Physicists on a distant planet were trying... to create a "quark- gluon plasma," a soup of extremely hot, dense subatomic particles that mimic conditions of the "Big Bang" that spawned our cosmos 13.7 billion years ago.
Critics speculated that this high concentration of energy might have one of three undesirable results...
Processors have onboard memory... as in on the CPU. It's called cache and there are usually several levels. It's where instructions or data can be kept when needed repetitively instead of repeatedly accessing RAM. Because the memory is onboard the CPU, ie. it is in close physical proximity, it is thus many, many times faster than RAM. More cache is, if managed correctly, better. For a nice simple view see
... every article I've seen to help you speed up your PC begins with the directive to "increase your memory" before all else (and at all levels memory is the bottleneck). Is it really cheaper to come out with a whole new CPU than to make sure you have squeezed maximum performance out of the last batch? Why not increase onboard cache size so you could swap out the old 1 Ghz with a new 1 Ghz that would have better performance but wouldn't need a chipset/mobo upgrade?
... to gather definitive piracy data. Just track the number of times the key is used vs the number of copies sold. Then they can put a _definitive_ ratio to the number of pirated copies versus legitimate copies. At least there would be some facts instead of wild ass statements like:
"For example, the Redmond, Wash.-based company estimates that about half the copies of Office in use worldwide are pirated."
Of course, someone might have to leak the result to the public...
Nuclear Power: You cite two examples of operator failure.
DDT: saved immensely more people from pest borne disease than were remotely affected by environmental impact
Preservatives: when was our last famine?
Observation: Environmentalists, like most of us, focus on "evidence" that supports their point of view i.e. observation is wildly subjective even when gathered by the finest technology available simply because data must be interpreted.
Fact is, from based on "observation" we should intensely distrust other people. Mind you, my computer is a close second. Now there's an untrustworthy piece of technology:-)
,,, Like the little stats example there is some hope. If a million open source programmers bang away long enough, eventually a coherent, full featured product will surface. Of course no way of telling when, where, or what. And of course there will be a new release of it a few months later.
"Fulfilling the needs of a whiny end user who doesn't give a damn about anything but "cheap and Windows clone" is really far down on the list. "
The arrogance that permeates this statement is sadly too common in Open Source. How can you despise people and then expect them to buy in to your vision? Unfortunately the impression it leaves is that Open Source is a self-serving ego trip for individuals who really aren't at all interested in the public good.
Read about it in _the_ book (http://www.cwi.nl/~paulv/kolmogorov.html) or check out the web site here (http://www.hutter1.de/kolmo.htm). For a more succint idea of the approach, these articles by one of the gurus on the topic (http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~mli/focs.ps and http://www.cwi.nl/~paulv/papers/ecml97.ps).
The word "profession" is abused when associated with something like locksmiths. What has been missed in the preceding comment by the Ontario engineer is that there is a governing body (the profession) which self-regulates members of the profession. That is different from whether a client will sue you or not. These people can take away your status as licenced engineer for transgressions against the engineering code of ethics. As such it isn't a question of insurance or CYA, it is a matter of ensuring that the word "engineer" stands for a high standard of practice and ethics.
After seeing refs to artists/professional in several posts I'd say: Choose one or the other. You can't be both.
Consider: an artist works in an environment constrained only by imagination and medium. Creativity is allowed through free reign of thought and expression ideally, for some, in isolation. No "art" is wrong e.g. the folly of critiquing whether a painting is "art". A professional by contrast is one who works within guidelines laid out by an overseeing body (the profession) that exercises self-regulation on members of the profession i.e. there are definitions of good and bad, and _enforcement_ of adherence to those definitions from _outside_ the confines of the work environment. To do a job well, or to work hard, is not the sole definition of a "professional". (Note too that being a member of a union does not constitute membership in a profession either since they are generally local and/or not self-regulating.)
As long as the mythos of programmer as artist persists, programmers will continue to be viewed as non-professionals. Some industries can thrive with artists e.g. game design. But artistry has no place in others e.g. software design of mission critical systems.
... since we on the interenet _are_ the public domain. As long as there is an internet, there will always be a global and effective way to circumvent the more draconian information legislations. Some will abuse it but most, I think, will use it as a source of empowerment; a way to effect change or rail against the powers that need changing.
A stunning money maker for those involved if they cater to the traffic of consumer stats. Now "they" will be able to track not just your surfing but your travels too. I imagine the anti-terrorist folks would find this good too.
... and swap with them or communally buy books. If say, 5 of you buy a book and swap it around you have paid a fifth of the price. Or agree on a list of books you all want to read. Buy them as a group and swap them around. To really expand this, get on any chat forum whatsoever and ask if anyone local wants to swap. For the record, I've done this with CD's, power tools, books... drew the line at wives/husbands but I guess I'm just not open-minded enough:-)
... be a problem? Judicious use of jamming technology in areas of importance (to the criminals e.g. gang turf) and suddenly all the functions ported to online are unusable. This may be a niche market here for the less scrupulous.
... in messing up Iranian GPS users (read: military). It would just make their movements more chaotic. Contrary to what you might think, a predictable enemy is far better than one who's actions defy reason. And all their missles have either inertial navigation, IR homing, or are ballistic so it's not like you're mucking up any precision guided equipment.
This is the device (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite m=3013536743). Aside from the name, the write up only says you can get PPV, etc. when the coupler is connected to the appropriate box. Which is true since it is just a coupler. The buyer is inferring from the _name_ that the device will make the viewing free. A court case would revolve around whether it is reasonable to assume a descrambling ability when no such ability was mentioned in the description. The description would be argued as being the seller's definition of the name. Their definition does _not_ mention descrambling. Which makes the scam a rather tidy one.
Moriarty,P. et Honnery, D., "Alternative transport fuels: the long-term future", Int. J. of Vehicle Design, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2003
you will see a wonderful look at the alternative fuel sources. Bio-fuels take energy AND considerable plant resources to make; resources that are not adequate to meet any serious demand. Fact is, fossil fuels are it for now and the very long term. Long term? Yep: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/DHB.html.
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... so with the luxury of time, it _should_ be less buggy.
I don't think releasing the source is necessarily a good thing for a commericial app. How would you control updates and mods? Where would the configuration control come from? I just had my first encounter with CVS at Sourceforge. _NOT_ straightforward. I don't think you could scale that up to a million purhcasers.
... as the film companies slip in emotion inducing infrasound to enhance the emotional content of the movies. "That movie moved me so much!" Yup. Like at 4 Hz.
And an enterprising pan-handler with some technical savvy....
Like so many other techniques, this is impractical in so many ways: efficiency, amount of power generated, etc. And if it were adopted on a grand scale it would wreak havoc with the environment as land is cleared for the growing of more effective sources of glucose because there isn't enough garbage to sustain world demand.
We seem to be spending so much time looking for solutions that are environmentally benign. Let's just suck it up and go nuclear. In the history of the nuclear power industry fewer people have been negatively impacted than have been from the coal industry (black lung, acid rain), the hydro-electric industry (3 Gorges Dam in China), oil industry(too many to name). Shoot, I'm off-topic...
I think efficiency ($$ and %power to input) is the big question. In the preceding, the homogenization, purification, and addition of water for evaporation all require non-trivial amounts of energy. As well, you need sun for evaporation and that isn't practical except in certain latitudes.
Face it, energy solutions evolve out of a combination of practicality and necessity. The economy doesn't drive the choice of fuel, the most effective evolved solution drives the economy. And the best solutions for the forseeable future are fosssil fuel and nuclear.
... since the program mostly "drew" against _the_ supreme human chess player. Fact is, it would beat 99.99% or better of the population. Statistically it seems to me that it won... big time.
Slashdot Mirror
Physicists on a distant planet were trying ... to create a "quark- gluon plasma," a soup of extremely hot, dense subatomic particles that mimic conditions of the "Big Bang" that spawned our cosmos 13.7 billion years ago.
...
Critics speculated that this high concentration of energy might have one of three undesirable results
Make that four.
"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"
or
"plurality should not be posited without necessity."
English philosopher and Franciscan monk William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1349)
Intel makes CPU's => Intel makes caches. I proposed they make larger caches, etc.
... every article I've seen to help you speed up your PC begins with the directive to "increase your memory" before all else (and at all levels memory is the bottleneck). Is it really cheaper to come out with a whole new CPU than to make sure you have squeezed maximum performance out of the last batch? Why not increase onboard cache size so you could swap out the old 1 Ghz with a new 1 Ghz that would have better performance but wouldn't need a chipset/mobo upgrade?
... to gather definitive piracy data. Just track the number of times the key is used vs the number of copies sold. Then they can put a _definitive_ ratio to the number of pirated copies versus legitimate copies. At least there would be some facts instead of wild ass statements like:
...
"For example, the Redmond, Wash.-based company estimates that about half the copies of Office in use worldwide are pirated."
Of course, someone might have to leak the result to the public
Nuclear Power: You cite two examples of operator failure.
:-)
DDT: saved immensely more people from pest borne disease than were remotely affected by environmental impact
Preservatives: when was our last famine?
Observation: Environmentalists, like most of us, focus on "evidence" that supports their point of view i.e. observation is wildly subjective even when gathered by the finest technology available simply because data must be interpreted.
Fact is, from based on "observation" we should intensely distrust other people. Mind you, my computer is a close second. Now there's an untrustworthy piece of technology
,,, Like the little stats example there is some hope. If a million open source programmers bang away long enough, eventually a coherent, full featured product will surface. Of course no way of telling when, where, or what. And of course there will be a new release of it a few months later.
"Fulfilling the needs of a whiny end user who doesn't give a damn about anything but "cheap and Windows clone" is really far down on the list. "
The arrogance that permeates this statement is sadly too common in Open Source. How can you despise people and then expect them to buy in to your vision? Unfortunately the impression it leaves is that Open Source is a self-serving ego trip for individuals who really aren't at all interested in the public good.
Read about it in _the_ book (http://www.cwi.nl/~paulv/kolmogorov.html) or check out the web site here (http://www.hutter1.de/kolmo.htm). For a more succint idea of the approach, these articles by one of the gurus on the topic (http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~mli/focs.ps and http://www.cwi.nl/~paulv/papers/ecml97.ps).
The word "profession" is abused when associated with something like locksmiths. What has been missed in the preceding comment by the Ontario engineer is that there is a governing body (the profession) which self-regulates members of the profession. That is different from whether a client will sue you or not. These people can take away your status as licenced engineer for transgressions against the engineering code of ethics. As such it isn't a question of insurance or CYA, it is a matter of ensuring that the word "engineer" stands for a high standard of practice and ethics.
After seeing refs to artists/professional in several posts I'd say: Choose one or the other. You can't be both.
Consider: an artist works in an environment constrained only by imagination and medium. Creativity is allowed through free reign of thought and expression ideally, for some, in isolation. No "art" is wrong e.g. the folly of critiquing whether a painting is "art". A professional by contrast is one who works within guidelines laid out by an overseeing body (the profession) that exercises self-regulation on members of the profession i.e. there are definitions of good and bad, and _enforcement_ of adherence to those definitions from _outside_ the confines of the work environment. To do a job well, or to work hard, is not the sole definition of a "professional". (Note too that being a member of a union does not constitute membership in a profession either since they are generally local and/or not self-regulating.)
As long as the mythos of programmer as artist persists, programmers will continue to be viewed as non-professionals. Some industries can thrive with artists e.g. game design. But artistry has no place in others e.g. software design of mission critical systems.
... since we on the interenet _are_ the public domain. As long as there is an internet, there will always be a global and effective way to circumvent the more draconian information legislations. Some will abuse it but most, I think, will use it as a source of empowerment; a way to effect change or rail against the powers that need changing.
A stunning money maker for those involved if they cater to the traffic of consumer stats. Now "they" will be able to track not just your surfing but your travels too. I imagine the anti-terrorist folks would find this good too.
... and swap with them or communally buy books. If say, 5 of you buy a book and swap it around you have paid a fifth of the price. Or agree on a list of books you all want to read. Buy them as a group and swap them around. To really expand this, get on any chat forum whatsoever and ask if anyone local wants to swap. For the record, I've done this with CD's, power tools, books ... drew the line at wives/husbands but I guess I'm just not open-minded enough :-)
... be a problem? Judicious use of jamming technology in areas of importance (to the criminals e.g. gang turf) and suddenly all the functions ported to online are unusable. This may be a niche market here for the less scrupulous.
... in messing up Iranian GPS users (read: military). It would just make their movements more chaotic. Contrary to what you might think, a predictable enemy is far better than one who's actions defy reason. And all their missles have either inertial navigation, IR homing, or are ballistic so it's not like you're mucking up any precision guided equipment.
This is the device (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite m=3013536743). Aside from the name, the write up only says you can get PPV, etc. when the coupler is connected to the appropriate box. Which is true since it is just a coupler. The buyer is inferring from the _name_ that the device will make the viewing free. A court case would revolve around whether it is reasonable to assume a descrambling ability when no such ability was mentioned in the description. The description would be argued as being the seller's definition of the name. Their definition does _not_ mention descrambling. Which makes the scam a rather tidy one.
If you look up this article,
Moriarty,P. et Honnery, D., "Alternative transport fuels: the long-term future",
Int. J. of Vehicle Design, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2003
you will see a wonderful look at the alternative fuel sources. Bio-fuels take energy AND considerable plant resources to make; resources that are not adequate to meet any serious demand. Fact is, fossil fuels are it for now and the very long term. Long term? Yep: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/DHB.html.
Can be found here:
http://www.ettus.com/sdr/sdr_w6yx.pdf
... so with the luxury of time, it _should_ be less buggy.
I don't think releasing the source is necessarily a good thing for a commericial app. How would you control updates and mods? Where would the configuration control come from? I just had my first encounter with CVS at Sourceforge. _NOT_ straightforward. I don't think you could scale that up to a million purhcasers.
... as the film companies slip in emotion inducing infrasound to enhance the emotional content of the movies. "That movie moved me so much!" Yup. Like at 4 Hz.
....
And an enterprising pan-handler with some technical savvy
Like so many other techniques, this is impractical in so many ways: efficiency, amount of power generated, etc. And if it were adopted on a grand scale it would wreak havoc with the environment as land is cleared for the growing of more effective sources of glucose because there isn't enough garbage to sustain world demand.
...
We seem to be spending so much time looking for solutions that are environmentally benign. Let's just suck it up and go nuclear. In the history of the nuclear power industry fewer people have been negatively impacted than have been from the coal industry (black lung, acid rain), the hydro-electric industry (3 Gorges Dam in China), oil industry(too many to name). Shoot, I'm off-topic
I think efficiency ($$ and %power to input) is the big question. In the preceding, the homogenization, purification, and addition of water for evaporation all require non-trivial amounts of energy. As well, you need sun for evaporation and that isn't practical except in certain latitudes.
Face it, energy solutions evolve out of a combination of practicality and necessity. The economy doesn't drive the choice of fuel, the most effective evolved solution drives the economy. And the best solutions for the forseeable future are fosssil fuel and nuclear.
... since the program mostly "drew" against _the_ supreme human chess player. Fact is, it would beat 99.99% or better of the population. Statistically it seems to me that it won ... big time.
... to the current reentry method are there? Can the descent be controlled more or is it fuel prohibitive? I googled but nothing came up.