>really destructive hurricanes aren't common enough to justify massive increases in building cost (better materials, more materials, and more difficult building processes) when you can get storm insurance.
Um, this may be a dumb question, but is the shuttle insured?
>A more just comparison would likely be Canada; but wait: they're not only offering faster speeds than their southern neighbors, but consumers pay less, and Canada is close to South Korea when it comes to broadband penetration.
So, you're saying "bomb Canada and take their maple syrup" ?
>You just have to love that they mention sharing a DVD over the Net with a friend, WTF?! Give me a break, why did they even bring that shit up? They know that’s illegal here…
So the only DVDs than can be shared are illegal? Where did you get that idea?
If I author a DVD and want to share it with my friends, there is NO law that can prevent it.
Let's not automatically lump everything together, shall we?
With arguments like that, the RIAA could be justified in forcing all homes back down to 300 baud modems under the pretext that people only need that kind of throughput for pirating.
I think the best thing all developers can do is turn their backs on Microsoft and only target *nix platforms for any new development.
It's best for the client, best for the industry and best for us as professionals in the long run.
Microsoft is untrustworthy and by now is almost irrelevant.
Rather than listen to promises from Microsoft, I prefer to steer any project I am responsible for towards something that will benefit the USERS, not Microsoft.
The supercomputer would have to be structured internally just like a cluster, with multiple processors overseeing different parts of the calculation, just like any cluster would do.
Also, I don't believe a supercomputer can REALLY beat a really big cluster.
Of course it depends on how big the cluster is and the latency between nodes.
Or is it really? Crays are hardware, Linux is software. A cray could conceivably run Linux. Maybe an off-the-shelf cray performs faster in some cases than a linux cluster, but you could adapt Linux to run on a Cray, what's the issue here, other than sales?
OK, conceivably the earth couldn't move very much, but the moon might. There is no atmosphere on the moon, so meteors are able to hit its surface without frying up first. Depending where it hit, it could simply jar the beam.
Maybe we'd never have an accident, but there are a lot of ways that the beam could get diverted, and I'm pretty sure that's dangerous.
The beam is half a kilometer wide or more, and just moving it one degree would make it hit the earth many miles from where it should.
For some reason, the idea of the moon as an Imperial Death-Star just popped into my head! LOL!
>There's no such thing as a ZPM. Zero point energy doesn't exist. It violates laws of physics. I'm not going to mod you down; just so others may laugh at you...
"Even in its ground state, a quantum system possesses fluctuations and an associated zero-point energy, since otherwise the uncertainty principle would be violated. In particular the vacuum state of a quantum field has these properties. For example, the electric and magnetic fields in the electromagnetic vacuum are fluctuating quantities."
This is taken from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_poin t_energy
OK, not to be argumentative, but that doesn't explain HOW it's going to be safe. How can something that will undoubtedly lose energy (read - convert to heat) as it goes through clouds, dust and rain have NO impact on the environment? And with NO containment like that, what about birds?
Granted if you're a few (how many is a few?) meters away from the receiving dish, you're going to be exposed to something akin to a 20% more-than-usual sunburn, but where's the data about beam control?
Let's say you're on the moon, and you're beaming power to earth.
The ONLY way you can know you're on-target is by receiving telemetry back from earth confirming the beam's correct contact.
Let's say a meteorite hits earth (or the moon) or there is a moonquake (or eathquake) sufficiently close enough to either terminal for the beam to be knocked out of alignment by a degree or two.
The earth-station's communications latency is about one second. that means there'll potentially be one second (more or less) while the beam is pointing somewhere it's not supposed to.
It might be strafing be a village, might be strafing a desert...
*oops* just set fire to a forest there, sorry!
I don't know, but I'd actually feel safer if we relayed the energy back to earth along transmission lines running down space-elevators...
It *is* dangerous when you consider the energies we're talking about here. A high-powered microwave beam is NOT a going thing to be in the way of, even when it's comparitively low-powered like a cell-phone tower, say.
When it's thousands of times MORE powerful, and the beam drifts a few degrees from where it's supposed to be collected, we're talking melt-your-fillings!
OK, maybe not, but possibly boil-the-water-in-your-brain hot.
Also, wouldn't the microwaves HEAT the dust and other airborne particles they traverse on the way down? What would that do to the climate?
You know, you say that jokingly, but - Wasn't there a science-experiment that succeeded in freezing light within a container?
Maybe that technology (once it gets developed) will yeild REALLY high-power batteries that we'll be able to charge at a space power-station and then transport down.
C'mon singularity, get over here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_ singularity
I think we're gonna need help to get this working!
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, it's something that happened a lot on Windows NT, but less often on Windows 2000.
>I never had to compile my windows kernel to get video working.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never had a Linux system become completely unable to boot because of a bad video driver.
On Windows? It has happened often.
Maybe you need to look again for something Windows is "better" at.
ground...
Astronaut surprise, anyone?
Eeuwww... Gooey
>really destructive hurricanes aren't common enough to justify massive increases in building cost (better materials, more materials, and more difficult building processes) when you can get storm insurance.
Um, this may be a dumb question, but is the shuttle insured?
>A more just comparison would likely be Canada; but wait: they're not only offering faster speeds than their southern neighbors, but consumers pay less, and Canada is close to South Korea when it comes to broadband penetration.
So, you're saying "bomb Canada and take their maple syrup" ?
>bomb them, then steal their broadband? It works for everything else..
Nuke the Swedes and take their gold! Yeah!
Wait, what? It's the SWISS that have the gold? Oh...
Nevermind.
>You just have to love that they mention sharing a DVD over the Net with a friend, WTF?! Give me a break, why did they even bring that shit up? They know that’s illegal here…
So the only DVDs than can be shared are illegal? Where did you get that idea?
If I author a DVD and want to share it with my friends, there is NO law that can prevent it.
Let's not automatically lump everything together, shall we?
With arguments like that, the RIAA could be justified in forcing all homes back down to 300 baud modems under the pretext that people only need that kind of throughput for pirating.
SCO Halted.
Please reboot underhanded business practices, or better yet, install Linux.
OK, I've set it to Plain Old Text, thank you.
Useful advice
So SCO's real talent is for theatrics.
Figures; they don't seem to amount to anything off the stage, in the real world.
I think the best thing all developers can do is turn their backs on Microsoft and only target *nix platforms for any new development.
It's best for the client, best for the industry and best for us as professionals in the long run.
Microsoft is untrustworthy and by now is almost irrelevant.
Rather than listen to promises from Microsoft, I prefer to steer any project I am responsible for towards something that will benefit the USERS, not Microsoft.
Funny claim to make:
The supercomputer would have to be structured internally just like a cluster, with multiple processors overseeing different parts of the calculation, just like any cluster would do.
Also, I don't believe a supercomputer can REALLY beat a really big cluster.
Of course it depends on how big the cluster is and the latency between nodes.
So the claim is "Our supercomputer performs better than a PC?"
No kidding.
Even for geeks, this isn't really news.
Or is it really?
Crays are hardware, Linux is software.
A cray could conceivably run Linux.
Maybe an off-the-shelf cray performs faster in some cases than a linux cluster, but you could adapt Linux to run on a Cray, what's the issue here, other than sales?
>Why do you make all of your posts monospaced? Don't you know how fucking annoying that is?
*embarassed*
Actually, I don't know how to change it...
I don't remember setting it this way.
Seriously.
OK, conceivably the earth couldn't move very much, but the moon might. There is no atmosphere on the moon, so meteors are able to hit its surface without frying up first. Depending where it hit, it could simply jar the beam.
Maybe we'd never have an accident, but there are a lot of ways that the beam could get diverted, and I'm pretty sure that's dangerous.
The beam is half a kilometer wide or more, and just moving it one degree would make it hit the earth many miles from where it should.
For some reason, the idea of the moon as an Imperial Death-Star just popped into my head! LOL!
OK, maybe that's exaggerating.
Anyone who is telling you they "Love" Linux while running an "Escape Unix" campaign is simply milking both sides (you).
Unisys, being both the agency originally owning the patents and the creator of the code may contribute it under the GPL.
Once published under the GPL, they cannot "submarine" an attack since they are the ones who gave it up.
/NotALawyer
I would really like to know what Richard Stallman has to say about this.
Someone quoted a design here, and it turns out that the beam would be AT MINIMUM .5 kilometers across.
duh.
It could be "Oops, you've incinerated a village" instead, if you prefer.
The point is you don't know where the beam will hit.
>There's no such thing as a ZPM. Zero point energy doesn't exist. It violates laws of physics. I'm not going to mod you down; just so others may laugh at you...
n t_energy
"Even in its ground state, a quantum system possesses fluctuations and an associated zero-point energy, since otherwise the uncertainty principle would be violated. In particular the vacuum state of a quantum field has these properties. For example, the electric and magnetic fields in the electromagnetic vacuum are fluctuating quantities."
This is taken from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_poi
Maybe you shouldn't start laughing too quickly.
OK, not to be argumentative, but that doesn't explain HOW it's going to be safe. How can something that will undoubtedly lose energy (read - convert to heat) as it goes through clouds, dust and rain have NO impact on the environment? And with NO containment like that, what about birds?
Granted if you're a few (how many is a few?) meters away from the receiving dish, you're going to be exposed to something akin to a 20% more-than-usual sunburn, but where's the data about beam control?
Let's say you're on the moon, and you're beaming power to earth.
The ONLY way you can know you're on-target is by receiving telemetry back from earth confirming the beam's correct contact.
Let's say a meteorite hits earth (or the moon) or there is a moonquake (or eathquake) sufficiently close enough to either terminal for the beam to be knocked out of alignment by a degree or two.
The earth-station's communications latency is about one second. that means there'll potentially be one second (more or less) while the beam is pointing somewhere it's not supposed to.
It might be strafing be a village, might be strafing a desert...
*oops* just set fire to a forest there, sorry!
I don't know, but I'd actually feel safer if we relayed the energy back to earth along transmission lines running down space-elevators...
It *is* dangerous when you consider the energies we're talking about here.
A high-powered microwave beam is NOT a going thing to be in the way of, even when it's comparitively low-powered like a cell-phone tower, say.
When it's thousands of times MORE powerful, and the beam drifts a few degrees from where it's supposed to be collected, we're talking melt-your-fillings!
OK, maybe not, but possibly boil-the-water-in-your-brain hot.
Also, wouldn't the microwaves HEAT the dust and other airborne particles they traverse on the way down? What would that do to the climate?
You know, you say that jokingly, but -
_ singularity
Wasn't there a science-experiment that succeeded in freezing light within a container?
Maybe that technology (once it gets developed) will yeild REALLY high-power batteries that we'll be able to charge at a space power-station and then transport down.
C'mon singularity, get over here!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological
I think we're gonna need help to get this working!