someone should go in with a wearable set up with wireless ethernet and a camera and BROADCAST the thing to the internet.
/. effect of people trying to view the stream would kill whatever server(s) it was on.
This sounds naive - I don't think it could be done for a few reasons:
1. They wouldn't let you in.
2. The quality would suck.
3. The
I am not going to see it - I am going to wait until the lines get smaller, or when the re-run it at the theater again. That, or go in the middle of a Thursday a few weeks after its release or something. I am not willing to get a crappy seat for a movie like this - and I am not willing to take time off (already doing it for two days this month) for a movie. It is, after all, just a movie...
If complex emergent behavior, esp. behavior that wasn't programmed in initially, is supposed to arise from a multitude of simpler components, could we theorise that AI might emerge from the underworkings of the internet?
Do I really believe this? No - but it is interesting to think about...
I always thought the Robodyne stuff - while far-fetched in its current form - was, ultimately, feasible. When I first came upon the idea of fractal robotics, my first thought was "Wow! Conway's Life in 3D!". After looking into how Robodyne was trying to achieve it, it just didn't look like something that would work - at least on the scale he was trying. I do think that once the mechanics of keeping the blocks together (while also allowing them to move) are worked out to the point that something could actually be built, some form of a computer could be slapped in with a power supply and comm links to the other "blocks". Right now, the whole thing looks silly - the problem arises from how the blocks should work (heck, do they have to be blocks?). Once that problem is solved, such a robot could be built.
On the surface, this sounds bogus - but the idea is sane (or maybe not, take a look for yourself):
Fractal Robots
This hardware, called "TWINKLE" (which stands for The Weizmann INstitute Key Locating Engine), is an electro-optical sieving device which will execute sieve-based factoring algorithms approximately two to three orders of magnitude as fast as a conventional fast PC.
It runs at a very high clock rate (10 GHz), must trigger LEDs at precise intervals of time, and uses wafer-scale technology.
What the hell is this thing?
Sounds like an ultra small, ultra high speed punch card machine of some type! The statement of it being "electro-optical" seems to point to either that, or it being some form of an optical computer.
I am thinking more on the latter - the former seems like a bad April Fools Day joke!
Holy shit! I am glad you are with us!
I have always thought it would be fun to do what you have done. I am sure I could do it if I put the time in, but since I haven't had any real problems since HS, I just can't convince myself to do it (and take away from my coding time?)...
I am happy to see that someone has done it. I know when I was in HS I had larger friends who would help me in bad situations - the kind of guys who drifted between the jocks and geeks and kinda made life easier.
Thanks for sharing...
Tell me, are some peopleborn gay, or do they become gay?
That depends on who you ask, I personally believe that some are born that way (or are at least nurtured that way from an early age), and others do it out of choice.
Tell me, are some people born heterosexual, or do they become heterosexual?
This all sounds like drivel I have heard from various people like, "Ooooo... How can he/she love/have sex with/etc. another man/woman?"
I mean, really - people who are gay have the same lack of attraction to the opposite sex as those who are heterosexual have to those of the same sex. Why do heterosexuals insist on trying to figure out homosexuals, when they (the heterosexuals) can't even figure out themselves? Really - I have thought long and hard (no pun intended) about why I am a heterosexual - and I haven't a clue why. I don't dare presume to try and figure out homosexuals.
Can you imagine the Gs the outer edge of the disk would be pulling if rotating at today's speeds? 10000 RPM would probably tear'em apart!
I'll tell you something - when I was in high school, I had to be the one of the biggest geeks there.
I had my moments before in junior high and grade school - getting pantsed, thrown in the trash dumpster, spit on, etc - though one time in grade school I got back at a bully who was tormenting me:
My friend Jesus (hey-soose), my mexican compadre, big as shit, held this kid down while I beat the kid with a big trucker belt buckle behind a school building - never got caught, and didn't have a problem from that asshole ever again.
However, in high school I was "the big geek" - wearing Dockers, T-shirts with funny slogans/look, big backpack (carried on both shoulders!), glasses, braces, pimples - everything. I tried to excel as best I could in all of my classes - maintained around a 3.8-4.0 GPA without serious studying. I also tried to fit in as best I could in PE - when we did weight lifting, while I wasn't good at bench pressing (had trouble with the BAR!), I was able to squat around 450 lbs - earning a bit of respect from the jocks. One other thing I did was to be really nice to everyone - so if I had to fuck somebody up, in a covert fashion, no one would believe it was me. CIP:
One day at PE this guy came up to me and punched me in the shoulder for no reason - after hearing in the locker how he had injured his leg, I of course struck him back there, HARD! He screamed like the prig he was - the teacher came, asked him what had happened - the guy said what I did - and would you believe this (I still don't, but it happenned!): The teacher told the guy "I wish we had more kids like (my name) in this class." - and walked off. By then I was ROTFL.
These are the only two times I remember being particularly vengeful - there were days I was sent to the office for various fights, etc. There were many times I came home upset. Most of the time, I came home pretty blah. But I survived it. It chills me to think about the knee-jerk reactions people have had for what happened. I keep in touch with the one good friend I had in school (everyone thought we were gay - we were just great friends) - and most of the people we hung around with (an outsider kind of group) all turned out happy, if not successful. The popular kids - those that I know of aren't doing shit - and to be honest, those that I don't know about, I really don't care.
It has almost been ten years since HS. Since then, I have gotten a GF, a great apartment, an excellent job, a truck, more computers and shit than I could imagine, and I have dropped the geeky look (thanks to my GF - BTW, lose the glasses, get contacts if you can - I wish I had done it in HS!), wearing good clothes (most of the time - I still have some geek stuff), and getting some bulk on my bones (though still no muscle - though I could if I wanted).
Even so, the posts here and the tragedy in CO brought back a lot of pain and thought of "the old days". If anything Katz has done, it is make us really think about our lives - thanks, Jon.