This might work, but the question to ask is whether it would really be faster. FPGAs are usually a lot slower than ASICs, as another replier pointed out. One FPGA emulation that I saw didn't even run half as fast (in terms of compute time for a task) as the actual ASIC. And if the FPGA becomes the critical path in your processing, it had better be fast (or at least faster than your CPU).
So I think that this would only work if a general purpose CPU (or GPU, for that matter) has a serious architectural weakness for your particular computing application. And I think that would be rare, given that it is the job of CPU manufacturers to keep track of what kind of computation people are interested in, and architect the chips accordingly.
If there isn't a serious architectural weakness, it would probably be more cost-effective to make a system that bolts on another general purpose CPU (or GPU) into the PCI slot. But that could be fun.
I have to wonder why they pressurize? I mean, they are taking people from lower altitudes to higher altitudes right? This seems different from a plane, where people go up to a high altitude, come down to a lower altitude, then get off.
Some people ought to be getting off in tibet, so what happens when they open the doors? Do they get the bends or does their head explode? or just get altitude sickness all at once?
The output of the system I described produces a Bernoulli RV with p precisely equal to 0.5. There are no epsilons about it. It may be some amount of trials before the system produces any output at all, but when it does, the bias on the random variable is guaranteed to be fair, right from the start.
There is no need to try to "average out" the results by performing more trials. The system you describe may make the difference between your RV and an unbiased RV "insignificant" after enough trials, but it will never be equal.
For more information, feel free to wade through this paper.
One (semi) interesting talk I went to recently brought up the point the scheme described isn't random if the coin is biased.
And this is a reasonable possibility, because you don't know if the coin weighs exactly the same on both sides, or maybe you're really good at flipping heads.
In order to get unbiased results, there's a simple protocol that will guarantee a non-biased random result. Suppose the probability of heads is p. Then the probability of tails is (1-p).
Flip the coin twice. a. If it comes up heads the 1st time and tails the 2nd, call it a 1. b. If it comes up tails the 1st time and heads the 2nd, call it a 0. c. If it comes up heads both times or tails both times, re-run the trial until you get one of the first two.
If the coin flips are assumed to be independent, then the probability of events a and b are p*(1-p) and (1-p)*p, which are equal.
There are improvements on this scheme which output more random bits per trial (it reduces/removes the probability of the outcome c where your result is inconclusive).
Between the magnetic CDs, not knowing whether they mean a million or a billion, and not knowing whether they mean bits or bytes, this has to be least informative article ever. Oh, and don't forget the fact that they appear to be talking about a write-only memory.
It's been a while since I've read up on quantum computing. You mentioned that there is a 'quantum computing algorithm that solves DLP incredibly efficiently.' Is this Shor's algorithm? My gut instinct was that Shor's algorithm factors integers quickly, but I never thought of it as a DLP solver. Or is this just a case of mapping factoring to a DLP problem?
Perhaps does the gov't know of a "quick" way to do large prime factorization unknown to the rest of us? With RSA resting so heavily on big primes, it would be uniquely vulnerable to something like a new way to do factorization.
Yeah I can do large prime factorization in my head. But I'm sure as hell not telling anyone else how to do it.
There are no known prime numbers that Miller-Rabin reports to be composite.
I'm certain that you can prove that no prime numbers will ever be reported composite by the definition of the test, but I don't have any number theory texts around me. I'm sure you can just look it up online. Or probably in Schneier's Applied Cryptography, too.
This article is reporting about a paper published in the "Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets". That means it's just an academic paper, not a proposal for NASA funding. These are two totally different things.
Whenever people publish papers about new drilling technology, you don't see people getting all "Drilling Mars is a BAD idea!"
Margarita Marinova (who is apparently a recent MIT graduate) is simply discussing this as an academic paper.
I'm glad the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service is doing its job. Rather than doing the "hack" that is the leap second, clearly they've managed to change the rotating speed of the earth to match reality, this year.
A big part of the research of the group is to come up with the mathematics to create a "constant" image. Right now I think they're using simple perspective projections to make objects in the plane of the balloon appear in focus.
I think that it is possible to make objects in a particular depth plane appear non-shifty (even from the same set of sample data). Making the entire background non-shifty would be a matter of properly segmenting the video so that various regions can be mapped to the right depth planes.
How about the program actually terminating when you close it? Even with Thunderbird 1.0 I still need to pull up the Task Manager and manually kill the bastard half of the time.
File a bug report. I can't reproduce it, but if I could, I would. My Thunderbird closes cleanly every time. Maybe it's Windows that's messing things up:-)
Another somewhat nice feature of Outlook Express is the ability to set up a separate SMTP server for each account you create.
From the Thunderbird SMTP Options dialog, Only one outgoing server (SMTP) needs to be specified, even if you have several mail accounts. But you can specify more than one SMTP if you need to. Sure you could specify a different SMTP server for each one (which occasionally helps with false positives from mail server anti-spam software). But this doesn't come up very often. If you really need to, you can add more SMTP servers to the list through the Advanced setup.
Ditto. I've been using Calendar for the past year+. I just got a PocketPC and I'm hoping someone will bust through with some sync software so I don't have to switch to Outlook.
If they get a sync feature running, I'll try it in alpha testing. Heck, I might even file bug reports.:)
An iPod is most likely to be capacitative, not inductive. I know for a fact that Synaptics touchpads (in most new laptops) are capacitive. I believe their web site gives some better tech descriptions.
In order for induction to work, you would have to have a large quantity of metal in your finger.
So unless you're Wolverine, you're probably out of luck.
Slashdot Mirror
This might work, but the question to ask is whether it would really be faster. FPGAs are usually a lot slower than ASICs, as another replier pointed out. One FPGA emulation that I saw didn't even run half as fast (in terms of compute time for a task) as the actual ASIC. And if the FPGA becomes the critical path in your processing, it had better be fast (or at least faster than your CPU).
So I think that this would only work if a general purpose CPU (or GPU, for that matter) has a serious architectural weakness for your particular computing application. And I think that would be rare, given that it is the job of CPU manufacturers to keep track of what kind of computation people are interested in, and architect the chips accordingly.
If there isn't a serious architectural weakness, it would probably be more cost-effective to make a system that bolts on another general purpose CPU (or GPU) into the PCI slot. But that could be fun.
I have to wonder why they pressurize? I mean, they are taking people from lower altitudes to higher altitudes right? This seems different from a plane, where people go up to a high altitude, come down to a lower altitude, then get off.
Some people ought to be getting off in tibet, so what happens when they open the doors? Do they get the bends or does their head explode? or just get altitude sickness all at once?
I don't think he's describing a hollowpoint. I don't think hollowpoints are designed to tumble through the body if they're symmetrically shaped.
Also, hollowpoint doesn't penetrate body armor as effectively, so I doubt that an M16 round would be hollowpoint.
*Shakes fist in air*
*Twirls mustache*
"...if it's the last thing I do!"
No, I think you're mistaken.
The output of the system I described produces a Bernoulli RV with p precisely equal to 0.5. There are no epsilons about it. It may be some amount of trials before the system produces any output at all, but when it does, the bias on the random variable is guaranteed to be fair, right from the start.
There is no need to try to "average out" the results by performing more trials. The system you describe may make the difference between your RV and an unbiased RV "insignificant" after enough trials, but it will never be equal.
For more information, feel free to wade through this paper.
After flipping, you eat the coin.
That was certainly random.
One (semi) interesting talk I went to recently brought up the point the scheme described isn't random if the coin is biased.
And this is a reasonable possibility, because you don't know if the coin weighs exactly the same on both sides, or maybe you're really good at flipping heads.
In order to get unbiased results, there's a simple protocol that will guarantee a non-biased random result. Suppose the probability of heads is p. Then the probability of tails is (1-p).
Flip the coin twice.
a. If it comes up heads the 1st time and tails the 2nd, call it a 1.
b. If it comes up tails the 1st time and heads the 2nd, call it a 0.
c. If it comes up heads both times or tails both times, re-run the trial until you get one of the first two.
If the coin flips are assumed to be independent, then the probability of events a and b are p*(1-p) and (1-p)*p, which are equal.
There are improvements on this scheme which output more random bits per trial (it reduces/removes the probability of the outcome c where your result is inconclusive).
Problem solved, next problem. ... Here's to Al-Kashi, a sane man and a pragmatic!
Lazy bastard.
Verbing words weirds language.
Well, now if I see a White Ford Taurus station wagon with that license plate number, I'll know how much it's worth...
Maybe CDs are magnetic in Soviet Russia.
All right, fine, so I'm having a little fun at the expense of semantic ambiguity.
large-prime factorization
vs.
large prime-factorization
It's been a while since I've read up on quantum computing. You mentioned that there is a 'quantum computing algorithm that solves DLP incredibly efficiently.' Is this Shor's algorithm? My gut instinct was that Shor's algorithm factors integers quickly, but I never thought of it as a DLP solver. Or is this just a case of mapping factoring to a DLP problem?
Yeah I can do large prime factorization in my head. But I'm sure as hell not telling anyone else how to do it.
There are no known prime numbers that Miller-Rabin reports to be composite.
I'm certain that you can prove that no prime numbers will ever be reported composite by the definition of the test, but I don't have any number theory texts around me. I'm sure you can just look it up online. Or probably in Schneier's Applied Cryptography, too.
If it didn't do that, the test would be useless.
This article is reporting about a paper published in the "Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets". That means it's just an academic paper, not a proposal for NASA funding. These are two totally different things.
Whenever people publish papers about new drilling technology, you don't see people getting all "Drilling Mars is a BAD idea!"
Margarita Marinova (who is apparently a recent MIT graduate) is simply discussing this as an academic paper.
related googled stuff.
I'm glad the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service is doing its job. Rather than doing the "hack" that is the leap second, clearly they've managed to change the rotating speed of the earth to match reality, this year.
While we're buying solid silver cables, why don't we go shopping for a solid gold rocket car!
A big part of the research of the group is to come up with the mathematics to create a "constant" image. Right now I think they're using simple perspective projections to make objects in the plane of the balloon appear in focus.
I think that it is possible to make objects in a particular depth plane appear non-shifty (even from the same set of sample data). Making the entire background non-shifty would be a matter of properly segmenting the video so that various regions can be mapped to the right depth planes.
How about the program actually terminating when you close it? Even with Thunderbird 1.0 I still need to pull up the Task Manager and manually kill the bastard half of the time.
:-)
File a bug report. I can't reproduce it, but if I could, I would. My Thunderbird closes cleanly every time. Maybe it's Windows that's messing things up
Another somewhat nice feature of Outlook Express is the ability to set up a separate SMTP server for each account you create.
From the Thunderbird SMTP Options dialog, Only one outgoing server (SMTP) needs to be specified, even if you have several mail accounts. But you can specify more than one SMTP if you need to. Sure you could specify a different SMTP server for each one (which occasionally helps with false positives from mail server anti-spam software). But this doesn't come up very often. If you really need to, you can add more SMTP servers to the list through the Advanced setup.
Ditto. I've been using Calendar for the past year+. I just got a PocketPC and I'm hoping someone will bust through with some sync software so I don't have to switch to Outlook.
:)
If they get a sync feature running, I'll try it in alpha testing. Heck, I might even file bug reports.
who really gives a flip about Thunderbird?
I do. That's three. I use it for imap.
Using this vulnerability to say that OSS is superior to MS is like saying that my television superior because it is immune to email viruses.
Firefox doesn't support ActiveX, and that's why the vulnerability doesn't work.
What is this, some kind of techno-troll? What you've said is true, but like the other replies have implied, it's basically inconsequential.
In order for induction to work, you would have to have a large quantity of metal in your finger.
So unless you're Wolverine, you're probably out of luck.