I don't think the hard drive will disappear completely, but as the costs come down, the companies cannot make money producing the smaller capacity drives.
I agree. This is a big problem for larger companies that want maximum performance, but don't have that much data. They stripe 8, 16, 32 drives, and it's a pain in the wrist to find someone that can sell small enough drives so that you don't massively overshoot the space requirements.
We will see 1Tb hard drives readily available someday, sure thing.
"Some day"? Some day, as in far, far into the future?!? First of all, a Tb is 128 GB. Second: Lacie BiggestDisk. You, my friend, are suffering from "Future Shock"
Please repeat after me, "Terabyte storage is available now for prosumers. By 2016, petabyte storage. By 2026, exabyte storage."
But different people have different needs. Hard drives are beginning to augment backup strategies because they have become so cheap and high in capacity.
A solid state drive has a higher G-shock tolerance, is quieter and requires less power than a hard drive. These features are why the technology is attractive to the people who need it. And not everyone needs a hard drive that is 400gb in size. Network appliances may only need a small 1gb boot drive, and these kind of devices will need this new phase-change memory, or whatever will work for the task beyond flash.
Once again, agreed, but from a different perspective... Disk sizes are growing way more rapidly than other parts of the computer, including OS sizes.
Smaller/faster (and more expensive) "disk" technologies keep popping up.
Why not do it like Ye Olde Amiga did? IE, the default install is to use different partitions for "OS" and "Data". The OS fits onto the (NG) flash memory described in this thread, the rest goes onto the "Data" partition. This would also go some way towards improving boot-up times as discussed in recent threads on/.
It would be cool to have something like this that is your main memory AND your storage space in one. We could call it Run-In-Place. We could then have a instant-on computers. Just imagine Windows XP or Linux booting up in under 3 seconds!
I, personally will not be satisfied until boot-times are cut down until they are comparable with my old C=64. (I used to reboot my C=64 by flipping the power switch down, then up again, as fast as humanly possible. Once, in five years, I actually managed to do it too fast (<.05 seconds?) leaving the computer in a strange, scrambled state.
An easy way to warn you that your GSM phone call may be intercepted: look for the cipher indicator icon. It typically looks like an open lock. If your phone displays this icon, the base station has turned encryption off for this call.
This typically happens when the They have ordered the phone company to spy on you, or when reception is low.
All data read from external sources must be validated before being used. In some languages/frameworks this is as hard as nails (ie. I programmed a pretty large web application with only straight CGI programs written in pure Unix/C), in some you have help (Perl with taint), in some it's kinda-sorta-almost not an issue (PHP with Agavi and Creole).
If I had to choose, I would have to say that the middle way, the Perl way, is the best. It does not pretend to solve all your problems for you, even when it can't really. Rather it brings the problems at hand to your attention. Problems surface, fix problems, code gets better.
With all the bad press and near disasters surronding the PS3 development, I was becoming more and more sceptical as to wether I shouldn't just get a Wii instead.
Until, that is I went into my favorite game store today to pick up Liberty City Stories. The store had started their PS3 promo, with big signs saying "Coming Spring 2007: PS3" and lots of pretty posters and whatnot. None of that impressed me, but:
In the center was a very good 50" HDTV rolling demo footage. The game in question was MetalGear 4. Nice! So I got closer... and closer... and closer...
In the end, the screen filled my entire field of vision. I still couldn't see any pixels, edges or blurring. The detail was jaw-dropping. That's when I suddenly noticed a caption at the top right.
Demo only, not full PS3 resolution.
In other words, once you see what the PS3 can do on a good display, you'd never buy a Wii. Perhaps a XBox360, but lets face it, to make things look good at that resolution you need a metric shitload of textures, and the PS3 can fit 50 GB of data onto a single disc.
Conclusion: seeing is believing. I'll get three, please.
Ps: You will also need extremely deep pockets. PS3 + TV to make it shine will cost you at least $4000.
What the grandparent was suggesting was not to force the english alphabet onto the entire world, but rather the complete eradication of all languages but English.
[spam] is still strongly associated with both unsolicited email and the ham product in most English speaking person's minds
But that would be about 10% of the population of the EU. For the 90% living outside Britain I would guess that only Monty Python fans will be aware that there is another meaning for the word spam besides unsollicitated bulk email.
Spot on. My parents here in Sweden used to buy some really tasty canned ham back in the 80's, which in retrospect I think must have been the official product in question. It was called "burkskinka", ie. simply Canned Ham.
The same i18n was probably applied in all non-english markets. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 60% of Europeans have probably eaten spam at one point or another, but with localized names that aren't remotely similar to "spam".
The problem here is, even if you had a computer like the one described here, you still need to be able to understand your problem well enough to cogently explain it to your computer.
That describes my day job. The clients never know what they really want, and why should they? I'm the solution guy. I give them what they don't know they want.
Research, a few (million) questions, some creativity and blam, presto, a system that does more-or-less what they didn't-know-they-wanted.
If I, with an IQ of a measly 145 can do this, why couldn't a 2015 computer with an IQ equivalent of a person?
Or the 2030 computer with an IQ equivalent of 10,000? (Moores law).
Photons lack mass but (since they move at 1,0 c) they do have momentum. This is wat makes solar sails work.
Nope.
Quoth wikipedia:
A solar wind is a...
Except that solar sails do not depend on "solar wind", ie. particles. The main thrust (when above a certain distance form the sun at least) is delivered by massless photons, ie. light. Hence the more correct term "light sail".
However, this feels more like you being slammed into a chair, and me entering in full SS regalia. Slowly I walk to you, and slap my horse whip against my black-gloved palm.
Me: Yes... "Mister"... <Insert Your Name> We will soon become very aquainted...
I suggest that you are a terrorist. Yes?
Any elevated blood pressure will be seen as a sign of admission. Off with him to the camps.
Bush bad
Nah. A moron and a tool, though.
Democrats good
Not at all, but maybe slightly more capable of making sane decisions if you did some kind of statistical analysis.
Amerika evil
Amerika confused and acting erratically. Need help.
Terrorism is freedom fighting (tell that to the burka wearing clitoris missing women)
Freedom-fighting is often mislabled terrorism by opposite party. Don't get me wrong, blowing up civilians randomly is terrorism. Israel and Hizbolla are both doing just that right now. Capturing (or even killing) enemy soldiers is not terrorism, it's simply war.
I also find it very interesting that you infer terrorism == islam == ancient african custom that happens to be in force in an area that is mostly muslim.
Israel bad
Israel strange construction. Settle occupied land long time. Aboriginals hate good.
peace at any cost
Yep. Equitable peace at any cost. Do you mean you prefer this forever war?
...and as a final thought
Evil comes in many forms, which form will you take?
I put it to you that Evil does not exist. It's a figment of your religious mind. In reality, people do bad things for reasons that seem good at the time.
[after all] we are trying to save the children.
We wouldnt want these children to be harmed by terrorists just because we didnt have the fortitude to torture them.
Your ideas intrigue me. Please tell me more about how torturing children will keep them safe from terrorists. Also, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I am ever so grateful that there is still at leat one designer willing to do huge, epic and different games. This comment is aimed solidly at David Braben. Elite II (Frontier) had the entire galaxy, each star, planet and rock condensed into a 500 kB game. All thanks to procedural generation and fractals, much like Spore. I know that Braben has planned an Elite III for many years which would be fully multi-player... Come on David, you know you want to...
This is a good thing. One of two things will happen from this
:
The scientists are right and Einstein wasn't 100% correct.
The scientists are wrong and let dust onto the damn sensors again
I'd say 1. It's not just the "variable constants", it's the way the galaxy rotates, it's the anisotropy measurements of the comsic background etc. You know, all the evidence piling up over the last few decades that lead cosmologists to pull first dark matter, then dark energy out of their hats.
Apparently 96% of our entire universe is now believed to be made up by these two substances, neither of wich have been explained. I suggest that one of the following options are true:
With many "patches" the existing theories can be contorted enough to explain the new data (see also epicycles, phlogiston)
A new theory will explain these anomalies in a simple and obvious way.
My bet is 2, and string theory is not it... Interesting times ahead, mark my word.
At my current gig (OnGame ie. PokerRoom.com) we've been using a kind of modified Scrum. The idea is to start "El Project Grande", spend a day breaking the project into parts and deciding what depends on what, then spend another day in groups breaking down the parts into parts until you have tiny pieces which ideally will take less than 16 man hours a piece.
You now have a big pile of tasks, sub-tasks, sub-sub-tasks and so forth with dependencies and time estimates (all set by the programmers themselves.) It's then up to the Scrum Master aka. "Get-those-assholes-off-our-back-person" to show the results to the customer and decide priorites.
The priorities are passed to programming team, and they then plan the first "iteration". Now, the goal of every "iteration", which typically spans max one month, is to produce a fully implemented, tested and launchable subset of the complete product.
Every day, all the coders have a *short* meeting (10-30 min). Each individual states what he is working on, what he's done since the last meeting, what he's planning to do until the next meeting and most importantly he's strongly encouraged to cry for help if he's blocked in any way.
In addition to this there's an evil, buggy Excel sheet with all the (sub-sub-sub)tasks along the vertical, and days along the horizontal. It's each programmers responsibility to update estimated hours left for tasks he has been working on each day. NB! *hours left* It's prefectly alright to up the time remaining if you have unexpected problems. So a certain task may go "16 12 4 56" hours left.
The main points of Scrum (for a programmer):
The programmers set all time estimates.
Individual programmers may change any estimates upward without hard feelings.
(In our version) The programmers hire new programmers.
The programmers allocate work among the programmers.
In fact, the programmers control their own work 99%.
The Scrum Master aka. ('Nearest-thing-we-have-to-a-boss') deflects all flack and handles all communication with harpies^W customers.)
...and that's how it's supposed to work in the best of worlds. In reality, however, the whole model crashes and burns if
* The projects are to short (
Spanish? The worlds third largest language, widely spoken even in the U.S.A.?
It's spelt that way, because that's the closest translation possible from the original Japanese sound to Spanish letter sounds.
You are aware that Kyoto is a Japanese city? As such, the name is spelt in the Japanese alphabet.
When transliterating a word, it's common practise for every european language to choose the transliteration that works best with the pronounciation rules of that language.
Just hoping to clarify the math a bit more... Mr. Yak injected an extra zero into his calculations.
The relevant formulas are:
d=a*t^2 (d: distance in meters, a: acceleration in m/s^2, t: time in s) v=a*t (v: velocity in m/s)
In our target scenario v and a are fixed.
v = 11000 m/s (escape velocity, more or less) a = 500 m/s^2 (a bit more than 5 gs)
Shuffle the formulas to give t (launch time) and d (size of tower): t=v/a (= 22s, *not* 220!) d=v^2/a (= 242km)
Not as bad as ShavenYak made it out to be, but still way hard to accomplish. The real killer in the numbers is that nasty "^2"... To double the final velocity, the tower must quadruple in size (all other things being constant).
A few final thoughts:
Escape velocity is the velocity required to *entirely* break away from the Earth and "escape" towards infinity (ie. go into the solar system, or the Moon). If you're content with putting up geosync satelites you could use a much shorter tube.)
Suggestion: Build it laying down. A ramp instead of a tower. A 242 km ramp, curving up towards some mountains and a "final bit" that's like your proposed tower clearing the main atmosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. This is a big problem for larger companies that want maximum performance, but don't have that much data. They stripe 8, 16, 32 drives, and it's a pain in the wrist to find someone that can sell small enough drives so that you don't massively overshoot the space requirements.
"Some day"? Some day, as in far, far into the future?!? First of all, a Tb is 128 GB. Second: Lacie BiggestDisk. You, my friend, are suffering from "Future Shock"
Please repeat after me, "Terabyte storage is available now for prosumers. By 2016, petabyte storage. By 2026, exabyte storage."
Once again, agreed, but from a different perspective... Disk sizes are growing way more rapidly than other parts of the computer, including OS sizes.
Smaller/faster (and more expensive) "disk" technologies keep popping up.
Why not do it like Ye Olde Amiga did? IE, the default install is to use different partitions for "OS" and "Data". The OS fits onto the (NG) flash memory described in this thread, the rest goes onto the "Data" partition. This would also go some way towards improving boot-up times as discussed in recent threads on /.
I, personally will not be satisfied until boot-times are cut down until they are comparable with my old C=64. (I used to reboot my C=64 by flipping the power switch down, then up again, as fast as humanly possible. Once, in five years, I actually managed to do it too fast (<.05 seconds?) leaving the computer in a strange, scrambled state.
Slightly off-topic:
An easy way to warn you that your GSM phone call may be intercepted: look for the cipher indicator icon. It typically looks like an open lock. If your phone displays this icon, the base station has turned encryption off for this call.
This typically happens when the They have ordered the phone company to spy on you, or when reception is low.
It's a simple matter of hygiene:
Wash it before you eat it.
All data read from external sources must be validated before being used. In some languages/frameworks this is as hard as nails (ie. I programmed a pretty large web application with only straight CGI programs written in pure Unix/C), in some you have help (Perl with taint), in some it's kinda-sorta-almost not an issue (PHP with Agavi and Creole).
If I had to choose, I would have to say that the middle way, the Perl way, is the best. It does not pretend to solve all your problems for you, even when it can't really. Rather it brings the problems at hand to your attention. Problems surface, fix problems, code gets better.
With all the bad press and near disasters surronding the PS3 development, I was becoming more and more sceptical as to wether I shouldn't just get a Wii instead.
Until, that is I went into my favorite game store today to pick up Liberty City Stories. The store had started their PS3 promo, with big signs saying "Coming Spring 2007: PS3" and lots of pretty posters and whatnot. None of that impressed me, but:
In the center was a very good 50" HDTV rolling demo footage. The game in question was MetalGear 4. Nice! So I got closer... and closer... and closer...
In the end, the screen filled my entire field of vision. I still couldn't see any pixels, edges or blurring. The detail was jaw-dropping. That's when I suddenly noticed a caption at the top right.
Demo only, not full PS3 resolution.
In other words, once you see what the PS3 can do on a good display, you'd never buy a Wii. Perhaps a XBox360, but lets face it, to make things look good at that resolution you need a metric shitload of textures, and the PS3 can fit 50 GB of data onto a single disc.
Conclusion: seeing is believing. I'll get three, please.
Ps: You will also need extremely deep pockets. PS3 + TV to make it shine will cost you at least $4000.
Way to get upset about wrong thing.
What the grandparent was suggesting was not to force the english alphabet onto the entire world, but rather the complete eradication of all languages but English.
Slight difference.
Spot on. My parents here in Sweden used to buy some really tasty canned ham back in the 80's, which in retrospect I think must have been the official product in question. It was called "burkskinka", ie. simply Canned Ham.
The same i18n was probably applied in all non-english markets. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 60% of Europeans have probably eaten spam at one point or another, but with localized names that aren't remotely similar to "spam".
That describes my day job. The clients never know what they really want, and why should they? I'm the solution guy. I give them what they don't know they want.
Research, a few (million) questions, some creativity and blam, presto, a system that does more-or-less what they didn't-know-they-wanted.
If I, with an IQ of a measly 145 can do this, why couldn't a 2015 computer with an IQ equivalent of a person?
Or the 2030 computer with an IQ equivalent of 10,000? (Moores law).
Except that solar sails do not depend on "solar wind", ie. particles. The main thrust (when above a certain distance form the sun at least) is delivered by massless photons, ie. light. Hence the more correct term "light sail".
...and for all who didn't get the joke:
Soylent SG-1 is made out of canceled shows!!
(Other) canceled shows I tell you!!
I agree.
However, this feels more like you being slammed into a chair, and me entering in full SS regalia. Slowly I walk to you, and slap my horse whip against my black-gloved palm.
Me: Yes... "Mister"... <Insert Your Name> We will soon become very aquainted...
I suggest that you are a terrorist. Yes?
Any elevated blood pressure will be seen as a sign of admission. Off with him to the camps.
Well, the current iPod is not a video iPod according to Stephen, so maybe the next one will not be a phone?
Makes sense.
Why is the European Space Agency concerned?
I also find it very interesting that you infer terrorism == islam == ancient african custom that happens to be in force in an area that is mostly muslim. Israel bad Israel strange construction. Settle occupied land long time. Aboriginals hate good. peace at any cost Yep. Equitable peace at any cost. Do you mean you prefer this forever war?
...and as a final thought
I put it to you that Evil does not exist. It's a figment of your religious mind. In reality, people do bad things for reasons that seem good at the time.
What proof do you have for that statement?
Your ideas intrigue me. Please tell me more about how torturing children will keep them safe from terrorists. Also, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I am ever so grateful that there is still at leat one designer willing to do huge, epic and different games. This comment is aimed solidly at David Braben. Elite II (Frontier) had the entire galaxy, each star, planet and rock condensed into a 500 kB game. All thanks to procedural generation and fractals, much like Spore. I know that Braben has planned an Elite III for many years which would be fully multi-player... Come on David, you know you want to...
Apparently 96% of our entire universe is now believed to be made up by these two substances, neither of wich have been explained. I suggest that one of the following options are true:
My bet is 2, and string theory is not it... Interesting times ahead, mark my word.
At my current gig (OnGame ie. PokerRoom.com) we've been using a kind of modified Scrum. The idea is to start "El Project Grande", spend a day breaking the project into parts and deciding what depends on what, then spend another day in groups breaking down the parts into parts until you have tiny pieces which ideally will take less than 16 man hours a piece.
You now have a big pile of tasks, sub-tasks, sub-sub-tasks and so forth with dependencies and time estimates (all set by the programmers themselves.) It's then up to the Scrum Master aka. "Get-those-assholes-off-our-back-person" to show the results to the customer and decide priorites.
The priorities are passed to programming team, and they then plan the first "iteration". Now, the goal of every "iteration", which typically spans max one month, is to produce a fully implemented, tested and launchable subset of the complete product.
Every day, all the coders have a *short* meeting (10-30 min). Each individual states what he is working on, what he's done since the last meeting, what he's planning to do until the next meeting and most importantly he's strongly encouraged to cry for help if he's blocked in any way.
In addition to this there's an evil, buggy Excel sheet with all the (sub-sub-sub)tasks along the vertical, and days along the horizontal. It's each programmers responsibility to update estimated hours left for tasks he has been working on each day. NB! *hours left* It's prefectly alright to up the time remaining if you have unexpected problems. So a certain task may go "16 12 4 56" hours left.
The main points of Scrum (for a programmer):
Could someone more familiar with greek mythology please tell me how Pluto and the Hydra are connected?
I'll go to hell for this, but
Spanish? The worlds third largest language, widely spoken even in the U.S.A.?
It's spelt that way, because that's the closest translation possible from the original Japanese sound to Spanish letter sounds.
You are aware that Kyoto is a Japanese city? As such, the name is spelt in the Japanese alphabet.
When transliterating a word, it's common practise for every european language to choose the transliteration that works best with the pronounciation rules of that language.
DOH!
I stand spanked.
I hereby retract all posts I have made on Slashdot.
Just hoping to clarify the math a bit more... Mr. Yak injected an extra zero into his calculations.
The relevant formulas are:
Not as bad as ShavenYak made it out to be, but still way hard to accomplish. The real killer in the numbers is that nasty "^2"... To double the final velocity, the tower must quadruple in size (all other things being constant).
A few final thoughts:
I so hate it when people equate one of the many services runing on the internet with the Internet as such.
This article equates internet with DNS, which is as bad as equating internet and the web.
(Slightly in-topic) The internet will continue work just fine, the global DNS network OTOH might be slightly forked.
I guess "China to launch slightly different name resolution protocol" isn't a good headline.