I think this is a good idea. The overall message is that there
needs to be common data formats for text and numerical data (?
open doc) and standards at the network level. Corporations,
governments etc that support standardization at the operating
system/application suite level are being irresponsible.
I have some friends who are relative computer novices, but insigtful.
We were using netscape to look at some files on the Linux server
at work and they commented, if I can open an look at this file,
why cant I edit it and save it back on the server from home. You
dont have to be Dave Cutler or Linus Torvalds to realize that
a common open network protocol and data format is logical.
Microsoft had better learn this lesson quickly, because otherwise
as consumers we are going to teach them.
The computer industry has grown so rapidly that it can support
multiple operating system as they are not as important as
a common language (ie data format). To my mind excel or word6
is not a common data format. We must insist on open networking
protocols and data formats......and ideally a common programming
API although this less important.
I just hope that in 10 years time school kids are still learning
english, maths and art rather than MS-Word, Excel and MS-Paint!
Who is making promises? I do see the occaisonal half truth here; some
people are misinformed or get things a bit garbled. Wishful thinking is
perfectly fine among non-"professionals" IMO. Realism is not always the way
to motivate people.
Meaning matters. The acronym FUD does not convey what you want to convey.
The Linux media (lwn, linuxworld, linuxtoday) seems pretty responsible to
me. Well, except for slashdot, which can be pretty sloppy. But I've never
seen any malicious FUD in their articles.
To get your side greater attention, it helps immensely if you spread around
a lot of advertising dollars. The Linux community does not have that kind
of money yet.
The Linux community in general seems to be jumping up & down with joy
with the recent "exposure" of an internal memo by a Microsoft employee,
which in no uncertain terms identifies Open Source software in general,
and Linux in particular, as a serious threat to Microsoft's dominance in
the OS market. This was seen as a significant boost in confidence to all
who believe that "great men must have great enemies", and in the
software world, there can be no enemy greater than Microsoft. It appears
that the document was released via some undeterminable source from
within Microsoft, and now, confronted with the wildfire distribution of
it, they are acting in accordance to what is expected of a corporation
which has its dirty laundry hung in public. Shame on them. Tut tut.
But just suppose...
What if this document was not *leaked* out by some careless/disgruntled
employee? What if the document was *planted* by Microsoft?
"What good would that bring to Microsoft?" some might ask. Just think:
with the DOJ actions against Microsoft for essentially using its
monopolistic position to eliminate competitors in other fields, what
better defence if this very monopoly is brought into question?
The argument would then be: Microsoft can't be pushing other companies
around. It isn't a monopoly. Look how easy Linux got into the market.
And see, even Microsoft is "grudgingly" considering it a threat and are
taking appropriate measures. And the world agrees. Over 7 million people
don't use Windows. What kind of monopoly is that?
Microsoft can't lose! Right now, with the bad publicity it's getting as
a giant bully, what better tactic than to show a vulnerability.
Furthermore, they can readily admit the document is from within as the
strategy to 'deal' with Linux/Open Source only comes from one employee.
They'll just say, "well, it doesn't mean we accept all suggestions by
employees, right?"
Also, Linux/Open source cannot sue!! How can you show anti-competitive
behaviour on an entity that has no legal existence? Especially one which
makes no profit?
And the best part is that now that the document is "in the open", they
wouldn't be expected to actually follow the strategies outlined. The
world would think,
"well yeah, now they know we know, they *can't* follow those
strategies". But what if they never wanted to follow those strategies in
the first place? Then there would be no loss. Case in point: when was
the last time Microsoft gave away (as in open source) any serious code?
Lastly, ask yourselves: now that the document is out in the open, is
Microsoft in any weaker position?
Is the entire Linux community being played as fools by the master
puppeteer?
If only the save files (and bones) were compatible between different
platforms and different compile-time options..
For the problem at hand, it should be easier to include the random
number generated code in the game (rather than rely on a system
library), and add an option to start with a specific seed. That
should ensure everybody got the same initial conditions.
Oh, it would need an option to specify the external time too, instead
of using the system clock.
Of course, small changes in the initial playing may have unpredictable
consequences for later levels. So it would still be very much a
matter of luck.
How about this... in addition to adding a new RNG that could work with a
specific seed, configure it to generate all the dungeon levels *before*
starting the player at level 1. This might take some time, but it should
balance out the items that people find, and some of the monsters. Since
monster generation is a function of player level as well as dungeon depth,
pre-generation of levels could assume that the player is level (dlvl/2) or
so, when figuring in monster creation.
Then, for a tournament, the director could say, "Okay, start a game with
this role, this race, and random seed XYZ."
Putting this on a telnet server could ensure that each tourney seed is
only used once per user.
Others, Finzi in 1963, and Sanders in 1984, proposed that the
gravitational force becomes stronger at greater radii with the form;
U = -GM(1-Be^(-r/ro))
----------------
(1-B)r
B and ro are beta and r subscript o respectively. Pg 636 Galactic
Dynamics. The variables can be selected to eliminate a lot of the dark
mass anomalies. But there is no model that gives a reason to justify
this or other attempts.
In essence, if the force of gravity becomes a little stronger with large
distance, then it would explain the constant velocity profile in spiral
galaxies and other organizations of matter without requiring that 90
percent of the mass of the universe be dark matter (Tremaine and Binney,
Galactic Dynamics).
Another way of getting a similar thing is if you superpose a thrust
directed radially outward that *decreases* with increasing radius. One
can assume such a thrust to arise from the mass depletion in stars
nuclear reactions, if same emit aether, aka space. Such a mechanism
would give rise to a force directed essentially radially outward that was
proportional to the amount of energy being emitted inside of the radius
being considered. In this case, one gets an equation of the form;
U = -GM + k*sum(Li)
------------------
R
where k is a coupling constant,
sum(Li) is the sum of the luminosity of stars from 1 to n that
are inside of radius R being considered;
This assumes that the luminosity emitted from inside of radius R is
proportional to the total energy emitted, and therefore the mass
converted into energy. It also assumes that space consists of a material
aether that is emitted during the fusion reaction of mass to energy
conversion. Also, the term k is selected to balance out the forces, and
the second positive term is always less than G, otherwise individual
stars would blow themselves apart like a super nova. Though solar flares
and solar coronal heating could be the result of such an emission of
aether if aether exists.
Note that due to the form, we would not notice any variance in the orbits
of planets about a single star. Only groups of stars will exhibit any
peculiarities, ie galaxies. At the boundaries of large groups of stars,
there will be a discontinuous reduction in the emissions of aether into
space, and so the outward motions of bodies in that aether will be
altered and give rise to what would be considered an acceleration inward,
when it was actually a *reduction* in the acceleration outward.
Is any one aware of any proposals to alter the form of the Newtonian
gravitational potential into this kind of an equation?
Also, does anyone know where Sanders, Finzi, Milgrom, and/or Bekenstein
are working today, I would like to get in contact with them regarding
their models. Locations and or email addresses would be great.
I have been looking at globular clusters and their velocity
dynamics. If correct, then there should be a variance in the
gravitational force that is anomolous any time the field drops from being
strong to being essentially flat. The reason is the drop off in the
repulsive mechanism. A dropping repulsion will appear to be a rising
gravitational attraction effectiveness if one bases the analysis on
Newtonian gravitation correctly describing the interaction of stellar
bodies.
At the maximum radius of a group of stars, ie galaxies or GC's, there
should be a marked fall off in the repulsion profile and this should show
up as anomalous velocities of stars or gases in those regions. Such is
found in GC's but is attributed to "evaporation" ie stars with escape
velocity. If it could be shown from measurements of the
**accelerations** of the stars or other objects in those regions that the
values are too large, then it may be demonstrable implying dark matter in
GC's where it is not otherwise believed to exist as I understand.
In the solar vicinity the same thing may be possible by a study of the
solar "bubble" and interaction with aether emissions from the Milky Way.
There may also be an assymetry in the direction of the flow that is
inclined up out of the disk which would provide an apparent force tending
to compress the disk as the expansion falls slightly in that region.
On earth, I don't know yet how to try to measure it. However, solar
flare activity is also anticipated to be involved. If the emissions are
taking place in the interior of the sun, then they must escape. But we
have no manner currently to measure the velocity or actions of "space".
It is not even a question deemed askable or intelligible. However the
two effects that should occur in and around the sun is a rapid expansion
of the aether coming out of the sun which would act like a fluidized bed.
And, the increase in the temperature of the gas around the exterior of
the sun, ie the solar corona, due to the expansion and formation of a
nodal structure to interface with exterior space.
Another curious observation is the polarization of the light coming out
of some flares. It implies a commonality to the energy source.
Finally, on earth, some researchers have noted synchronized variance in
radioactivity rates at cites thousands of miles apart. And other
researchers have noted variances in the gravimetric constant that matched
the solar activity. I don't have good references on these last two so
don't place a lot of weight on them.
So, in answer, I don't know if we can get it yet but I am looking. I
have been hoping to link with others better at the formalization of such
a theory. I have the ground work pretty well laid out but need a little
more to get some credibility. The formulation of gravitation in the
manner of my concepts links it with the other forces.
Nondigital computing
on
Ternary Computing
·
· Score: -1, Interesting
As to imagined variants of digital computing, Heinlein laid out an
alternate world's technology path in The Number of The Beast, wherein the
prevalence of 3 phase wiring led to trinary computing.
Either Donald Knuth or Martin Gardner once speculated that if a computer
was ever designed using base 3, instead of flip-flops it would contain
flip-flap-flops.
It's just as easy to imagine base 3 digital electronics from circuitry
with 3 voltages that could be labeled neutral, +, and -.
Control circuitry (not computational circuitry) sometimes does use that
sort of thing. I can't remember the specifics, but I remember hearing
about circuits on British railways like that. There were two wires, and
nominally they were at the same voltage or one had +N volts relative to
the other, for some value of N. If you viewed one wire as the ground,
then the other would be "neutral, +, or -", as per the above.
The three possible states commanded three different settings of the
switches or signals -- perhaps positive for crossing over left to
right, neutral for straight through, negative for crossover right to
left, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the same hardware was also,
and more often, used at other locations in a binary mode where positive
and negative were not distinguished (as there were only two possible
settings); and one time a technician, not being used to it mattering
which was which, crossed the wires... oops!
I am unable to watch neither AMD's nor Tom's video. And I won't make any single effort to visualise it either. Until the day they figure how to export their propaganda in a standard file format, I have absolutely no lesson to learn from them.
My telephone is a 2.4GHz Siemens Gigaset. My X10 gear uses the 2.4GHz
frequency to transmit audio/video (That does
conflict with my phone)... The 802.11b wireless Networking adapters also
operate in the 2.4GHz frequency and so does Bluetooth. I wouldn't say that
it has much to do with Microwaves Ovens... You may not to use 2.4GHz
gear if you like but your neighbour may (and my phone works in the
ground floor even tough I live in the 8th floor... (If I am outside of
the building as7 layers of concrete is too much but some 3-4 are still
ok...))
If that was from 2.4 to 2.499 it would be quite a bandwidth, but if that
is from 2.43200 to 2.43201 it ain't that much... Got it?
The issue worth thinking about is the implication that there *can't* be any "silver bullets" (not just that there aren't any right now). Especially since, if we find something that dramatically
improves productivity, we crank up the level of complexity of the systems we
design.
As the scope of the systems keeps increasing, it's hard to see how a
single tool or technique could solve the compelexity problem for more
than a few years. If we want to get out of the tar-pit permanently,
we're going to need some really radical (and currently unfeasible) like
replacing digital, sequential processors with something more suited to
good engineering or reinventing ourselves as as less falible people (or
genuinely intelligent,
self-improving expert systems that make like less falible people).
However, I don't think that the scope _is_ going to increase
indefinitely. Back in 1980, any system that could be produced at low
risk was probably to trivial for general use and a useful system was
probably too hard. Any improvement in process had immediately to be
submerged by bigger systems because the existing systems were so
inadequate. Nowadays, there are many useful systems (especially the
smaller embedded ones) that are quite managable with existing tools.
The complexity of useful systems is limited by the complexity of the
human affairs that they support, and we aren't evolving our society fast
enough to raise that complexity limit much.
Over the next ten years, I predict that process, tools, and techniques
will gradually catch up with the sort of jobs we routinely need to
undertake. So, no silver bullets, but we may yet get the werewolf
house-trained and turn him vegetarian.
In short, the prelude to those horror movies like Brazil and 1984,
with droids sitting in front of some totally network controlled 'bland looking,
quasi dumb x-terminal', camera, keyboard & mouse monitoring every humanoid
action. Sound like innovation to you. You guys make the Redmond crowd look like
choir boys, from where I sit.
If you are nervous about your messages being intercepted, get yourself a
implementation of PGP and use it religiously. If you are really feeling
paranoid, get the source code to 'Gnu Privacy Guard' and compile your
own copy.
I am part-owner of one ISP, and know personally top network administrators
for at least a dozen other providers, both major and minor. None of them
have 'Carnivore' or other government-mandated software or hardware on
their networks.
The Feds did make a one-time request of several major providers to scan
their logs for email with a certain set of 'From' addresses, but there
is no new ongoing traffic analysis at individual ISPs.
There is absolutely no privacy left on the Net any more. None. Keep that in mind when you rant.
That's what crypto is for. Ranting on Slashdot is by it's very nature,
about as public as you can get.
There is no legal way to act anti-competitively when you define
anti-competitive to mean "illegal".
The government can, and does, impose anti-competitive tariffs and have
it still be legal. Congressmen can, and do, give targeted
anti-competitive breaks to companies and it is still legal. Patents
are legal, 17-year, permits to be anti-competitive. Max, you have yet
to define what "anti-competitive" means other than to say it is
illegal and it is what Microsoft does.
That, my friend, is exactly what you would expect in a low
transactional cost market. This is a market where the Cost of Goods
sold is less than 0.1% of the product price. For sake of argument,
zero transactional cost. Assume three potential companies start with
equal shares of the market. Natural perturbations will cause them to
become unequal. The one with the larger share will then have more
money for advertising, research, etc. This will cause the share to
increase even more. It is a positive feed-back loop.
You may not like anti-competitive effects of Marketing but it is
very effective and it is legal. It is especially effective on the
herd mentality that was brain-washed by a generation of TV commercials
telling them that expensive Brand Name products are much better than
low-cost alternatives.
Yes, it is very possible for a new, low transactional cost market to
become dominated through legal means. Call it FUD, call it Vaporware,
call it Marketing. In the United States, call it legal.
Did Microsoft violate Section 2? I think it did. It is virtually
impossible to be a monopoly and not be guilty of maintaining a
monopoly. But it may be possible monopolization is inevitable in this
market. Even the DoJ lawyer didn't answer the Appellate Court
question "We are going to replace one monopoly with another if you're
right; right?"
When a luser complains about error messages, I punch him in the face. I'm getting less and less bug reports that way.
Portable N64 are not unlikely
on
Portable N64
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm sure that a Nintendo "Portable N64" would have a much better battery
life, but that Nintendo still wouldn't do it. This is because, since the
Nomad and Game Gear, Nintendo and their technology partners could
undoubtably design more energy efficient systems. Also, Nintendo wouldn't
use a backlit system, most likely opting for the current screens, which
require an external light source, which would provide a comparable savings
in power.
However, Nintendo is unlikely to release a Portable N64. N64 is one of
Nintendo's close calls to failure. (Yes, it was successful in it's own
right, with 30 Million units sold, but still, compared to the console market
share it had with NES and SNES? It's absolutely not a resounding success.)
Also, because of one of Nintendo's major mistakes in designing the N64
Using the most expensive parts available on market (ie- remember the
Silicon Graphics fiasco?)), it would be technologically unfeasable to create
a Portable N64 at an acceptable mass-market price point for handhelds (which
is $100, just like the console mass-market price point is $200). People
just aren't that likely to buy a handheld, even if it is capable of the
N64's power, at more than $100. I'm sure it's feasable, but if Nintendo
thought that a Portable N64 had a lick of a chance to be a success, I'm sure
they'd be all over that, especially with PSone. But it doesn't. And with
GBA coming out, that is capable of having many NES, SNES, and N64 games
ported to it, there's no need for Nintendo to waste money on a Portable N64.
Any Portable N64 would be yet another "Virtual Boy" scar on Nintendo's back,
and right now, they don't need that, especially in the face of Sony
PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox.
Yes radio is a good approach. Running thru holographic sonar cryptography is a good
way to protect the content of your data stream but it WILL NOT protect
your internal network, mind you MANY of these systems act as BRIDGES
and not routers/switches.
With this construct, if one input word is changed, the probability of a
nonzero difference is ((2**N-1)/(2**N))**L (where L is the number of FFT
layers, and the log2 of the number of input words), and furthermore,
output differences of 0 are correlated in an easily detectible way.
Exactly, they aimed more at reliability -- even though the codes were lossy
and reliability was achieved mainly by coherent en/decoding, because noise is
incoherent. However, much of that was dropped in favor of faster and better
(in that approach) use of homomorhic processing and other DSP techniques.
Further, Holocomm's "delocalization" feature can be seen also in SHA-1, where
*all* output bits change when one changes a *single* input bit. However, SHA-1
hopelessly mixes and merges all the data (as it is intended to do), while
Holocomm allows for reversible and selective delocalization.
Thus, in two contrast points to former pure holographic codes, Holocomm aims
at (1) non-lossy reversible (2) selective delocalization -- which also allows
interoperation with all known cryptography algorithms (that require exact data
for decoding). The reliability feature is also further enhanced by the
non-lossy aspect of it. As mentioned, Holocomm can also work in lossy modes,
including lossy compression -- which can be quite useful.
Holocomm is the first example of a practical quantum mechanical communication
and encoding system that affords privacy and reliability, to a high degree,
while also offering compression and selective information delocalization.
As such, it naturally has many parallels in several things that are based on
wave functions or on the Schroedinger equation.. which essentially defines
wave phenomena... as the theoretical basis of Holocomm, as stated.
Interesting!
On the week end I will set up a stress test for the VM to see if I am able
to get some failure. Just I need a little of time, since I am at SMAU for
the magazine I write for (by the way, inside of the press room there is
a very very pretty bar girl:) ).
mmm, I should immagine some good test case...
I discovered something important for the test results I've
been reporting. The mp3's that I've been listening to were
not all sampled at the same rate. That means some of the
comparisons are suspect.
The mp3's were sampled between 88k and 192k. I did not notice
the sample rate affecting whether an mp3 skips or not.
I.E. an 88k mp3 and a 192k mp3 skip about the same on a
kernel/test that sputters. There probably is a difference,
but it isn't obvious. So the subjective reports on sound quality
are reasonable. In the future, I'll make sure comparisons that
include timing are done with comparable mp3's.
I remember somebody posting a message about a couple of tiny programs that
would print an Estes style fin alignment sheet and a centering ring template
for single and cluster engines. These were not big or pretty, but they did
the job. Does anybody know where these programs may be hiding? I've looked
at Tiny Apps with no luck.
Thanks for any assistance.
PA-8800 lets you
create two opposite predicates in one instruction, for example the
predicate a=b.
This seems to indicate that there are no separate "do this if predicate is
true" and "do this if predicate is false" instructions, so for opposite
predication you would have to specify two different predicates.
The processor cannot know that these two predicates are related, so this
would give you quite a problem.
As has been publicly disclosed, in general in PA-8800, an instruction reading
any resource (such as a predicate) must be in a later instruction group
(cycle) than the instruction writing that resource. As a special case,
branches are allowed to use a predicate written by another instruction in
the same instruction group (as shown in the IDF slides).
So, the straightforward (but slow) PA-8800 schedule for the earlier example:
if (a < 0)
b += a;
else
b -= a;
c += b;
d += b;
would be:
cmp.lt pLT, pNLT = a, 0// pLT & pNLT are 2 complementary preds ;;
(pLT) add b = b, a// add to b [then]
(pNLT) sub b = b, a// or sub from b [else] ;;
add c = c, b// uses of b
add d = d, b ;;
which takes 5 instructions in 3 cycles. (Note: In PA-8800 assembly, ";;"
indicates the end of an instruction group, "=" separates the target
operand(s) from the source(s), "//" begins a comment, and (pred)
specifies the controlling predicate.)
An alternate (faster) schedule in PA-8800 is as follows:
sub bTmp = b, a// speculatively sub from b (into temp)
add b = b, a// and add to b
cmp.lt pLT, pNLT = a, 0 ;;
(pLT) add c = c, b// uses of b [then]
(pLT) add d = d, b
(pNLT) add c = c, bTmp// uses of b (temp) [else]
(pNLT) add d = d, bTmp
(pNLT) mov b = bTmp// move bTmp to b [else] ;;
This takes 8 instructions in 2 cycles and one extra register. The final
move of bTmp to b can be eliminated if b isn't live out at that point.
I had an opportunity to play T3K on a DVD player with the nuon chip at the
last E3 in LA with none other than Jeff Minter. T3K didn't seem too hot
though but it wasn't really finished yet. I still prefer the Jag version
myself. As for nuon, the other titles I saw on it weren't that impressive
but I don't think it's targeted as being a killer gaming platform but rather
an inexpensive add-on to DVD players and the like that can support some cool
graphics and multimedia.
The N501 sounds like a nice enough deck. It has the new "expanded"
VLM and supports MP3 CD-R/RW. I will probably pick one up as an "extra"
DVD deck and for T3K of course. I was in Best Buy last week, and they DID
have some retail NUON presence as promoted months back. On impulse, I got
a Logitech pad and T3K "while I still could", planning to pick up the N501
at its EOL pricecut.
Here's a short depiction of what I'm trying to accomplish. If you've got any
ideas - pass them my way...I've got a balloon of ferrofluid suspended inside a
tube filled with the water - attached to the walls. Outside the tube I have a
configuration of solenoids, hooked up to deliver a magnetic field in sequence
starting at one end of the tube - and stepping to the other end. The effect
should expand the balloon to the walls of the tube, and the stepping of this
bubble down the tube should propell the water... Hopefully in a smooth fashion.
I've got everything working except the sequencing drivers for the solenoids, so
it's looking good so far.
I never got around to trying to build an MHD fountain that would shoot
salt water up in the air past a large magnet and a pair of electrodes.
Has anyone tried this kind of a project?
"Transcribing an hour of text takes a long time. But if you (yes, you!) are willing to transcribe a 3-minute (well. 3:15) chunk of
this interview, I will spend my putative day off gluing chunks of interview together."
Which bring the question. What are the alternatives for a voice recognition application that sould take a sound sample and convert it to text? Sort of like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) softwares does with a scanned image?
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is a good idea. The overall message is that there needs to be common data formats for text and numerical data (? open doc) and standards at the network level. Corporations, governments etc that support standardization at the operating system/application suite level are being irresponsible.
......and ideally a common programming
API although this less important.
I have some friends who are relative computer novices, but insigtful. We were using netscape to look at some files on the Linux server at work and they commented, if I can open an look at this file, why cant I edit it and save it back on the server from home. You dont have to be Dave Cutler or Linus Torvalds to realize that a common open network protocol and data format is logical. Microsoft had better learn this lesson quickly, because otherwise as consumers we are going to teach them.
The computer industry has grown so rapidly that it can support multiple operating system as they are not as important as a common language (ie data format). To my mind excel or word6 is not a common data format. We must insist on open networking protocols and data formats
I just hope that in 10 years time school kids are still learning english, maths and art rather than MS-Word, Excel and MS-Paint!
Who is making promises? I do see the occaisonal half truth here; some people are misinformed or get things a bit garbled. Wishful thinking is perfectly fine among non-"professionals" IMO. Realism is not always the way to motivate people.
Meaning matters. The acronym FUD does not convey what you want to convey.
The Linux media (lwn, linuxworld, linuxtoday) seems pretty responsible to me. Well, except for slashdot, which can be pretty sloppy. But I've never seen any malicious FUD in their articles.
To get your side greater attention, it helps immensely if you spread around a lot of advertising dollars. The Linux community does not have that kind of money yet.
The Linux community in general seems to be jumping up & down with joy with the recent "exposure" of an internal memo by a Microsoft employee, which in no uncertain terms identifies Open Source software in general, and Linux in particular, as a serious threat to Microsoft's dominance in the OS market. This was seen as a significant boost in confidence to all who believe that "great men must have great enemies", and in the software world, there can be no enemy greater than Microsoft. It appears that the document was released via some undeterminable source from within Microsoft, and now, confronted with the wildfire distribution of it, they are acting in accordance to what is expected of a corporation which has its dirty laundry hung in public. Shame on them. Tut tut.
But just suppose...
What if this document was not *leaked* out by some careless/disgruntled employee? What if the document was *planted* by Microsoft?
"What good would that bring to Microsoft?" some might ask. Just think: with the DOJ actions against Microsoft for essentially using its monopolistic position to eliminate competitors in other fields, what better defence if this very monopoly is brought into question?
The argument would then be: Microsoft can't be pushing other companies around. It isn't a monopoly. Look how easy Linux got into the market. And see, even Microsoft is "grudgingly" considering it a threat and are taking appropriate measures. And the world agrees. Over 7 million people don't use Windows. What kind of monopoly is that?
Microsoft can't lose! Right now, with the bad publicity it's getting as a giant bully, what better tactic than to show a vulnerability. Furthermore, they can readily admit the document is from within as the strategy to 'deal' with Linux/Open Source only comes from one employee. They'll just say, "well, it doesn't mean we accept all suggestions by employees, right?"
Also, Linux/Open source cannot sue!! How can you show anti-competitive behaviour on an entity that has no legal existence? Especially one which makes no profit?
And the best part is that now that the document is "in the open", they wouldn't be expected to actually follow the strategies outlined. The world would think, "well yeah, now they know we know, they *can't* follow those strategies". But what if they never wanted to follow those strategies in the first place? Then there would be no loss. Case in point: when was the last time Microsoft gave away (as in open source) any serious code?
Lastly, ask yourselves: now that the document is out in the open, is Microsoft in any weaker position?
Is the entire Linux community being played as fools by the master puppeteer?
If only the save files (and bones) were compatible between different platforms and different compile-time options..
For the problem at hand, it should be easier to include the random number generated code in the game (rather than rely on a system library), and add an option to start with a specific seed. That should ensure everybody got the same initial conditions.
Oh, it would need an option to specify the external time too, instead of using the system clock.
Of course, small changes in the initial playing may have unpredictable consequences for later levels. So it would still be very much a matter of luck.
How about this... in addition to adding a new RNG that could work with a specific seed, configure it to generate all the dungeon levels *before* starting the player at level 1. This might take some time, but it should balance out the items that people find, and some of the monsters. Since monster generation is a function of player level as well as dungeon depth, pre-generation of levels could assume that the player is level (dlvl/2) or so, when figuring in monster creation.
Then, for a tournament, the director could say, "Okay, start a game with this role, this race, and random seed XYZ."
Putting this on a telnet server could ensure that each tourney seed is only used once per user.
Thoughts?
Others, Finzi in 1963, and Sanders in 1984, proposed that the gravitational force becomes stronger at greater radii with the form;
U = -GM(1-Be^(-r/ro))
----------------
(1-B)r
B and ro are beta and r subscript o respectively. Pg 636 Galactic Dynamics. The variables can be selected to eliminate a lot of the dark mass anomalies. But there is no model that gives a reason to justify this or other attempts.
In essence, if the force of gravity becomes a little stronger with large distance, then it would explain the constant velocity profile in spiral galaxies and other organizations of matter without requiring that 90 percent of the mass of the universe be dark matter (Tremaine and Binney, Galactic Dynamics).
Another way of getting a similar thing is if you superpose a thrust directed radially outward that *decreases* with increasing radius. One can assume such a thrust to arise from the mass depletion in stars nuclear reactions, if same emit aether, aka space. Such a mechanism would give rise to a force directed essentially radially outward that was proportional to the amount of energy being emitted inside of the radius being considered. In this case, one gets an equation of the form;
U = -GM + k*sum(Li)
------------------
R
where k is a coupling constant, sum(Li) is the sum of the luminosity of stars from 1 to n that are inside of radius R being considered;
This assumes that the luminosity emitted from inside of radius R is proportional to the total energy emitted, and therefore the mass converted into energy. It also assumes that space consists of a material aether that is emitted during the fusion reaction of mass to energy conversion. Also, the term k is selected to balance out the forces, and the second positive term is always less than G, otherwise individual stars would blow themselves apart like a super nova. Though solar flares and solar coronal heating could be the result of such an emission of aether if aether exists.
Note that due to the form, we would not notice any variance in the orbits of planets about a single star. Only groups of stars will exhibit any peculiarities, ie galaxies. At the boundaries of large groups of stars, there will be a discontinuous reduction in the emissions of aether into space, and so the outward motions of bodies in that aether will be altered and give rise to what would be considered an acceleration inward, when it was actually a *reduction* in the acceleration outward.
Is any one aware of any proposals to alter the form of the Newtonian gravitational potential into this kind of an equation?
Also, does anyone know where Sanders, Finzi, Milgrom, and/or Bekenstein are working today, I would like to get in contact with them regarding their models. Locations and or email addresses would be great.
I have been looking at globular clusters and their velocity dynamics. If correct, then there should be a variance in the gravitational force that is anomolous any time the field drops from being strong to being essentially flat. The reason is the drop off in the repulsive mechanism. A dropping repulsion will appear to be a rising gravitational attraction effectiveness if one bases the analysis on Newtonian gravitation correctly describing the interaction of stellar bodies.
At the maximum radius of a group of stars, ie galaxies or GC's, there should be a marked fall off in the repulsion profile and this should show up as anomalous velocities of stars or gases in those regions. Such is found in GC's but is attributed to "evaporation" ie stars with escape velocity. If it could be shown from measurements of the **accelerations** of the stars or other objects in those regions that the values are too large, then it may be demonstrable implying dark matter in GC's where it is not otherwise believed to exist as I understand.
In the solar vicinity the same thing may be possible by a study of the solar "bubble" and interaction with aether emissions from the Milky Way.
There may also be an assymetry in the direction of the flow that is inclined up out of the disk which would provide an apparent force tending to compress the disk as the expansion falls slightly in that region.
On earth, I don't know yet how to try to measure it. However, solar flare activity is also anticipated to be involved. If the emissions are taking place in the interior of the sun, then they must escape. But we have no manner currently to measure the velocity or actions of "space". It is not even a question deemed askable or intelligible. However the two effects that should occur in and around the sun is a rapid expansion of the aether coming out of the sun which would act like a fluidized bed. And, the increase in the temperature of the gas around the exterior of the sun, ie the solar corona, due to the expansion and formation of a nodal structure to interface with exterior space.
Another curious observation is the polarization of the light coming out of some flares. It implies a commonality to the energy source.
Finally, on earth, some researchers have noted synchronized variance in radioactivity rates at cites thousands of miles apart. And other researchers have noted variances in the gravimetric constant that matched the solar activity. I don't have good references on these last two so don't place a lot of weight on them.
So, in answer, I don't know if we can get it yet but I am looking. I have been hoping to link with others better at the formalization of such a theory. I have the ground work pretty well laid out but need a little more to get some credibility. The formulation of gravitation in the manner of my concepts links it with the other forces.
As to imagined variants of digital computing, Heinlein laid out an alternate world's technology path in The Number of The Beast, wherein the prevalence of 3 phase wiring led to trinary computing.
Either Donald Knuth or Martin Gardner once speculated that if a computer was ever designed using base 3, instead of flip-flops it would contain flip-flap-flops.
It's just as easy to imagine base 3 digital electronics from circuitry with 3 voltages that could be labeled neutral, +, and -.
Control circuitry (not computational circuitry) sometimes does use that sort of thing. I can't remember the specifics, but I remember hearing about circuits on British railways like that. There were two wires, and nominally they were at the same voltage or one had +N volts relative to the other, for some value of N. If you viewed one wire as the ground, then the other would be "neutral, +, or -", as per the above.
The three possible states commanded three different settings of the switches or signals -- perhaps positive for crossing over left to right, neutral for straight through, negative for crossover right to left, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the same hardware was also, and more often, used at other locations in a binary mode where positive and negative were not distinguished (as there were only two possible settings); and one time a technician, not being used to it mattering which was which, crossed the wires... oops!
I am unable to watch neither AMD's nor Tom's video. And I won't make any single effort to visualise it either. Until the day they figure how to export their propaganda in a standard file format, I have absolutely no lesson to learn from them.
My telephone is a 2.4GHz Siemens Gigaset. My X10 gear uses the 2.4GHz frequency to transmit audio/video (That does conflict with my phone)... The 802.11b wireless Networking adapters also operate in the 2.4GHz frequency and so does Bluetooth. I wouldn't say that it has much to do with Microwaves Ovens... You may not to use 2.4GHz gear if you like but your neighbour may (and my phone works in the ground floor even tough I live in the 8th floor... (If I am outside of the building as7 layers of concrete is too much but some 3-4 are still ok...))
If that was from 2.4 to 2.499 it would be quite a bandwidth, but if that is from 2.43200 to 2.43201 it ain't that much... Got it?
The issue worth thinking about is the implication that there *can't* be any "silver bullets" (not just that there aren't any right now). Especially since, if we find something that dramatically improves productivity, we crank up the level of complexity of the systems we design.
As the scope of the systems keeps increasing, it's hard to see how a single tool or technique could solve the compelexity problem for more than a few years. If we want to get out of the tar-pit permanently, we're going to need some really radical (and currently unfeasible) like replacing digital, sequential processors with something more suited to good engineering or reinventing ourselves as as less falible people (or genuinely intelligent, self-improving expert systems that make like less falible people).
However, I don't think that the scope _is_ going to increase indefinitely. Back in 1980, any system that could be produced at low risk was probably to trivial for general use and a useful system was probably too hard. Any improvement in process had immediately to be submerged by bigger systems because the existing systems were so inadequate. Nowadays, there are many useful systems (especially the smaller embedded ones) that are quite managable with existing tools. The complexity of useful systems is limited by the complexity of the human affairs that they support, and we aren't evolving our society fast enough to raise that complexity limit much.
Over the next ten years, I predict that process, tools, and techniques will gradually catch up with the sort of jobs we routinely need to undertake. So, no silver bullets, but we may yet get the werewolf house-trained and turn him vegetarian.
You want strategy? Enrole in the US Army, and quit playing games on mom's computer, you funcking pussy.
In short, the prelude to those horror movies like Brazil and 1984, with droids sitting in front of some totally network controlled 'bland looking, quasi dumb x-terminal', camera, keyboard & mouse monitoring every humanoid action. Sound like innovation to you. You guys make the Redmond crowd look like choir boys, from where I sit.
If you are nervous about your messages being intercepted, get yourself a implementation of PGP and use it religiously. If you are really feeling paranoid, get the source code to 'Gnu Privacy Guard' and compile your own copy.
I am part-owner of one ISP, and know personally top network administrators for at least a dozen other providers, both major and minor. None of them have 'Carnivore' or other government-mandated software or hardware on their networks.
The Feds did make a one-time request of several major providers to scan their logs for email with a certain set of 'From' addresses, but there is no new ongoing traffic analysis at individual ISPs.
There is absolutely no privacy left on the Net any more. None. Keep that in mind when you rant. That's what crypto is for. Ranting on Slashdot is by it's very nature, about as public as you can get.
There is no legal way to act anti-competitively when you define anti-competitive to mean "illegal".
The government can, and does, impose anti-competitive tariffs and have it still be legal. Congressmen can, and do, give targeted anti-competitive breaks to companies and it is still legal. Patents are legal, 17-year, permits to be anti-competitive. Max, you have yet to define what "anti-competitive" means other than to say it is illegal and it is what Microsoft does.
That, my friend, is exactly what you would expect in a low transactional cost market. This is a market where the Cost of Goods sold is less than 0.1% of the product price. For sake of argument, zero transactional cost. Assume three potential companies start with equal shares of the market. Natural perturbations will cause them to become unequal. The one with the larger share will then have more money for advertising, research, etc. This will cause the share to increase even more. It is a positive feed-back loop.
You may not like anti-competitive effects of Marketing but it is very effective and it is legal. It is especially effective on the herd mentality that was brain-washed by a generation of TV commercials telling them that expensive Brand Name products are much better than low-cost alternatives.
Yes, it is very possible for a new, low transactional cost market to become dominated through legal means. Call it FUD, call it Vaporware, call it Marketing. In the United States, call it legal.
Did Microsoft violate Section 2? I think it did. It is virtually impossible to be a monopoly and not be guilty of maintaining a monopoly. But it may be possible monopolization is inevitable in this market. Even the DoJ lawyer didn't answer the Appellate Court question "We are going to replace one monopoly with another if you're right; right?"
When a luser complains about error messages, I punch him in the face. I'm getting less and less bug reports that way.
I'm sure that a Nintendo "Portable N64" would have a much better battery life, but that Nintendo still wouldn't do it. This is because, since the Nomad and Game Gear, Nintendo and their technology partners could undoubtably design more energy efficient systems. Also, Nintendo wouldn't use a backlit system, most likely opting for the current screens, which require an external light source, which would provide a comparable savings in power.
However, Nintendo is unlikely to release a Portable N64. N64 is one of Nintendo's close calls to failure. (Yes, it was successful in it's own right, with 30 Million units sold, but still, compared to the console market share it had with NES and SNES? It's absolutely not a resounding success.) Also, because of one of Nintendo's major mistakes in designing the N64 Using the most expensive parts available on market (ie- remember the Silicon Graphics fiasco?)), it would be technologically unfeasable to create a Portable N64 at an acceptable mass-market price point for handhelds (which is $100, just like the console mass-market price point is $200). People just aren't that likely to buy a handheld, even if it is capable of the N64's power, at more than $100. I'm sure it's feasable, but if Nintendo thought that a Portable N64 had a lick of a chance to be a success, I'm sure they'd be all over that, especially with PSone. But it doesn't. And with GBA coming out, that is capable of having many NES, SNES, and N64 games ported to it, there's no need for Nintendo to waste money on a Portable N64. Any Portable N64 would be yet another "Virtual Boy" scar on Nintendo's back, and right now, they don't need that, especially in the face of Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox.
Yes radio is a good approach. Running thru holographic sonar cryptography is a good way to protect the content of your data stream but it WILL NOT protect your internal network, mind you MANY of these systems act as BRIDGES and not routers/switches.
I will let you calculate it. The following are empirical equations from Kinsler and Frey.
t is in degrees C and c is in m/sec.
In Fresh water c = 1403 + 5t - 0.06t^2 + 0.0003t^3
Good for 0 to 60 degrees C.
In sea water
c = 1449 +4.6t - 0.055t^2 + 0.0003t^3 + (1.39 - 0.012t)(S - 35) + 0.017d
Where S is the salinity expressed in parts per thousand, and d is the depth below the surface in meters.
With this construct, if one input word is changed, the probability of a nonzero difference is ((2**N-1)/(2**N))**L (where L is the number of FFT layers, and the log2 of the number of input words), and furthermore, output differences of 0 are correlated in an easily detectible way.
Exactly, they aimed more at reliability -- even though the codes were lossy and reliability was achieved mainly by coherent en/decoding, because noise is incoherent. However, much of that was dropped in favor of faster and better (in that approach) use of homomorhic processing and other DSP techniques.
.. which essentially defines
wave phenomena ... as the theoretical basis of Holocomm, as stated.
Further, Holocomm's "delocalization" feature can be seen also in SHA-1, where *all* output bits change when one changes a *single* input bit. However, SHA-1 hopelessly mixes and merges all the data (as it is intended to do), while Holocomm allows for reversible and selective delocalization.
Thus, in two contrast points to former pure holographic codes, Holocomm aims at (1) non-lossy reversible (2) selective delocalization -- which also allows interoperation with all known cryptography algorithms (that require exact data for decoding). The reliability feature is also further enhanced by the non-lossy aspect of it. As mentioned, Holocomm can also work in lossy modes, including lossy compression -- which can be quite useful.
Holocomm is the first example of a practical quantum mechanical communication and encoding system that affords privacy and reliability, to a high degree, while also offering compression and selective information delocalization.
As such, it naturally has many parallels in several things that are based on wave functions or on the Schroedinger equation
Interesting! On the week end I will set up a stress test for the VM to see if I am able to get some failure. Just I need a little of time, since I am at SMAU for the magazine I write for (by the way, inside of the press room there is a very very pretty bar girl :) ).
mmm, I should immagine some good test case...
I discovered something important for the test results I've been reporting. The mp3's that I've been listening to were not all sampled at the same rate. That means some of the comparisons are suspect.
The mp3's were sampled between 88k and 192k. I did not notice the sample rate affecting whether an mp3 skips or not. I.E. an 88k mp3 and a 192k mp3 skip about the same on a kernel/test that sputters. There probably is a difference, but it isn't obvious. So the subjective reports on sound quality are reasonable. In the future, I'll make sure comparisons that include timing are done with comparable mp3's.
I remember somebody posting a message about a couple of tiny programs that would print an Estes style fin alignment sheet and a centering ring template for single and cluster engines. These were not big or pretty, but they did the job. Does anybody know where these programs may be hiding? I've looked at Tiny Apps with no luck.
Thanks for any assistance.
PA-8800 lets you create two opposite predicates in one instruction, for example the predicate a=b.
// pLT & pNLT are 2 complementary preds
;; // add to b [then] // or sub from b [else]
;; // uses of b
;;
// speculatively sub from b (into temp) // and add to b
;; // uses of b [then] // uses of b (temp) [else] // move bTmp to b [else]
;;
This seems to indicate that there are no separate "do this if predicate is true" and "do this if predicate is false" instructions, so for opposite predication you would have to specify two different predicates.
The processor cannot know that these two predicates are related, so this would give you quite a problem.
As has been publicly disclosed, in general in PA-8800, an instruction reading any resource (such as a predicate) must be in a later instruction group (cycle) than the instruction writing that resource. As a special case, branches are allowed to use a predicate written by another instruction in the same instruction group (as shown in the IDF slides).
So, the straightforward (but slow) PA-8800 schedule for the earlier example:
if (a < 0)
b += a;
else
b -= a;
c += b;
d += b;
would be:
cmp.lt pLT, pNLT = a, 0
(pLT) add b = b, a
(pNLT) sub b = b, a
add c = c, b
add d = d, b
which takes 5 instructions in 3 cycles. (Note: In PA-8800 assembly, ";;" indicates the end of an instruction group, "=" separates the target operand(s) from the source(s), "//" begins a comment, and (pred) specifies the controlling predicate.)
An alternate (faster) schedule in PA-8800 is as follows:
sub bTmp = b, a
add b = b, a
cmp.lt pLT, pNLT = a, 0
(pLT) add c = c, b
(pLT) add d = d, b
(pNLT) add c = c, bTmp
(pNLT) add d = d, bTmp
(pNLT) mov b = bTmp
This takes 8 instructions in 2 cycles and one extra register. The final move of bTmp to b can be eliminated if b isn't live out at that point.
I had an opportunity to play T3K on a DVD player with the nuon chip at the last E3 in LA with none other than Jeff Minter. T3K didn't seem too hot though but it wasn't really finished yet. I still prefer the Jag version myself. As for nuon, the other titles I saw on it weren't that impressive but I don't think it's targeted as being a killer gaming platform but rather an inexpensive add-on to DVD players and the like that can support some cool graphics and multimedia.
The N501 sounds like a nice enough deck. It has the new "expanded" VLM and supports MP3 CD-R/RW. I will probably pick one up as an "extra" DVD deck and for T3K of course. I was in Best Buy last week, and they DID have some retail NUON presence as promoted months back. On impulse, I got a Logitech pad and T3K "while I still could", planning to pick up the N501 at its EOL pricecut.
Here's a short depiction of what I'm trying to accomplish. If you've got any ideas - pass them my way...I've got a balloon of ferrofluid suspended inside a tube filled with the water - attached to the walls. Outside the tube I have a configuration of solenoids, hooked up to deliver a magnetic field in sequence starting at one end of the tube - and stepping to the other end. The effect should expand the balloon to the walls of the tube, and the stepping of this bubble down the tube should propell the water... Hopefully in a smooth fashion. I've got everything working except the sequencing drivers for the solenoids, so it's looking good so far.
I never got around to trying to build an MHD fountain that would shoot salt water up in the air past a large magnet and a pair of electrodes. Has anyone tried this kind of a project?
"Transcribing an hour of text takes a long time. But if you (yes, you!) are willing to transcribe a 3-minute (well. 3:15) chunk of this interview, I will spend my putative day off gluing chunks of interview together."
Which bring the question. What are the alternatives for a voice recognition application that sould take a sound sample and convert it to text? Sort of like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) softwares does with a scanned image?