You can have multiple memcached servers servicing multiple front ends (just ask wikipedia.org!)
Or just put an SLB in front of a bunch of web services boxen that connect to a NAS/SAN. The SLB distributes the requests across the boxen and tracks which request went where to keep sessions from breaking. Its all been in use for many years, and sounds about like their "One Click" patent:
1. combine widely used or obvious computer systems or "internets technology" 2. Patent this combination 3. ? 4. Profit!
Duh?
Why is this even news? Many music groups have one good song, and the rest of the album stinks. Most people that use the usual peer to peer networks download one song, and not entire albums. I perfer legal torrents because you get the album in just one convenient download. But I still perfer to buy my music in LP vinyl format.
The artist gets signed to the label for x number of albums. The band only makes a couple of good songs, so they either put one of each good song on two different albums or both on one and hope they can come up with more good songs for other albums later. The rest of the album they throw together whatever they can to pump out the album so they can meet their contract obligations. People buy (used to, at least..) the albums for the good song or two, for which they have to pay the full album price to get (again, not anymore), which makes more money for the labels (not the artist), which in turn writes more contracts based on number of albums since its more profitable that way...
And so the cycle continued until the MP3 came along, which made it much easier for people to get the one or two songs from the artist that are worth listening to, rather than pay the inflated price for > 80% crap. Now the labels are bitching because of this very reason, their big spinning wheel hit a big bump and got a hole knocked in it and isnt spinning so well anymore and they are yelling and blaming everyone in sight. People are more willing to download or buy single tracks online that take up only virtual space than collect more plastic coasters to stack on top of the rest of the empty CD cases. The labels are pissed because they can no longer pump albums out that are full of crap and expect them to sell well based on the one or two decent (if that) songs on them. Having the radios spew the good ones 10 times an hour until they are ingrained in everyone's head also doesnt help with sales of albums, because it only makes people want that song (if it doesnt drive them further away from it). Their wheel kept going straight and ran off road when the path turned and is breaking down because of it, yet they still refuse to change course.
Tm
ps: I know there are artists that can put together awesome albums out there still, but the newer "talents" the labels seem to be going after more and more these days are the pop-single one-hit-wonder type, in an attempt to make the quick buck. I would much rather buy an album by the likes of Pink Floyd, REM, STP or even Moby than try t piece one together from anything Ive heard on the radio of late.
What the heck!? Slackware makes it very easy to upgrade versions. I haven't had to do a fresh install on *any* computers once I put Slackware on them initially. There are a couple of docs included on the distro to help with upgrading. You should follow those and learn how to do it. You can also tar up Slack and move it to a different hard disk. No need to ever reinstall Slackware.
...
FWIW, I know upgrading is easy with slack, as is all the other stuff, it typically just works like it should without any "Magic" application builders/configurers/packagemanagment stuff. I have my/etc saved, backed up in several places (and to tape), and all apps that for whatever reason like to stow their configs elsewhere have them moved into/etc and sym linked to where they are expected to be so I can just pull over that dir and be good for the most part. Data drives are completely separate, as they should be, including the user homes. But with this new hardware I have, I had a fresh install sitting there waiting on me to apply these old configs, make sure none of the settings require different formats or have been moved (my last upgrade, 8 -> 10 I thnk, several files changed a good bit and required a little tweaking). Since its fresh, might as well start over and enjoy the installation process. It always feels better anyway, knowing its fresh, and no cruft hanging around.
And folks who think W is doing a great job - the 30%+- of the population who think Bush is doing a great job? They're my neighbors here in Georgia! You know: the big SUV driving obese folks with the pristine "W '04 " bumper stickers.
Those robots better be running on oil! None of that pansy "alternative fuel" shit - but OIL!!
Great test for robots going into hostile climates!
Yeh, hot and humid yet it doesnt rain! Well not till last week, still 12" in drought.
OT I know, but I always find it funny that its usually those same SUV drivers with the Bush '04 stickers and the WWJD/Jesus Loves You stickers that are carrying only a driver, doing about 90+ on I75, and are weaving in and out of traffic flipping people off that honk at them.
Bleh, and off I go to play in that very traffic, to GaTech none-the-less to try to go swim, same facility thats hosting the robo cup. Actually, its on the floor directly over the pool (at the time it was built, just a few years ago, one of the largest suspended concrete structure in the world)!
Let's see with 2 you can get 140 * 2 = "The BlueGene/L reached a Linpack benchmark performance of 280.6 TFlop/s ("teraflops" or trillions of calculations per second)."
Since when did ANY technical details make into a contract?
As a matter of fact, they do... In a patent application! (And those are all supposed to be in a searchable public database.)
The rest of contract law is entirely concerned with the behavior of people...
...And interactions and deals with other companies. Case in point, this secret contract between the labels and RIAA. Other examples are secret contracts between manufaturers and their suppliers, ala Cocacola. They have secret contracts to keep people from finding out how much of what ingredient they order from who, all to help hide their secret formula to their fizzy drinks. Other business interests might be done under secret contracts as well to keep from disclosing strategic aliances, or keep the public from finding out about upcoming product releases and such that another company might find out about and beat them to the punch. Such contracts abound in the business world for many reasons, think NDA and how many of those get signed all the time, they are basically a secret contract of sorts or have terms in them declaring other contracts covered by it to be secret.
Anyone that knows Prince and the reason for his name change, knows he changed his name was because of the record labels. He did it in protest of their ability to control him and his music and his name. He wanted to free himself from that control so he could do what he wanted as an artist rather than as the label's shill. He has always been against the record labels after originally signing with one and finding out the hard way what they are all about. He changed his name back after his contract with them ended, but has continued as an independent and always fighting against the labels. This is just another example of his battle, and seems to have already accomplished part of its goal: expose the labels for what they truly are, greedy self-proclaimed overlords of all music.
Just because they arent as available for desktop machines doesnt mean they went away. Sun also just released their UltraSparc T1 chip about a year ago, which looks very promising for virtualization with as many cores as it has...
I doubt Sun would come out with a system named Blue Steel. IBM, on the other hand, may be looking for something to call whatever they come up with to surpass this.
Its wings were so flexible the tips unexpectedly dragged the ground on takeoff due to the weight of the full load of fuel in them, which damaged them slightly. As you know from history though, that didnt keep them from continuing the mission and completing it successfully.
Another thing to think of, is that pole-vaulting poles have been made of composites for years. The first ones were bamboo, then aluminum, the fiberglass and more recently (cir. 1995 or so) carbon. If you have ever seen pole vaulting, you know why I bring it up, the poles bend almost to the point where their ends can touch, and are generally 12-20' long. I did this sport in highschool... what a thrill it was to have the pole throw you up in the air.... unless it breaks (shoulnt have jumped on an under-weighted and 3 year old pole!).
The most they will ever find is a nano sized cave where it traveled through the earth at near-light speed before going about its way after popping out through an ocean on the other side....
And where are they going to launch these craft? Not in the USA.... Bob Bigelow had to take his launch to Russia.
RTFA or go read up on the X-prize cup. Yes, in the USA, and no, this is not the first time they have been launched, and no its not really going to the moon. New Mexico has the US's first private space port down near Whitesands, where Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic is supposedly going to be launching their commercial flight venture from. Other teams competing in this challenge have already been launching, with Armadillo Aerospace already completing the requirements without a problem (at last year's event they almost won, landing just off the pad a couple times, and flipping over). They should win hands down unless something major changes before this years competition gets underway. They have videos and details of this as well.
I haven't RTFA, but there was a show on Discovery Channel a while back where one of the guys who had designed a series of Mars missions for Lockheed/NASA back in the 80's (and he's still fighting for them) had proposed actually building a bunch of factories on Mars whose sole output would be greenhouse gases. Their entire purpose would be to just pump billions of tons of what we'd call pollutants on Earth into the Martian atmosphere. Supposedly you could raise the planet's temperature by 10 degrees over 100 years using this method, which would be enough to start releasing the water trapped in the ground as ice into the atmosphere, creating clouds and precipitation for plants. Then you could start planting forests, which would thrive in the CO2-rich Martian atmosphere and would begin to create the oxygen we need to breathe.
Humans could live on Mars as the terraforming process was ongoing, but they would need to be in enclosed colonies until the process was complete. Eventually, though, they'd be able to venture out into an Earth-like world.
I'm curious to see how the author of this article thinks the process could be sped up - the Discovery show said it would take thousands of years given current technology before the air would be both warm enough to live in and breathable for humans.
Ever read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars)?
One of its central themes is the terraforming of Mars, and specifically includes the use of greenhouse gas factories, along with bio-engineering of plants and algea to seed the soil, with human colonists living there during the process. Quite the good read if you are into sci-fi, though it starts a bit stronger than it ends.
FTFA:
However, at 768 kbps, the download speed may be too low to appeal to the relatively sophisticated customers who use the Internet for phone calls
I would be more concerned about the 128k upload than 768 down. I mean, you do want to be able to talk to the other party right? That being said, even 128k is enough for 2 POTs lines using standard compression (64k/DS0), though the VoIP packet overhead would probably force a higher compression to actually use 2 lines at the same time. It sounds nice and all, until you compare price/kbs against other countries and remind yourself again, that the US is still falling off the backend of the broadbandwagon. Its cheap, and ideal for people like my parents, who would only be downloading emails and the occasional video or picture page forwarded by me or other family members. The upstream is a bit weak compared to other offerings, but I wouldnt get this service if I were serious about gaming anyways (yes, you can play WoW over it, even over 56k modem, just not very well and if it gets into a complex scene, forget about it).
During their extensive research and experiments, scientists discovered that sharing information between two people worked best with direct pelvis to pelvis contact, and have coined the term "PtoP" networking...
If a farmer had the choice between seeds he can use to generate new seeds, vs seeds that only work once, wouldn't he go with the most flexible ones? This just reeks of vendor lock-in...will we begin to see "open source" agriculture "sprout" up? T-gene crops are usually tied in with other genetic alterations as well. The idea is to prevent these other alterations from spreading to non-GE crops. Primary example, and shows how flawed this line of thought is, is Monsanto and its line of RoundUp resistant rapeseed/canola. The problem is that the plants still produce pollen and seeds, since the actual crop is seed, which requires pollen for them to be produced. Since its difficult (impossible) to prevent this pollen from blowing over into other fields, these crops tend to cross-pollinate with the crops in those fields, which might be non-GE crops. If the farmer of those fields also re-uses their seed from year to year, they will be pissed when their seeds dont sprout, and even more so when the company owning the patents comes and files a lawsuit claiming patent infringement or breach of license/contract (even if they never dealt with the company for seeds before). Its not a free market if a single company can claim damages from their own crop running amok in other farmers' fields.
A farmer in Canada who grew his own seeds his whole life lost a supreme court case so that when Roundup Ready seeds were blown from the highway into his field, now all his crops were owned by Monsanto....
Actually, he won, partially, and is firing back with another case due in 2008.
is going to harm biodiversity? IT CAN'T PROPAGATE.
But if you happen to be a farmer that likes to reuse your own seeds, and it happens that your neighbor uses a T-gene crop, and they cross-pollinate with your plants, your seeds can inherit the T-gene and next years seeds are no longer any good. The gene prevents germination, it doesnt stop pollination or production of seeds. The same issues with other genetic-modified crops have come up already and made their way through court, specifically the Monsanto RoundUp resistant rape-seed/canola plants.
I'm not sure what caused it, but somehow my USB external hard drive ceased to work at one point and was rendered useless on all OS platforms. After running a few apps and commands, perhaps due to some degree of simultaneousness, something caused it to start working again. This was unsettling and unpleasant, but there was no data loss.
Wtf? If my external drive ceased to work, and it did so on anything I plugged it into across multiple other OSs, I would blame the drive, not the OS. This guy is grasping for reasons to blame OS X for stuff and for ways to give it a bad review. Typical FUD: my drive died, while using OS X, so Im cautious about using any drives with it cause it obviously kills drives!! heh. His other complaints are just as laughable, blaming OS X for making people buy hardware? Name the last Windows version that did not require a Major upgrade in hardware over the previous just to run? Name an OS that wont go faster without buying more ram or faster processors? It like saying "my car wont accelerate any faster unless I replace the engine with a bigger one, so I must be a crappy driver." And the comment on lack of quality free software, how many quality free aps can you get for windows? Almost anything from the Linux/Open Source/*nix world will compile on OS X, there's even this project called Mac Ports that makes bringing normal FOSS stuff into the native OS X environment easier. Gimp is a prime example. If you look around, there is plenty. This guy is just spewing FUD, looking to complain about everything, riding the thought that to get better viewer ship for his articles he has to be negative, just like the major TV news is these days.
What does this do that previous ones don't? Why is this so much better than existing technology that it will supplant it?
The USB interface is a nice feature, but a USB nub is pretty clunky, and is, in and of itself, bigger than competing media cards. XD and microSD are both smaller than a USB connector. Every format is flatter (CF, XD, SD, MMC, MemoryStick). How is this going to be better than any of those? If it doesn't have a standard USB nub, then is it going to need an adaptor, therefore defeating the while "card reader not required" argument?
Actually, I dont know either, since MMC/SD cards with built-in USB connectors already exist. See Here. I know microcenter around here has been carrying them for quiet some time now. Basically, you fold the card in half and the tab that sticks out has the contacts for a USB plug. Its not a full USB plug form-factor, just a card large enough to hold itself in place against the USB jack's contacts. Maybe they are making the interface the same so that there is only one "plugin" side, and it can determine if its being used as mim or USB. The only other plus would be that it can hold up to 2T, and starts at 8G, where todays MMC/SD cards top out around 8G.
Slashdot Mirror
I can think of some very similar products/etc, for example memcached:
http://www.danga.com/memcached/
You can have multiple memcached servers servicing multiple front ends (just ask wikipedia.org!)
Or just put an SLB in front of a bunch of web services boxen that connect to a NAS/SAN. The SLB distributes the requests across the boxen and tracks which request went where to keep sessions from breaking. Its all been in use for many years, and sounds about like their "One Click" patent:
1. combine widely used or obvious computer systems or "internets technology"
2. Patent this combination
3. ?
4. Profit!
Tm
The artist gets signed to the label for x number of albums. The band only makes a couple of good songs, so they either put one of each good song on two different albums or both on one and hope they can come up with more good songs for other albums later. The rest of the album they throw together whatever they can to pump out the album so they can meet their contract obligations. People buy (used to, at least..) the albums for the good song or two, for which they have to pay the full album price to get (again, not anymore), which makes more money for the labels (not the artist), which in turn writes more contracts based on number of albums since its more profitable that way...
And so the cycle continued until the MP3 came along, which made it much easier for people to get the one or two songs from the artist that are worth listening to, rather than pay the inflated price for > 80% crap. Now the labels are bitching because of this very reason, their big spinning wheel hit a big bump and got a hole knocked in it and isnt spinning so well anymore and they are yelling and blaming everyone in sight. People are more willing to download or buy single tracks online that take up only virtual space than collect more plastic coasters to stack on top of the rest of the empty CD cases. The labels are pissed because they can no longer pump albums out that are full of crap and expect them to sell well based on the one or two decent (if that) songs on them. Having the radios spew the good ones 10 times an hour until they are ingrained in everyone's head also doesnt help with sales of albums, because it only makes people want that song (if it doesnt drive them further away from it). Their wheel kept going straight and ran off road when the path turned and is breaking down because of it, yet they still refuse to change course.
Tm
ps: I know there are artists that can put together awesome albums out there still, but the newer "talents" the labels seem to be going after more and more these days are the pop-single one-hit-wonder type, in an attempt to make the quick buck. I would much rather buy an album by the likes of Pink Floyd, REM, STP or even Moby than try t piece one together from anything Ive heard on the radio of late.
...
FWIW, I know upgrading is easy with slack, as is all the other stuff, it typically just works like it should without any "Magic" application builders/configurers/packagemanagment stuff. I have my /etc saved, backed up in several places (and to tape), and all apps that for whatever reason like to stow their configs elsewhere have them moved into /etc and sym linked to where they are expected to be so I can just pull over that dir and be good for the most part. Data drives are completely separate, as they should be, including the user homes. But with this new hardware I have, I had a fresh install sitting there waiting on me to apply these old configs, make sure none of the settings require different formats or have been moved (my last upgrade, 8 -> 10 I thnk, several files changed a good bit and required a little tweaking). Since its fresh, might as well start over and enjoy the installation process. It always feels better anyway, knowing its fresh, and no cruft hanging around.
tm
And humid!
And folks who think W is doing a great job - the 30%+- of the population who think Bush is doing a great job? They're my neighbors here in Georgia! You know: the big SUV driving obese folks with the pristine "W '04 " bumper stickers.
Those robots better be running on oil! None of that pansy "alternative fuel" shit - but OIL!!
Great test for robots going into hostile climates!
Yeh, hot and humid yet it doesnt rain! Well not till last week, still 12" in drought.
OT I know, but I always find it funny that its usually those same SUV drivers with the Bush '04 stickers and the WWJD/Jesus Loves You stickers that are carrying only a driver, doing about 90+ on I75, and are weaving in and out of traffic flipping people off that honk at them.
Bleh, and off I go to play in that very traffic, to GaTech none-the-less to try to go swim, same facility thats hosting the robo cup. Actually, its on the floor directly over the pool (at the time it was built, just a few years ago, one of the largest suspended concrete structure in the world)!
Tm
tm
3 and they could be #1 in the world
And you can power 711 of them with one Mr Fusion!
Tm
As a matter of fact, they do... In a patent application! (And those are all supposed to be in a searchable public database.)
The rest of contract law is entirely concerned with the behavior of people...
...And interactions and deals with other companies. Case in point, this secret contract between the labels and RIAA. Other examples are secret contracts between manufaturers and their suppliers, ala Cocacola. They have secret contracts to keep people from finding out how much of what ingredient they order from who, all to help hide their secret formula to their fizzy drinks. Other business interests might be done under secret contracts as well to keep from disclosing strategic aliances, or keep the public from finding out about upcoming product releases and such that another company might find out about and beat them to the punch. Such contracts abound in the business world for many reasons, think NDA and how many of those get signed all the time, they are basically a secret contract of sorts or have terms in them declaring other contracts covered by it to be secret.
Tm
Tm
bleh, need more coffee, sarcasm detector not functioning yet...
Thats news to Sun and IBM...
Just because they arent as available for desktop machines doesnt mean they went away. Sun also just released their UltraSparc T1 chip about a year ago, which looks very promising for virtualization with as many cores as it has...
Tm
IBM has already beaten this....(3 > 2)
Tm
Another thing to think of, is that pole-vaulting poles have been made of composites for years. The first ones were bamboo, then aluminum, the fiberglass and more recently (cir. 1995 or so) carbon. If you have ever seen pole vaulting, you know why I bring it up, the poles bend almost to the point where their ends can touch, and are generally 12-20' long. I did this sport in highschool... what a thrill it was to have the pole throw you up in the air.... unless it breaks (shoulnt have jumped on an under-weighted and 3 year old pole!).
Tm
The most they will ever find is a nano sized cave where it traveled through the earth at near-light speed before going about its way after popping out through an ocean on the other side....
tm
RTFA or go read up on the X-prize cup. Yes, in the USA, and no, this is not the first time they have been launched, and no its not really going to the moon. New Mexico has the US's first private space port down near Whitesands, where Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic is supposedly going to be launching their commercial flight venture from. Other teams competing in this challenge have already been launching, with Armadillo Aerospace already completing the requirements without a problem (at last year's event they almost won, landing just off the pad a couple times, and flipping over). They should win hands down unless something major changes before this years competition gets underway. They have videos and details of this as well.
Tm
Humans could live on Mars as the terraforming process was ongoing, but they would need to be in enclosed colonies until the process was complete. Eventually, though, they'd be able to venture out into an Earth-like world.
I'm curious to see how the author of this article thinks the process could be sped up - the Discovery show said it would take thousands of years given current technology before the air would be both warm enough to live in and breathable for humans.
Ever read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars)? One of its central themes is the terraforming of Mars, and specifically includes the use of greenhouse gas factories, along with bio-engineering of plants and algea to seed the soil, with human colonists living there during the process. Quite the good read if you are into sci-fi, though it starts a bit stronger than it ends.
Tm
tm
I would be more concerned about the 128k upload than 768 down. I mean, you do want to be able to talk to the other party right? That being said, even 128k is enough for 2 POTs lines using standard compression (64k/DS0), though the VoIP packet overhead would probably force a higher compression to actually use 2 lines at the same time. It sounds nice and all, until you compare price/kbs against other countries and remind yourself again, that the US is still falling off the backend of the broadbandwagon. Its cheap, and ideal for people like my parents, who would only be downloading emails and the occasional video or picture page forwarded by me or other family members. The upstream is a bit weak compared to other offerings, but I wouldnt get this service if I were serious about gaming anyways (yes, you can play WoW over it, even over 56k modem, just not very well and if it gets into a complex scene, forget about it).
Tm
tm
When?
Real Soon!!!
th
T-gene crops are usually tied in with other genetic alterations as well. The idea is to prevent these other alterations from spreading to non-GE crops. Primary example, and shows how flawed this line of thought is, is Monsanto and its line of RoundUp resistant rapeseed/canola. The problem is that the plants still produce pollen and seeds, since the actual crop is seed, which requires pollen for them to be produced. Since its difficult (impossible) to prevent this pollen from blowing over into other fields, these crops tend to cross-pollinate with the crops in those fields, which might be non-GE crops. If the farmer of those fields also re-uses their seed from year to year, they will be pissed when their seeds dont sprout, and even more so when the company owning the patents comes and files a lawsuit claiming patent infringement or breach of license/contract (even if they never dealt with the company for seeds before). Its not a free market if a single company can claim damages from their own crop running amok in other farmers' fields.
tm
Actually, he won, partially, and is firing back with another case due in 2008.
Tm
But if you happen to be a farmer that likes to reuse your own seeds, and it happens that your neighbor uses a T-gene crop, and they cross-pollinate with your plants, your seeds can inherit the T-gene and next years seeds are no longer any good. The gene prevents germination, it doesnt stop pollination or production of seeds. The same issues with other genetic-modified crops have come up already and made their way through court, specifically the Monsanto RoundUp resistant rape-seed/canola plants.
Tm
Wtf? If my external drive ceased to work, and it did so on anything I plugged it into across multiple other OSs, I would blame the drive, not the OS. This guy is grasping for reasons to blame OS X for stuff and for ways to give it a bad review. Typical FUD: my drive died, while using OS X, so Im cautious about using any drives with it cause it obviously kills drives!! heh. His other complaints are just as laughable, blaming OS X for making people buy hardware? Name the last Windows version that did not require a Major upgrade in hardware over the previous just to run? Name an OS that wont go faster without buying more ram or faster processors? It like saying "my car wont accelerate any faster unless I replace the engine with a bigger one, so I must be a crappy driver." And the comment on lack of quality free software, how many quality free aps can you get for windows? Almost anything from the Linux/Open Source/*nix world will compile on OS X, there's even this project called Mac Ports that makes bringing normal FOSS stuff into the native OS X environment easier. Gimp is a prime example. If you look around, there is plenty. This guy is just spewing FUD, looking to complain about everything, riding the thought that to get better viewer ship for his articles he has to be negative, just like the major TV news is these days.
Blah
Tm
...several Years ago...Blah
Tm
The USB interface is a nice feature, but a USB nub is pretty clunky, and is, in and of itself, bigger than competing media cards. XD and microSD are both smaller than a USB connector. Every format is flatter (CF, XD, SD, MMC, MemoryStick). How is this going to be better than any of those? If it doesn't have a standard USB nub, then is it going to need an adaptor, therefore defeating the while "card reader not required" argument?
Actually, I dont know either, since MMC/SD cards with built-in USB connectors already exist. See Here. I know microcenter around here has been carrying them for quiet some time now. Basically, you fold the card in half and the tab that sticks out has the contacts for a USB plug. Its not a full USB plug form-factor, just a card large enough to hold itself in place against the USB jack's contacts. Maybe they are making the interface the same so that there is only one "plugin" side, and it can determine if its being used as mim or USB. The only other plus would be that it can hold up to 2T, and starts at 8G, where todays MMC/SD cards top out around 8G.
Tm