Right, this was my point. Processor speed nowadays is so much faster than memory and disk that I wonder how they overcome the hurdles without caching all of main memory.;) With several cores in the same package, bandwidth to your RAM is probably going to be *the* decisive factor in how fast your overall system performs.
That and whether your processor spontaneously combusts.
Still, the problems are not insurmountable. Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on a given chip can be doubled every two years, has a lot of life left in it, Weber said. Designers will likely continue to increase the number of transistors on a chip by stacking them.
LOL, this style of writing (the kind without any explanation whatsoever) is dangerously close to Scotty-speak.:) Gotta reroute power from the secondary warp plasma phase inducers because the relays are fused! We're gonna increase the number of transistors on a chip by stacking them!
So, now we'll have multiple processing units and pipelines in each core, and multiple cores. The biggest question in my head is how much limitation there will be from memory bandwidth limitations. I just don't see how you can supply data and instructions fast enough to, say, three 3 GHz cores running on the same chip unless you have close to a thousand pins on the chip. The other question would be about cooling.:)
In the spirit of poking holes in arguments for the sake of poking holes in arguments... I don't have to show my driver's license in order to buy a compact disc (when using cash, anyway). The shopkeeper doesn't log the transaction along with my SSN. There are plenty of other ways that you remain anonymous in the offline world. Digital technology can be easily used to erode this anonymity at many levels, to the point where some machine or person somewhere becomes suspicious, determines that you are to be watched even more closely than you are already watched because of, say, your musical preferences.
As our offline world became more digitized, suspicious, and tracked, I for one loved the Internet as a medium where I had some measure of anonymity. I for one would like to keep things that way.
Now this is silly. It is obviously a form of expression. Please don't be upset at this fact or get overemotional. I repeat: it is a fact that kiddie porn is a form of expression. I actually find it offensive that I'll probably have to defend myself from overemotional nuts now by saying something like "Of *course* it's disgusting, and I'm *sure* *everyone* will agree with me." In any case, ("as much as I agree with your sentiment," dammit!!!) your argument makes no sense and as such, being without logic, it doesn't really belong in a g33k ph0rum.
The fact that we're even debating this stupid kiddie porn argument at all is disgusting and it's really telling. Grow up, everyone.
Fucking political correctness will preserve my karma, right?
My colleague pointed out that suppressing the images from high resolution USAF cameras makes sense b/c the recording equipment itself is probably classified. This guy in California, I guess, didn't keep copies of anything, the media never got hold of the film, and NASA is simply not devoting as much time to publishing as investigating.
That was my solution for my 600e's battery woes, and it works like a charm. Most places I inhabit have electrical power available, either via a wall outlet or a 12VDC socket, and I always had adapters with me. A battery that's not plugged in will not get so decrepit so quickly. It's been a couple of years now and the second battery is still as fresh as the day I bought it.
Problems with this solution: The need to carry your adapter around, the sudden death of your computing experience when the power plug accidentally slips out. If you compute on a desk, I'd certainly encourage you to simply slip the battery off once it's reached 90-100% charge.
Currently, I have a Thinkpad A21p, and while I use my battery more heavily nowadays, I still generally keep it out of the laptop, and it's been lasting relatively long for its age.
You sound like you still have quite a bit to learn about how computers work and about software engineering discipline. It's very hard to answer your questions because there are fundamental ideas about software engineering, computer processors, and the history of computers that you just don't know about - this is fine, but it's important to do your research before you repeat anything that you don't absolutely know for certain.
Topics for study include: How Linux came to be - the origins of Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, etc.
What is an Operating System?
Open source and how it makes computing more secure. On a related note, try to grok the difference between security and obscurity: the latter is *not* real security.
Assembly language programming for any machine: try to get a good idea of how microprocessors work, at least from the software side of things.
Programming in C, Pascal, Ada, LISP, Perl, Java,... as many languages as you can learn. It's good to be versatile, and it's good to be able to use the right tool for the right job.
And once you have done all that, you will be able to come up with your own conclusions, you will be the expert. Study hard, you never know, you might be the agent that makes Linux tomorrow's killer OS.
The entertainment industry's attempt to lock everything under DRM may be trumped by legislation that has yet to be passed. The bill tries to restore fair use rights to those who legally acquired a work of non-analog art by allowing the circumvention of DRM by the owner of the work. Quite a pleasant shock, I hope this bill (or something very similar) gets passed.
Is Dubbya's policy on Iraq reflective of the power you exercised in November 2000?
Well, you can always start splitting hairs and argue either yes or no to this one. This whole post is obvious flamebait.
My argument was that South Africa really can only be compared to one U.S. state, if Africa unifies and becomes the United States of Africa, let's see if South Africa's "constitution applies to all citizens, not just the ones who live in a more progressive state."
Not really a fair statement. This will depend on which U.S. state you are talking about, some will be more progressive than others and will match or exceed the "progress" (which is always up for debate) you describe above. The administration of government elected by a progressive population will pass progressive laws, and that elected by a conservative population will pass conservative ones. This is as true for South Africa as it is for America; American law is simply reflective of the voters that exercise their power.
Well, that's not quite fair. You're neglecting to mention why they're so conservative. The DoD is interested in things working correctly all the time, and generally don't have a more experimental mentality when it comes to, say, maintaining secure communications, running logistical software, or launching and guiding missiles. Published papers like this will more likely convince them that free software is better, and will less likely be used for butt-covering.
uhm, let's see... the article mentioned debris being flung at 75 billion meters per hour. That's 270 trillion meters per second, or 2.7e12 m/s. The speed of light is a bit less than 3e8 m/s... isn't this incredible observation more exciting than an exploding star?:)
This system we find ourselves in might actually work really well for us. We just need to put the right spin on things. I'm sure that if we can get, say, Adobe to claim that illegal thieving DMCA-breaking commie SPAM terrorist pirates cost them $3 billion last year, we could get the FBI to crack down on all spammers with utter prejudice and without due process.
Slashdot Mirror
What about the possibility of massless phenomena?
Photons have no mass.
how about "I can't believe it's not Windows!"
mod me up for ingenuity.
Right, this was my point. Processor speed nowadays is so much faster than memory and disk that I wonder how they overcome the hurdles without caching all of main memory. ;) With several cores in the same package, bandwidth to your RAM is probably going to be *the* decisive factor in how fast your overall system performs.
That and whether your processor spontaneously combusts.
Well, remember that Bender is still using a 6502 as his CPU in the year 3000 ...
"We've hit the memory wall," Weber said.
Still, the problems are not insurmountable. Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on a given chip can be doubled every two years, has a lot of life left in it, Weber said. Designers will likely continue to increase the number of transistors on a chip by stacking them.
LOL, this style of writing (the kind without any explanation whatsoever) is dangerously close to Scotty-speak. :) Gotta reroute power from the secondary warp plasma phase inducers because the relays are fused! We're gonna increase the number of transistors on a chip by stacking them!
So, now we'll have multiple processing units and pipelines in each core, and multiple cores. The biggest question in my head is how much limitation there will be from memory bandwidth limitations. I just don't see how you can supply data and instructions fast enough to, say, three 3 GHz cores running on the same chip unless you have close to a thousand pins on the chip. The other question would be about cooling. :)
As our offline world became more digitized, suspicious, and tracked, I for one loved the Internet as a medium where I had some measure of anonymity. I for one would like to keep things that way.
The fact that we're even debating this stupid kiddie porn argument at all is disgusting and it's really telling. Grow up, everyone.
Fucking political correctness will preserve my karma, right?
The latter. It's the Digital Millenium Copyright Act!!!
My colleague pointed out that suppressing the images from high resolution USAF cameras makes sense b/c the recording equipment itself is probably classified. This guy in California, I guess, didn't keep copies of anything, the media never got hold of the film, and NASA is simply not devoting as much time to publishing as investigating.
Check out this legislation - an amendment to the DMCA that will allow exactly this sort of fair use under the law. I hope it passes.
That was my solution for my 600e's battery woes, and it works like a charm. Most places I inhabit have electrical power available, either via a wall outlet or a 12VDC socket, and I always had adapters with me. A battery that's not plugged in will not get so decrepit so quickly. It's been a couple of years now and the second battery is still as fresh as the day I bought it.
Problems with this solution: The need to carry your adapter around, the sudden death of your computing experience when the power plug accidentally slips out. If you compute on a desk, I'd certainly encourage you to simply slip the battery off once it's reached 90-100% charge.
Currently, I have a Thinkpad A21p, and while I use my battery more heavily nowadays, I still generally keep it out of the laptop, and it's been lasting relatively long for its age.
You sound like you still have quite a bit to learn about how computers work and about software engineering discipline. It's very hard to answer your questions because there are fundamental ideas about software engineering, computer processors, and the history of computers that you just don't know about - this is fine, but it's important to do your research before you repeat anything that you don't absolutely know for certain.
Topics for study include: How Linux came to be - the origins of Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, etc.
What is an Operating System?
Open source and how it makes computing more secure. On a related note, try to grok the difference between security and obscurity: the latter is *not* real security.
Assembly language programming for any machine: try to get a good idea of how microprocessors work, at least from the software side of things.
Programming in C, Pascal, Ada, LISP, Perl, Java, ... as many languages as you can learn. It's good to be versatile, and it's good to be able to use the right tool for the right job.
And once you have done all that, you will be able to come up with your own conclusions, you will be the expert. Study hard, you never know, you might be the agent that makes Linux tomorrow's killer OS.
The entertainment industry's attempt to lock everything under DRM may be trumped by legislation that has yet to be passed. The bill tries to restore fair use rights to those who legally acquired a work of non-analog art by allowing the circumvention of DRM by the owner of the work. Quite a pleasant shock, I hope this bill (or something very similar) gets passed.
Not really a fair statement. This will depend on which U.S. state you are talking about, some will be more progressive than others and will match or exceed the "progress" (which is always up for debate) you describe above. The administration of government elected by a progressive population will pass progressive laws, and that elected by a conservative population will pass conservative ones. This is as true for South Africa as it is for America; American law is simply reflective of the voters that exercise their power.
I love the concept of your PC accidentally rolling off your desk.
The gyroscopic action of the spinning hard disk should help keep the sphere on the desk. Wonder if coriolis forces will work on a freely rolling PC.
Well, that's not quite fair. You're neglecting to mention why they're so conservative. The DoD is interested in things working correctly all the time, and generally don't have a more experimental mentality when it comes to, say, maintaining secure communications, running logistical software, or launching and guiding missiles. Published papers like this will more likely convince them that free software is better, and will less likely be used for butt-covering.
whoops, i mean, 72 million km/hr. That's more like 2.6e12 m/s. Still pretty fast.
uhm, let's see ... the article mentioned debris being flung at 75 billion meters per hour. That's 270 trillion meters per second, or 2.7e12 m/s. The speed of light is a bit less than 3e8 m/s ... isn't this incredible observation more exciting than an exploding star? :)
Right?
In fact, his original caffeinated words were "look, I have this iPaq running linux and a webserver." The BOFH response: "we'll see about that ..."