National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
And? Do you think someone would try to "push the envelope" that hard if there were an (practically empty and available) channel 0.1 GHz away (easily accessible from your receiving equipment) which would be *dedicated* to showing J.J.s titties?
Seriously, when you put any kind of regulation of *technology* (that being clay tablets, print press, photography, airwaves or our good new I'net) for the explicit purpose of regulating *morality*, you are on a very slippery slope, and the slide down is not too satisfying.
As of abolishing of the FCC, I guess Ayn Rand wrote about the same idea, like what?, 40 years ago... I am surprized that none of the libertarian folks out here have jumped on the bandwagon so far.
Paul B.
Speaking of "children" and "breasts" --- Wow! what a horrible thought!!! Of course those big mounds of flesh were created *solely* for the purposes of showing them in naughty videos, really!;-/
At the time when I was involved with preliminary design of HTMT petaflops supercomputer (yes, it is petaflops, as in million gigaflops, see, for example, here), anyway, one of the problems which would require a supercomputer with this this kind of performance was real-time optimization of car traffic in a city the size of Manhattan, NY.
I see it now... What is the third axis then? (TFA was already/.ed by the time I tried clicking on it, but I assumed that any Cube would be 3D, right?;-) )
I'm not a pure libertarian, I do accept the neccesary evil of government.
Actually any modern libertarian (as opposed to "pure anarchist") would completely agree with what you said here. The "necessary evil" with a mandate to use force against people, thus better limited to using the force (i.e., military, police and courts) and NOT distracted by doing "nice" things (like, everything else liberals would want it to do).
If the government can do whatever it wishes within its own borders.
This is where we disagree (and where that slippery slope begins) -- what the gov't can do is limited by (at least) the Constitution (I assume we are taking about the USA here). Or do you think the Gov't can arbitrary decide to, for example, throw in jail (or execute) people who want to, say, trade in the currency other than the official state currency? (It is an actual example, back in the old Soviet Union in 80s one could easily get a jail sentence for keeping/using USD, and people were accused of "economic sabotage" and executed for not much more than that). Do you REALLY want to give your Gov't that "right"?
Suggesting that a government doesn't have any rights beyond military and police is ridiculous.
Yet, some not too stupid people suggest just that.
Anyway, maybe you will find some of this more relevant to the current discussion.
... only *indivuduals* do. Countries have duties to their citizens, the extent of those can vary, but at least should include military protection and keeping "law and order" and (I personally very much agree with Libertarins on this one) not too much else.
When you start saying that "countries" have rights of their own it is pretty much a start on a slippery slope to Communist/Nazi regimes. (BTW, I've lived unter the former one).
The parent (whom I modded up back in the day, now trading my mod points for a chance to clarify his view) was speaking about "socially liberal", quite different from "liberal" in political sense. As in, liberal (=supporting freedom) in SOCIAL, day-to-day issues (abortion, pot-smoking, co-habitating, you know...). Libertarians agree on this with (U.S.) Dems, but also mix that with "fiscally conservative", which includes small taxes and, as part of overall phylosophy, small government. So there is not contradiction here at all, really.
As of CA (I guess you are from this state, and I live here now, right?;-) ), our current Guvernor IS *socially* quite liberal (more than many of his Republican friends would like), this is what in the end got him elected.
Now that jokes about 190 dB have died out, it's time for us geeks to learn how the damn thing works. The thing that has reportedly flown on the Space Shuttle (and many other space missions) is properly called "pulse tube cryocooler", good background is here.
And where I work the joke was "Hey, Ben and Jerry switch to pulse tubes, NOW they'll become cheaper!;-) "
MgB2 is a standard low temp. superconductor with a Tc of only ~40 Kelvin.
As pfdietz pointed out below, MgB2 is so much easier to work with than HTS ceramics. Its discovery is considered the next big thing in the field since the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, not because of increased Tc, but because it can be deposited using standard semiconductor tools and one does not have to worry about grain size/orientation/etc.
Whaaa? HTS (high temp. superconductors) are perfectly suited to "digital apps" in many situations. A company called STI makes HT superconducting filters for cell phone antennas in order to increase data bandwidth and and decrease service dropout by making their recievers more sensitive.
STI/Conductus filters are purely passive devices, there is not a single Josephson junction nor a single cold logic gate. As a matter of fact filters themselves are rather simple, their main achievement is development and mass-production of relatively low cost and reliable cryocoolers. And of course they are not used in "cell phone antennas", rather in "cell phone *base station* antennas", big difference!:-)
But when I was talking about "digital" I meant exactly the stuff from your second link. Search for a guy named Paul Bunyk there , look at my user ID and then decided if I have something to say about those matters...;-)
Am I the only one who has no idea what this is? SuperConductor Electronics.
I suppose for EDA, when there are widespread EDA chips and IP contained within, one would find similar roadblocks to exchange as are found in 3D.
Sure, especially now when you can not just ship the layout layers geometry to the vendor and expect them to print it on silicon perfectly. In deep submicron world, fabs want to be able to adjust geometry depending on how things print out *right now*, and fabless design shops (unlike, say, Boeing which has its own plants taking blueprints from its own design engineers) have to be really nervous about not releasing anything fancy in their designs (their IP) while giving foundry enough latitude to adjust the design to fit their current process.
But it seems that this problem is solved more through obfuscation and filtering rather than limiting the expressiveness and openess of the format itself, in the same way NDAs _usually_;-) do not require that all information exchange goes in, say, Esperanto, but explicitly limit the information that can be openly exchanged.
I tried with some powers that be for mozilla, and the answer back was the software needed to work in IE; chickens and eggs. Like, say, the PNG situation?;-/ At least there is some hope that a rogue group in (or outside) mozilla will add a patch to support X3D natively. If X3D becomes popular enough and SolidWorks starts distributing free IE plugins to view designs (as far as I remember they did that for their native format), we'll have one proven case where Moz is more user-friendly than IE (i.e., does not require dealing with thirt-party plugins).
But then, again, I'll believe in this only after I see a stable and widespread SVG support...;-(
Ok, man, I admit (after checking out this page and your way overheated exchange with ctxspy) that you do know things that were simply not there in that article.
And all I hoped for was a nice 3D format that major players would agree to use for data *exchange* (not necessarily one-way) and small tool vendors would be able to hack. In my world (EDA) people seem to get along with GDSII, Cadence's OpenAccess DB and CIF if everything else fails, but I was stunned how bad interoperability is in 3D mechanical CAD world when I learned that, after our company (a sizeable one even before it was aquired by even bigger one) decided to standartize on something (either Catia or ProE, do not remember the details), the tool that they chose DID NOT READ ITS OWN FILES saved in the previous version and they had to re-digitize from paper...
From the article: Intel and co.'s goal is to end the array of proprietary 3D graphics formats devised by CAD, 3D and other software developers and replace it with a single, standard format that all can use.
I read this as if they do indeed want this format to replace proprietary formats and CAD is mentioned first. Nowhere it was said that this one is for "downstream consumption" only (except if you read too much into mp3 and JPEG being mentioned).
I would be more than happy to see CAD models flowing between my layout tool, EM simulator and my project manager's Powerpoint. Heck, I've spent half a day recently figuring out that the only way to convert GDSII file into Agilent's ADS layout database which did not involve a tool with expired license was to go through IGES...;-)
As for the IPR protection angle, what makes you think that Boeing would treat data in this format differently than any other data they have, i.e., "need to know" and only on the intranet? If they would want to release a 3D mockup of their next plane to CNN they will definitely filter data and maybe intentionally disturbe vertices and such.
The beauty of well-designed format is that it would be able to be used at all levels of detail, from real detailed CAD database to 3D game objects. The examples of CAD data that you cite require only the availability of user-definable properties/sections in the file and decent data precision + scaling factors incorporated in the format (microns/mils for chips, mm/inches for planes...;-) ).
Would one really notice slight noise in the coordinates of points of a mesh or in texel color values?
I've got a feeling that this format is specified not only for 3D as in virtual reality/animation but also for 3D as in mechanical CAD work. Do you REALLY want that rivet in a wing of a plane you fly to be "just a little bit" off?;-)
I did not mean in *legal* sense, I was talking about the spirit... After all, the whole town is one big parking lot, not too much "environment" left... I guess Walmart did not want to mess with local politicians and decided to take the issue directly to The People, and politicians managed to (brainwash?) everyone enough so that the bill was not passed. And I am not sure that WalMart builds lots of stores without waivers, I guess they more or less play by the book except in really dire situations, but then, again, in no way I am an expert in retail, really...
I personally would not have a slightest chance to know, but judging from my friends' experience you just have to be of the "good moral character" and have skills needed by the people who need the cleared performer on the job (as in, working for one of the above-mentioned Govt. contractors of Govt. itself). Spending time in the military does not necessarily help...
... zoning and building code waivers, in Inglewood???;-) Ever seen "Pulp Fiction"? Remember the scene right after they finally washed the remains of their poor comrade from the back seat of the car and Mr. Wolf is offering them a ride? What were the answers? "Torrance... -- Inglewood...". Believe me, if you'd ever visit the town you'd find out that "Environmental Impact Statement" does not *really* apply... Not that I think that the people over there do not have a right to say No to the idea (after all, it's their town, and I am very much for people to deal with their land/inhabitat/town the way they see fit!), but I think that it is a bit stupid of them to do that, that's all...
Listening to too much of John and Ken, KFI 640?;-)
I know, I know, I guess my reaction was partially due to the whole story about stupid minority/socialist politicians trying to pull the 'mom-and-pop-store" card in that Inglewood case (Redondo Beach here). I can accept opposing to Walmart on pure snobbish/aestetics grounds (as my wife undoubtly would do;-) ), but to bring in the whole "minimum wage" vs. "high-paid *unionized* employees in small stores" crap is just silly!
- Walmart stores put small local retailers out of business, and replace the jobs they offered with minimum-wage positions.
And? Do the "small local retailers" offer *maximum*-wage positions to their employees? Hmm, I had a friend who had a small cafe and hard time competing with local Starbucks; judging from conversations with him I highly doubt he offered the girls who worked the store anything more than minimum-wage. The only difference might've been that he was paying *cash*, but we are not advocating not paying income tax here, are we? I thought the idea was not consistent with your anti-capitalist (pro-socialist!) views...;-)
Slashdot Mirror
National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
;-/
And? Do you think someone would try to "push the envelope" that hard if there were an (practically empty and available) channel 0.1 GHz away (easily accessible from your receiving equipment) which would be *dedicated* to showing J.J.s titties?
Seriously, when you put any kind of regulation of *technology* (that being clay tablets, print press, photography, airwaves or our good new I'net) for the explicit purpose of regulating *morality*, you are on a very slippery slope, and the slide down is not too satisfying.
As of abolishing of the FCC, I guess Ayn Rand wrote about the same idea, like what?, 40 years ago... I am surprized that none of the libertarian folks out here have jumped on the bandwagon so far.
Paul B.
Speaking of "children" and "breasts" --- Wow! what a horrible thought!!! Of course those big mounds of flesh were created *solely* for the purposes of showing them in naughty videos, really!
At the time when I was involved with preliminary design of HTMT petaflops supercomputer (yes, it is petaflops, as in million gigaflops, see, for example, here), anyway, one of the problems which would require a supercomputer with this this kind of performance was real-time optimization of car traffic in a city the size of Manhattan, NY.
Paul B.
I see it now... What is the third axis then? (TFA was already /.ed by the time I tried clicking on it, but I assumed that any Cube would be 3D, right? ;-) )
Paul B.
... After all the $$M spent on cute visualization and PR promotion of the technology, evil authors of port-scanners just add two lines:
/* this */ ...) ...){ /* and this */
pseed=urand(); iseed=urand();
for(port
for(ip
port ^= pseed; ip^=iseed;
probe(ip,port);
}
or use some fancier one-to-one mapping and the dots in your cube are again "random" to the naked eye.
(On a side note, why whoever implemented that "barberwire"-producing scanner did not do this at the time, I can not understand).
Paul B.
www.reason.com, judging from the subj of your message... ;-)
;-)
Agreed with everything else you said though. And let them call us "libertarian freaks" rather than "dirty hippies"...
Paul B.
Your .sig was never more appropriate! ;-)
Here.
I'm not a pure libertarian, I do accept the neccesary evil of government.
Actually any modern libertarian (as opposed to "pure anarchist") would completely agree with what you said here. The "necessary evil" with a mandate to use force against people, thus better limited to using the force (i.e., military, police and courts) and NOT distracted by doing "nice" things (like, everything else liberals would want it to do).
Paul B.
If the government can do whatever it wishes within its own borders.
This is where we disagree (and where that slippery slope begins) -- what the gov't can do is limited by (at least) the Constitution (I assume we are taking about the USA here). Or do you think the Gov't can arbitrary decide to, for example, throw in jail (or execute) people who want to, say, trade in the currency other than the official state currency? (It is an actual example, back in the old Soviet Union in 80s one could easily get a jail sentence for keeping/using USD, and people were accused of "economic sabotage" and executed for not much more than that). Do you REALLY want to give your Gov't that "right"?
Suggesting that a government doesn't have any rights beyond military and police is ridiculous.
Yet, some not too stupid people suggest just that.
Anyway, maybe you will find some of this more relevant to the current discussion.
Paul B.
... only *indivuduals* do. Countries have duties to their citizens, the extent of those can vary, but at least should include military protection and keeping "law and order" and (I personally very much agree with Libertarins on this one) not too much else.
When you start saying that "countries" have rights of their own it is pretty much a start on a slippery slope to Communist/Nazi regimes. (BTW, I've lived unter the former one).
Paul B.
Well, I had a little bit of sympathy to them before, I guess it was undeserved...
Paul B.
The parent (whom I modded up back in the day, now trading my mod points for a chance to clarify his view) was speaking about "socially liberal", quite different from "liberal" in political sense. As in, liberal (=supporting freedom) in SOCIAL, day-to-day issues (abortion, pot-smoking, co-habitating, you know...). Libertarians agree on this with (U.S.) Dems, but also mix that with "fiscally conservative", which includes small taxes and, as part of overall phylosophy, small government. So there is not contradiction here at all, really.
;-) ), our current Guvernor IS *socially* quite liberal (more than many of his Republican friends would like), this is what in the end got him elected.
As of CA (I guess you are from this state, and I live here now, right?
Paul B.
Now that jokes about 190 dB have died out, it's time for us geeks to learn how the damn thing works. The thing that has reportedly flown on the Space Shuttle (and many other space missions) is properly called "pulse tube cryocooler", good background is here.
;-) "
And where I work the joke was "Hey, Ben and Jerry switch to pulse tubes, NOW they'll become cheaper!
Paul B.
MgB2 is a standard low temp. superconductor with a Tc of only ~40 Kelvin.
:-)
;-)
As pfdietz pointed out below, MgB2 is so much easier to work with than HTS ceramics. Its discovery is considered the next big thing in the field since the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, not because of increased Tc, but because it can be deposited using standard semiconductor tools and one does not have to worry about grain size/orientation/etc.
Whaaa? HTS (high temp. superconductors) are perfectly suited to "digital apps" in many situations. A company called STI makes HT superconducting filters for cell phone antennas in order to increase data bandwidth and and decrease service dropout by making their recievers more sensitive.
STI/Conductus filters are purely passive devices, there is not a single Josephson junction nor a single cold logic gate. As a matter of fact filters themselves are rather simple, their main achievement is development and mass-production of relatively low cost and reliable cryocoolers. And of course they are not used in "cell phone antennas", rather in "cell phone *base station* antennas", big difference!
But when I was talking about "digital" I meant exactly the stuff from your second link. Search for a guy named Paul Bunyk there , look at my user ID and then decided if I have something to say about those matters...
Am I the only one who has no idea what this is? SuperConductor Electronics.
Paul B.
Search for MgB2 , though it is not much better (except possibly for digital apps where HTS sucked big time...)
And I actually used to work in SCE...
Paul B.
(Thorugh got the FP... ;-( )
Please mod accordingly...
Paul B.
... you insensitive clod!!!
(OTOH, it is in So.Cal., so weather is the same all year long anyway...)
Paul B.
I suppose for EDA, when there are widespread EDA chips and IP contained within, one would find similar roadblocks to exchange as are found in 3D.
;-) do not require that all information exchange goes in, say, Esperanto, but explicitly limit the information that can be openly exchanged.
;-/ At least there is some hope that a rogue group in (or outside) mozilla will add a patch to support X3D natively. If X3D becomes popular enough and SolidWorks starts distributing free IE plugins to view designs (as far as I remember they did that for their native format), we'll have one proven case where Moz is more user-friendly than IE (i.e., does not require dealing with thirt-party plugins).
;-(
Sure, especially now when you can not just ship the layout layers geometry to the vendor and expect them to print it on silicon perfectly. In deep submicron world, fabs want to be able to adjust geometry depending on how things print out *right now*, and fabless design shops (unlike, say, Boeing which has its own plants taking blueprints from its own design engineers) have to be really nervous about not releasing anything fancy in their designs (their IP) while giving foundry enough latitude to adjust the design to fit their current process.
But it seems that this problem is solved more through obfuscation and filtering rather than limiting the expressiveness and openess of the format itself, in the same way NDAs _usually_
I tried with some powers that be for mozilla, and the answer back was the software needed to work in IE; chickens and eggs. Like, say, the PNG situation?
But then, again, I'll believe in this only after I see a stable and widespread SVG support...
Paul B.
Ok, man, I admit (after checking out this page and your way overheated exchange with ctxspy) that you do know things that were simply not there in that article.
And all I hoped for was a nice 3D format that major players would agree to use for data *exchange* (not necessarily one-way) and small tool vendors would be able to hack. In my world (EDA) people seem to get along with GDSII, Cadence's OpenAccess DB and CIF if everything else fails, but I was stunned how bad interoperability is in 3D mechanical CAD world when I learned that, after our company (a sizeable one even before it was aquired by even bigger one) decided to standartize on something (either Catia or ProE, do not remember the details), the tool that they chose DID NOT READ ITS OWN FILES saved in the previous version and they had to re-digitize from paper...
Paul B.
From the article: Intel and co.'s goal is to end the array of proprietary 3D graphics formats devised by CAD, 3D and other software developers and replace it with a single, standard format that all can use.
;-)
;-) ).
I read this as if they do indeed want this format to replace proprietary formats and CAD is mentioned first. Nowhere it was said that this one is for "downstream consumption" only (except if you read too much into mp3 and JPEG being mentioned).
I would be more than happy to see CAD models flowing between my layout tool, EM simulator and my project manager's Powerpoint. Heck, I've spent half a day recently figuring out that the only way to convert GDSII file into Agilent's ADS layout database which did not involve a tool with expired license was to go through IGES...
As for the IPR protection angle, what makes you think that Boeing would treat data in this format differently than any other data they have, i.e., "need to know" and only on the intranet? If they would want to release a 3D mockup of their next plane to CNN they will definitely filter data and maybe intentionally disturbe vertices and such.
The beauty of well-designed format is that it would be able to be used at all levels of detail, from real detailed CAD database to 3D game objects. The examples of CAD data that you cite require only the availability of user-definable properties/sections in the file and decent data precision + scaling factors incorporated in the format (microns/mils for chips, mm/inches for planes...
Paul B.
Would one really notice slight noise in the coordinates of points of a mesh or in texel color values?
;-)
I've got a feeling that this format is specified not only for 3D as in virtual reality/animation but also for 3D as in mechanical CAD work. Do you REALLY want that rivet in a wing of a plane you fly to be "just a little bit" off?
Paul B.
I did not mean in *legal* sense, I was talking about the spirit... After all, the whole town is one big parking lot, not too much "environment" left... I guess Walmart did not want to mess with local politicians and decided to take the issue directly to The People, and politicians managed to (brainwash?) everyone enough so that the bill was not passed. And I am not sure that WalMart builds lots of stores without waivers, I guess they more or less play by the book except in really dire situations, but then, again, in no way I am an expert in retail, really...
Paul B.
I personally would not have a slightest chance to know, but judging from my friends' experience you just have to be of the "good moral character" and have skills needed by the people who need the cleared performer on the job (as in, working for one of the above-mentioned Govt. contractors of Govt. itself). Spending time in the military does not necessarily help...
Paul B.
... zoning and building code waivers, in Inglewood??? ;-) Ever seen "Pulp Fiction"? Remember the scene right after they finally washed the remains of their poor comrade from the back seat of the car and Mr. Wolf is offering them a ride? What were the answers? "Torrance... -- Inglewood...". Believe me, if you'd ever visit the town you'd find out that "Environmental Impact Statement" does not *really* apply... Not that I think that the people over there do not have a right to say No to the idea (after all, it's their town, and I am very much for people to deal with their land/inhabitat/town the way they see fit!), but I think that it is a bit stupid of them to do that, that's all...
Paul B.
Hey,
;-)
;-) ), but to
Listening to too much of John and Ken, KFI 640?
I know, I know, I guess my reaction was partially due to the whole story about stupid
minority/socialist politicians trying to pull
the 'mom-and-pop-store" card in that Inglewood
case (Redondo Beach here). I can accept opposing
to Walmart on pure snobbish/aestetics grounds
(as my wife undoubtly would do
bring in the whole "minimum wage" vs. "high-paid
*unionized* employees in small stores" crap is
just silly!
Paul B.
- Walmart stores put small local retailers out of business, and replace the jobs they offered with minimum-wage positions.
;-)
And? Do the "small local retailers" offer *maximum*-wage positions to their employees? Hmm, I had a friend who had a small cafe and hard time competing with local Starbucks; judging from conversations with him I highly doubt he offered the girls who worked the store anything more than minimum-wage. The only difference might've been that he was paying *cash*, but we are not advocating not paying income tax here, are we? I thought the idea was not consistent with your anti-capitalist (pro-socialist!) views...
Paul B.