Hmmm... people seem to have liked the other post, so I'll offer some other (potential) practical applications for the sound server. Just my 2 cents...
1. CAVE environments. Anybody who's worked in an X11 CAVE environment knows that X can handle video cube arangements. Maybe not the most elegent way to run a cave, but it's do-able. X-sound-server can then provide 3D sound support to cave applications.
2. PACS environments (terminal services). Do you have a *nix based picture archiving and communication system (PACS)? For example: a hospital or library kiosk system. Now, your PACS is an audio environment as well.
3. Video Jockeying (VJ). If you're running a linux based VJ operation at a nightclub or dance hall, audio support is now available via X. You can now synchronize your video panels and speakers with the same daemon... Check out JMAX for more information...
4. Voice-over-IP kludge. As microphones are basically just speakers operating in reverse, theoretically, the X-sound-server should support microphones at some level... Hack your X11 system to support XVOIP!
Virtual Environments - Network Monitors
on
A Sound Server For X
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Lots of neat applications, actually. One of my favorites is a network monitoring room... For instance: network monitoring apps sample your network traffic once a second... while bandwidth and processor utilization of your servers is within preset values, an audio file of a creek is played over your X-enabled speaker system. When congestion occurs, you here a new audio file played (which is, of course, mixed into the original creek audio-file) of a herd of cows drinking water, or something... When a router or server goes down, an alarm is triggered, and a flock of crows start caw-ing; or an elephant trumpets, or whatever...
The point is, when everything is going fine, the audio environment of your network control room sounds like a peacefull woodland setting, or something. When something goes wrong, you hear the animals going crazy. It's a really, really great way to monitor a large network, without being glued to a network monitor all the time.
Typically, an X-server would alert you to each of these above mentioned alerts and statistics by displaying a video-file of some sort, which is displayed on your video monitor (CRT, LCD). With an X-sound-server, you can pipe the same alerts and statistics to audio-files which are 'displayed' on your sound monitors (speakers).
sounds like somebody I heard who once said that 64k of memory would be enough memory for any application a person would ever want to use...
for the record, there are a lot of people in the world of biology, radiology, and bioinformatics who would love to have a 128 or 256 or 1024 bit computer. applications like nMRI could then address the individual hydrogen atoms they excite... astronomers could address all of the stars, planets, and meteorites in the sky... historians could address all of the people who have lived in the past and will live in the future... etc. etc. lots of interesting, non-gaming applications become possible with the advent of high-bit processors... (just going to show that Isaac Asimov was way ahead of his time...)
Good analogy... especially with the x-y axis as a measurement of the relationship between linux and windows. Now, expand the game of Go into the third dimension, with 19 levels of 19x19 square GO boards. (19^3 instead of 19^2). Perhaps this new stone is being played in the opposite corner from linux and windows, which is currently mostly vacant, and the rest of the world will ignore it until it reaches version 1.0...
This question was asked elsewhere on this post... VMS is optimised, at the very least, for fourier wave analysis... Having a 64 bit processor could make MRI scans faster and potentially have higher resolutions, as the data packets wouldn't need to be 'thunked'.
We want VMS on new hardware, so that radiologists can more quickly and more accurately diagnose things like cancers and musculo-skeletal trauma.
New MRI scanners run on VMS these days... (although there is a push to migrate to Windows, because all the PACS are Windows... a processess in which this Itanium port is probably going to be a stepping stone...)
Well, I just happened to have these links lying around, as I work on VMS/VAX systems at work (Gyroscan Intera system). These links are sort of the OpenVMS equivalent of gnu.org, gnome.org, redhat.com, and so forth...
It means something important to anybody who ever has to receive a CAT scan or a nMRI scan... VMS/VAX systems run nMRI and CAT scanners... They use 64 bit architecture during Fourier analysis...
99.99999999999999% of software today does NOT run on it
probably because 99% of software today is used for text and graphics processing; not for mission critical apps. that's kind of like saying that 99% of all driving accidents happen within 25 miles of home... well, geeze, 99% of all driving period occurs within 25 miles of home...
performance difference in mhz between 32 bit and 64 bit processors (especially in the north bridge) makes any performance gained by using 64 bit architecture negligible
I disagree with you. The difference between being able to handle 2^32 and 2^64 is worlds apart in performance. I suggest that you compare 16 bit computers, which didn't support true-color, full motion multimedia, and compare to 32 bit computers. They both support text editing; however, one supports WYSIWYG better than the other...
FYI, my day job involves running MRI scans on a VMS/VAX Gyroscan Intera workstation... This 64 bit architecture is the hottest stuff around, for somebody who works with a VMS/VAX workstation... here's why: MRI scanners work just like any other printer/scanner device, in terms of device drivers, and general operation. The difficulty is, because MRI looks at differential angular momentum of hydrogen atoms to obtain it's pictures, it's got to calculate a Fourier wave analysis on each atom it vibrates. Being able to run an algorithm with 64 bits means less data manipulation, higher resolution, faster scan times, and increased diagnostic imaging power to the medical doctors.
Anyhow, for those interested, there currently seems to be a big migration from VMS/VAX/Alpha solutions to Windows/Intel compatibility (for obvious reasons). Philips has introduced an InteraNT product into their Intera Gyroscan line, which runs the MRI scanner on a Windows NT platform, instead of the traditional VMS/VAX platform which they've been using for some time...
As usual, great tool for the server companies, crap for everyone else in the world.
This is slashdot... they cover stuff which is great for server companies, hospital radiology departments, nuclear power facilities, astronautical engineering groups, etc. etc. That's why we love it...
Does anybody know if they are using factor VIII protein as their clotting agent? Also, how many dalmations were used in testing this agent before it was released, hmmm?
Check out this article for more info on blood clotting protein research in Seattle.
It seems to me that this argument basically admits what the music industry is getting at: that Kazaa enables and almost condones the illegal music trade. I'm speaking straightly from a legal perspective.
You are also speaking from a United States legal perspective. From a non-US perspective, what gives the US the right to dictate world-wide commercial and legal jurisdiction? I know that a lot of people believe that might-makes-right (considering the fact that we can nuke anybody we don't like)... but I'm not sure that I believe nukes justify the superiority of US legal code over UN legal code or another country's legal code. But, I'm not a laywer either... Something seems fishy about the US practice of global-superpower-throws-weight-around-all-the-tim e-to-obtain-more-commercial-power to me...
...but i don't see how it's physically possible. It sounds like he's proposing that we re-structure programming languages or at least the fundamentals of programming in the languages we do know (which might as well mean creating a new language).
Hmmm. That's kind of like asking how it's possible for two three dimensional objects to occupy the same place is space. The answer, of course, is to displace those objects along the time vector. Similarly, I think that the author is trying to urge coding paradigms onto a new and different vector basis. This, of course, happens all the time, and people are always indignant when their domain of study's basis of authority is undermined by someone else's work.
Am i stupid or something? He seems to be drawing two, completely unrelated things together. Our computers, our CPUs, our ICs, at the end of the day they're just a bundle of very, very tiny on/off switches - pure binary logic. When we develop code for this environment, we have to develop according to those binary rules.
No, not stupid. Caught up in the paradigm of binary opposition, perhaps. Personal computers produced for mass consumption are bundles of very, very tiny on/off switches. Research computers often utilize quadratic switches (biocomputing) and n-switches (optical and quantum computing). A biocomputer, for example, may run well over a billion solutions to a problem, simultaneously, utilizing A,C,G,T switches; the trade-off for breaking the on/off paradigm, however, is that you can only run this particular biocomputer once, and then it's no longer a biocomputer.
Maybe i'm missing his point, but i just don't understand how you can redefine programming, which is by definition a means of communication with a predictable binary system to mean inputting some kind of "digitized" real-world pattern.
The process works like this: You (PersonA) can redefine programming or whatever else you want (religion, science, government, etc. etc.) by gather at least one other person (PersonB) to you, and declaring between the two of you, 'We're going to redefine this term F(x) to now mean F(y).' Alternatively, you can say, 'We're going to redefine this term F(x) to now mean G(x).' Between PersonA and PersonB, this term is now redefined.
After that, it's all a matter of gathering other people into your circle or domain of practice, and getting other people to believe in your ideas. If you, as PersonA, never get a PersonB, then you a lone crackpot without any supporters. If you, as PersonA, gather a million people around you and your believes, you are either L Ron Hubbard or Bill Gates.
And lastly, programming for biocomputers often involves communication with a predictable quadratic (i.e. genetic) system. It just goes to show that the term 'programming' is pigeon-holed by the computer scientists to mean a particular thing in their field of study.
Seriously, has there ever been a need to write a program of 10 million lines?
Yeah. A 10 million line application is, at a minimum, 80 Mbytes I believe. Therefore, MS Office is approaching 10 million lines.
M$ products aside, there are lots of specialized applications which exist in industry that are millions of lines long. Take, for instance, the control program for an airport or a nuclear power plant. In such complexes, the blueprints, system diagrams, and physics are typically all coded into the control program. Modern nuclear power plants have VR CAVES, where robots can be controlled from, and one can do a virtual walk-through of the plant, without actually having to go near the reactor or storage containers. These kinds of programs are millions of lines long, and are critical to the operation of both the plant and our society.
The oil, auto, and medical industries are other areas which have their own 10 million line code applications.
Now, I agree with you on the philosophy of modularity. However, the fact of the matter is that science, technology, and coding doesn't work that well. When people are faced with a new problem, they kludge together solutions from previous problems until they get an octogonal or dodecagonal shaped peg which they force into the circular hole with a rubber hammer. After kludging that together, they go get some putty and cement over the hole. That's typically how 10 million line apps get developed.
Now, the extent to which the pieces that you're building are called "programs," or whether the whole system is called "a program" is questionable.
Agreed. However, I think that they may really be talking about 10 million line programs, however. Mainframes ship with 50 to 100 GB of RAM nowdays. A mainframe with 80GB of RAM can handle a 10 million line app with 1000 characters per line. I don't know about you, but I've never seen an app with 1000 characters per line...
I mean, I've worked on programs of 10 million bytes, and they've seemed to work okay. It would surprise me if 10 million lines is out of my reach using the methods that I'm familiar with.
Is it though? Scalability is a tricky issue. Between 10M bytes and 10M lines, there could be all sorts of threshold points, critical mass points, boundary layers, domain changes, and so forth. For instance, at 10M lines of code, code may suddenly require to by multithreaded or run on multiple processors; which is a serious issue that many smaller programs never need to take into account for.
Are we supposed to feel guilty because of how expensive we or our tools are in terms of environmental impact?
Guilty, no. Responsible, yes. There are a bunch of non-human, low-intelligence animals on this planet which don't have the capabilities of protecting themselves from us. Free exchange of information is nobel; being responsible caretakers and guardians of the environment is also nobel.
Do you think an environmental impact study was done before the Mona Lisa was painted?
Yep. 2000 years ago, the Romans had environmental impact studies.
Pliny reports on ecological disasters and effects of pollution from refining of metals in his Natural History (check books 8, 11, 19, & 33).
Strabo reports on the effects of clearcutting forests for fuel and on pollution from refining in his Geography. (14.6.5; 3.2.8)
Xenophon reports on pollution from refining of silver in Memorabilia. (3.6.12)
Lastly, Plato talks about the deforestation of Greece in Critias. (111b-c)
I like what you have to say. Good points all. Some comments and food for thought:
The key is not to be better than everyone else, (the PS2 is currently the slowest console available), but to be so much better that all of the developers flock to your system and produce must-have games.
Agreed. There is a contrapositive however (I think the syllogism is contrapositive... it's been awhile since I had a formal logic class). Anyhow, design the best system for the must-have games which the developers already flock too. Case in point, Quake, Unreal, et al. As far as I can tell, the market is just waiting for an optimized console box designed to take advantage of the glut of 3D first-person shooters. The developers are already there. The games are already developed. But the console has got to nail that one particular market. If they can actually get the 3D first-person shooter market, they win. Everything else is freebees. (i.e. the 32k+ other titles in existence which run on PCs, and only have a couple points of market share next to the big 3D titles.)
On the other hand, by going with broadband, they have limited themselves to selling a crippled, specialized PC to people who are guaranteed to already have a full-fledged PC.
Agreed. On the other hand, there are a lot of electronic devices which have embedded operating systems and are just crippled, specialized PCs. It's how one makes just about any video game console or 'smart appliance'. Anyhow, how many of those full-fledged PCs are dedicated to gaming? How many are shared by the family? How many have a 17" monitor, when there is a 40" big screen TV in the living room? Would you rather play Quake or Unreal on the 17" monitor and computer speakers, or the family's home theater system? I suspect that this console is being marketed to families which have Mom and Dad cruising the internet (checking the stock market, buying groceries, et al), and the kids want to make the home theater system into the video gaming room.
Now then, back to broadband. Have you considered the LAN market? Especially in context of Quake, Unreal, et al?
It seems to me that all they need to do is make a crippled, specialized PC, that was optimized for Quake and Unreal, and had device drivers for televisions (read: home theater systems) and it would sell like hot cakes. You don't have to worry about building the dedicated gaming machine... someone else has already done it for you. Which is the entire point of this business venture, I suspect.
I didn't say that I followed it, or believed in what it says. I just mentioned that a person may want to put it on their reading list. =)
On the note of Dianetics, I would also include the Quaran, The Book of Mormon, The Bible (Parts I and II), the Odyssey, the Illiad, the I Ching, and Emile Durkheim's Elementary forms of Religious Life.
But the reading list asked for science fiction and fantasy books, not texts regarding world religions.;)
Thanks for the corrections! I didn't know that Crossroads of Twilight was released! I had totally lost track of it's release date.
As for your question... yes. I grew up in an underground house, located in rural Indiana, for ten years. That gives a person plenty of time to read. And no, it wasn't like the fallout shelter in Blast from the Past. It was more of a Frank Lloyd Wright style underground house.
And, no, I'm really, really not kidding. Ask me any questions about growing up in a hole in a ground (i.e. underground house), and I'll be more than glad to answer them.
Jordan, Robert Wheel of Time Series
Books: Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadows Rising, The Fires of Heaven, Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords
Herbert, Frank The Dune Series
Books: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emporer of Dune, Heritics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune, Dune: House Atraides, Dune: House Harkonen, Dune: House Coronin
Gaiman, Neil The Sandman Series
Preludes and Nocturnes, The Dolls House, Dream Country, Seasons of Mist, A Game of You, Brief Lives, Fables and Reflection, World's End, The Kindly Ones, The Wake
Rice, Anne The Vampire Chronicles
Books: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, The Vampire Armand, Merrick, Blood & Gold, Blackwood Farm
King, Stephen The Dark Tower Series
Books: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass
Rollings, JK Harry Potter Series
Books: Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Pheonix
Dick, Philip
Books: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Man in the High Castle, The Dark Haired Girl, Confessions of a Crap Artist, Divine Invasion, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Galactic Pot-Healer, The Game-Players of Titan, Martian Time-Slip, A Maze of Death, Radio Free Albemuth, A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, We Can Build You, The World Jones Made
OLDER / HARDCORE
Gibson, William
Books: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Brooks, Terry The Shannara Series
Books: The Sword of Shannara, The Elfstones of Shannara, The Wishsong of Shannara, The Scions of Shannara, The Druid of Shannara, The Elf Queen of Shannara, The Talismans of Shannara The Landover Series
Books: Magic Kingdom For Sale -- Sold! The Black Unicorn, Wizard At Large, The Tangle Box, Witches' Brew
Tolkein, J.R.R.
Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales
Hubbard, L. Ron The Mission: Earth Series
Books: The Invaders Plan, Black Genesis, The Enemy Within, An Alien Affair, Fortune Of Fear, Death Quest, Voyage Of Vengeance, Disaster, Villainy Victorious, The Doomed Planet Also: Battlefield Earth, Dianetics
Asimov, Isaac The Foundation Series
1600+ other books and articles.
Wells, H.G.
The Time Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Monroe, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
Verne, Jules
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in 80 Days
OTHER
White Wolf Publishers
Mage: The Ascension, Vampire: The Masquarade, Wraith: The Oblivion, Werewolf: The Apacolypse, Hunter: The Reckoning
(I figure that if you're reading DragonLance, that you're also probably playing some D&D or AD&D. If so, you may want to consider switching from TSR to WhiteWolf. I only suggest this because you've asked slashdot for some new reading.)
Ah, the Internet of the 1970s! Takes me back to the cyberpunk heyday of writers like Gibson and Stephenson.
Hughes is like some weird combination between the cowboy hackers of Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the dude who was pushing the hive mind project in Cryptonomicon.
Any thoughts? Do you think that Gibson or Stephenson ran across Col. Dave Hughes, USA, Ret., in their research? Think the Cowboy Curser inspired any personalities in Cryptonomicon or SnowCrash? Neuromancer? Count Zero? Mona Lisa Overdrive?
Is there something magic about the Creator3D cards that I don't know about?
Yeah, the built in stereo-video coprocessor thingy. The Creator3D pushes multiplexed left/right signals to a dedicated stereo-port, for your VR goggles.
You got the specs right, but what the online specs may not mention is that the Creator3D actually pushes that 1280x1024 (x32bit color) at a blazing 116hz, for separation into 58hz Left and 58hz Right signals. That means it has just enough juice to handle true-color, photographic quality stereo VR applications. Great for CAVE applications.
Of course, one has to have an autostereoscopic monitor or stereo goggles / stereo projector system. That, in turn, can set a department or a person back from anywhere between $2,000 to $50,000 depending on what kind of equipment you want.
As I understand, most of the hacks to get GeForce and nForce cards to support true stereo 3D require top/bottom video spliting, which just doesn't work as well. Although I havn't used one of them GeForce cards in some time, so maybe they've got a stereo-port on them now-days. I'd be a bit surprised, as it's not a home consumer kind of toy, really. As I recall, the Creator3D series runs somewhere around two thousand dollars for that built in multiplexed stereo adapter and coprocessor thingy (but I could be way off, on that). Goggles are an extra $800 each.
But as to your original question: Yeah. Big, big magic with a Creator3D card. Slickist video card I've ever seen.
They know they got the same answer. But how do you use this to send a message from A to C?
By having a common operating system between them. Nuclear submarines and naval command bases use a system which is very similar.
Imagine two space ships with common operating systems. They both have a folder with a bunch of files. These files are systematically named, according to a Morse-code, binary-code, or whatever.
Instead of just two entangled photons being sent out, you send out a Morse-code of entangled photons. Person C and A measure the polarizations simultaneously, far apart. They know they got the same answer. For example, the answer is "3". Or "R". Or "SOS".
They then go to their operating system, and check the related file, and find that they need to move their spaceship to the Whatever Quadrant, in the Whichever Sector, based on the results of the message.
It's basically utilizing a virtual network between persons A and C.
Information has passed from one person to the other, via the operating system, rather than the message itself. Basically, it's a quantum tunneling affect, via a virtual private network. The quantum tunneling is obtained via the use of the parity of two quantum particles. At best, as I understand it, data can be transfered/obtained/mined up to twice the speed of light, utilizing this method. Experiments with quantum entanglement and quantum 'teleportation' verify this.
There is also the more general concept of using physical laws of the universe as a de-facto operating system. Sending fibinachi sequences and whatnot, encoded via photon packets, to the far reaches of space, in an attempt to say, 'We are here.' The really weird result, as I understand it, is that given the right situations, Alien Race A over there might wind up finding out about Alien Race C over yonder, with Earth in the middle.
But back to the topic at hand. I'm not trying to suggest that we can send energy or matter at faster-then-light speeds. I'm talking about data. Not energy. Not matter. Data. And as far as I can figure, data is different than energy and matter. Also, I'm not talking about macroscopic states, or relativistic frames of reference. I'm talking about quantum particles, quantum tunneling, quantum entanglement, and virtual private networks.
For the record, I also think that whenever I go see a new movie at the theaters, the moment I see the movie, data has been transfered amongst myself and all the other people who have seen that movie. That's not to say that information is necessarily usefull or important. But, I can walk up to somebody, and ask 'Did you see such and such movie?' and we can have a conversation without needing to actually go see the movie again. We have a virtual private network between us, based on a shared experience of watching an array of photons, which allows us to communicate about things without having exchanged prior packets of information. Similar to the exchange of information which we are currently doing on Slashdot.
I remember seeing some concept demos for nanotech that involved pooring a bunch of nanotech goop onto the ground, sticking some computer control device, shaped like a stake, into the ground, and the nanogoop proceeded to assemble weapons from the raw elements in the ground. I think that Cid Meier's Alpha Centuari demoed a similar concept.
I've also read some reports about nano-systems which are being designed for survelliance and information gathering. The idea is that they are aerosol based and act as tiny mirrors floating in the air. They have a tiny control device which collects light rays bounced from the nanoparticles, and which reassembles the light rays into a video stream, which is then transmitted to a survelliance team.
Aldus Huxley should be rolling over in his grave with the advent of such technology.
From an economist's or business person's perspective, that's one hell of an achievement. As near as I can figure, just about everybody in 1st world nations wear shoes. That means they've developed a new product which is marketable to every person on the planet who wears a pair of shoes.
Figure $5/bottle. Figure 1 billion customers. You do the math.
I have to agree that all of those applications will become your next best friend, if you're supporting a bunch of workstations (50+). I would also include Ghost and Altiris LabExpert to the list, as two other very good products. These two products may be slightly better for non-profit company, however, as they generally cost less money.
Most of them do. They tend to be more file system dependent than OS dependent. Basically, they all just write 1s and 0s to a hard disk. The question is whether they have the right algorithm to write the 1s and 0s so that the OS can read it correctly.
That, and the fact that most of them can actually handle an entire OS image.
Of course, some solutions work better than others...
Ah, I used to do something similar at the Department of Networking Services & Information Technologies, at the University of Chicago, were I used to work. Setup up webkiosks and the like for the campus.
Your probably already know this, but I'll point out the obvious:
1. Set up a Ghost server for yourself. Maybe even look at a copy of Alteris LabExpert.
2. Backup often.
3. Set yourself a timeline with mile markers. Give yourself a few months, so you don't pull out your hair or have a mental break down. Plan a reasonable project timeline, such as 3 months.
4. Set up testing workstations. Get all of your networking issues out of the way before you start on Mozilla. TCP/IP or other protocol stacks should already be installed. All device drivers should already be installed.
5. Take the list which you've already made, and make the changes to the box. When you get the change to work, backup the box with your image server. Keep detailed notes of what you've just accomplished.
6. Repeat step 5 until all items are completed.
7. When step 6 is completed, backup the workstation, diff the image if needed, and push it onto workstations of similar hardware configuration. Either package the image as an application (tar, zip), an application image (ZenWorks, Active Directory resource, Ghost, etc), or an operating system image (SMS, Alteris, Ghost).
Once you get into the groove of the project, it'll go quickly.
Sorry for stating the obvious, but you're talking about a fairly complex network engineering task. Don't expect it to happen next week or even next month. Just make sure you have an imaging server and that you take good notes, and the project will go fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... people seem to have liked the other post, so I'll offer some other (potential) practical applications for the sound server. Just my 2 cents...
1. CAVE environments. Anybody who's worked in an X11 CAVE environment knows that X can handle video cube arangements. Maybe not the most elegent way to run a cave, but it's do-able. X-sound-server can then provide 3D sound support to cave applications.
2. PACS environments (terminal services). Do you have a *nix based picture archiving and communication system (PACS)? For example: a hospital or library kiosk system. Now, your PACS is an audio environment as well.
3. Video Jockeying (VJ). If you're running a linux based VJ operation at a nightclub or dance hall, audio support is now available via X. You can now synchronize your video panels and speakers with the same daemon... Check out JMAX for more information...
4. Voice-over-IP kludge. As microphones are basically just speakers operating in reverse, theoretically, the X-sound-server should support microphones at some level... Hack your X11 system to support XVOIP!
Lots of neat applications, actually. One of my favorites is a network monitoring room... For instance: network monitoring apps sample your network traffic once a second... while bandwidth and processor utilization of your servers is within preset values, an audio file of a creek is played over your X-enabled speaker system. When congestion occurs, you here a new audio file played (which is, of course, mixed into the original creek audio-file) of a herd of cows drinking water, or something... When a router or server goes down, an alarm is triggered, and a flock of crows start caw-ing; or an elephant trumpets, or whatever...
The point is, when everything is going fine, the audio environment of your network control room sounds like a peacefull woodland setting, or something. When something goes wrong, you hear the animals going crazy. It's a really, really great way to monitor a large network, without being glued to a network monitor all the time.
Typically, an X-server would alert you to each of these above mentioned alerts and statistics by displaying a video-file of some sort, which is displayed on your video monitor (CRT, LCD). With an X-sound-server, you can pipe the same alerts and statistics to audio-files which are 'displayed' on your sound monitors (speakers).
sounds like somebody I heard who once said that 64k of memory would be enough memory for any application a person would ever want to use...
for the record, there are a lot of people in the world of biology, radiology, and bioinformatics who would love to have a 128 or 256 or 1024 bit computer. applications like nMRI could then address the individual hydrogen atoms they excite... astronomers could address all of the stars, planets, and meteorites in the sky... historians could address all of the people who have lived in the past and will live in the future... etc. etc. lots of interesting, non-gaming applications become possible with the advent of high-bit processors... (just going to show that Isaac Asimov was way ahead of his time...)
Good analogy... especially with the x-y axis as a measurement of the relationship between linux and windows. Now, expand the game of Go into the third dimension, with 19 levels of 19x19 square GO boards. (19^3 instead of 19^2). Perhaps this new stone is being played in the opposite corner from linux and windows, which is currently mostly vacant, and the rest of the world will ignore it until it reaches version 1.0...
Orthogonality, folks... use it; love it...
This question was asked elsewhere on this post... VMS is optimised, at the very least, for fourier wave analysis... Having a 64 bit processor could make MRI scans faster and potentially have higher resolutions, as the data packets wouldn't need to be 'thunked'.
We want VMS on new hardware, so that radiologists can more quickly and more accurately diagnose things like cancers and musculo-skeletal trauma.
New MRI scanners run on VMS these days... (although there is a push to migrate to Windows, because all the PACS are Windows... a processess in which this Itanium port is probably going to be a stepping stone...)
Well, I just happened to have these links lying around, as I work on VMS/VAX systems at work (Gyroscan Intera system). These links are sort of the OpenVMS equivalent of gnu.org, gnome.org, redhat.com, and so forth...
n vms_roadmaps.htm
Core OpenVMS
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/
OpenVMS Future Release Contents, Schedules
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/roadmap/ope
OpenVMS and Core Layered Product Documentation
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/doc/
http://www.openvms.compaq.com:8000/
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/commercial/
Core OpenVMS Support Search Engine URLs, FTP Patch Area http://askq.compaq.com/
http://ftp.digital.com.au/pub/ecoinfo/
ftp://ftp.service.digital.com/public/vms/vax/...
ftp://ftp.service.digital.com/public/vms/axp/...
The OpenVMS Freeware
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/freeware/
Encompas
http://www.encompassus.org/
Tech Help OpenVMS
http://askq.compaq.com/
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/wizard/
ftp://ftp.service.digital.com/public/vms/vax/...
I must disagree with you.
64 bit does not mean a thing.
It means something important to anybody who ever has to receive a CAT scan or a nMRI scan... VMS/VAX systems run nMRI and CAT scanners... They use 64 bit architecture during Fourier analysis...
99.99999999999999% of software today does NOT run on it
probably because 99% of software today is used for text and graphics processing; not for mission critical apps. that's kind of like saying that 99% of all driving accidents happen within 25 miles of home... well, geeze, 99% of all driving period occurs within 25 miles of home...
performance difference in mhz between 32 bit and 64 bit processors (especially in the north bridge) makes any performance gained by using 64 bit architecture negligible
I disagree with you. The difference between being able to handle 2^32 and 2^64 is worlds apart in performance. I suggest that you compare 16 bit computers, which didn't support true-color, full motion multimedia, and compare to 32 bit computers. They both support text editing; however, one supports WYSIWYG better than the other...
FYI, my day job involves running MRI scans on a VMS/VAX Gyroscan Intera workstation... This 64 bit architecture is the hottest stuff around, for somebody who works with a VMS/VAX workstation... here's why: MRI scanners work just like any other printer/scanner device, in terms of device drivers, and general operation. The difficulty is, because MRI looks at differential angular momentum of hydrogen atoms to obtain it's pictures, it's got to calculate a Fourier wave analysis on each atom it vibrates. Being able to run an algorithm with 64 bits means less data manipulation, higher resolution, faster scan times, and increased diagnostic imaging power to the medical doctors.
Anyhow, for those interested, there currently seems to be a big migration from VMS/VAX/Alpha solutions to Windows/Intel compatibility (for obvious reasons). Philips has introduced an InteraNT product into their Intera Gyroscan line, which runs the MRI scanner on a Windows NT platform, instead of the traditional VMS/VAX platform which they've been using for some time...
As usual, great tool for the server companies, crap for everyone else in the world.
This is slashdot... they cover stuff which is great for server companies, hospital radiology departments, nuclear power facilities, astronautical engineering groups, etc. etc. That's why we love it...
Does anybody know if they are using factor VIII protein as their clotting agent? Also, how many dalmations were used in testing this agent before it was released, hmmm?
Check out this article for more info on blood clotting protein research in Seattle.
It seems to me that this argument basically admits what the music industry is getting at: that Kazaa enables and almost condones the illegal music trade. I'm speaking straightly from a legal perspective.
m e-to-obtain-more-commercial-power to me...
You are also speaking from a United States legal perspective. From a non-US perspective, what gives the US the right to dictate world-wide commercial and legal jurisdiction? I know that a lot of people believe that might-makes-right (considering the fact that we can nuke anybody we don't like)... but I'm not sure that I believe nukes justify the superiority of US legal code over UN legal code or another country's legal code. But, I'm not a laywer either... Something seems fishy about the US practice of global-superpower-throws-weight-around-all-the-ti
...but i don't see how it's physically possible. It sounds like he's proposing that we re-structure programming languages or at least the fundamentals of programming in the languages we do know (which might as well mean creating a new language).
Hmmm. That's kind of like asking how it's possible for two three dimensional objects to occupy the same place is space. The answer, of course, is to displace those objects along the time vector. Similarly, I think that the author is trying to urge coding paradigms onto a new and different vector basis. This, of course, happens all the time, and people are always indignant when their domain of study's basis of authority is undermined by someone else's work.
Am i stupid or something? He seems to be drawing two, completely unrelated things together. Our computers, our CPUs, our ICs, at the end of the day they're just a bundle of very, very tiny on/off switches - pure binary logic. When we develop code for this environment, we have to develop according to those binary rules.
No, not stupid. Caught up in the paradigm of binary opposition, perhaps. Personal computers produced for mass consumption are bundles of very, very tiny on/off switches. Research computers often utilize quadratic switches (biocomputing) and n-switches (optical and quantum computing). A biocomputer, for example, may run well over a billion solutions to a problem, simultaneously, utilizing A,C,G,T switches; the trade-off for breaking the on/off paradigm, however, is that you can only run this particular biocomputer once, and then it's no longer a biocomputer.
Maybe i'm missing his point, but i just don't understand how you can redefine programming, which is by definition a means of communication with a predictable binary system to mean inputting some kind of "digitized" real-world pattern.
The process works like this: You (PersonA) can redefine programming or whatever else you want (religion, science, government, etc. etc.) by gather at least one other person (PersonB) to you, and declaring between the two of you, 'We're going to redefine this term F(x) to now mean F(y).' Alternatively, you can say, 'We're going to redefine this term F(x) to now mean G(x).' Between PersonA and PersonB, this term is now redefined.
After that, it's all a matter of gathering other people into your circle or domain of practice, and getting other people to believe in your ideas. If you, as PersonA, never get a PersonB, then you a lone crackpot without any supporters. If you, as PersonA, gather a million people around you and your believes, you are either L Ron Hubbard or Bill Gates.
And lastly, programming for biocomputers often involves communication with a predictable quadratic (i.e. genetic) system. It just goes to show that the term 'programming' is pigeon-holed by the computer scientists to mean a particular thing in their field of study.
Good points all. Here's my 2cents:
Seriously, has there ever been a need to write a program of 10 million lines?
Yeah. A 10 million line application is, at a minimum, 80 Mbytes I believe. Therefore, MS Office is approaching 10 million lines.
M$ products aside, there are lots of specialized applications which exist in industry that are millions of lines long. Take, for instance, the control program for an airport or a nuclear power plant. In such complexes, the blueprints, system diagrams, and physics are typically all coded into the control program. Modern nuclear power plants have VR CAVES, where robots can be controlled from, and one can do a virtual walk-through of the plant, without actually having to go near the reactor or storage containers. These kinds of programs are millions of lines long, and are critical to the operation of both the plant and our society.
The oil, auto, and medical industries are other areas which have their own 10 million line code applications.
Now, I agree with you on the philosophy of modularity. However, the fact of the matter is that science, technology, and coding doesn't work that well. When people are faced with a new problem, they kludge together solutions from previous problems until they get an octogonal or dodecagonal shaped peg which they force into the circular hole with a rubber hammer. After kludging that together, they go get some putty and cement over the hole. That's typically how 10 million line apps get developed.
Now, the extent to which the pieces that you're building are called "programs," or whether the whole system is called "a program" is questionable.
Agreed. However, I think that they may really be talking about 10 million line programs, however. Mainframes ship with 50 to 100 GB of RAM nowdays. A mainframe with 80GB of RAM can handle a 10 million line app with 1000 characters per line. I don't know about you, but I've never seen an app with 1000 characters per line...
I mean, I've worked on programs of 10 million bytes, and they've seemed to work okay. It would surprise me if 10 million lines is out of my reach using the methods that I'm familiar with.
Is it though? Scalability is a tricky issue. Between 10M bytes and 10M lines, there could be all sorts of threshold points, critical mass points, boundary layers, domain changes, and so forth. For instance, at 10M lines of code, code may suddenly require to by multithreaded or run on multiple processors; which is a serious issue that many smaller programs never need to take into account for.
Are we supposed to feel guilty because of how expensive we or our tools are in terms of environmental impact?
Guilty, no. Responsible, yes. There are a bunch of non-human, low-intelligence animals on this planet which don't have the capabilities of protecting themselves from us. Free exchange of information is nobel; being responsible caretakers and guardians of the environment is also nobel.
Do you think an environmental impact study was done before the Mona Lisa was painted?
Yep. 2000 years ago, the Romans had environmental impact studies.
Pliny reports on ecological disasters and effects of pollution from refining of metals in his Natural History (check books 8, 11, 19, & 33).
Strabo reports on the effects of clearcutting forests for fuel and on pollution from refining in his Geography. (14.6.5; 3.2.8)
Xenophon reports on pollution from refining of silver in Memorabilia. (3.6.12)
Lastly, Plato talks about the deforestation of Greece in Critias. (111b-c)
I like what you have to say. Good points all. Some comments and food for thought:
The key is not to be better than everyone else, (the PS2 is currently the slowest console available), but to be so much better that all of the developers flock to your system and produce must-have games.
Agreed. There is a contrapositive however (I think the syllogism is contrapositive... it's been awhile since I had a formal logic class). Anyhow, design the best system for the must-have games which the developers already flock too. Case in point, Quake, Unreal, et al. As far as I can tell, the market is just waiting for an optimized console box designed to take advantage of the glut of 3D first-person shooters. The developers are already there. The games are already developed. But the console has got to nail that one particular market. If they can actually get the 3D first-person shooter market, they win. Everything else is freebees. (i.e. the 32k+ other titles in existence which run on PCs, and only have a couple points of market share next to the big 3D titles.)
On the other hand, by going with broadband, they have limited themselves to selling a crippled, specialized PC to people who are guaranteed to already have a full-fledged PC.
Agreed. On the other hand, there are a lot of electronic devices which have embedded operating systems and are just crippled, specialized PCs. It's how one makes just about any video game console or 'smart appliance'. Anyhow, how many of those full-fledged PCs are dedicated to gaming? How many are shared by the family? How many have a 17" monitor, when there is a 40" big screen TV in the living room? Would you rather play Quake or Unreal on the 17" monitor and computer speakers, or the family's home theater system? I suspect that this console is being marketed to families which have Mom and Dad cruising the internet (checking the stock market, buying groceries, et al), and the kids want to make the home theater system into the video gaming room.
Now then, back to broadband. Have you considered the LAN market? Especially in context of Quake, Unreal, et al?
It seems to me that all they need to do is make a crippled, specialized PC, that was optimized for Quake and Unreal, and had device drivers for televisions (read: home theater systems) and it would sell like hot cakes. You don't have to worry about building the dedicated gaming machine... someone else has already done it for you. Which is the entire point of this business venture, I suspect.
I didn't say that I followed it, or believed in what it says. I just mentioned that a person may want to put it on their reading list. =)
;)
On the note of Dianetics, I would also include the Quaran, The Book of Mormon, The Bible (Parts I and II), the Odyssey, the Illiad, the I Ching, and Emile Durkheim's Elementary forms of Religious Life.
But the reading list asked for science fiction and fantasy books, not texts regarding world religions.
Thanks for the corrections! I didn't know that Crossroads of Twilight was released! I had totally lost track of it's release date.
As for your question... yes. I grew up in an underground house, located in rural Indiana, for ten years. That gives a person plenty of time to read. And no, it wasn't like the fallout shelter in Blast from the Past. It was more of a Frank Lloyd Wright style underground house.
And, no, I'm really, really not kidding. Ask me any questions about growing up in a hole in a ground (i.e. underground house), and I'll be more than glad to answer them.
So, here's my 2 cents worth:
Jordan, Robert
Wheel of Time Series
Books: Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadows Rising, The Fires of Heaven, Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords
Herbert, Frank
The Dune Series
Books: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emporer of Dune, Heritics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune, Dune: House Atraides, Dune: House Harkonen, Dune: House Coronin
Gaiman, Neil
The Sandman Series
Preludes and Nocturnes, The Dolls House, Dream Country, Seasons of Mist, A Game of You, Brief Lives, Fables and Reflection, World's End, The Kindly Ones, The Wake
Rice, Anne
The Vampire Chronicles
Books: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, The Vampire Armand, Merrick, Blood & Gold, Blackwood Farm
King, Stephen
The Dark Tower Series
Books: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass
Rollings, JK
Harry Potter Series
Books: Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Pheonix
Stephenson, Neal
Books: Snow Crash, Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon
Dick, Philip
Books: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Man in the High Castle, The Dark Haired Girl, Confessions of a Crap Artist, Divine Invasion, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Galactic Pot-Healer, The Game-Players of Titan, Martian Time-Slip, A Maze of Death, Radio Free Albemuth, A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, We Can Build You, The World Jones Made
OLDER / HARDCORE
Gibson, William
Books: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Brooks, Terry
The Shannara Series
Books: The Sword of Shannara, The Elfstones of Shannara, The Wishsong of Shannara, The Scions of Shannara, The Druid of Shannara, The Elf Queen of Shannara, The Talismans of Shannara
The Landover Series
Books: Magic Kingdom For Sale -- Sold! The Black Unicorn, Wizard At Large, The Tangle Box, Witches' Brew
Tolkein, J.R.R.
Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales
Hubbard, L. Ron
The Mission: Earth Series
Books: The Invaders Plan, Black Genesis, The Enemy Within, An Alien Affair, Fortune Of Fear, Death Quest, Voyage Of Vengeance, Disaster, Villainy Victorious, The Doomed Planet
Also: Battlefield Earth, Dianetics
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Series
1600+ other books and articles.
Wells, H.G.
The Time Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Monroe, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
Verne, Jules
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in 80 Days
OTHER
White Wolf Publishers
Mage: The Ascension, Vampire: The Masquarade, Wraith: The Oblivion, Werewolf: The Apacolypse, Hunter: The Reckoning
(I figure that if you're reading DragonLance, that you're also probably playing some D&D or AD&D. If so, you may want to consider switching from TSR to WhiteWolf. I only suggest this because you've asked slashdot for some new reading.)
Ah, the Internet of the 1970s! Takes me back to the cyberpunk heyday of writers like Gibson and Stephenson.
Hughes is like some weird combination between the cowboy hackers of Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the dude who was pushing the hive mind project in Cryptonomicon.
Any thoughts? Do you think that Gibson or Stephenson ran across Col. Dave Hughes, USA, Ret., in their research? Think the Cowboy Curser inspired any personalities in Cryptonomicon or SnowCrash? Neuromancer? Count Zero? Mona Lisa Overdrive?
What's your opinion?
Is there something magic about the Creator3D cards that I don't know about?
Yeah, the built in stereo-video coprocessor thingy. The Creator3D pushes multiplexed left/right signals to a dedicated stereo-port, for your VR goggles.
You got the specs right, but what the online specs may not mention is that the Creator3D actually pushes that 1280x1024 (x32bit color) at a blazing 116hz, for separation into 58hz Left and 58hz Right signals. That means it has just enough juice to handle true-color, photographic quality stereo VR applications. Great for CAVE applications.
Of course, one has to have an autostereoscopic monitor or stereo goggles / stereo projector system. That, in turn, can set a department or a person back from anywhere between $2,000 to $50,000 depending on what kind of equipment you want.
As I understand, most of the hacks to get GeForce and nForce cards to support true stereo 3D require top/bottom video spliting, which just doesn't work as well. Although I havn't used one of them GeForce cards in some time, so maybe they've got a stereo-port on them now-days. I'd be a bit surprised, as it's not a home consumer kind of toy, really. As I recall, the Creator3D series runs somewhere around two thousand dollars for that built in multiplexed stereo adapter and coprocessor thingy (but I could be way off, on that). Goggles are an extra $800 each.
But as to your original question: Yeah. Big, big magic with a Creator3D card. Slickist video card I've ever seen.
They know they got the same answer. But how do you use this to send a message from A to C?
By having a common operating system between them. Nuclear submarines and naval command bases use a system which is very similar.
Imagine two space ships with common operating systems. They both have a folder with a bunch of files. These files are systematically named, according to a Morse-code, binary-code, or whatever.
Instead of just two entangled photons being sent out, you send out a Morse-code of entangled photons. Person C and A measure the polarizations simultaneously, far apart. They know they got the same answer. For example, the answer is "3". Or "R". Or "SOS".
They then go to their operating system, and check the related file, and find that they need to move their spaceship to the Whatever Quadrant, in the Whichever Sector, based on the results of the message.
It's basically utilizing a virtual network between persons A and C.
Information has passed from one person to the other, via the operating system, rather than the message itself. Basically, it's a quantum tunneling affect, via a virtual private network. The quantum tunneling is obtained via the use of the parity of two quantum particles. At best, as I understand it, data can be transfered/obtained/mined up to twice the speed of light, utilizing this method. Experiments with quantum entanglement and quantum 'teleportation' verify this.
There is also the more general concept of using physical laws of the universe as a de-facto operating system. Sending fibinachi sequences and whatnot, encoded via photon packets, to the far reaches of space, in an attempt to say, 'We are here.' The really weird result, as I understand it, is that given the right situations, Alien Race A over there might wind up finding out about Alien Race C over yonder, with Earth in the middle.
But back to the topic at hand. I'm not trying to suggest that we can send energy or matter at faster-then-light speeds. I'm talking about data. Not energy. Not matter. Data. And as far as I can figure, data is different than energy and matter. Also, I'm not talking about macroscopic states, or relativistic frames of reference. I'm talking about quantum particles, quantum tunneling, quantum entanglement, and virtual private networks.
For the record, I also think that whenever I go see a new movie at the theaters, the moment I see the movie, data has been transfered amongst myself and all the other people who have seen that movie. That's not to say that information is necessarily usefull or important. But, I can walk up to somebody, and ask 'Did you see such and such movie?' and we can have a conversation without needing to actually go see the movie again. We have a virtual private network between us, based on a shared experience of watching an array of photons, which allows us to communicate about things without having exchanged prior packets of information. Similar to the exchange of information which we are currently doing on Slashdot.
I remember seeing some concept demos for nanotech that involved pooring a bunch of nanotech goop onto the ground, sticking some computer control device, shaped like a stake, into the ground, and the nanogoop proceeded to assemble weapons from the raw elements in the ground. I think that Cid Meier's Alpha Centuari demoed a similar concept.
I've also read some reports about nano-systems which are being designed for survelliance and information gathering. The idea is that they are aerosol based and act as tiny mirrors floating in the air. They have a tiny control device which collects light rays bounced from the nanoparticles, and which reassembles the light rays into a video stream, which is then transmitted to a survelliance team.
Aldus Huxley should be rolling over in his grave with the advent of such technology.
From an economist's or business person's perspective, that's one hell of an achievement. As near as I can figure, just about everybody in 1st world nations wear shoes. That means they've developed a new product which is marketable to every person on the planet who wears a pair of shoes.
Figure $5/bottle. Figure 1 billion customers. You do the math.
I have to agree that all of those applications will become your next best friend, if you're supporting a bunch of workstations (50+). I would also include Ghost and Altiris LabExpert to the list, as two other very good products. These two products may be slightly better for non-profit company, however, as they generally cost less money.
Most of them do. They tend to be more file system dependent than OS dependent. Basically, they all just write 1s and 0s to a hard disk. The question is whether they have the right algorithm to write the 1s and 0s so that the OS can read it correctly.
That, and the fact that most of them can actually handle an entire OS image.
Of course, some solutions work better than others...
Ah, I used to do something similar at the Department of Networking Services & Information Technologies, at the University of Chicago, were I used to work. Setup up webkiosks and the like for the campus.
Your probably already know this, but I'll point out the obvious:
1. Set up a Ghost server for yourself. Maybe even look at a copy of Alteris LabExpert.
2. Backup often.
3. Set yourself a timeline with mile markers. Give yourself a few months, so you don't pull out your hair or have a mental break down. Plan a reasonable project timeline, such as 3 months.
4. Set up testing workstations. Get all of your networking issues out of the way before you start on Mozilla. TCP/IP or other protocol stacks should already be installed. All device drivers should already be installed.
5. Take the list which you've already made, and make the changes to the box. When you get the change to work, backup the box with your image server. Keep detailed notes of what you've just accomplished.
6. Repeat step 5 until all items are completed.
7. When step 6 is completed, backup the workstation, diff the image if needed, and push it onto workstations of similar hardware configuration. Either package the image as an application (tar, zip), an application image (ZenWorks, Active Directory resource, Ghost, etc), or an operating system image (SMS, Alteris, Ghost).
Once you get into the groove of the project, it'll go quickly.
Sorry for stating the obvious, but you're talking about a fairly complex network engineering task. Don't expect it to happen next week or even next month. Just make sure you have an imaging server and that you take good notes, and the project will go fine.
Nay! Times New Roman for everything!