Yes, I believe some of the tree-hugging hippie types would like us to go back to the 17th century; I realize not everyone has that as their goal. But it is naive to assume that the "drastic" cuts in carbon emissions demanded by the current Al-Gorish wave of global warming activists will not reduce economic activity. Hydrocarbons are what dragged us from the 17th century, and restricting or eliminating their use will return us to that economic environment.
I agree completely...we are so close to things like pervasive nanotech that it would be foolish to revert to 18th-century levels of industry. If we continue our current exponential growth levels, we will accomplish things like fusion, nanotech, etc. that will make hydrocarbons irrelevant, and global warming irrelevant as well. If we commit to the Kyoto path of reducing world economic levels, we will end up stagnating and declining as we never reach critical economic mass on such technologies.
I am saying that WWII was about territory and conquest, planting your flag in an enemy's pile of rubble/capital. There were Nazi tanks to strafe, there were Japanese Yamatos to sink. Who do we kill in this war? We could go flatten Tehran and Damascus, but what would that fix? Perhaps a better term would be "we are fighting a religion" and really, fighting a relgious war that is millenia old.
Okay then, I'll post with my name in it. I am in a position to know exactly what is going on in the School District where I work, and I see the same thing happening everywhere else. Maybe I'm not the first person to realize it, but NOBODY seems to care. And by the way, I see you posted AC yourself. I see the government screaming for more money, and I see NO results from their billions of spending. Hell yes, I'm going to point this out. They are sacrificing any future we may have for this country on the altar of "safety" and "security". Maybe it doesn't bother you, but I'll shout it from the rooftops as long as I'm alive.
Okay, then, lets produce some ships, planes and tanks...and fight who? This is a war against an ideology, not a country. I don't think the world is ready for us to fight EVERYONE who has that ideology. What, might I ask, in his stead as President, do? Transform our economy to make a working radio system? You are fighting physics, not a war.
A local Fire/Police organization was recently trying to upgrade their radios to a newer system. The project failed spectacularly with huge cost overruns and was eventually cancelled. Their solution? Award a virtually identical contract to the same vendor for the same system. The problem is government...wasteful spending brought on by too many years of overfunding. Where a $5 solution would suffice, they ALWAYS spend $500. The solution? I dunno, anarchy maybe.
You can be forgiven for a few spelling mistakes, the message is there. I agree with you totally that Itanium represents a fundametally better way of doing things...and I wish that the business side of things would have allowed Intel to push it down to the desktop by now. But Intel is a hurtling elephant guided by a myopic beancounter and his trusty sidekick marketeer, and has not been productive. It is a shame that a tacked-on architecture like X86-64 can come to dominate the 64-bit world, but I attribute that to Intel's terrible strategy.
Are you a member of the Itanium Solutions Alliance? Yes, I have read the architecture blue books, and have followed the processor from the earliest days of rumor. "Multi-core x86 has never at any point overtaken the raw horsepower of the Itanium 2" you say...well, one particular page lists the following...
Single Itanium 2 1.3GHz 3MB 888
Single Opteron 144, 1.8GHz 1126
These are for SpecInt2000 tests, and note the Opteron is SINGLE core. Well ya, that's just one test, and it narrowly beats the Opterson in FP, but making a blanket statement like "never at any time" is a bit of a jump. Look at dollar per performance, and the Itanium is not a strong value. Look at dollar per performance on X86 code and it's much, much worse. I agree that the Itanium calls for a "new way" of thinking about how things are programmed, but there is a reason they are selling so terribly few of them, and that is that there is compellingly little reason to buy one. The whole point of the original article was that Intel and its partners have, to quote Eisenhower, spent "many billions" on the chip and Intel has nothing to show but a tiny fraction of the market.
Itanium exemplifies the "modern" Intel; a processor that looks great on paper, but fails to perform in the real world. Marketing pushes it for all it's worth, but of course it's a cart with no wheels. Perhaps they just underestimated how rapidly multi-core processors would overtake Itanium in processing power? I realize that for certain scientific applications it's still the processor to beat, but there's no chance of it pushing down to the consumer market like the Pentium Pro's did back in their day...and that's what would have made the difference. There never was a critical mass that made people switch, and pushed operating systems to keep up.
They want to ban it from schools and libraries because they can goad them with the removal of e-Rate funding. For years schools and libraries have had to certify they were "CIPA" (Children's Internet Protection Act) certified so as to keep them from browsing "bad" websites. If they extend this ban to any sort of chat/forum/interactive website, it will simply be another check box on an e-Rate form. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis, it's quite amazing the paranoia that some administrators have when dealing with the internet. They are so focused on the "problem at school" that they completely ignore the fact that these kids can go home and look at whatever they like.
It seems to me that, while things like reducing carbon emissions and having meetings about global warming are nice, Japan and in fact all of Europe are having a hard time meeting their so-called "Targets." The fact remains that in the current world, you cannot maintain economic growth and at the same time reduce your carbon emissions to the levels they are talking about. The populace of the world would quickly put off global warming concerns if their unemployment went to 30% and their economies tanked. I think that global warming is a problem and needs to be addressed, but you have to realize we do not have the technology nor the will to solve it. When fusion becomes cheap and room-temp superconductors common, maybe we'll have the solution.
The laser's mirrors are highly polished, and kept under very strict environmental conditions. A missile, by virtue of its mission, must fly through the atmosphere, encountering dust and debris along the way. Simply launching one is a vibration-filled event. If you start with a missile built of highly-polished material, all it takes is one speck of dust, one imperfection, to ruin the whole thing's utility as a laser-deflector. There are plenty of chances for that on a ballistic missile's flight.
Are you directing the "incompetence" comment at me? I am by no means a warmonger. All I am saying that directing a sufficient amount of energy to a ballistic missile so as to cause its explosion is an engineering problem, not a physics problem. It can be done, and it really doesn't take any huge advance in technology to do so. We have adaptive optics, we have high-power lasers, we have a tracking system, and we have a firing platform, all that is needed is the will and the cash to put it all together. Oh by the way, the MAneuverable Re-entry Vehicle or MARV was deployed on European-based Pershing II theater-type nuclear missiles in the 70's, as a means to get more precise targeting. I suppose it COULD be used to maneuver a warhead in an evasive way, but the lateral velocity relative to its forward velocity would be very, very small. It wouldn't make that much of a change in its path. If you slow it down enough to make it "evasive", you've made a glide-bomb out of it, and eliminated a ballistic missile's greatest asset: speed.
All of this research was done a long time ago. The laser delivers its power in such a burst that no amount of mirroring or spinning will make a difference. As to the atmospheric attenuation, that's what the laser's adaptive optics are for. It's kind of like a telescope in reverse. In any case, this sort of thing was tried for short-range defense in the 70's, and even a small laser was capable of shooting down Sidewinders (mounted on a KC-135.) We're talking about serious firepower here...this thing was tested at a low-altitude range of 50km, and worked fine...up in the high atmosphere where they hope to catch boost-phase weapons, it should be much easier. It's not like the things can evade or maneuver, after all, they're called ballistic missiles for a reason.
You're missing their point. It's not your music...it's their music and you are paying for the priviledge to listen to it temporarily. You do so at your peril and their leisure.
Fact is, if you clamp down on US carbon emissions, the manufacturing sector will only accelerate its moves to other countries that have no such limits. If you make it so every KWH of electricity costs $100, then suddenly it becomes economically viable to build transmission lines from China. Without very harsh controls on everything, the economy will simply ooze into another direction that is not so heavily taxed or controlled.
I believe you need to get a catchy name for this bill. Right now the acronym is TCEHAFA...perhaps weaving children into the name would help too. Perhaps the Telecom Having Eatable Cake Antiterrorism Protecting (children) act, THECAP. It could be called "THECAP act of 2006!" "THECAP will protect us all from harmful mind-control beams from satellites!" I like the cut of your jib! You have my vote!
I agree with you completely on Windows being too generic. But if Microsoft was granted a trademark on the letter W (with no consideration for the President), and the courts were defending it, then that's just the way it goes, I guess. The guy should have known Microsoft would come knocking at some point, with a name like that.
While I think that it stinks a bit, he WAS using Windows as part of his product name, which has been ruled several times to be Microsoft's trademark...So I don't think it's out of line with any other legal decisions in Microsoft's favor.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I believe some of the tree-hugging hippie types would like us to go back to the 17th century; I realize not everyone has that as their goal. But it is naive to assume that the "drastic" cuts in carbon emissions demanded by the current Al-Gorish wave of global warming activists will not reduce economic activity. Hydrocarbons are what dragged us from the 17th century, and restricting or eliminating their use will return us to that economic environment.
I agree completely...we are so close to things like pervasive nanotech that it would be foolish to revert to 18th-century levels of industry. If we continue our current exponential growth levels, we will accomplish things like fusion, nanotech, etc. that will make hydrocarbons irrelevant, and global warming irrelevant as well. If we commit to the Kyoto path of reducing world economic levels, we will end up stagnating and declining as we never reach critical economic mass on such technologies.
>>- Every 90-second a car is colliding with a train due to lacking regulations if crossing.
Perhaps we should make it illegal for a car and train to collide? The penalty is death!
I am saying that WWII was about territory and conquest, planting your flag in an enemy's pile of rubble/capital. There were Nazi tanks to strafe, there were Japanese Yamatos to sink. Who do we kill in this war? We could go flatten Tehran and Damascus, but what would that fix? Perhaps a better term would be "we are fighting a religion" and really, fighting a relgious war that is millenia old.
Okay then, I'll post with my name in it. I am in a position to know exactly what is going on in the School District where I work, and I see the same thing happening everywhere else. Maybe I'm not the first person to realize it, but NOBODY seems to care. And by the way, I see you posted AC yourself. I see the government screaming for more money, and I see NO results from their billions of spending. Hell yes, I'm going to point this out. They are sacrificing any future we may have for this country on the altar of "safety" and "security". Maybe it doesn't bother you, but I'll shout it from the rooftops as long as I'm alive.
Okay, then, lets produce some ships, planes and tanks...and fight who? This is a war against an ideology, not a country. I don't think the world is ready for us to fight EVERYONE who has that ideology. What, might I ask, in his stead as President, do? Transform our economy to make a working radio system? You are fighting physics, not a war.
A local Fire/Police organization was recently trying to upgrade their radios to a newer system. The project failed spectacularly with huge cost overruns and was eventually cancelled. Their solution? Award a virtually identical contract to the same vendor for the same system. The problem is government...wasteful spending brought on by too many years of overfunding. Where a $5 solution would suffice, they ALWAYS spend $500. The solution? I dunno, anarchy maybe.
You can be forgiven for a few spelling mistakes, the message is there. I agree with you totally that Itanium represents a fundametally better way of doing things...and I wish that the business side of things would have allowed Intel to push it down to the desktop by now. But Intel is a hurtling elephant guided by a myopic beancounter and his trusty sidekick marketeer, and has not been productive. It is a shame that a tacked-on architecture like X86-64 can come to dominate the 64-bit world, but I attribute that to Intel's terrible strategy.
Single Itanium 2 1.3GHz 3MB 888
Single Opteron 144, 1.8GHz 1126
These are for SpecInt2000 tests, and note the Opteron is SINGLE core. Well ya, that's just one test, and it narrowly beats the Opterson in FP, but making a blanket statement like "never at any time" is a bit of a jump. Look at dollar per performance, and the Itanium is not a strong value. Look at dollar per performance on X86 code and it's much, much worse. I agree that the Itanium calls for a "new way" of thinking about how things are programmed, but there is a reason they are selling so terribly few of them, and that is that there is compellingly little reason to buy one. The whole point of the original article was that Intel and its partners have, to quote Eisenhower, spent "many billions" on the chip and Intel has nothing to show but a tiny fraction of the market.Itanium exemplifies the "modern" Intel; a processor that looks great on paper, but fails to perform in the real world. Marketing pushes it for all it's worth, but of course it's a cart with no wheels. Perhaps they just underestimated how rapidly multi-core processors would overtake Itanium in processing power? I realize that for certain scientific applications it's still the processor to beat, but there's no chance of it pushing down to the consumer market like the Pentium Pro's did back in their day...and that's what would have made the difference. There never was a critical mass that made people switch, and pushed operating systems to keep up.
They want to ban it from schools and libraries because they can goad them with the removal of e-Rate funding. For years schools and libraries have had to certify they were "CIPA" (Children's Internet Protection Act) certified so as to keep them from browsing "bad" websites. If they extend this ban to any sort of chat/forum/interactive website, it will simply be another check box on an e-Rate form. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis, it's quite amazing the paranoia that some administrators have when dealing with the internet. They are so focused on the "problem at school" that they completely ignore the fact that these kids can go home and look at whatever they like.
It seems to me that, while things like reducing carbon emissions and having meetings about global warming are nice, Japan and in fact all of Europe are having a hard time meeting their so-called "Targets." The fact remains that in the current world, you cannot maintain economic growth and at the same time reduce your carbon emissions to the levels they are talking about. The populace of the world would quickly put off global warming concerns if their unemployment went to 30% and their economies tanked. I think that global warming is a problem and needs to be addressed, but you have to realize we do not have the technology nor the will to solve it. When fusion becomes cheap and room-temp superconductors common, maybe we'll have the solution.
The laser's mirrors are highly polished, and kept under very strict environmental conditions. A missile, by virtue of its mission, must fly through the atmosphere, encountering dust and debris along the way. Simply launching one is a vibration-filled event. If you start with a missile built of highly-polished material, all it takes is one speck of dust, one imperfection, to ruin the whole thing's utility as a laser-deflector. There are plenty of chances for that on a ballistic missile's flight.
Are you directing the "incompetence" comment at me? I am by no means a warmonger. All I am saying that directing a sufficient amount of energy to a ballistic missile so as to cause its explosion is an engineering problem, not a physics problem. It can be done, and it really doesn't take any huge advance in technology to do so. We have adaptive optics, we have high-power lasers, we have a tracking system, and we have a firing platform, all that is needed is the will and the cash to put it all together. Oh by the way, the MAneuverable Re-entry Vehicle or MARV was deployed on European-based Pershing II theater-type nuclear missiles in the 70's, as a means to get more precise targeting. I suppose it COULD be used to maneuver a warhead in an evasive way, but the lateral velocity relative to its forward velocity would be very, very small. It wouldn't make that much of a change in its path. If you slow it down enough to make it "evasive", you've made a glide-bomb out of it, and eliminated a ballistic missile's greatest asset: speed.
All of this research was done a long time ago. The laser delivers its power in such a burst that no amount of mirroring or spinning will make a difference. As to the atmospheric attenuation, that's what the laser's adaptive optics are for. It's kind of like a telescope in reverse. In any case, this sort of thing was tried for short-range defense in the 70's, and even a small laser was capable of shooting down Sidewinders (mounted on a KC-135.) We're talking about serious firepower here...this thing was tested at a low-altitude range of 50km, and worked fine...up in the high atmosphere where they hope to catch boost-phase weapons, it should be much easier. It's not like the things can evade or maneuver, after all, they're called ballistic missiles for a reason.
Z -4ZPQHJ?OpenDocument
http://www.nae.edu/nae/bridgecom.nsf/weblinks/MKE
I think that this will probably turn into a DDOS rather than an outright hack...
You're missing their point. It's not your music...it's their music and you are paying for the priviledge to listen to it temporarily. You do so at your peril and their leisure.
"Some estimates suggest the Chinese fires could be accounting for as much as 2-3% of the annual world emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels."
Link
Fact is, if you clamp down on US carbon emissions, the manufacturing sector will only accelerate its moves to other countries that have no such limits. If you make it so every KWH of electricity costs $100, then suddenly it becomes economically viable to build transmission lines from China. Without very harsh controls on everything, the economy will simply ooze into another direction that is not so heavily taxed or controlled.
The 1800's boom in geniuses was the result of greater opportunity for self-advancement, not greater opportunity for sloth and Oprah-watching.
I believe you need to get a catchy name for this bill. Right now the acronym is TCEHAFA...perhaps weaving children into the name would help too. Perhaps the Telecom Having Eatable Cake Antiterrorism Protecting (children) act, THECAP. It could be called "THECAP act of 2006!" "THECAP will protect us all from harmful mind-control beams from satellites!" I like the cut of your jib! You have my vote!
Nice to see that the US doesn't have a monopoly on loony government agencies and legislation...that's obviously in the public domain.
If the guy would have named his product Defender, then maybe there wouldn't be a problem...except for maybe Williams
I agree with you completely on Windows being too generic. But if Microsoft was granted a trademark on the letter W (with no consideration for the President), and the courts were defending it, then that's just the way it goes, I guess. The guy should have known Microsoft would come knocking at some point, with a name like that.
It was Windows Defender, but it was software meant to Defend Microsoft Windows, so the Microsoft part was pretty heavily implied...
While I think that it stinks a bit, he WAS using Windows as part of his product name, which has been ruled several times to be Microsoft's trademark...So I don't think it's out of line with any other legal decisions in Microsoft's favor.