As always wikipedia is your friend. The reason for this illusion is summarized in the following line:
When interpreted as a 3-dimensional scene, our visual system immediately estimates a lighting vector and uses this to judge the property of the material. So, in effect the brain sees something that looks like a 3D image and imagines that there is a source of light somewhere. If you look at the picture again, you would notice that the perceived color difference of the two squares appear distinctly with a mental image of a shadow of the cylinder on the chequered platform. The brain imagines a light source on the upper left side of the picture. Why exactly there? Probably because the cylinder seems to have a lighter shade in that direction and darker on the opposite side, making it seem as if there is a light source in that direction.
Wikipedia does have an entry about Linos. Unfortunately the whole article is:
Linos is a proprietary embedded version of Linux used by Aware Electronics in their A-BOOK products[1]. It is also expected to be used in the Elonex ONE. (Emphasis added)
This doesn't really answer your question and I will add another question to the discussion. Just how come a version of Linux is proprietary? Doesn't proprietary mean that you don't automatically get a license to use and/or distribute the software? This can not be the case with a Linux derivative since GPL v2 (the license of the kernel) allows everyone to use, modify and distribute it.
Note to the humorless ninja mods who are already brandishing their mod points at this post threatening to mod it troll or so, the proper mod for this post is funny. Of course that would just waste your mod points since it doesn't affect my karma so if this part of the post applies to you (that is if you are a humorless ninja mod) then don't click on the link (hey! it's slashdot) and mod this post insightful or informative or underrated (see it says "historian" in the link?).
As far as my understanding goes, comparing a GPU's performance to a CPU's performance is very very task dependent and the comparison with 300 CPUs should not be taken to mean that a 8GPU system is more powerful than a 300 core duo system in general.
If the application requires solving a small task many times over and over and all of these tasks can be done in parallel then using a GPU works great because a GPU has many cores each of which can handle a simple routine. Also the GPU is designed to spend very little time on the way code is hadled (load, switch etc) and spend more time actually running the code (hence the requirement of only very simple functions).
Such problems frequently arise in tomography, physics, astronomy etc and I hear GPUs are a great success in these areas. But don't hold your breath for running your favorite distro blazingly fast using GPUs.
From TFA:
Translated it means that the PDF was created from a Microsoft Word document with the filename "204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC". Didn't Google use a version of Ubuntu internally? Probably not a real question given the size of Google but nevertheless...
Save for mod points for the "frist p0st" and likes. If it hurts your ego that I am "badmouthing" india, either come up with why I am wrong or go do something to change the situation.
PS: Now that is the kind of post that can be modded troll. Go ahead and burn my karma. At least it would be targeted rightly to a trollish post. Idiots.
I suppose you have little knowledge about India. Perhaps the situation is not as bad as some other countries but the indian police and indian jails are scary enough to begin with. If you tell an indian that the police tortured someone or that some guy in prison got thrashed pretty nasty, I doubt s/he will be surprised. At least I won't. The situation is even worse if you don't live in a big city where situation is perhaps better. I come from a small village/town and you have to bribe the police even to file a report and even then they are pretty nasty to you. And it is pretty common that if a policeman stops someone who doesn't appear to have a "good background", a slap precedes any question.
Perhaps if one is suave enough to be using PGP or "rich" enough to have a blackberry things are different but for most people *any* involvement with law-enforecement agencies is bad news already. Gitmo is perhaps tame. Of course that doesn't make gitmo right, but a statement like "they need their own gitmo" is humorous in a dark sort of way.
From the linked page:
KDE on Windows is mostly in an alpha state, so not suitable for day to day use yet. The parent poster made it sound as if it was ready to use. Anyway, thanks for the link. I wasn't aware of it.
There is a KDE clone for Windows already? Can you post a link? I tried googling with "kde clone for windows" but did not get much, and I am not aware of such a project. I thought one of the great things about the new QT library was that it made it possible for someone to run it on windows. I might be confused as you are talking about a clone and not running KDE directly. In any case, I would appreciate a link.
While I agree with your comments that this is far from the ideal way of using linux, I disagree with your assessment that it serves little to no purpose. Once a windows user gets used to the KDE task bar, and then eventually with the whole lot of programs that come with it, it would be easier for them to totally abandon Windows. Of course not everyone will switch boats but a good enough chunk should:)
I am amazed at the number of responses being just smug and claiming how you need to do math to appreciate the beauty. Reminds me of a guy doing PhD is Chemistry about effects of certain chiral isomer of nicotine on cancer. His first response when I asked what he worked on was "You won't get it". I am a PhD student in computational geometry and I frequently have to explain my work to relatives who have no idea about geometry. When I pestered the guy that whether or not he can explain his work to a layman reflects his understanding about his work, he agreed to try. Of course I could understand the central part once he replaced the technical name of the molecule with "a chiral isomer of nicotine". I am sure it could have been further simplified as "mirror image molecule of the stuff in tobacco" in case I didn't remember what "chiral" and "nicotine" are.
On the topic, I am not entirely sure about the exact math used in the said experiment but based on the fact that the link points to the notion of "information content", here is my guess how it should work (at least in principle). I will try just because no one else seems to. Feel free to correct me.
The state of the neurons of the relevant area of the brain (relevant for the goal in the experiment - say pick marshmallows or open the door) could be modeled as a random variable. The first problem when trying to figure out what a certain electrical activity in brain represents would be to figure out whether you are looking at a random electrical activity (brain doing lots of background work maybe) or some order (brain trying to focus and activate the subroutine for "move hand and open door"). This difference between order and chaos is captured in a neat formula describing the entropy or the information content of the random variable. Naturally, the less the entropy the more the order. I have no idea what possibly goes on after this step.
In any case, now coming to the "beauty" part. Of course you need an eye to appreciate beauty for the notion is quite subjective. The remarkable thing is that a simple formula captures the vague notion of "order" that we all have. The formula might not be the most beautiful thing because as I understood from the article, the log term is somewhat forced to make sure different things add up nicely. But then, one could think of this very fact (the extra log term) as a neat mathematical representation of the notion that disorder should be able to be combined with another disorder to create something bigger.
I hope my response is better than "drop whatever you are doing and go do a PhD in math before you can understand the beauty of math".
Just because his vision of what the future looks like is different than yours? He said it in the most neutral way and judging by the replies he sure created a whole thread of conversation thereby adding some value to the discussion. I can't imagine how many idiots get mod points here!
Since you said you wanted to see the results I decided to reply to your post to inform you that I submitted it under the alias xp-virtualbox. Have a look;-)
Does it help wine project in any way if I run those tests with a windows installation running under a virtual machine?
I would sure like to help by playing my little part and I also have a native windows installation on my laptop but I wouldn't want to boot into it unless I really need to:)
that all the problems these days can be solved either by litigating or by making laws enabling the government to collect more and more personal information.
This panacea coming to the country near you soon.. stay tuned!
Selling "Windows" when they could give away free software is not a good will gesture. What do you "mean"? Is there some other "side" of the "story" we are not "aware" of?
Probably you mean to ask if Quantum entanglement can be used for FTL communication. If so, the answer is NO.
Informally, to be able to communicate via Quantum entanglement, you need to transport the entangled particles (probably done before the actual communication, so irrelevant) and then upon aligning the state of one entangled particle one needs to send some classical information to the destination. Without this classical part the receiver can not "decode" the state of his/her particle correctly. So you need a way to communicate the classical information FTL which is not allowed if GR is correct.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah true. They will go bananas if something is not done!
Fascinating really!
This doesn't really answer your question and I will add another question to the discussion. Just how come a version of Linux is proprietary? Doesn't proprietary mean that you don't automatically get a license to use and/or distribute the software? This can not be the case with a Linux derivative since GPL v2 (the license of the kernel) allows everyone to use, modify and distribute it.
I know a better theory. It was built by early transvestites. Watch the excellent commentary of the well known historian Eddie Izzard.
Note to the humorless ninja mods who are already brandishing their mod points at this post threatening to mod it troll or so, the proper mod for this post is funny. Of course that would just waste your mod points since it doesn't affect my karma so if this part of the post applies to you (that is if you are a humorless ninja mod) then don't click on the link (hey! it's slashdot) and mod this post insightful or informative or underrated (see it says "historian" in the link?).
As far as my understanding goes, comparing a GPU's performance to a CPU's performance is very very task dependent and the comparison with 300 CPUs should not be taken to mean that a 8GPU system is more powerful than a 300 core duo system in general.
If the application requires solving a small task many times over and over and all of these tasks can be done in parallel then using a GPU works great because a GPU has many cores each of which can handle a simple routine. Also the GPU is designed to spend very little time on the way code is hadled (load, switch etc) and spend more time actually running the code (hence the requirement of only very simple functions).
Such problems frequently arise in tomography, physics, astronomy etc and I hear GPUs are a great success in these areas. But don't hold your breath for running your favorite distro blazingly fast using GPUs.
Save for mod points for the "frist p0st" and likes. If it hurts your ego that I am "badmouthing" india, either come up with why I am wrong or go do something to change the situation.
PS: Now that is the kind of post that can be modded troll. Go ahead and burn my karma. At least it would be targeted rightly to a trollish post. Idiots.
I suppose you have little knowledge about India. Perhaps the situation is not as bad as some other countries but the indian police and indian jails are scary enough to begin with. If you tell an indian that the police tortured someone or that some guy in prison got thrashed pretty nasty, I doubt s/he will be surprised. At least I won't. The situation is even worse if you don't live in a big city where situation is perhaps better. I come from a small village/town and you have to bribe the police even to file a report and even then they are pretty nasty to you. And it is pretty common that if a policeman stops someone who doesn't appear to have a "good background", a slap precedes any question.
Perhaps if one is suave enough to be using PGP or "rich" enough to have a blackberry things are different but for most people *any* involvement with law-enforecement agencies is bad news already. Gitmo is perhaps tame. Of course that doesn't make gitmo right, but a statement like "they need their own gitmo" is humorous in a dark sort of way.
1. They ignore you
2. They ridicule you
3. They fight you
4. ???
5. Profit (You win)
There is a KDE clone for Windows already? Can you post a link? I tried googling with "kde clone for windows" but did not get much, and I am not aware of such a project. I thought one of the great things about the new QT library was that it made it possible for someone to run it on windows. I might be confused as you are talking about a clone and not running KDE directly. In any case, I would appreciate a link.
While I agree with your comments that this is far from the ideal way of using linux, I disagree with your assessment that it serves little to no purpose. Once a windows user gets used to the KDE task bar, and then eventually with the whole lot of programs that come with it, it would be easier for them to totally abandon Windows. Of course not everyone will switch boats but a good enough chunk should :)
World domination, naturally, is the next step.
Soon if you tell someone that you are typing with two hands, they would scream and think of you as a pervert.
I can't begin to imagine the shock if someone says they are typing with just one then.
I am amazed at the number of responses being just smug and claiming how you need to do math to appreciate the beauty. Reminds me of a guy doing PhD is Chemistry about effects of certain chiral isomer of nicotine on cancer. His first response when I asked what he worked on was "You won't get it". I am a PhD student in computational geometry and I frequently have to explain my work to relatives who have no idea about geometry. When I pestered the guy that whether or not he can explain his work to a layman reflects his understanding about his work, he agreed to try. Of course I could understand the central part once he replaced the technical name of the molecule with "a chiral isomer of nicotine". I am sure it could have been further simplified as "mirror image molecule of the stuff in tobacco" in case I didn't remember what "chiral" and "nicotine" are.
On the topic, I am not entirely sure about the exact math used in the said experiment but based on the fact that the link points to the notion of "information content", here is my guess how it should work (at least in principle). I will try just because no one else seems to. Feel free to correct me.
The state of the neurons of the relevant area of the brain (relevant for the goal in the experiment - say pick marshmallows or open the door) could be modeled as a random variable. The first problem when trying to figure out what a certain electrical activity in brain represents would be to figure out whether you are looking at a random electrical activity (brain doing lots of background work maybe) or some order (brain trying to focus and activate the subroutine for "move hand and open door"). This difference between order and chaos is captured in a neat formula describing the entropy or the information content of the random variable. Naturally, the less the entropy the more the order. I have no idea what possibly goes on after this step.
In any case, now coming to the "beauty" part. Of course you need an eye to appreciate beauty for the notion is quite subjective. The remarkable thing is that a simple formula captures the vague notion of "order" that we all have. The formula might not be the most beautiful thing because as I understood from the article, the log term is somewhat forced to make sure different things add up nicely. But then, one could think of this very fact (the extra log term) as a neat mathematical representation of the notion that disorder should be able to be combined with another disorder to create something bigger.
I hope my response is better than "drop whatever you are doing and go do a PhD in math before you can understand the beauty of math".
And also astronauts would have to hear how full of shit they are!
Just because his vision of what the future looks like is different than yours? He said it in the most neutral way and judging by the replies he sure created a whole thread of conversation thereby adding some value to the discussion. I can't imagine how many idiots get mod points here!
It tried but was snubbed by the Exherbo developers. True story:
EDT - Exherbo Dev Team, EDE - Equinox Desktop Environment
EDT: Exherbo is one bad ass muthafucking distro! Seriously!
EDE: Cool! I wan to run on Exherbo.
EDT: No, you don't.
EDE: No really, I do.
EDT: OK. But we will have to break you since our distro is so badass that it does everything badly.
EDE: eeep
OK.
Since you said you wanted to see the results I decided to reply to your post to inform you that I submitted it under the alias xp-virtualbox. Have a look ;-)
Does it help wine project in any way if I run those tests with a windows installation running under a virtual machine?
:)
I would sure like to help by playing my little part and I also have a native windows installation on my laptop but I wouldn't want to boot into it unless I really need to
that all the problems these days can be solved either by litigating or by making laws enabling the government to collect more and more personal information.
This panacea coming to the country near you soon.. stay tuned!
I have some beach-front estate to sell. It is not near any beach and it is actually a chair.
Yeah, what about it?
Probably you mean to ask if Quantum entanglement can be used for FTL communication. If so, the answer is NO.
Informally, to be able to communicate via Quantum entanglement, you need to transport the entangled particles (probably done before the actual communication, so irrelevant) and then upon aligning the state of one entangled particle one needs to send some classical information to the destination. Without this classical part the receiver can not "decode" the state of his/her particle correctly. So you need a way to communicate the classical information FTL which is not allowed if GR is correct.