Pushing around a 64 bit pointer incurs more than a 10% performance penalty? Yick. I find that hard to believe. I'd still be more apt to believe there's some optimizations that aren't as optimized on the 64 bit side. It's either that, or gcc on the sparc makes really crappy 64 bit code.
I don't know anything about the Sparc processor, but it's likely that there are hardware tradeoffs to running your code in 64 bit mode. There was a similar situation (though in reverse) with poor branch prediction with the Pentium Pro and 16 bit code (it had worse performance than a Pentium in 16 bit mode, so windows 95 actually ran slower on a PPro). Certainly it's true that 64 bit code will simply take up more cache space than 32 bit code.
The crypto routines would also have to be written to take advantage of the larger bitsize available. I think the wordsize of most crypto routines is 32 bits, so you'd need to figure out a way to do two crypts at the same time to take advantage of the extra 32 bits.
The article should be more appropriately titled "Are Sparc 64 bit binaries slower than Spar 32 bit binaries", as the benchmarks have nothing to do with other 32 vs 64 bit platforms (Athlon 64, G5, etc)
Any microphone is going to be vulnerable to interference from a big magnetic field near it. Microphones use magnets to convert sound into electrical impulses, so the only thing that might save you is microphones designed to deal with high RF interference.
The same thing goes for the RF interference to a wireless setup. Digital isn't a magic solution that eliminates RF problems. The better solution as far as the wireless is to just go to a frequency that the power lines aren't putting out, which probbably just means a higher frequency.
We have always been experimenting with things we don't fully understand.
Yes, that's why people experiment with things, because they don't understand them. If we fully understood something, there'd be no need to experiment.
Your objections seem a bit out of order. The particle experiments that are being done contain less energy than in a fastball, it's just highly concentrated.
It's impossible for anyone to blow up anything more than the apparatus with a fusion experiment, as the reaction stops as soon the containment of the plasma stops. If you're concerned about anything, you should be concerned about biological research, not some sci-fi notions of a physicist twiddling the wrong electron and destroying the universe.
The list is not to bad, but there's a few that really stick out as incredibly stupid. Here's my list:
Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages - they should all go into a single app.
Why do people think a single app is the solution to problems? Massive apps that try to do everything are bloated, hard to maintain, and have make compromises that hurt all the other functions. Mozilla has wisely decided to split the mail reader and the internet browser into firebird and mozilla. Make applications seperate, but able to communicate with one another.
8 Declare spammers are terrorists And put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails.
Ugh. This is mostly tongue in cheak I'm assuming, but the last thing we need to do is water down the definition of "terrorist"
10 Free the handsets We should be able to buy any cell phone and match it with any service plan.
Just what I want, a bloated, expensive phone that supports the 5-10 different mobile phone standards/frequencies, of which I use one. Providers already give you a free phone if you sign up for them. The phone itself is already a commodity, why is making it more expensive/bloated necessary?
12 Make email addresses portable
Huh? If you want a "portable" email address just register a domain, and forward your email to the provider of the week. The situation just isn't analogous to phone numbers, where you've never been able to own what amounts to an exchange.
38 Simplify URLs Why can't http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail//03755 02904/qid=1068751824/sr=12-8/103-2810600-6302246?v =glance&s=books be amazon/wolf/wired?
Because a lot of information needs to be conveyed in a URL. I suspect the real complaint is it's hard to exchange a URL unless you do it via email, etc.
42 Replace servers with P2P Too many network services - domain names, Web servers, email - rely on the old client-server model, which is vulnerable to attack.
Wired is smoking crack. There's a place for p2p, but it isn't in replacing webservers, dns, and email. The reasons should be fairly obvious (not fast or reliable enough, etc).
58 Take the blame Software license agreements that absolve you of, oh, deleting three years' worth of email are irresponsible. Bugs are negligence, and negligence should cost you, not us.
And kill off open source, single programmers, and anyone else that can't afford million dollar lawsuits. Software is unreliable, shouldn't be guaranteed unless you require it. Anything that puts someones life on the line is different of course (there's an example of a cancer irradiating machine that comes to mind), but it's your responsiblity to back up your data from being wiped out.
75 Let us link to a page we hate without boosting its ranking
Why are you linking to sites you hate? Why create the link at all, and not just mention the site in text? If you create the link, it's probbably interesting. If lots of people hate it, maybe I want to know why?
76 Add mobile numbers to the phone book
77 Create an email address directory
Good god no. The last thing I want is more spammers finding my email address, and people calling up my cell phone I don't know. If I _want_ people calling/emailing me, I give out that information.
Wow, how misinformed are you? Most of the population of Iraq hated Saddam, and are at worst cautious about the US presence. (Who can blame them after 20 years of rule be an evil dictator that the US help set up).
There's currently a small, but (relatively) powerfull segment of the population that were the weasel-boy minions under Saddam that did all the evil shit (you don't murder and brutalize hundreds of thousands of people alone). These are the people carrying out the attacks.
It's a pretty hard sell to say the war is over when there's US soldiers killed every other day in Iraq. Calling it a war is just a matter of semantics, but there's certainly no question there's still active resistance operating in Iraq.
You're right about one thing though, it still remains to be seen exactly what the US is really setting up in Iraq.
Yah. A new HD tops out at perhaps 45 MB/sec, maybe a bit more. One of the advantages of SATA is command reordering (taking a series of requests for data and re-ordering them to maximize efficiency). The other immediate advantage is the cables are much smaller, so they don't restrict airflow.
The shielding is so your computer doesn't muck-up your next door neighbors TV reception. It doesn't have anything to do with shielding PEOPLE from EM radiation. If you're really concerned about such things, you should be more afraid of your blender than your computer.
We've got plants that produce wonder cures. And yet we humans still spend billions trying to "discover" new drugs
I'm not really sure what you're getting at. It costs billions of dollars to screen the huge number of naturallly occuring substances in plants (irrational drug design). And it costs billions to figure out the shape of a receptor, and design a drug to fit into that receptor (rational drug design).
The "naturally occuring disease cure" is just an accident. "nature" (whatever that means) wasn't trying to produce a cure, it's just that living things are very good at producing vast numbers of different organic chemicals, of which a percentage are going to be usefull drugs. Humans are the ones most responsible for finding these cures, not "nature" (if you can even really seperate the two concepts).
Otherwise known as Malthusian theory. The idea put forth by Malthus was (very briefly) that resources (in this case food) increase linearly, while population increases exponentially. Therefore population would always quickly expand to exceed the expanded amount of resources.
It's true in the so called developing countries, but developed countries have lowered their birthrate substantially . It's now to the point where without immigration most, if not all developed countries are either barely growing in population, or actually shrinking.
The end effect is there's far more food available to than is necessary for developed countries. As more countries become developed countries and infant morality rates plunge, I'm certain the same thing will happen to developing nations. Having 6 kids simply isn't necessary anymore when it's highly likely any one of them will survive into adulthood. Of course there's still people going hungry in developed nations, but that's a problem of economic distribution, not food production.
Huh? Where did you read all this "the scientists are frustrated" stuff? All I read in the article was some official who said they weren't going to sell him fuel. I didn't hear any opinions of any actual scientists in the article, nor did I hear anything about this being a continuing problem. The men and women of the base are not arbiters of international politics, get it?
True, but the officials making decisions are, get it? Just because you don't _want_ the decision to be political doesn't mean it isn't. This isn't like you've got a cabin in the country, and refused to sell fuel to a German tourist whose car ran out of gas.
So you're saying that a human being from Australia should get better treatment from Americans than a human being from France or Germany, because of the support during the war?
No, I'm just saying I could understand the decision better. The Australian govt. didn't send this guy there, he's not representing Australia so his nationality shouldn't play any part in this.
True, but if the story gets more press the guys nationality will play a role. Maybe it shouldn't, but any story big enough and it's a big political situation. Slashdot is obviously small time outside the tech world, but the story certainly has the appeal to become a big story. Adventurous explorer from Down Under is refused a few measly gallons of gas from the big evil US Govt. I'd pick up the story if I were a news editor.
And again- why aren't you nailing the New Zealanders for the same thing? What is your ax to grind?
New Zealand doesn't currently look like a bunch of douche-bags for starting a war over WOMD that never existed in the first place. It's just a little disconcerting hearing how the US continues to act like spoiled children in its international relations.
On an entirely different note I believe McMurdo could probbably spare the fuel much more easily than the New Zealand base. McMurdo in the summer months has somewhere around a thousand people or so. I don't know how big the New Zealand base is, but it's my understanding that the US has the largest presence on Antarctica by far.
It's also harder to come down on New Zealand because I simply don't know much about the country, or the base.
It's about maintaining friendly relations with your allies of course. McMurdo is a US government run base. Its actions directly reflect on the US Government. Denying fuel to an Australian citizen sends a bad message that the US government doesn't seem to care about anyone. I'd still diagree with it, but it'd make a bit more political sense if it was a French or German citizen that McMurdo wouldn't sell fuel too.
I can draw lines on a map and "claim" it's mine too. Unless enough people recognize it, or I have enough power to act upon my claims I'm just plain crazy. The claims aren't real in any sense of the word. Antarctica is worthless to live on, and far to difficult to take advantage of its minerals. It's not even important as a tactical position AFAIK. How could it be when you can't even fly in/out 3-4 months of the year? Maybe even more?
There's probbably oil, but to get to it you first have to drill through miles and miles of ice, then you have to deal with the ice moving beneath you. Then if you solve all that you have to have your guys, and equipment survive in extremely harsh conditions. Oh, and then you have to get the oil out.
No one lays serious claims for Antarctica because it's (so far) worthless for anything but scientific investigations (which it's fairly valueable for).
And Australia even supported the US in the Iraq war. What has the US gained but some bad publicity? Maybe they should make him wait a while as a penalty, but sell the poor guy some fuel. Isn't that just the decent thing to do?
Yah, he should have planned ahead and gotten permission to have someone sell him fuel ahead of time, true. But if you're the only guy around for miles and you refuse to help someone out (and you can) you just look like a jerk. It's not as if this is a continuing problem, and every week there's some yahoo who needs to buy fuel because he was a dumb-ass.
Someone please tell me there's more to this story so I can feel a little better about the folks down in McMurdo.
There has never been a machine demonstrated capable of cracking 56-bit DES in under 24 hours. The EFF built a DES Cracker which could search the entire key space in 9 days.
You're right that it's not a terrible loss, but if it's permanent, it's unfortunate. Having all the instruments function can be often usefull. For example, if a instrument whose name I forget were still working on Voyager II, we'd know for certain when Voyager II has left the solar system.
Heh, I thought of the same book, though I'm not sure it's really worth reading (it's OK, but kinda trashy). If you're really into cyber-punk type stuff you might give it a try.
I'm not sure I really agree with your analogy though. Shockwave Rider really doesn't have much to do with modern day hacking, but from what I remember Little Heroes is fairly accurate with what the music industry has become (algorithms to predict music popularity, etc).
I think the original poster meant that 32 bit computing won't die in the same sense that 8 bit computing is still alive, in controllers, etc.
The same is true for AMD. All AMD said is they don't see themselves producing 32 bit processors around the end of 2005. The Athlon64 is the replacement for the venerable Athlon, first introduced in 1999. Athlon was a replacement for the K6. AMD stopped producing the K6 a couple years after the introduction of the Athlon, why would they produce 32 bit Athlons a couple years after the introduction of the Athlon64? After the first process shrink it's about as expensive to produce the new higher-transistor chip with the new smaller process/feature size as it is to make the old chip with smaller transistor number, but larger process/feature size.
Many people seem to think that AMD not producing 32 bit processors means the end of 32 bit computing. That's obviously ridiculous as it'll take many years before 64 bit OSs are the norm. Remember that the whole point of the Athlon64 over the Itanium is that the Athlon64 has very good 32 bit support to make a transition go far more easily.
This is a research robot. It is for *experimenting*. Saying "what's the point" just because it is tethered is just lacking in imagination.
The article seems to imply this will lead to a commercial product, and is not simply pure experiment. The article also doesn't mention that the robot is tethered by a power cable, though that's certainly the case. Not mentioning the power tether is a major ommision.
Epson have not created this so they can test out battery technology, but to experiment with the problems of robots that operate in three dimensions. This is about solving the problems of navigation and control, not power supply, that's a job for Duracell.
On the contrary the weight of the power source is a MAJOR part of building a flying machine. It's not just a problem to be simply sloughed off to duracell. This one one of the big problems the Wright brothers had, simply that you had to make an engine that had the proper power/weight ratio. The lack of an onboard power source means they're only at the stage of experimenting with controlling the beast (and in isolation from the added weight of a power source). That's all cool, but it's an important point that the article misses.
You may be right in your assessment of many projects being cancelled for lack of immediate application. But I think the problem is the article doesn't empasize the fact that this vehicle is still just basic research, and not an error in the perceptions of the poster(s).
RH9 is a dead product now with the release of Fedora. RH is going to drop support of 9 in April 2004. The key word in your statement about Fedora is upGRADE, not update. Unless I'm mistaken, Fedora is only providing a method to upgrade RH9 to Fedora Core 1.
The usefullness of RH9 is that that's what Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0 is based on. So the book isn't completely worthless, and it's a good start for the writer/publisher to write a book about RHE 3.0. RHE is a long release and supported product (12-18 months between releases, and 5 years of paid updates after release). This makes the documentation for it far more usefull.
Of the CDs I own, the ones that've gone bad have suffered damage to the top foil part. It either rubs off, or partially becomes dislodged from the
bottom part. All the review sites seem to think the
dye is the weak link in the chain, but in my experience a crapy foil will go long before the dye.
Slashdot Mirror
Pushing around a 64 bit pointer incurs more than a 10% performance penalty? Yick. I find that hard to believe. I'd still be more apt to believe there's some optimizations that aren't as optimized on the 64 bit side. It's either that, or gcc on the sparc makes really crappy 64 bit code.
I don't know anything about the Sparc processor, but it's likely that there are hardware tradeoffs to running your code in 64 bit mode. There was a similar situation (though in reverse) with poor branch prediction with the Pentium Pro and 16 bit code (it had worse performance than a Pentium in 16 bit mode, so windows 95 actually ran slower on a PPro). Certainly it's true that 64 bit code will simply take up more cache space than 32 bit code.
The crypto routines would also have to be written to take advantage of the larger bitsize available.
I think the wordsize of most crypto routines is 32 bits, so you'd need to figure out a way to do two crypts at the same time to take advantage of the extra 32 bits.
The article should be more appropriately titled "Are Sparc 64 bit binaries slower than Spar 32 bit binaries", as the benchmarks have nothing to do with other 32 vs 64 bit platforms (Athlon 64, G5, etc)
Any microphone is going to be vulnerable to interference from a big magnetic field near it. Microphones use magnets to convert sound into electrical impulses, so the only thing that might save you is microphones designed to deal with high RF interference.
The same thing goes for the RF interference to a wireless setup. Digital isn't a magic solution that eliminates RF problems. The better solution as far as the wireless is to just go to a frequency that the power lines aren't putting out, which probbably just means a higher frequency.
Yes, that's why people experiment with things, because they don't understand them. If we fully understood something, there'd be no need to experiment.
Your objections seem a bit out of order. The particle experiments that are being done contain less energy than in a fastball, it's just highly concentrated.
It's impossible for anyone to blow up anything more than the apparatus with a fusion experiment, as the reaction stops as soon the containment of the plasma stops. If you're concerned about anything, you should be concerned about biological research, not some sci-fi notions of a physicist twiddling the wrong electron and destroying the universe.
The list is not to bad, but there's a few that really stick out as incredibly stupid. Here's my list:
5 02904/qid=1068751824/sr=12-8/103-2810600-6302246?v =glance&s=books be amazon/wolf/wired?
Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages - they should all go into a single app.
Why do people think a single app is the solution to problems? Massive apps that try to do everything are bloated, hard to maintain, and have make compromises that hurt all the other functions. Mozilla has wisely decided to split the mail reader and the internet browser into firebird and mozilla. Make applications seperate, but able to communicate with one another.
8 Declare spammers are terrorists And put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails.
Ugh. This is mostly tongue in cheak I'm assuming,
but the last thing we need to do is water down the definition of "terrorist"
10 Free the handsets We should be able to buy any cell phone and match it with any service plan.
Just what I want, a bloated, expensive phone that supports the 5-10 different mobile phone standards/frequencies, of which I use one. Providers already give you a free phone if you sign up for them. The phone itself is already a commodity, why is making it more expensive/bloated necessary?
12 Make email addresses portable
Huh? If you want a "portable" email address just register a domain, and forward your email to the provider of the week. The situation just isn't analogous to phone numbers, where you've never been able to own what amounts to an exchange.
38 Simplify URLs Why can't http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail//0375
Because a lot of information needs to be conveyed in a URL. I suspect the real complaint is it's hard to exchange a URL unless you do it via
email, etc.
42 Replace servers with P2P Too many network services - domain names, Web servers, email - rely on the old client-server model, which is vulnerable to attack.
Wired is smoking crack. There's a place for p2p, but it isn't in replacing webservers, dns, and email. The reasons should be fairly obvious (not fast or reliable enough, etc).
58 Take the blame Software license agreements that absolve you of, oh, deleting three years' worth of email are irresponsible. Bugs are negligence, and negligence should cost you, not us.
And kill off open source, single programmers, and anyone else that can't afford million dollar lawsuits. Software is unreliable, shouldn't be guaranteed unless you require it. Anything that puts someones life on the line is different of course (there's an example of a cancer irradiating machine that comes to mind), but it's your responsiblity to back up your data from being wiped out.
75 Let us link to a page we hate without boosting its ranking
Why are you linking to sites you hate? Why create the link at all, and not just mention the site in text? If you create the link, it's probbably interesting. If lots of people hate it, maybe I want to know why?
76 Add mobile numbers to the phone book
77 Create an email address directory
Good god no. The last thing I want is more spammers finding my email address, and people calling up my cell phone I don't know. If I _want_ people calling/emailing me, I give out that information.
Wow, how misinformed are you? Most of the population of Iraq hated Saddam, and are at worst cautious about the US presence. (Who can blame them after 20 years of rule be an evil dictator that the US help set up).
There's currently a small, but (relatively) powerfull segment of the population that were the weasel-boy minions under Saddam that did all the evil shit (you don't murder and brutalize hundreds of thousands of people alone). These are the people carrying out the attacks.
It's a pretty hard sell to say the war is over when there's US soldiers killed every other day in Iraq. Calling it a war is just a matter of semantics, but there's certainly no question there's still active resistance operating in Iraq.
You're right about one thing though, it still remains to be seen exactly what the US is really setting up in Iraq.
Yah. A new HD tops out at perhaps 45 MB/sec, maybe a bit more. One of the advantages of SATA is command reordering (taking a series of requests for data and re-ordering them to maximize efficiency). The other immediate advantage is the cables are much smaller, so they don't restrict airflow.
The shielding is so your computer doesn't muck-up your next door neighbors TV reception. It doesn't have anything to do with shielding PEOPLE from EM radiation. If you're really concerned about such things, you should be more afraid of your blender than your computer.
We've got plants that produce wonder cures. And yet we humans still spend billions trying to "discover" new drugs
I'm not really sure what you're getting at. It costs billions of dollars to screen the huge number of naturallly occuring substances in plants (irrational drug design). And it costs billions to figure out the shape of a receptor, and design a drug to fit into that receptor (rational drug design).
The "naturally occuring disease cure" is just an accident. "nature" (whatever that means) wasn't trying to produce a cure, it's just that living things are very good at producing vast numbers of different organic chemicals, of which a percentage are going to be usefull drugs. Humans are the ones most responsible for finding these cures, not "nature" (if you can even really seperate the two concepts).
Otherwise known as Malthusian theory. The idea put forth by Malthus was (very briefly) that resources (in this case food) increase linearly, while population increases exponentially. Therefore population would always quickly expand to exceed the expanded amount of resources.
It's true in the so called developing countries, but developed countries have lowered their birthrate substantially . It's now to the point where without immigration most, if not all developed countries are either barely growing in population, or actually shrinking.
The end effect is there's far more food available to than is necessary for developed countries. As more countries become developed countries and infant morality rates plunge, I'm certain the same thing will happen to developing nations. Having 6 kids simply isn't necessary anymore when it's highly likely any one of them will survive into adulthood. Of course there's still people going hungry in developed nations, but that's a problem of economic distribution, not food production.
Canada Mirror
mirror 2
Someone forgot to update where the winamp.com virtual host points too?
Huh? Where did you read all this "the scientists are frustrated" stuff? All I read in the article was some official who said they weren't going to sell him fuel. I didn't hear any opinions of any actual scientists in the article, nor did I hear anything about this being a continuing problem.
The men and women of the base are not arbiters of international politics, get it?
True, but the officials making decisions are, get it? Just because you don't _want_ the decision to be political doesn't mean it isn't. This isn't like you've got a cabin in the country, and refused to sell fuel to a German tourist whose car ran out of gas.
So you're saying that a human being from Australia should get better treatment from Americans than a human being from France or Germany, because of the support during the war?
No, I'm just saying I could understand the decision better.
The Australian govt. didn't send this guy there, he's not representing Australia so his nationality shouldn't play any part in this.
True, but if the story gets more press the guys nationality will play a role. Maybe it shouldn't, but any story big enough and it's a big political situation. Slashdot is obviously small time outside the tech world, but the story certainly has the appeal to become a big story. Adventurous explorer from Down Under is refused a few measly gallons of gas from the big evil US Govt. I'd pick up the story if I were a news editor.
And again- why aren't you nailing the New Zealanders for the same thing? What is your ax to grind?
New Zealand doesn't currently look like a bunch of douche-bags for starting a war over WOMD that never existed in the first place. It's just a little disconcerting hearing how the US continues to act like spoiled children in its international relations.
On an entirely different note I believe McMurdo could probbably spare the fuel much more easily than the New Zealand base. McMurdo in the summer months has somewhere around a thousand people or so. I don't know how big the New Zealand base is, but it's my understanding that the US has the largest presence on Antarctica by far.
It's also harder to come down on New Zealand because I simply don't know much about the country, or the base.
It's about maintaining friendly relations with your allies of course. McMurdo is a US government run base. Its actions directly reflect on the US Government. Denying fuel to an Australian citizen sends a bad message that the US government doesn't seem to care about anyone. I'd still diagree with it, but it'd make a bit more political sense if it was a French or German citizen that McMurdo wouldn't sell fuel too.
I can draw lines on a map and "claim" it's mine too. Unless enough people recognize it, or I have enough power to act upon my claims I'm just plain crazy. The claims aren't real in any sense of the word. Antarctica is worthless to live on, and far to difficult to take advantage of its minerals. It's not even important as a tactical position AFAIK. How could it be when you can't even fly in/out 3-4 months of the year? Maybe even more?
There's probbably oil, but to get to it you first have to drill through miles and miles of ice, then you have to deal with the ice moving beneath you. Then if you solve all that you have to have your guys, and equipment survive in extremely harsh conditions. Oh, and then you have to get the oil out.
No one lays serious claims for Antarctica because it's (so far) worthless for anything but scientific investigations (which it's fairly valueable for).
And Australia even supported the US in the Iraq war. What has the US gained but some bad publicity? Maybe they should make him wait a while as a penalty, but sell the poor guy some fuel. Isn't that just the decent thing to do?
Yah, he should have planned ahead and gotten permission to have someone sell him fuel ahead of time, true. But if you're the only guy around for miles and you refuse to help someone out (and you can) you just look like a jerk. It's not as if this is a continuing problem, and every week there's some yahoo who needs to buy fuel because he was a dumb-ass.
Someone please tell me there's more to this story so I can feel a little better about the folks down in McMurdo.
There has never been a machine demonstrated capable of cracking 56-bit DES in under 24 hours. The EFF built a DES Cracker which could search the entire key space in 9 days.
Naw, the EFF machines was later upgraded, and combined with distributed.net was able to crack a DES encoded message in 22 hours
You're right that it's not a terrible loss, but if it's permanent, it's unfortunate. Having all the instruments function can be often usefull. For example, if a instrument whose name I forget were still working on Voyager II, we'd know for certain when Voyager II has left the solar system.
Heh, I thought of the same book, though I'm not sure it's really worth reading (it's OK, but kinda trashy). If you're really into cyber-punk type stuff you might give it a try.
I'm not sure I really agree with your analogy though. Shockwave Rider really doesn't have much to do with modern day hacking, but from what I remember Little Heroes is fairly accurate with what the music industry has become (algorithms to predict music popularity, etc).
I think the original poster meant that 32 bit computing won't die in the same sense that 8 bit computing is still alive, in controllers, etc. The same is true for AMD. All AMD said is they don't see themselves producing 32 bit processors around the end of 2005. The Athlon64 is the replacement for the venerable Athlon, first introduced in 1999. Athlon was a replacement for the K6. AMD stopped producing the K6 a couple years after the introduction of the Athlon, why would they produce 32 bit Athlons a couple years after the introduction of the Athlon64? After the first process shrink it's about as expensive to produce the new higher-transistor chip with the new smaller process/feature size as it is to make the old chip with smaller transistor number, but larger process/feature size. Many people seem to think that AMD not producing 32 bit processors means the end of 32 bit computing. That's obviously ridiculous as it'll take many years before 64 bit OSs are the norm. Remember that the whole point of the Athlon64 over the Itanium is that the Athlon64 has very good 32 bit support to make a transition go far more easily.
This is a research robot. It is for *experimenting*. Saying "what's the point" just because it is tethered is just lacking in imagination.
The article seems to imply this will lead to a commercial product, and is not simply pure experiment. The article also doesn't mention that the robot is tethered by a power cable, though that's certainly the case. Not mentioning the power tether is a major ommision.
Epson have not created this so they can test out battery technology, but to experiment with the problems of robots that operate in three dimensions. This is about solving the problems of navigation and control, not power supply, that's a job for Duracell.
On the contrary the weight of the power source is a MAJOR part of building a flying machine. It's not just a problem to be simply sloughed off to duracell. This one one of the big problems the Wright brothers had, simply that you had to make an engine that had the proper power/weight ratio. The lack of an onboard power source means they're only at the stage of experimenting with controlling the beast (and in isolation from the added weight of a power source). That's all cool, but it's an important point that the article misses.
You may be right in your assessment of many projects being cancelled for lack of immediate application. But I think the problem is the article doesn't empasize the fact that this vehicle is still just basic research, and not an error in the perceptions of the poster(s).
RH9 is a dead product now with the release of Fedora. RH is going to drop support of 9 in April 2004. The key word in your statement about Fedora is upGRADE, not update. Unless I'm mistaken, Fedora is only providing a method to upgrade RH9 to Fedora Core 1.
The usefullness of RH9 is that that's what Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0 is based on. So the book isn't completely worthless, and it's a good start for the writer/publisher to write a book about RHE 3.0. RHE is a long release and supported product (12-18 months between releases, and 5 years of paid updates after release). This makes the documentation for it far more usefull.
Of the CDs I own, the ones that've gone bad have suffered damage to the top foil part. It either rubs off, or partially becomes dislodged from the bottom part. All the review sites seem to think the dye is the weak link in the chain, but in my experience a crapy foil will go long before the dye.