His goal is not to prove, disprove or otherwise challenge evolution. If he manages to build such life forms (what he did yet definitely isn't one), it will certainly be his creation and would say exactly nothing about evolution, nor is it intended to do. What he wants to prove is that metal based life is possible at all.
I'm also sceptical that he will manage to do it (independent from the question if metallic life forms would be possible in principle). But the point is, no matter if he does, it won't tell anything about evolution either way, nor is it intended to.
Finite? Hardly. The cheap & readily accessible reserves may be, but "cheap" is a moving target.
I wasn't talking about cheap oil. I was talking about oil (where with "oil" I of course meant crude oil, as you probably did, too; if you add e.g. salad oil, things change of course). There's a finite supply, even if you include things like oil sands.
Even once we've used up the last of the oil sands, so long as chemists walk a planet bathed in sunlight there will be means of producing hydrocarbons from biomass.
But only a fool would first produce oil and then refine that to the final product if instead he can produce the final product directly.
Your argument against MIPS is retarded. Watt hours are a rate as well.
Nonsense. Watt hours are not a rate. Watts are a rate. Watt hours are an amount. And yes, 1/3600 Watt hour is a Watt second, also known as Joule (there's no dollar involved in that conversion, though, or do you use the dollar sign to denote squaring?). That still doesn't make it a rate. You also can't do meaningful conversion into MIPS (and BTW, the existence or nonexistence of such a conversion definitely doesn't change whether you measure the energy in Watt hours or Watt seconds; it's just a factor of 60, after all). You might convert Watt into MIPS, or Watt hours into million instructions (if you prefer, you can also use MIPS hours, where 1 MIPS hour is 3.6 billion instructions).
You just have demonstrated that you have no clue about physical units. Or about units in general.
If computer instructions don't have a value, I guess we can tell the super computer & bot net guys to go home.
Again, MIPS are million instructions per second. It's a rate, not an amount.
Really? I let a washing machine do that. The only thing I have to do myself is putting clothes and washing powder in, switch it on, and take the clothes out afterwards. And in principle it would be possible to build washing machines where you don't have to fill in washing powder each time, but have a large supply which needs eventually refilled. I'd say washing is pretty much automated today.
cooking my own food (or paying another human to cook it)
For all that food which you put in the microwave, most of it has been produced by machines in the factory. And putting it in the microwave and taking it out when its ready hardly does count as cooking. Yes, it's not the only option, and traditionally cooked food generally tastes better. But it doesn't mean there's no automated food production. It just means you don't like the food which is produced that way as much as the traditionally cooked food.
The pricing mechanism in a free economy does a very good job of allocating resources.
The pricing mechanism is relatively good in managing direct consequences. It is very bad in managing long term consequences. If there's a small cost saving now which will give rise to a huge cost increase in 50 years, the pricing mechanism will ensure that this cost saving opportunity is taken, even though in the long run it is disadvantageous. Moreover even for short term consequences it will not always find the optimum. It will find the Nash equilibrium.
Try to price it in units that are timeless like gallons of oil, MIPS, Bitcoins or Watt Hours.
Gallons of oil are definitely not timeless. The supply is finite. The supply of Bitcoins is also finite, but at least they are not consumed. But they have no inherent value. MIPS are not an amount, but a rate (million instructions per second). The only unit in this list which makes sense is Watt hours. While formally also finite, the supply of usable energy is large enough that it won't be used up any time soon. More importantly, as soon as the supply is completely used up, there will be neither humans, nor robots, nor anything else which could care about such questions, because all of those need energy to operate.
I just wonder who is going to buy all those goods and services when we are all replaced by robots.
Robots, of course. After all, a robot needs energy. A robot needs repair. A robot needs to be oiled. All these basic needs of a robot have to be fulfilled if the robot is to work correctly. By other robots, of course.
If they send an interrupt, a root kit could simply redirect that interrupt to itself and then return without doing anything else. It then would be as if that interrupt never occurred.
It doesn't matter if it's really more secure. It only matters if it is perceived as being more secure. If you don't believe it, go to the next airport.
Yeah, because before patents, nobody ever invented anything. And certainly not for making money with it.
Patents were not introduced to promote innovation. Patents were introduced to promote dissemination. People always invented, and will always invent, no matter whether there are patents or not. However, there's a tendency to keep your invention secret to keep your advantage. The idea of patents is: OK, you tell us how your invention works, and in return you get limited time protection against others using it.
Wouldn't it just be cheaper for Google to arrange a direct patent license with Microsoft and Apple rather than trying to build their own patent portfolio to try and go to war?
You are assuming that Apple and Microsoft would be willing to license the patents to Google. But why should they? There's probably more money in having no competition from Google than Google could ever pay.
If you change the CPU, you must open your case and manipulate the hardware anyway. Changing a jumper to allow BIOS update wouldn't be a big deal in that case.
Given the very limited space available in the average PC Flash BIOS chip, how fancy can this possibly be, ?
Just loading a different sector than the standard MBR sector on startup (maybe after a check that the virus code is there, e.g. by CRC) would probably already defeat a lot of tools protecting against MBR infections. Your "MBR" disk virus would no longer reside on the MBR, and thus not be detected/protected against by the standard antivirus code. Doing so should in the simplest case (no check) require to change no more than one number in the BIOS (the sector to read and execute when booting). The new "MBR" could then load and execute an arbitrary amount of extra code before handing over to the real (unchanged) MBR. Maybe even start a virtual machine to run the OS in.
Setting the real time clock (if not the clock itself then the area that allows the machine to wake itself on an alarm) Setting the BIOS settings (e.g. BIOS password, boot devices) in a corporate environment across hundreds of machines
That's not in the BIOS Flash but on the CMOS RAM.
The ability to update the BIOS (e.g. to address a buggy video BIOS or support previously untested hardware)
Such an update can be done on the BIOS level. The operating system itself doesn't use the BIOS for this anyway (unless you are running DOS, of course).
Save a crash dump somewhere safe (don't want to trash the disk) across a shutdown
Do you know a system where dumps are stored in the BIOS Flash? If you want to provide dumping into on-board Flash, you better make that Flash separate (even without viruses, if your system is so fucked up that it might trash the disk on dumping, it might also trash the flash memory it writes to; you definitely do not want that to be your BIOS!)
I've done it on my (purely theoretical) single instruction computer. Now, it wasn't exactly difficult because the single instruction of that computer has been well chosen.
Slashdot Mirror
Both videos are not available in Germany.
His goal is not to prove, disprove or otherwise challenge evolution. If he manages to build such life forms (what he did yet definitely isn't one), it will certainly be his creation and would say exactly nothing about evolution, nor is it intended to do. What he wants to prove is that metal based life is possible at all.
I'm also sceptical that he will manage to do it (independent from the question if metallic life forms would be possible in principle). But the point is, no matter if he does, it won't tell anything about evolution either way, nor is it intended to.
I wasn't talking about cheap oil. I was talking about oil (where with "oil" I of course meant crude oil, as you probably did, too; if you add e.g. salad oil, things change of course). There's a finite supply, even if you include things like oil sands.
But only a fool would first produce oil and then refine that to the final product if instead he can produce the final product directly.
Nonsense. Watt hours are not a rate. Watts are a rate. Watt hours are an amount. And yes, 1/3600 Watt hour is a Watt second, also known as Joule (there's no dollar involved in that conversion, though, or do you use the dollar sign to denote squaring?). That still doesn't make it a rate. You also can't do meaningful conversion into MIPS (and BTW, the existence or nonexistence of such a conversion definitely doesn't change whether you measure the energy in Watt hours or Watt seconds; it's just a factor of 60, after all). You might convert Watt into MIPS, or Watt hours into million instructions (if you prefer, you can also use MIPS hours, where 1 MIPS hour is 3.6 billion instructions).
You just have demonstrated that you have no clue about physical units. Or about units in general.
Again, MIPS are million instructions per second. It's a rate, not an amount.
Hey, did you notice the last promise on the "infographic"????
"By 2038, a completely autonomous flying robot car..."
Man, I've wanted one of these for ages...
They will crash due to Unix time overflow. :-)
Really? I let a washing machine do that. The only thing I have to do myself is putting clothes and washing powder in, switch it on, and take the clothes out afterwards. And in principle it would be possible to build washing machines where you don't have to fill in washing powder each time, but have a large supply which needs eventually refilled. I'd say washing is pretty much automated today.
For all that food which you put in the microwave, most of it has been produced by machines in the factory. And putting it in the microwave and taking it out when its ready hardly does count as cooking. Yes, it's not the only option, and traditionally cooked food generally tastes better. But it doesn't mean there's no automated food production. It just means you don't like the food which is produced that way as much as the traditionally cooked food.
The pricing mechanism is relatively good in managing direct consequences. It is very bad in managing long term consequences. If there's a small cost saving now which will give rise to a huge cost increase in 50 years, the pricing mechanism will ensure that this cost saving opportunity is taken, even though in the long run it is disadvantageous. Moreover even for short term consequences it will not always find the optimum. It will find the Nash equilibrium.
However at one point, the rich people will have to decide whether it is cheaper to fight against the unemployed, or to feed them.
Gallons of oil are definitely not timeless. The supply is finite. The supply of Bitcoins is also finite, but at least they are not consumed. But they have no inherent value. MIPS are not an amount, but a rate (million instructions per second). The only unit in this list which makes sense is Watt hours. While formally also finite, the supply of usable energy is large enough that it won't be used up any time soon. More importantly, as soon as the supply is completely used up, there will be neither humans, nor robots, nor anything else which could care about such questions, because all of those need energy to operate.
I just wonder who is going to buy all those goods and services when we are all replaced by robots.
Robots, of course. After all, a robot needs energy. A robot needs repair. A robot needs to be oiled. All these basic needs of a robot have to be fulfilled if the robot is to work correctly. By other robots, of course.
There will always be at least one person for whom this is wrong.
If they send an interrupt, a root kit could simply redirect that interrupt to itself and then return without doing anything else. It then would be as if that interrupt never occurred.
It doesn't matter if it's really more secure. It only matters if it is perceived as being more secure. If you don't believe it, go to the next airport.
God only infects human brains, not computers.
Given the choice of McAfee or malware at this level, I would choose the malware.
- Dan.
Tell me again what the difference is?
Most malware doesn't make your computer unusable.
Yeah, because before patents, nobody ever invented anything. And certainly not for making money with it.
Patents were not introduced to promote innovation. Patents were introduced to promote dissemination. People always invented, and will always invent, no matter whether there are patents or not. However, there's a tendency to keep your invention secret to keep your advantage. The idea of patents is: OK, you tell us how your invention works, and in return you get limited time protection against others using it.
You are assuming that Apple and Microsoft would be willing to license the patents to Google. But why should they? There's probably more money in having no competition from Google than Google could ever pay.
If you change the CPU, you must open your case and manipulate the hardware anyway. Changing a jumper to allow BIOS update wouldn't be a big deal in that case.
Yeah, let me know how well that sells to the general public.
"What do you mean I have to open up my computer?!? That's going to void the warranty!!!"
And reflashing the BIOS doesn't?
Just loading a different sector than the standard MBR sector on startup (maybe after a check that the virus code is there, e.g. by CRC) would probably already defeat a lot of tools protecting against MBR infections. Your "MBR" disk virus would no longer reside on the MBR, and thus not be detected/protected against by the standard antivirus code. Doing so should in the simplest case (no check) require to change no more than one number in the BIOS (the sector to read and execute when booting). The new "MBR" could then load and execute an arbitrary amount of extra code before handing over to the real (unchanged) MBR. Maybe even start a virtual machine to run the OS in.
That's not in the BIOS Flash but on the CMOS RAM.
Such an update can be done on the BIOS level. The operating system itself doesn't use the BIOS for this anyway (unless you are running DOS, of course).
Do you know a system where dumps are stored in the BIOS Flash? If you want to provide dumping into on-board Flash, you better make that Flash separate (even without viruses, if your system is so fucked up that it might trash the disk on dumping, it might also trash the flash memory it writes to; you definitely do not want that to be your BIOS!)
A way to get better prices from Microsoft? ("If you don't lower the price, we fund ReactOS!")
What about using a VPN provider? Or does your provider block that as well?
So before the invention of computer games, people remained animal-like?
I've done it on my (purely theoretical) single instruction computer.
Now, it wasn't exactly difficult because the single instruction of that computer has been well chosen.
Here's the implementation:
Not to mention 4 bit computers.