So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night? After all, her naked body is reflecting electromagnetic radiation into my personal space. Amplifying it into a visible image, digitizing it, and making it available on the Internet seems like a perfectly logical step, doesn't it?
Well, 64 bit computing is a hell of lot faster than 32 bit.
Oh, because "64" is more than "32"?
Yes, 64-bit has some advantages, primarily in the area of memory management. It's a bit much to say that it's always faster, across the board. In fact, for some tasks 32-bit is significantly quicker, all else being equal.
There may be a few liberals who push stupid, anti-rights agendas. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, California. Quit electing fucking actors as governors. First, Reagan, now ARNIE? What the fuck are you guys smoking out there? And why don't I have any?)
Believe it or not, there were quite a few of us out here who weren't thrilled with the way the governator got into office. There were 3 main reasons it happened, in retrospect.
1. An angry, rich republican (Darrell Issa) paid a vast amount of money out of his own pocket to fund a private army of people to get signatures for the petition for a recall of Grey Davis. Moral of the story: with enough money, any petition will get all the signatures you need for anything.
2. There was a crucial issue at stake in the election, the planned ending of the CA car registration discount. We were in a huge budget crisis at the time, and ending this would have fixed it, at a cost of a few hundred dollars per vehicle registered in the state, per year. Moral of the story: when something's going to cost people money out of their own pocket, all other considerations go by the wayside. Start buying votes for $300-$600 each, and you could put Peewee Herman in the White House. Whoops. Too late.
3. Along the vast liberal population, there was a pervasive atmosphere of, "eh... why the fuck not? This'll be hilarious. What's the worst that could happen?" I'm guessing the same thing happened in Minnesota with Jesse Ventura. Moral of the story: apathy's a bitch, and given the option, people will vote for CowboyNeal just for the fuck of it.
Well, I have around 130gb of music. (Most of it legal, if that matters. When my wife and I got married, we had over a thousand CDs between us, and that was years ago.)
I use iTunes, on an old MDD G4 with 768mb ram. Runs just fine, and feeds our various iPods just fine. I try to manage organizational matters as I add new stuff, because otherwise it's just too big a chore.
Yes, I know it's a lot of music. Hey, some people smoke, I buy music.
See, I was thinking more along the lines of sealed, liquid-cooled units.
One of the things that people forget is that one of the biggest reasons that most PC cases are loud is that they have to be upgradable, and re-configurable. By default, the fans are full speed, and the air flow isn't designed for quiet operation.
If something's a sealed module that will never need to be opened, the thermal profile is a known quantity that can be engineered around. Look at Apple's G5 series: whisper quiet, unless your ambient temp is 80+ degrees. Of course, they aren't the most expandable things in the world, but we're just talking about modules here.
Of course, pick energy-efficient processors, and vent them properly, and you can use passive cooling. No fans at all. Quiet.
I can see an interesting situation where you could have a traditional CPU, to which you could plug in additional external processor modules as your needs expand. (assuming the OS could handle sharing out multithreaded apps over a variety of different multi-CPU configurations.)
Dave has a processor intensive project this week? He gets the big stack plugged into his machine until someone else in the office needs it.
Server getting bogged down? Add another couple modules to the system.
Newsforge is reporting that Linus Torvalds took a few minutes to review the cross-platform proof of concept virus covered yesterday and has proven that the virus does indeed not work with latest kernel version 2.6.16 and even released a patch in order to fix this "problem."
While I appreciate your point, I respectfully disagree. The tone of yesterday's discussion was vitrolic, mean-spirited and crass.
There's a big difference between saying "What an obvious fake! What a lousy photoshop job! What an idiot to think that we would believe this!" and something like "While there's no reason that this couldn't be faked, there's no evidence that it has been. Let's wait and evaluate the proof when it becomes available before passing judgement."
Where I come from, the scientific process of peer-review doesn't include name-calling and obviously premature pronouncements of fakery by armchair image analysts with a copy of the GIMP and no knowledge of things like light bleed in cheap CCDs.
Of course, this is slashdot, where making instant pronouncements about things you don't understand is practically the official sport.
If memory serves, both tobacco and tomato are in the nightshade family (along with peppers, potatoes and petunias). It's not surprising that the same virus would affect both or even all of these plants.
For a virus, the line between living and non-living is an abstract one anyway. Same thing with those prion diseases. People want to start drawing these hard distinctions, and it's all an illusion. Words like "believe" and "feel" come into the picture, and objectivity goes out the window. What is life? "Unique" in what way?
It's hard to structure a definition of "life" that includes things like viruses and prion diseases without including stuff like these simulations, cellular automata and even memes, imo.
Sadly, there is a high degree of functional illiteracy among those people who are born deaf in this country. From what I understand, a lot of the problem is that American Sign Language is not based on English, so the grammatical structures are completely different.
Seems sad to me, though. Imagine being that completely locked out of our culture's discourse... I can imagine being deaf, and I can imagine being illiterate, but I can not imagine being both at the same time.
Zip disks were called a "syquest killer", and they certainly did the job much better, for a long time. I once had over 200 Zip disks going back and forth in my office. Very efficient, considering the alternatives at the time.
Currently hotpluggable external drives are not the norm, nor are they easily transportable (hassle with power supply wall warts, sensitivity to jolting movements etc.) but if they become standard, won't the sneakernet gain increased relevance?
I'm guessing that you're forgetting about iPods. They certainly work well for that purpose for me, at least. Then again, I've only done this on Macs... perhaps it's a bit more tricky on PCs?
Slashdot Mirror
So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night? After all, her naked body is reflecting electromagnetic radiation into my personal space. Amplifying it into a visible image, digitizing it, and making it available on the Internet seems like a perfectly logical step, doesn't it?
Ok, I'm with you so far.
URL?
m-
Of course, any Hasslehoff discussion is incomplete with mentioning...
THE HASSELHOFFIAN RECURSION
Behold, and weep.
You can thank me later. Muah hah hah hah!
m-
Hrmmph. The geek is strong in this one.
m-
Hmmm, yeah I've had AVG installed and running for 3 years, without having to reactivate.
Is it every 4 years or something?
m-
Well, 64 bit computing is a hell of lot faster than 32 bit.
Oh, because "64" is more than "32"?
Yes, 64-bit has some advantages, primarily in the area of memory management. It's a bit much to say that it's always faster, across the board. In fact, for some tasks 32-bit is significantly quicker, all else being equal.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
m-
What?? You have a Scottish Leprechaun??
I'm only familiar with the Irish type, silly me... Does he ride a haggis or what?
m-
There may be a few liberals who push stupid, anti-rights agendas. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, California. Quit electing fucking actors as governors. First, Reagan, now ARNIE? What the fuck are you guys smoking out there? And why don't I have any?)
Believe it or not, there were quite a few of us out here who weren't thrilled with the way the governator got into office. There were 3 main reasons it happened, in retrospect.
1. An angry, rich republican (Darrell Issa) paid a vast amount of money out of his own pocket to fund a private army of people to get signatures for the petition for a recall of Grey Davis. Moral of the story: with enough money, any petition will get all the signatures you need for anything.
2. There was a crucial issue at stake in the election, the planned ending of the CA car registration discount. We were in a huge budget crisis at the time, and ending this would have fixed it, at a cost of a few hundred dollars per vehicle registered in the state, per year. Moral of the story: when something's going to cost people money out of their own pocket, all other considerations go by the wayside. Start buying votes for $300-$600 each, and you could put Peewee Herman in the White House. Whoops. Too late.
3. Along the vast liberal population, there was a pervasive atmosphere of, "eh... why the fuck not? This'll be hilarious. What's the worst that could happen?" I'm guessing the same thing happened in Minnesota with Jesse Ventura. Moral of the story: apathy's a bitch, and given the option, people will vote for CowboyNeal just for the fuck of it.
m-
Well, I have around 130gb of music. (Most of it legal, if that matters. When my wife and I got married, we had over a thousand CDs between us, and that was years ago.)
I use iTunes, on an old MDD G4 with 768mb ram. Runs just fine, and feeds our various iPods just fine. I try to manage organizational matters as I add new stuff, because otherwise it's just too big a chore.
Yes, I know it's a lot of music. Hey, some people smoke, I buy music.
M-
Google is the gateway to porn right now, and that needs to change.
OK, I'll bite.
Why?
M-
You beat me to it. I just spent a week in Edinburgh and Aviemore, so the dialect is fresh in my mind.
"Oooo, look at the wee bairns!"
m-
See, I was thinking more along the lines of sealed, liquid-cooled units.
One of the things that people forget is that one of the biggest reasons that most PC cases are loud is that they have to be upgradable, and re-configurable. By default, the fans are full speed, and the air flow isn't designed for quiet operation.
If something's a sealed module that will never need to be opened, the thermal profile is a known quantity that can be engineered around. Look at Apple's G5 series: whisper quiet, unless your ambient temp is 80+ degrees. Of course, they aren't the most expandable things in the world, but we're just talking about modules here.
Of course, pick energy-efficient processors, and vent them properly, and you can use passive cooling. No fans at all. Quiet.
m-
I can see an interesting situation where you could have a traditional CPU, to which you could plug in additional external processor modules as your needs expand. (assuming the OS could handle sharing out multithreaded apps over a variety of different multi-CPU configurations.)
Dave has a processor intensive project this week? He gets the big stack plugged into his machine until someone else in the office needs it.
Server getting bogged down? Add another couple modules to the system.
I like the idea.
m-
Now you're going to make me dig this old baddie out...
http://www.thyla.com/bubble/Anki-Cosmic-bath.jpg
(shudder)
m-
Newsforge is reporting that Linus Torvalds took a few minutes to review the cross-platform proof of concept virus covered yesterday and has proven that the virus does indeed not work with latest kernel version 2.6.16 and even released a patch in order to fix this "problem."
Oh, um... Well, hmmm.
Thanks, Linus. I guess.
m-
Most of those people are too busy yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off the damn lawn. Damn whippersnappers.
Besides, when you're wearing trifocals, the resolution difference is less perceptible.
m-
While I appreciate your point, I respectfully disagree. The tone of yesterday's discussion was vitrolic, mean-spirited and crass.
There's a big difference between saying "What an obvious fake! What a lousy photoshop job! What an idiot to think that we would believe this!" and something like "While there's no reason that this couldn't be faked, there's no evidence that it has been. Let's wait and evaluate the proof when it becomes available before passing judgement."
Where I come from, the scientific process of peer-review doesn't include name-calling and obviously premature pronouncements of fakery by armchair image analysts with a copy of the GIMP and no knowledge of things like light bleed in cheap CCDs.
Of course, this is slashdot, where making instant pronouncements about things you don't understand is practically the official sport.
M-
If memory serves, both tobacco and tomato are in the nightshade family (along with peppers, potatoes and petunias). It's not surprising that the same virus would affect both or even all of these plants.
m-
For a virus, the line between living and non-living is an abstract one anyway. Same thing with those prion diseases. People want to start drawing these hard distinctions, and it's all an illusion. Words like "believe" and "feel" come into the picture, and objectivity goes out the window. What is life? "Unique" in what way?
It's hard to structure a definition of "life" that includes things like viruses and prion diseases without including stuff like these simulations, cellular automata and even memes, imo.
m-
Though I'm not sure exactly how he got the message out to us...
I'm pretty sure they use Outlook down there.
m-
Sadly, there is a high degree of functional illiteracy among those people who are born deaf in this country. From what I understand, a lot of the problem is that American Sign Language is not based on English, so the grammatical structures are completely different.
Seems sad to me, though. Imagine being that completely locked out of our culture's discourse... I can imagine being deaf, and I can imagine being illiterate, but I can not imagine being both at the same time.
m-
Ah, yes. The Dreaded Octopus.
It's a killer.
"Whoops!" is not something you want to hear under those, ahem, circumstances.
m-
Zip disks were called a "syquest killer", and they certainly did the job much better, for a long time. I once had over 200 Zip disks going back and forth in my office. Very efficient, considering the alternatives at the time.
At least until CD-R became affordable.
m-
You know, silicon and silicone are not the same thing. Common mistake.
Silicone jubblies are pretty common in LA, for example.
Silicon jubblies are best enjoyed in HD (DOA4 for e.g.).
m-
Currently hotpluggable external drives are not the norm, nor are they easily transportable (hassle with power supply wall warts, sensitivity to jolting movements etc.) but if they become standard, won't the sneakernet gain increased relevance?
I'm guessing that you're forgetting about iPods. They certainly work well for that purpose for me, at least. Then again, I've only done this on Macs... perhaps it's a bit more tricky on PCs?
m-
Personally, I didn't know where my pants were.
Long story.
m-