My expectation is that the only way batteries are going to able to really compete with liquid fuels as an energy storage mechanism for vehicles is through some sort of comprehensive and mandatory recycling program. And I'm not just talking about just the actual batteries but rather a complete infrastructure and financing system which makes it difficult and expensive to ignore, opt-out or avoid. Otherwise, the whole thing will be an expensive and short lived boondoggle.
Having said that, I'd love to be able to build a 3D printing machine that could produce batteries and fuel cells.
And the PSP has been out for quite some time... is that the most recent consumer device to use a MIPS32? Or are there devices which could compete with the upcoming ARM based devices?
I bought an electric bicycle for much the same reason. As far as I am concerned it is the best way to get around within the small city I live in. My Ducati is too fast to comfortably drive within the city. Finding a parking space for my car is frequently a pain. The electric bike gets me into the city in minutes, it park anywhere and on all but the hottest of days I get where I am going without soaking myself in sweat... often in similar or less time than using my car. I'm using this experience to engineer an ultra-lightweight electric motorcycle for the city.
Down the street from me is a place which teaches kids gymnastics and unicycles... Watching them, I think an electric unicycle would be a blast!
I don't think folks have to avoid MD5 as strongly & immediately as you suggest... the attacks are for the most part theoretical or require more compute power / patience that people outside of this blackhat con can muster. It was my understanding the PS3 cluster actually got a cert which could be used nefariously... and this guy showed he could do it cheaper and faster. This is perfectly inline with my understanding: Attacks always get better, they never get worse. So I suppose it is time to work out a migration plan for whatever uses MD5
On your closing comment: I think the author was suggesting that if people had been paying attention a lot more of them would be using ATI GPGPU clusters for stuff they used to use Vector processors and now use fleets of X86 variants for.
I don't completely disagree with him but there a lot of small GPU clusters out there and there are a lot of reasons why more people haven't really got with the program. I think the biggest reason is the difficulty developing for GPGPUs. It's not the hardest thing I've ever done but it really takes a deliberate effort to get into a different state of mind. And the ATI SDK just plain sucks. I'll take the performance hit and develop using a C superset with a NVIDIA target. The process can run during that extra time I am not pounding my head against a hard flat surface. Actually now that I think of it, I've just kept a lot the old FORTRAN code I have and used the NVIDIA kit... rather than porting to the ATI SDK.
Having said that I don't think that this state will last long at all. The rate of increase of performance in GPUs is steeper than that of CPUs; AMD & NVIDIA are really serious about getting into the general compute market (with the same or similar chips to what they already market); The power consumption, cooling, and noise are all really favorable.
I am sort of curious what OpenCL will be like, being a Mac user... but here lately Apple has been going further out of their way to make things suck, so I am not holding my breath.
I've seen some pretty complicated stuff with layers on Google Earth, so I thought the same thing while I was in the "Screw it, I'll build it myself" stage a few days ago. Truthfully I don't have the time or the skills to pull off something on that scale... but still I like the idea. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1317323&cid=28851655&art_pos=2#
Spore seriously sucks. And besides, it's not at all what I am after... I'm looking for light weight climate modeling I can do without one the top 100 supercomputers and which comes with additional animated visual feedback... like an all grown up Sim Earth.
Gah!! Yet another failed negation! Naturally I meant to say that it would NOT be a best seller.
Anyway, I don't really object to the Gaia shtick. It was a hokey way to provide feedback for success or failure. A way to give a voice that was not the simulated people or societies. Doubtless there may be a less kitschy way to do that though...
OK, I know this would be the best selling game in the history of games... but I've been pining for an updated Sim Earth lately. There is so much going on with climate science I think it would be really interesting.
You are right that my characterization of "thought crime" as "muttering to yourself" was completely bogus and trivializing, guilty as charged.
However:
The US is not the most multicultural or well integrated society in the world... I've lived in societies with better & worse integration.
I've never heard the assertion of societies which allow people "to insult groups" causes better integration into that society. Frankly that is more bogus and trivializing than my flippant characterization of thought crime. It's a wonderful example of my assertion that the most Americans have a dysfunctional understanding of Free Speech.
Furthermore, If you think that the public discourse in the United States is some how creating a meeting of the minds or such (and you live in the United States), you are deceiving yourself. BTW, I am US citizen and I've voted in every election I eligible to vote in. So I am not talking about a country I know nothing about.
It least where I live these days "Hate Speech" is a blanket term for that for laws that regulate speech which has the design of inciting men to violence. That and we have laws specifically about glorifying the Drittes Reich or Nationalsozialismus; denying the holocaust; and generally attempting to relive the mistakes of the past. As far as I can tell these laws are pretty useful because to a man all that have been prosecuted have been intent on goading others to do violence, part of violent groups, done violence themselves, or all of the above. And like you, I have a hard time getting worked up seeing those people prosecuted.
I've also lived in the US for nearly 20 years and I am not sure that the tolerance of hate speech in the US has had the result of creating a freer & safer society or a freer or more effective press. As far as I can tell, the laws and public opinion about freedom of speech issues are dysfunctional.
Also I'm absolutely convinced that corporate speech and political speech is more dangerous than hate speech. And the US has completely failed to deal with them... or for that matter even discuss them openly and honestly.
One last thing. It's a far cry from Hate Speech (public speech with a call to action) & Hate Crime (Violence motivated by Bigotry) to Thought Crime (muttering to yourself as women & children cross the street to avoid you)... which is what the parent was referring to and which I think has at least at basis for argument & discussion with regard to US and UK anti-terror laws.
Why not try to answer the question with data or reasoned argument rather than a nice sophistic non-denial denial?
Because the scientific community and the wider internet is already awash with data and extraordinarily well reasoned arguments outlining the realities of anthropogenic climate change. Nothing I post on any website is going to change anyone's mind. It won't because it's become a politicized issue, which deniers traffic in talking points from propagandists and preachers.
It's not that they are misinformed, it is that they have made a decision from a political or religious perspective to deny reality. They push these long refuted talking points not because they are completely convinced of their accuracy or validity but rather because they have an intent to misinform. In truth they have no interest in the facts or the science behind the facts, except to the extent that they view such facts with hostility.
For some reason that storage space business got me more in the film adaption of Johnny Mnemonic with Keanu Reeves, than the books. Though admittedly I'm sure I had more RAM in my own computer the last time I read Neuromancer.
They could have easily slipped in another SI prefix...
I did not say ANYTHING about predictions or their validity. What I said was that A DISCUSSION about the prescience of speculative Sci-Fi limited to only what was correct is incomplete and thus less interesting. It doesn't make Neuromancer a bad book or Gibson a bad author. It does make this list disappointing and unworthy.
As it happens, I am a William Gibson fan. I bought first edition hardback copies of all of his books as they were published and I own an Agrippa.
Sorry, I enjoyed Neuromancer as much as anyone. However, you can't talk about what Gibson got right without talking about what he missed... most interestingly he missed the invention of mobile phones and so pay phones make an appearance in the book.
I am not forgetting about any part of the federal budget. Spending American Tax payers money on Americans in America makes sense. Spending it on a string of foreign wars, interventions, coups, invasions, and however they call such things does not.
-Doubtless the system will be abused, all systems are. The question is will it be abused more than the benefit it provides. My feeling is that it would not provide the benefit expected. -Tax Money never goes where I hope it will, the US government spends trillions of dollars maintaining a military killing people in far flung lands. I didn't sign up for that. -If you can't afford quadrupling $0.005/Per Mile tax, you can't afford to drive. -I don't give a fuck if you "feel the need to drive 'excessively'". I also don't give a fuck if you can't afford drive as much as you would like. Go get a job... or bike.
If it was a big increase for you, it's because you've made decisions based on the costs of long commutes that will change. Not that, this is a bad thing it just isn't an issue for me. Which is why I ignored your math... I use less than 3 gallons of diesel a month, averaged over a year. So I wouldn't care if it was 15 dollars a gallon.
I do also agree that the federal fuel tax should be higher, much higher (along with all non-renewable energy sources). However most Americans would not stand for it. They've accepted a much larger tax burden elsewhere, loss of government services, and the most pathetic infrastructure maintenance in the industrialized world rather than have reasonable priced energy (gasoline foremost among them). Given that track record, I'd bet that Americans would sign up all manner of wildly ridiculous shit in the future. GPS based taxation is so far outside of what I see as acceptable it's a complete non-stater... but I'm not going to guess what the great unwashed will tolerate.
The US used to have a lot of small businesses which have been closed due to price competition from business like Walmart. In the end the customer gets a greater selection of inferior merchandise, the employees become a permanent underclass, and small towns around American are in decline. This is in the news on a recurring basis but still Americans will chose a tainted product produced by enslaved children if it is a nickle cheaper.
The US used to have a large and vibrant small family farm / produce sales. Now the family farm is a myth, and Americans consume industrialized food products manufactured by large transnational corporations and shipped around the world. That product has less nutrition, less taste, damages our environment, and is unsustainable. However, because it is slightly less expensive than real food American consumers prefer it.
The government is just people. If you have a problem with them, I would suggest that you not vote for parties who think the government is bad and want to "strangle it in a bath tub". They've long since proven disastrously incapable of governance.
The huge variations of state & local tax codes is, again, not a problem of the Federal Government, this is a states' rights issue. A Federal VAT could easily replace the vast array of local & state taxes. But that is not how the US is designed... If you don't like that, don't vote for people who are strongly in favor of states' rights.
Or someone could just write an application which figured taxes automatically based on shipping addresses... I wrote more complicated code in High School.
Finally I don't buy into your 3 exclamation point hysteria.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just netbooks... it's other small boards too because they impose other I/O Limits as well.
My expectation is that the only way batteries are going to able to really compete with liquid fuels as an energy storage mechanism for vehicles is through some sort of comprehensive and mandatory recycling program. And I'm not just talking about just the actual batteries but rather a complete infrastructure and financing system which makes it difficult and expensive to ignore, opt-out or avoid. Otherwise, the whole thing will be an expensive and short lived boondoggle.
Having said that, I'd love to be able to build a 3D printing machine that could produce batteries and fuel cells.
And the PSP has been out for quite some time... is that the most recent consumer device to use a MIPS32? Or are there devices which could compete with the upcoming ARM based devices?
I bought an electric bicycle for much the same reason. As far as I am concerned it is the best way to get around within the small city I live in. My Ducati is too fast to comfortably drive within the city. Finding a parking space for my car is frequently a pain. The electric bike gets me into the city in minutes, it park anywhere and on all but the hottest of days I get where I am going without soaking myself in sweat... often in similar or less time than using my car. I'm using this experience to engineer an ultra-lightweight electric motorcycle for the city.
Down the street from me is a place which teaches kids gymnastics and unicycles... Watching them, I think an electric unicycle would be a blast!
Trying to block 4Chan just encourages them
I don't think folks have to avoid MD5 as strongly & immediately as you suggest... the attacks are for the most part theoretical or require more compute power / patience that people outside of this blackhat con can muster. It was my understanding the PS3 cluster actually got a cert which could be used nefariously... and this guy showed he could do it cheaper and faster. This is perfectly inline with my understanding: Attacks always get better, they never get worse. So I suppose it is time to work out a migration plan for whatever uses MD5
On your closing comment: I think the author was suggesting that if people had been paying attention a lot more of them would be using ATI GPGPU clusters for stuff they used to use Vector processors and now use fleets of X86 variants for.
I don't completely disagree with him but there a lot of small GPU clusters out there and there are a lot of reasons why more people haven't really got with the program. I think the biggest reason is the difficulty developing for GPGPUs. It's not the hardest thing I've ever done but it really takes a deliberate effort to get into a different state of mind. And the ATI SDK just plain sucks. I'll take the performance hit and develop using a C superset with a NVIDIA target. The process can run during that extra time I am not pounding my head against a hard flat surface. Actually now that I think of it, I've just kept a lot the old FORTRAN code I have and used the NVIDIA kit... rather than porting to the ATI SDK.
Having said that I don't think that this state will last long at all. The rate of increase of performance in GPUs is steeper than that of CPUs; AMD & NVIDIA are really serious about getting into the general compute market (with the same or similar chips to what they already market); The power consumption, cooling, and noise are all really favorable.
I am sort of curious what OpenCL will be like, being a Mac user... but here lately Apple has been going further out of their way to make things suck, so I am not holding my breath.
I've seen some pretty complicated stuff with layers on Google Earth, so I thought the same thing while I was in the "Screw it, I'll build it myself" stage a few days ago. Truthfully I don't have the time or the skills to pull off something on that scale... but still I like the idea. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1317323&cid=28851655&art_pos=2#
Spore seriously sucks. And besides, it's not at all what I am after... I'm looking for light weight climate modeling I can do without one the top 100 supercomputers and which comes with additional animated visual feedback... like an all grown up Sim Earth.
Gah!! Yet another failed negation! Naturally I meant to say that it would NOT be a best seller.
Anyway, I don't really object to the Gaia shtick. It was a hokey way to provide feedback for success or failure. A way to give a voice that was not the simulated people or societies. Doubtless there may be a less kitschy way to do that though...
OK, I know this would be the best selling game in the history of games... but I've been pining for an updated Sim Earth lately. There is so much going on with climate science I think it would be really interesting.
You are right that my characterization of "thought crime" as "muttering to yourself" was completely bogus and trivializing, guilty as charged.
However:
The US is not the most multicultural or well integrated society in the world... I've lived in societies with better & worse integration.
I've never heard the assertion of societies which allow people "to insult groups" causes better integration into that society. Frankly that is more bogus and trivializing than my flippant characterization of thought crime. It's a wonderful example of my assertion that the most Americans have a dysfunctional understanding of Free Speech.
Furthermore, If you think that the public discourse in the United States is some how creating a meeting of the minds or such (and you live in the United States), you are deceiving yourself. BTW, I am US citizen and I've voted in every election I eligible to vote in. So I am not talking about a country I know nothing about.
It least where I live these days "Hate Speech" is a blanket term for that for laws that regulate speech which has the design of inciting men to violence. That and we have laws specifically about glorifying the Drittes Reich or Nationalsozialismus; denying the holocaust; and generally attempting to relive the mistakes of the past. As far as I can tell these laws are pretty useful because to a man all that have been prosecuted have been intent on goading others to do violence, part of violent groups, done violence themselves, or all of the above. And like you, I have a hard time getting worked up seeing those people prosecuted.
I've also lived in the US for nearly 20 years and I am not sure that the tolerance of hate speech in the US has had the result of creating a freer & safer society or a freer or more effective press. As far as I can tell, the laws and public opinion about freedom of speech issues are dysfunctional.
Also I'm absolutely convinced that corporate speech and political speech is more dangerous than hate speech. And the US has completely failed to deal with them... or for that matter even discuss them openly and honestly.
One last thing. It's a far cry from Hate Speech (public speech with a call to action) & Hate Crime (Violence motivated by Bigotry) to Thought Crime (muttering to yourself as women & children cross the street to avoid you)... which is what the parent was referring to and which I think has at least at basis for argument & discussion with regard to US and UK anti-terror laws.
Why not try to answer the question with data or reasoned argument rather than a nice sophistic non-denial denial?
Because the scientific community and the wider internet is already awash with data and extraordinarily well reasoned arguments outlining the realities of anthropogenic climate change. Nothing I post on any website is going to change anyone's mind. It won't because it's become a politicized issue, which deniers traffic in talking points from propagandists and preachers.
It's not that they are misinformed, it is that they have made a decision from a political or religious perspective to deny reality. They push these long refuted talking points not because they are completely convinced of their accuracy or validity but rather because they have an intent to misinform. In truth they have no interest in the facts or the science behind the facts, except to the extent that they view such facts with hostility.
Out of curiosity why are you accusing the Pew Research Center of systematic unethical and deceptive practices?
Do you think they always engage such behavior? Or is it just certain studies?
Which point, exactly, is in dispute?
I'm thinking it's the part where people arrive at a conclusion regarding matters of science from a path dictated by politics and or religion.
I got the impression that was exactly the sort thing Google wanted Chrome to do.
He's also still using DOS
For some reason that storage space business got me more in the film adaption of Johnny Mnemonic with Keanu Reeves, than the books. Though admittedly I'm sure I had more RAM in my own computer the last time I read Neuromancer.
They could have easily slipped in another SI prefix...
I did not say ANYTHING about predictions or their validity. What I said was that A DISCUSSION about the prescience of speculative Sci-Fi limited to only what was correct is incomplete and thus less interesting. It doesn't make Neuromancer a bad book or Gibson a bad author. It does make this list disappointing and unworthy.
As it happens, I am a William Gibson fan. I bought first edition hardback copies of all of his books as they were published and I own an Agrippa.
So lighten up a little.
Sorry, I enjoyed Neuromancer as much as anyone. However, you can't talk about what Gibson got right without talking about what he missed... most interestingly he missed the invention of mobile phones and so pay phones make an appearance in the book.
I am not forgetting about any part of the federal budget. Spending American Tax payers money on Americans in America makes sense. Spending it on a string of foreign wars, interventions, coups, invasions, and however they call such things does not.
Lets see:
-Doubtless the system will be abused, all systems are. The question is will it be abused more than the benefit it provides. My feeling is that it would not provide the benefit expected.
-Tax Money never goes where I hope it will, the US government spends trillions of dollars maintaining a military killing people in far flung lands. I didn't sign up for that.
-If you can't afford quadrupling $0.005/Per Mile tax, you can't afford to drive.
-I don't give a fuck if you "feel the need to drive 'excessively'". I also don't give a fuck if you can't afford drive as much as you would like. Go get a job... or bike.
If it was a big increase for you, it's because you've made decisions based on the costs of long commutes that will change. Not that, this is a bad thing it just isn't an issue for me. Which is why I ignored your math... I use less than 3 gallons of diesel a month, averaged over a year. So I wouldn't care if it was 15 dollars a gallon.
I do also agree that the federal fuel tax should be higher, much higher (along with all non-renewable energy sources). However most Americans would not stand for it. They've accepted a much larger tax burden elsewhere, loss of government services, and the most pathetic infrastructure maintenance in the industrialized world rather than have reasonable priced energy (gasoline foremost among them). Given that track record, I'd bet that Americans would sign up all manner of wildly ridiculous shit in the future. GPS based taxation is so far outside of what I see as acceptable it's a complete non-stater... but I'm not going to guess what the great unwashed will tolerate.
As long as military spending is essentially nonnegotiable and the US is at a perpetual state of war, taxes will nothing but go up.
The US used to have a lot of small businesses which have been closed due to price competition from business like Walmart. In the end the customer gets a greater selection of inferior merchandise, the employees become a permanent underclass, and small towns around American are in decline. This is in the news on a recurring basis but still Americans will chose a tainted product produced by enslaved children if it is a nickle cheaper.
The US used to have a large and vibrant small family farm / produce sales. Now the family farm is a myth, and Americans consume industrialized food products manufactured by large transnational corporations and shipped around the world. That product has less nutrition, less taste, damages our environment, and is unsustainable. However, because it is slightly less expensive than real food American consumers prefer it.
The government is just people. If you have a problem with them, I would suggest that you not vote for parties who think the government is bad and want to "strangle it in a bath tub". They've long since proven disastrously incapable of governance.
The huge variations of state & local tax codes is, again, not a problem of the Federal Government, this is a states' rights issue. A Federal VAT could easily replace the vast array of local & state taxes. But that is not how the US is designed... If you don't like that, don't vote for people who are strongly in favor of states' rights.
Or someone could just write an application which figured taxes automatically based on shipping addresses... I wrote more complicated code in High School.
Finally I don't buy into your 3 exclamation point hysteria.