(..) assess 'technical debt,' or the cost to fix the violations.
Sounds like a very useful metric: the cost of fixing a bug. Or perhaps even more useful: the cost of a bug as it's released into the wild. That is: the total cost of stumbling on that bug, reporting it, discussing it, devising workarounds, producing & testing a patch, bandwidth / system maintainers' time for checking whether to apply it, actually doing so, cost of a site hack resulting from that bug, etc, etc, all of that vs. no bug in the first place.
With that as a metric I suspect even minor bugs have a massive cost if you're talking mass-used software like popular OS or the embedded software that runs smartphones etc. And considering that massive cost, it might make sense to invest massive effort trying to find bugs before software is released. At least for popular and/or mission-critical software...
Lithium? Don't know exact chemistry / type, but I've got a few button-cell Lithium batteries around the house that have been powering something (backup memory, RTC), are much older than 10 years, and still output >2V (3.2V or so start value).
A set of two AA batteries would be enough to power a keyboard using the BCM20730 Bluetooth chip to connect with a computer for its entire lifetime
The silly thing is, chances are keyboards using such chip would actually include that set of two AA batteries.
As opposed to sticking a 1 cm^2 solar cell + supercapacitor onto it. Or a mechanism for "tilt back & forth a few times, use rest of the week". Well you get the point: if low-power enough, use that to get rid of batteries, not just prolong their life.
If Iran gets the bomb, I hope for all Iranians its government won't be stupid enough to use it (in any way, like running a test explosion somewhere).
And if any country would feel the urge to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, let's hope for all our sakes conventional bombs would be used for that job.
In the meanwhile, "The PRISM reactor actually disposes of a great majority of the plutonium as opposed to simply reusing it over again without ever actually ridding the planet of the substance." sounds like a very good plan to me.
First computers were effectively designed, built, programmed and used by their end-users.
Then specialized companies designed & built computers, and users would write all the software for it.
Then mass-produced computers came along (often with some sort of OS built in), and users would write & share software for it.
Then masses of software would be available, and most users would just use pre-written software, on pre-built computers. Leaving perhaps system configuration / maintenance as extra tasks.
And now software repositories, appstores, and companies like Apple make that so easy that most users feel comfortable to hand off even system maintenance to a 3rd party. Basically: reducing most computers to an appliance, something that's just used (and not programmed, built, modified, or maintained). This is called progress. Which (at least for most users) is a good thing.
Of course there will always be some % of folks that prefer to do things their own way, mod the hardware, write their own programs, etc. Apple helping to make that impossible? Don't think so. Apple helping to reduce options for that? In the long term: quite possible (which is a reason you won't see me spending much money on Apple hw). YMMV...
"Even though your light might be green, it may recommend you not to go, because there are people behaving badly that you may not be aware of."
Even with a green light I may not go because there are people behaving badly that I am aware of. Don't need a traffic light for that - when in traffic, always keep your eyes open (and traffic lights aren't fail-proof either). For those dumb-asses that rely solely on what a traffic light tells them, let Darwin do the work.
Some driver assistance here might not be bad, but I'd hope it would be based on something more generic than "detected a driver that's going to run a red light".
Is the decomposition different in composting vs. landfills?
For starters, it goes much faster. Especially if done in centralized facilities, composting can be reduced to a matter of weeks, vs. years or more inside a landfill.
Also composting normally happens in an oxygen-rich environment, so that breakdown products are heat, water & CO2. In a landfill, much of the breakdown will be in oxygen-poor environment, producing methane (which IIRC, is a much, much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2).
So but putting organic waste into a landfill, you're just postponing the inevitable. All the while taking a big chunk of space that could have been put to better use. And producing methane, which greenhouse gas-wise is much worse than if the organic waste breaks down in oxygen-rich environment. Of course you could capture that methane & burn, but putting organic waste in a landfill is pretty dumb IMHO (to be fair the same holds true for much other stuff that's put in landfills).
Since when is quad-core cpu A 'automagically' faster than dual-core cpu B? Of course 2x the number of cores helps a lot, but it still depends on how much work each core can do @ a given clock speed (and that's ignoring the issue of how well existing apps' performance scales across multiple cores).
By rendering our polygons with colors corresponding to their 'high' or 'low' logic state, we can show, visually, exactly how the chip operates: how it reads data and instructions from memory, how its registers and internal busses operate, and how toggling a single input pin (the 'clock') on and off drives the entire chip to step through a program and get things done.
Wonderful and amazing stuff... but what would be even more wonderful & amazing: visually show how the effect of signal changes propagates through the chips' logic, as a function of time.
That is: not do 1 step, see colors update to reflect new state, repeat quickly to simulate running cpu. But rather: flip input signals, watch how some transistors respond first, then some internal bus(ses?) follow, then how registers are updated, and some outputs change as result of changed internal state. I'd expect that would create organic-like patterns flashing across the chip's surface, showing where 'early responders' are located, etc.
Fact is the man in the street didn't have a computer in his home (not a single one, regardless what type), perhaps not even heard about it or understanding what it is.
And suddenly there were these affordable machines that you could buy, discover how they work, program, play games on, plan your finances with, etc, etc. That novelty aspect was way bigger attraction than just MHz's or graphical / sound capabilities (if any!).
Remember this was a time the first single-chip microprocessor (Intel 4004) was hardly a decade old, and the internet was just a military/academic network that no-one in the street had ever heard of.
Of course once the homecomputer market was created, it became a matter of "mine is bigger than yours" & picking one system over the other because it had nicer/more games.
Makes one wonder what a Facebook account is really worth to a company (or pop group, or artist, whatever). On the one hand, the option of gaining & holding customers, and do lots of PR through the social network, on the other hand the possibility that at any time, if someone with same name (competitor?) creates a dispute about it, Facebook might close the account for no good reason.
Who needs hackers for a DoS attack when Facebook could do the job for you?
(..) and you should always ask yourself why a no-name chinese battery costs 1/3 of the original battery.
A lot of that will be branding, some of that may be shortcuts taken in production. But much more interesting question:
Would it be possible to determine this, non-destructively, for a battery you already have? I mean, if construction of a battery is different to the point of being unsafe, wouldn't that also affect that batteries' electrical (and perhaps thermal) behavior? Could some test procedure be devised to determine whether you have a battery in hand whose construction isn't safe?
In an alternate Universe, software would be released not before it's done, bug-free, and not need updates other than to add functionality.
Software quality being what it is today, there's only 2 choices:
If you don't want to patch all the time, disconnect from network so that you have a stand-alone installation (or only use on very strict managed local network).
If internet-facing: patch, patch, patch, so that you have current software with known leaks fixed. In this respect, *nix or Windows doesn't make much difference, the important thing is that it's kept up-to-date.
Stallman himself would make the case himself that the GPL is an attempt to turn copyright against itself. It's not an argument for copyright but a means to subvert it.
That's the beauty of a Free/Open Source software license like the GPL: it works within the system, and its strength grows right along with any bolstering of copyright law that might be done. It's like a sword that becomes bigger & stronger automatically when copyrights are strengthened.
Ideally you wouldn't need that sword in the first place. But if you do, it's nice to have a powerful one in your hands.
So you don't see them. I am against copyright (as it exists now) but at least I am aware that it isn't a human right to see them.
Why wouldn't it be? The world is divided in countries. And within countries (or groups of those like EU), people have the right to decide for themselves, what are their rights, and what not.
So suppose I come to the US, and record a TV show for personal use (allowed per US law I assume). Then go to country XYZ, bringing that recording with me (still okay I presume). And then copy that recording million-fold, selling it on streetcorners, IF that's allowed by country XYZ's laws (because people in country XYZ decided for themselves that should be okay). Would that be 'wrong'? Should I feel guilty there for 'ripping profits' from the TV show makers?
The way I see it, the problem is not one country (like the US) having too extreme copyright laws, it's in the US trying to force the same upon the rest of the world (through trade agreements or whatever means available). Sure US people should be allowed to have laws in place that seem ridiculous to other countries, but what right does the US have to prevent people elsewhere from using content they get their hands on, once it lands within that country's borders? IMHO: none. And other countries are really stupid to let this crap get shoveled into their face, acting like sheep in a US-led flock. Note that I'm not trying to bash the US here, it's just that the US seems to be the prime driving force behind 'intellectual property' at the moment. The same would hold true for any country trying to force similar things on other countries.
For example the Chinese seem to have a general lack of respect for 'intellectual property', does that make them 'bad'? I think not, they make their own decisions as a nation - and I'd say copying & reproducing things without 3rd country's permission seems to have worked well for them. Same argument goes for countries that are really poor, ignore patents & copy medicines to help a large swat of their population. Ignoring those patents isn't 'bad' - patent-holding medicine companies squeezing money for live-saving medicines out of those poor folks, is. Especially since that behavior doesn't affect their bottom line anyway - if the people are poor enough, they wouldn't be able to pay up. Even if priced friendly: any more than production-cost still causes people to not spend that money on other bare necessities. But since it might be a numbers game, every step to have that poor country respect the companies' patents, will cause (unnecessary) suffering / lost lives. I can't help to feel disgust towards those folks that have only profit in their mind...
Yes it's good content creators get rewarded if society benefits a lot from their work. But IMHO current copyright regimes simply aren't the way to do that (at least if that would be the primary purpose, it's obviously failing to do as intended). And to lawmakers pushing ever harder punishments because 'that would be good for society' : f**k off, you idiot. Only thing you are supporting is the ??AA mafia.
Note that this is different from making 3D chips. That's about making an entire IC, then laying down another substrate and making another IC on top of it. Or, in some cases, mechanically stacking the chips with vertical interconnects going through the substrate. The density improves, but the fab cost goes up, the yield goes down, and getting heat out becomes tougher. We'll see that for memory devices, but it may not be a win for CPUs.
Well you could use it to pack ever more transistors onto the same area, but also to pack the same number of transistors onto a smaller area. For example not 100 million transistors on a 10*10mm die, but 100 million transistors on a 3*3mm die, stacked 11 layers high (assuming cubic space / transistor is the same).
Sure that would be more difficult to produce & thermally less optimal, but also enable shorter interconnects within an IC. Shorter interconnects -> higher clock speeds? Less interconnect -> more space for logic. So the net result might just make it worthwhile.
A business should know what it's doing and therefore not assume anything. So it should have people going over the fine print (and of course as provider, put out fine print to read).
But depending on type of agreement & exact conditions, some of that fine print may not even be legally binding. So if it's important enough: consult a lawyer. And consider consequences of privacy breaches, regardless of legal implications.
You won't have the same level of quality as company produced products as they not only had the patent information, they also had existing years of experience which these guys don't have.
Check the website: the project was started by a small group of the most experienced former Polaroid employees - so those years of experience is in their bones.
Long-term speaking, do you plan to stay in the current location of the old Polaroid factory?
I suppose you'd basically run production like old days, but on a much smaller scale. That might make it very costly to stay in the same building & pay for maintenance / repairs / heating etc. So do you have any plans to move to another location, one that might be more fitting to the size of the operation? If so, what would you be looking for @ a possible next site?
(disclaimer: I happen to live around the corner from it, so I know the building & surrounding area).
Slashdot Mirror
(..) assess 'technical debt,' or the cost to fix the violations.
Sounds like a very useful metric: the cost of fixing a bug. Or perhaps even more useful: the cost of a bug as it's released into the wild. That is: the total cost of stumbling on that bug, reporting it, discussing it, devising workarounds, producing & testing a patch, bandwidth / system maintainers' time for checking whether to apply it, actually doing so, cost of a site hack resulting from that bug, etc, etc, all of that vs. no bug in the first place.
With that as a metric I suspect even minor bugs have a massive cost if you're talking mass-used software like popular OS or the embedded software that runs smartphones etc. And considering that massive cost, it might make sense to invest massive effort trying to find bugs before software is released. At least for popular and/or mission-critical software...
Lithium? Don't know exact chemistry / type, but I've got a few button-cell Lithium batteries around the house that have been powering something (backup memory, RTC), are much older than 10 years, and still output >2V (3.2V or so start value).
A set of two AA batteries would be enough to power a keyboard using the BCM20730 Bluetooth chip to connect with a computer for its entire lifetime
The silly thing is, chances are keyboards using such chip would actually include that set of two AA batteries.
As opposed to sticking a 1 cm^2 solar cell + supercapacitor onto it. Or a mechanism for "tilt back & forth a few times, use rest of the week". Well you get the point: if low-power enough, use that to get rid of batteries, not just prolong their life.
If Iran gets the bomb, I hope for all Iranians its government won't be stupid enough to use it (in any way, like running a test explosion somewhere).
And if any country would feel the urge to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, let's hope for all our sakes conventional bombs would be used for that job.
In the meanwhile, "The PRISM reactor actually disposes of a great majority of the plutonium as opposed to simply reusing it over again without ever actually ridding the planet of the substance." sounds like a very good plan to me.
Who cares about speed anymore? Power efficiency is what counts!
Let those cells race, and then decide winners on criteria like "microns moved per sugar molecule" or something.
First computers were effectively designed, built, programmed and used by their end-users.
Then specialized companies designed & built computers, and users would write all the software for it.
Then mass-produced computers came along (often with some sort of OS built in), and users would write & share software for it.
Then masses of software would be available, and most users would just use pre-written software, on pre-built computers. Leaving perhaps system configuration / maintenance as extra tasks.
And now software repositories, appstores, and companies like Apple make that so easy that most users feel comfortable to hand off even system maintenance to a 3rd party. Basically: reducing most computers to an appliance, something that's just used (and not programmed, built, modified, or maintained). This is called progress. Which (at least for most users) is a good thing.
Of course there will always be some % of folks that prefer to do things their own way, mod the hardware, write their own programs, etc. Apple helping to make that impossible? Don't think so. Apple helping to reduce options for that? In the long term: quite possible (which is a reason you won't see me spending much money on Apple hw). YMMV...
Yeah, you'd almost wish you were a drug smuggler (but no, thanks).
"Even though your light might be green, it may recommend you not to go, because there are people behaving badly that you may not be aware of."
Even with a green light I may not go because there are people behaving badly that I am aware of. Don't need a traffic light for that - when in traffic, always keep your eyes open (and traffic lights aren't fail-proof either). For those dumb-asses that rely solely on what a traffic light tells them, let Darwin do the work.
Some driver assistance here might not be bad, but I'd hope it would be based on something more generic than "detected a driver that's going to run a red light".
Is the decomposition different in composting vs. landfills?
For starters, it goes much faster. Especially if done in centralized facilities, composting can be reduced to a matter of weeks, vs. years or more inside a landfill.
Also composting normally happens in an oxygen-rich environment, so that breakdown products are heat, water & CO2. In a landfill, much of the breakdown will be in oxygen-poor environment, producing methane (which IIRC, is a much, much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2).
So but putting organic waste into a landfill, you're just postponing the inevitable. All the while taking a big chunk of space that could have been put to better use. And producing methane, which greenhouse gas-wise is much worse than if the organic waste breaks down in oxygen-rich environment. Of course you could capture that methane & burn, but putting organic waste in a landfill is pretty dumb IMHO (to be fair the same holds true for much other stuff that's put in landfills).
Since when is quad-core cpu A 'automagically' faster than dual-core cpu B? Of course 2x the number of cores helps a lot, but it still depends on how much work each core can do @ a given clock speed (and that's ignoring the issue of how well existing apps' performance scales across multiple cores).
Here's a hint: It's not about specs anymore.
You're right... they should just throw a MHz-clocked tablet out there for the enthusiast crowd.
By rendering our polygons with colors corresponding to their 'high' or 'low' logic state, we can show, visually, exactly how the chip operates: how it reads data and instructions from memory, how its registers and internal busses operate, and how toggling a single input pin (the 'clock') on and off drives the entire chip to step through a program and get things done.
Wonderful and amazing stuff... but what would be even more wonderful & amazing: visually show how the effect of signal changes propagates through the chips' logic, as a function of time.
That is: not do 1 step, see colors update to reflect new state, repeat quickly to simulate running cpu. But rather: flip input signals, watch how some transistors respond first, then some internal bus(ses?) follow, then how registers are updated, and some outputs change as result of changed internal state. I'd expect that would create organic-like patterns flashing across the chip's surface, showing where 'early responders' are located, etc.
Fact is the man in the street didn't have a computer in his home (not a single one, regardless what type), perhaps not even heard about it or understanding what it is.
And suddenly there were these affordable machines that you could buy, discover how they work, program, play games on, plan your finances with, etc, etc. That novelty aspect was way bigger attraction than just MHz's or graphical / sound capabilities (if any!).
Remember this was a time the first single-chip microprocessor (Intel 4004) was hardly a decade old, and the internet was just a military/academic network that no-one in the street had ever heard of.
Of course once the homecomputer market was created, it became a matter of "mine is bigger than yours" & picking one system over the other because it had nicer/more games.
Makes one wonder what a Facebook account is really worth to a company (or pop group, or artist, whatever). On the one hand, the option of gaining & holding customers, and do lots of PR through the social network, on the other hand the possibility that at any time, if someone with same name (competitor?) creates a dispute about it, Facebook might close the account for no good reason.
Who needs hackers for a DoS attack when Facebook could do the job for you?
(..) and you should always ask yourself why a no-name chinese battery costs 1/3 of the original battery.
A lot of that will be branding, some of that may be shortcuts taken in production. But much more interesting question:
Would it be possible to determine this, non-destructively, for a battery you already have? I mean, if construction of a battery is different to the point of being unsafe, wouldn't that also affect that batteries' electrical (and perhaps thermal) behavior? Could some test procedure be devised to determine whether you have a battery in hand whose construction isn't safe?
In an alternate Universe, software would be released not before it's done, bug-free, and not need updates other than to add functionality.
Software quality being what it is today, there's only 2 choices:
Stallman himself would make the case himself that the GPL is an attempt to turn copyright against itself. It's not an argument for copyright but a means to subvert it.
That's the beauty of a Free/Open Source software license like the GPL: it works within the system, and its strength grows right along with any bolstering of copyright law that might be done. It's like a sword that becomes bigger & stronger automatically when copyrights are strengthened.
Ideally you wouldn't need that sword in the first place. But if you do, it's nice to have a powerful one in your hands.
So you don't see them. I am against copyright (as it exists now) but at least I am aware that it isn't a human right to see them.
Why wouldn't it be? The world is divided in countries. And within countries (or groups of those like EU), people have the right to decide for themselves, what are their rights, and what not.
So suppose I come to the US, and record a TV show for personal use (allowed per US law I assume). Then go to country XYZ, bringing that recording with me (still okay I presume). And then copy that recording million-fold, selling it on streetcorners, IF that's allowed by country XYZ's laws (because people in country XYZ decided for themselves that should be okay). Would that be 'wrong'? Should I feel guilty there for 'ripping profits' from the TV show makers?
The way I see it, the problem is not one country (like the US) having too extreme copyright laws, it's in the US trying to force the same upon the rest of the world (through trade agreements or whatever means available). Sure US people should be allowed to have laws in place that seem ridiculous to other countries, but what right does the US have to prevent people elsewhere from using content they get their hands on, once it lands within that country's borders? IMHO: none. And other countries are really stupid to let this crap get shoveled into their face, acting like sheep in a US-led flock. Note that I'm not trying to bash the US here, it's just that the US seems to be the prime driving force behind 'intellectual property' at the moment. The same would hold true for any country trying to force similar things on other countries.
For example the Chinese seem to have a general lack of respect for 'intellectual property', does that make them 'bad'? I think not, they make their own decisions as a nation - and I'd say copying & reproducing things without 3rd country's permission seems to have worked well for them. Same argument goes for countries that are really poor, ignore patents & copy medicines to help a large swat of their population. Ignoring those patents isn't 'bad' - patent-holding medicine companies squeezing money for live-saving medicines out of those poor folks, is. Especially since that behavior doesn't affect their bottom line anyway - if the people are poor enough, they wouldn't be able to pay up. Even if priced friendly: any more than production-cost still causes people to not spend that money on other bare necessities. But since it might be a numbers game, every step to have that poor country respect the companies' patents, will cause (unnecessary) suffering / lost lives. I can't help to feel disgust towards those folks that have only profit in their mind...
Yes it's good content creators get rewarded if society benefits a lot from their work. But IMHO current copyright regimes simply aren't the way to do that (at least if that would be the primary purpose, it's obviously failing to do as intended). And to lawmakers pushing ever harder punishments because 'that would be good for society' : f**k off, you idiot. Only thing you are supporting is the ??AA mafia.
Wrong story... :-))
They don't need to... no need to rule the world, happy to be king in 'their' corner of it.
Note that this is different from making 3D chips. That's about making an entire IC, then laying down another substrate and making another IC on top of it. Or, in some cases, mechanically stacking the chips with vertical interconnects going through the substrate. The density improves, but the fab cost goes up, the yield goes down, and getting heat out becomes tougher. We'll see that for memory devices, but it may not be a win for CPUs.
Well you could use it to pack ever more transistors onto the same area, but also to pack the same number of transistors onto a smaller area. For example not 100 million transistors on a 10*10mm die, but 100 million transistors on a 3*3mm die, stacked 11 layers high (assuming cubic space / transistor is the same).
Sure that would be more difficult to produce & thermally less optimal, but also enable shorter interconnects within an IC. Shorter interconnects -> higher clock speeds? Less interconnect -> more space for logic. So the net result might just make it worthwhile.
A business should know what it's doing and therefore not assume anything. So it should have people going over the fine print (and of course as provider, put out fine print to read).
But depending on type of agreement & exact conditions, some of that fine print may not even be legally binding. So if it's important enough: consult a lawyer. And consider consequences of privacy breaches, regardless of legal implications.
You won't have the same level of quality as company produced products as they not only had the patent information, they also had existing years of experience which these guys don't have.
Check the website: the project was started by a small group of the most experienced former Polaroid employees - so those years of experience is in their bones.
Long-term speaking, do you plan to stay in the current location of the old Polaroid factory?
I suppose you'd basically run production like old days, but on a much smaller scale. That might make it very costly to stay in the same building & pay for maintenance / repairs / heating etc. So do you have any plans to move to another location, one that might be more fitting to the size of the operation? If so, what would you be looking for @ a possible next site?
(disclaimer: I happen to live around the corner from it, so I know the building & surrounding area).