Yeah, hopefully this will kick Intel into working a bit harder for their money. I remember the day when I wouldn't wish AMD on anybody - they were scarcely better than Cyrix (actually, that's too nasty to say about anything) but really, they were just making cheap, plastic (metaphorically) copies of Intel chips that ran slower, but were dirt cheap. Then the Athlon came out, and I had to take everything back, as they made a better chip for less money. Strange, you'd have thought Intel would be more concerned.
Hopefully with the ludicrous prices for the high MHz P4s that we need to even compete with an Athlon that is a fracton of the price, people will stop licking the TV when Intel adverts come on, and instead buy the obvious choice. Maybe then Intel will have to come up with a decent chip, rather than just squeezing out an extra 200MHz every few months for a mere £500 extra.
I have a P3 500, btw. Bought it just before 1GHz Athlons came out for about the same price. Doh!
Tom Cheatham's amendment of Conway's Law: "If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager."
And you're right, BSc projects never (rarely?) come up with brand new ideas, but it's nice to at least work with brand new technology, riding just behind the cutting edge.
You're unnervingly accurate, though; IIRC, a project I turned down when doing my BSc dissertation was to write a compiler for a lecturer's pet functional language.
I don't mean to sound rude (though I'm sure that it will anyway) but at university in the UK, CS dissertations are supposed to be on (or at least near) the cutting edge of CS technology. Writing code, and researching ideas that advance computing e.g. there were projects on CASE tools, radical design methodologies, evolutionary algorithms etc, etc.
It seems to me that writing software (be it a game of a 'conventional' app) with the only twist being that it's on a PS2 is a bit of a waste when you should be showing real talent and original thinking.
Oh, and as has been said before, if you're planning to write a graphical game, DON'T. They're bloody hard.
I doubt he worked for free, so his salary was part of the cost for the Linux solution.
I hope he didn't charge much - christ, he knows less about Linux and Win2K than I do. Admittedly I know a fair bit, but I certainly don't know enough to charge companies for consultancy.
There've been enough comments on his stupid memory quotes already, but I like the '...easy installation....best to get it pre-installed' and '...easy to file-share with Samba....best to get an expert to configure it'
I know I was paraphrasing, but if I had paid this man to write a comparison, I'd sue him to get my money back. Looks to me like he logged on to AOL, saw some news about Linux and thought 'Whoa, c00l' (because these people think with numbers too)
Astroturfing: A fake grass-roots movement. Hence Astroturfing, not grass-rootsing. How can this be astroturfing unless it is an MS employee paid to write messages to slashdot?
Honestly, I'd rather be modding you down
There speaks somebody who couldn't be arsed to read the moderators' guilelines, which clearly say you shouldn't mod people down just because you disagree with them.
But you're right - it's unthinkable that/. is biased towards Linux and against Microsoft. Slander.
This is an excellent idea; office blocks have to be some of the most power hungry buildings there are, and this could really cut down on energy/natural resource usage, pollution etc.
I would have to imagine that even once maintenance is taken care of, the energy savings this could make would quickly pay for the initial setup cost.
My only concern is the noise - the article suggests that noise may be damped by insulation, however given that rural turbines are criticised for noise pollution, I suspect that the effect of sound insulation is still not going to be enough to make it a pleasant working environment. When the small fridge in the corner of our office starts whirring occasionally (solved by a swift kick) that tiny noise soon becomes irritating. Imagine even a supposedly acceptable but constant hum all day, every day. This could really have a bad effect on the nerves of workers inside the building.
I remember thinking this was a neat idea a year or so back, when there was a paper about 'ant technology' being used as an efficient algorithm for the travelling salesman problem (mentioned in article).
Applying this to packet routing seems a really elegant idea, there are obvious similarities between optimising packet transport between sites and ant trails to food sources. What confuses me is the talk about P2P networks at the end of the article. It seems to be thrown in to jump on the P2P bandwagon: I mean, where's the similarity between Napster (mentioned by name in the article) and an ant colony? Well, there's no central intelligence (server) and...err..thats it?
Applying ant technology to solve a related problem is a potential solution to that problem. Spotting a vague similarity between two fashionable technologies does not automatically mean that that they are actually relevant to each other. Unless of course he's thought of something and not put it in the article...
Did you guys hear the news? The worst terrorist attack on the U.S. in recorded history happened two days ago. And you're talking about VIDEO GAMES?
Jesus Christ on a pogostick! You fucking nerds need to learn some PRIORITIES!
Fucking wankers.
Well as you're going off topic, I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank the American public for giving so much support and funding to the IRA over the years (Noraid)
Oh, I realise I can say goodbye to my Karma, but the reason I'm not posting as AC is that this is not a troll, it is a serious point. Before you mod me down, at least read what I've said.
Possibly due to the name, everybody seems to treat a black hole as if it is exactly that - a hole. Really it is just a massive gravity source due to phenomenal mass and density.
The implication in this case is that the black hole provides a central gravity source large enough that the entire galaxy slowly circles it, in a gradually degrading orbit. In this aspect you are right - without such an object the Milky Way could not exist as it does now, as there would be nothing stronger than the attraction between solar systems to hold it together.
However, that does not mean that the black hole is incapable of "swallowing" the galaxy. The fact that the Milky Way is a spiral demonstrates that the orbit is degrading. As more objects are drawn in to the black hole, it can only serve to increase the size and mass and make an even more powerful gravity well.
The researchers make two claims about how password transmission can weaken security:
In the first they claim that by analysing key timings they can attack passwords up to 50 times faster. We'll assume that they are not exaggerating and that this is based on real life tests.
The second claim they make is that it allows the length of the password to be ascertained immediately, giving a significant advantage. However, simple maths shows that a password based on a set of n characters has ~(n-1) more permutations than the sum of all shorter passwords. Hence, in a strong password we see that attacking the shorter passwords is virtually noise compared with the time taken to attack the correct length password.
So really the result is an approximate 50 times speedup in brute force attacks, as suggested by the first claim. Once again, assuming we are using a strong password, using upper/lower case, numerical and punctuation, we have a character set of well over 50, so to combat this attack we simply all increase our passwords by one character. This will take security back to a state even higher than before this weakness was found.
Actually this is an interesting point, and I stand corrected. A keyboard optimised for a single stylus that works by keeping commonly grouped characters located close to each other may turn out to be a hinderance for a touch typist, as it would tend to force a couple of fingers on one hand at a time to do most of the typing.
Perhaps for a hardware keyboard a more sensible option would be to keep commonly grouped characters on opposite sides of the keyboards, to distribute the typing between both hands. However, it may make sense to keep common groups of characters that happen to fall on the same side of the keyboard to all fall on the same row, to reduce the strain in each hand - useful in this age of RSI.
Obviously this is just guesswork on my part, and really needs the same sort of research as with ATOMIK, but it is an idea.
...That we move away from using a qwerty keyboard just because it's what the computer professionals are used to. Admittedly the immediate effect would be for me (and every other/.er) to drop to a sluggish hunt-and-peck typing style, but in the future it should be easier to learn for novices, and boost everybody's wpm.
Also, I think the idea of designing the keyboard according to Fitts' law applied to a certain language is a cunning idea - seems the obvious choice to boost wpm and reduce typing strain. Of course it'd have to be changed for other languages, but that is a fairly simple task, and it's not like it doesn't happen already (the French azerty, anyone?)
Of course, we'll have to wait for a hardware version with all keys implemented before it's worth learning.
They can cut spending on advertisement of their yet another 24-hours nasal decongestant by few percents.
Whilst I would love to think in such simplistic terms, I have to point out:
If cutting spending on advertisments resulted in an increase in profit, why do you think they do spend that much? Surely you don't think they enjoy giving money away just for the sake of advertising?
As somebody said earlier in the discussion, money has to change hands somewhere. If drugs should be available to poor countries for free, vote in a government who will increase taxes in order to pay for these countries to receive medication.
I'm sure 90% of people would whole-heartedly agree with this idea, right up until a government actually suggested doing it...
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed it is a sad world when a software company would dare to violate our civil liberties by designing an operating system that is hard to pirate.
Thoughtless bastards - what next, people fitting 'locks' on doors to make it harder for burglars? Selfish fuckers.
Yeah, hopefully this will kick Intel into working a bit harder for their money. I remember the day when I wouldn't wish AMD on anybody - they were scarcely better than Cyrix (actually, that's too nasty to say about anything) but really, they were just making cheap, plastic (metaphorically) copies of Intel chips that ran slower, but were dirt cheap. Then the Athlon came out, and I had to take everything back, as they made a better chip for less money. Strange, you'd have thought Intel would be more concerned.
Hopefully with the ludicrous prices for the high MHz P4s that we need to even compete with an Athlon that is a fracton of the price, people will stop licking the TV when Intel adverts come on, and instead buy the obvious choice. Maybe then Intel will have to come up with a decent chip, rather than just squeezing out an extra 200MHz every few months for a mere £500 extra.
I have a P3 500, btw. Bought it just before 1GHz Athlons came out for about the same price. Doh!
And you're right, BSc projects never (rarely?) come up with brand new ideas, but it's nice to at least work with brand new technology, riding just behind the cutting edge.
You're unnervingly accurate, though; IIRC, a project I turned down when doing my BSc dissertation was to write a compiler for a lecturer's pet functional language.
I don't mean to sound rude (though I'm sure that it will anyway) but at university in the UK, CS dissertations are supposed to be on (or at least near) the cutting edge of CS technology. Writing code, and researching ideas that advance computing e.g. there were projects on CASE tools, radical design methodologies, evolutionary algorithms etc, etc.
It seems to me that writing software (be it a game of a 'conventional' app) with the only twist being that it's on a PS2 is a bit of a waste when you should be showing real talent and original thinking.
Oh, and as has been said before, if you're planning to write a graphical game, DON'T. They're bloody hard.
I hope he didn't charge much - christ, he knows less about Linux and Win2K than I do. Admittedly I know a fair bit, but I certainly don't know enough to charge companies for consultancy.
There've been enough comments on his stupid memory quotes already, but I like the '...easy installation....best to get it pre-installed' and '...easy to file-share with Samba....best to get an expert to configure it'
I know I was paraphrasing, but if I had paid this man to write a comparison, I'd sue him to get my money back. Looks to me like he logged on to AOL, saw some news about Linux and thought 'Whoa, c00l' (because these people think with numbers too)
There speaks somebody who couldn't be arsed to read the moderators' guilelines, which clearly say you shouldn't mod people down just because you disagree with them.
But you're right - it's unthinkable that
This is an excellent idea; office blocks have to be some of the most power hungry buildings there are, and this could really cut down on energy/natural resource usage, pollution etc.
I would have to imagine that even once maintenance is taken care of, the energy savings this could make would quickly pay for the initial setup cost.
My only concern is the noise - the article suggests that noise may be damped by insulation, however given that rural turbines are criticised for noise pollution, I suspect that the effect of sound insulation is still not going to be enough to make it a pleasant working environment. When the small fridge in the corner of our office starts whirring occasionally (solved by a swift kick) that tiny noise soon becomes irritating. Imagine even a supposedly acceptable but constant hum all day, every day. This could really have a bad effect on the nerves of workers inside the building.
I remember thinking this was a neat idea a year or so back, when there was a paper about 'ant technology' being used as an efficient algorithm for the travelling salesman problem (mentioned in article).
Applying this to packet routing seems a really elegant idea, there are obvious similarities between optimising packet transport between sites and ant trails to food sources. What confuses me is the talk about P2P networks at the end of the article. It seems to be thrown in to jump on the P2P bandwagon: I mean, where's the similarity between Napster (mentioned by name in the article) and an ant colony? Well, there's no central intelligence (server) and...err..thats it?
Applying ant technology to solve a related problem is a potential solution to that problem. Spotting a vague similarity between two fashionable technologies does not automatically mean that that they are actually relevant to each other. Unless of course he's thought of something and not put it in the article...
Oh, btw, my genuine condolances to the families of the victims. My previous post was not meant to condone the attack in any way.
Well as you're going off topic, I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank the American public for giving so much support and funding to the IRA over the years (Noraid)
Oh, I realise I can say goodbye to my Karma, but the reason I'm not posting as AC is that this is not a troll, it is a serious point. Before you mod me down, at least read what I've said.
Possibly due to the name, everybody seems to treat a black hole as if it is exactly that - a hole. Really it is just a massive gravity source due to phenomenal mass and density.
The implication in this case is that the black hole provides a central gravity source large enough that the entire galaxy slowly circles it, in a gradually degrading orbit. In this aspect you are right - without such an object the Milky Way could not exist as it does now, as there would be nothing stronger than the attraction between solar systems to hold it together.
However, that does not mean that the black hole is incapable of "swallowing" the galaxy. The fact that the Milky Way is a spiral demonstrates that the orbit is degrading. As more objects are drawn in to the black hole, it can only serve to increase the size and mass and make an even more powerful gravity well.
W3LL S41D B1FF!!!!!!!
---
Fucking lameness filter - tries to stop you taking the piss unless you follow it with a line insulting the lameness filter.
Huh?
Flight time: 30 minutes (probably longer or shorter, depending on destination, weather, etc.)
;-P
And I always thought it was a stereotype that Americans didn't realise there were countries outside the States.
Oh, sorry, you've heard of Mexico and Canada too - I saw it on South park
The researchers make two claims about how password transmission can weaken security:
In the first they claim that by analysing key timings they can attack passwords up to 50 times faster. We'll assume that they are not exaggerating and that this is based on real life tests.
The second claim they make is that it allows the length of the password to be ascertained immediately, giving a significant advantage. However, simple maths shows that a password based on a set of n characters has ~(n-1) more permutations than the sum of all shorter passwords. Hence, in a strong password we see that attacking the shorter passwords is virtually noise compared with the time taken to attack the correct length password.
So really the result is an approximate 50 times speedup in brute force attacks, as suggested by the first claim. Once again, assuming we are using a strong password, using upper/lower case, numerical and punctuation, we have a character set of well over 50, so to combat this attack we simply all increase our passwords by one character. This will take security back to a state even higher than before this weakness was found.
Hmm. Not really a fatal security flaw is it?
Actually this is an interesting point, and I stand corrected. A keyboard optimised for a single stylus that works by keeping commonly grouped characters located close to each other may turn out to be a hinderance for a touch typist, as it would tend to force a couple of fingers on one hand at a time to do most of the typing.
Perhaps for a hardware keyboard a more sensible option would be to keep commonly grouped characters on opposite sides of the keyboards, to distribute the typing between both hands. However, it may make sense to keep common groups of characters that happen to fall on the same side of the keyboard to all fall on the same row, to reduce the strain in each hand - useful in this age of RSI.
Obviously this is just guesswork on my part, and really needs the same sort of research as with ATOMIK, but it is an idea.
...That we move away from using a qwerty keyboard just because it's what the computer professionals are used to. Admittedly the immediate effect would be for me (and every other /.er) to drop to a sluggish hunt-and-peck typing style, but in the future it should be easier to learn for novices, and boost everybody's wpm.
Also, I think the idea of designing the keyboard according to Fitts' law applied to a certain language is a cunning idea - seems the obvious choice to boost wpm and reduce typing strain. Of course it'd have to be changed for other languages, but that is a fairly simple task, and it's not like it doesn't happen already (the French azerty, anyone?)
Of course, we'll have to wait for a hardware version with all keys implemented before it's worth learning.
They can cut spending on advertisement of their yet another 24-hours nasal decongestant by few percents.
Whilst I would love to think in such simplistic terms, I have to point out:
If cutting spending on advertisments resulted in an increase in profit, why do you think they do spend that much? Surely you don't think they enjoy giving money away just for the sake of advertising?
As somebody said earlier in the discussion, money has to change hands somewhere. If drugs should be available to poor countries for free, vote in a government who will increase taxes in order to pay for these countries to receive medication.
I'm sure 90% of people would whole-heartedly agree with this idea, right up until a government actually suggested doing it...
So, explain that to the 3-year kid that got AIDS from his mom. Will somebody please think of the children? -1 Offtopic