hmm, there are enough hoops you need to jump through to write self-modifying code on a modern CPU that I would expect that adding NX into the mix only adds a small additional complexity.
...definitely qualifies as "sufficiently novel" especially given that every different DVD case I see seems to have 4 different patents regarding its disc retention system and the plastic tabs that hold it closed.
Exactly. Everyone has to come up with their own mechanism for holding the DVD in, microscopically different from their competitors, and none of them work very well (well, presumably one mechanism does work, but I've never seen it and presumably the patent holder isn't licencing it).
How hard is it to devise a mechanism to hold a DVD in? Surely, pretty easy. But how hard is it to devise a mechanism to hold a DVD, that doesn't infringe on the multitude of patents already issued? Tremendously difficult.
This is what writing software will be like, if software patents are ever systematically enforced.
Well, I cannot speak for the rest of slashdot, but I for one would be up in arms over a patent on the design of a remote control.
Of course, if there as something truely novel assocated with it then perhaps a patent would be appropriate, but the vast majority of patents that are actually issued don't have this as far as I can see, even 'traditional' hardware engineering type patents hve been corrupted.
Additionally, I wonder, from a psychology perspective, to what extent pictures of kiddie porn incite people to commit physical acts against kids. That is really, to my mind, where the focus of policing efforts should be. If someone could show some scientifc evidence that links kiddie porn pics to physical offences, then by all means go after the pics as well (even the paintshop ones!), but as far as I know, no such studies have been done.
Considering that people have been sent to jail for writing fantasy stories in their private diary, I think the angle you present is unfortunately the reality.
Wine is GPL'ed so they cannot add non-GPL code to it. Clearly, that prohibits an NDA as well.
But, Microsoft could release some of their source under the GPL (as the copyright holders, they can release it under any and all licenses they like). What do you reckon the chances of that are?
It is possible that Microsoft are simply waiting until more of the world has stupid patent laws. If M$ sued someone now for patent violation, the developers would simply move overseas (well, possibly those developers would end up bankrupt and homeless, but other developers overseas would continue).
Once Australia, Europe and India have software patents, there are not so many other places for developers to flee too. Besides, patents also allow (at least in principle) end-user lawsuits, so that cuts down the userbase as well.
Not really. M, k, G, B, etc are the universally accepted SI prefixes for 10^6, 10^3,...., but 'byte' never was (and probably never will be) an official SI unit. Can you give any examples of technical fields where MB == 10^6 bytes is a standard notation? The only example I can think of is hard drive marketers on crack, which doesn't count as a technical field.
If you wanted an SI unit of information, it would be more sensible to use 10 bits as the basic unit (or even one bit), rather than a byte (which is actually not even a fixed unit, but is usually read as 'octet'). Attempting to graft MB = 10^6 bytes is at least as arbitary (even more so, IMHO) than defining MB = 2^20 bytes.
The IEEE have recognized them, but nobody else has, certainly not part of SI!
You should read you own links:
It is important to recognize that the new prefixes for binary multiples are not part of the International System of Units (SI), the modern metric system.
...
Faced with this reality, the IEEE Standards Board decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes. Mega will mean 1 000 000, except that the base-two definition may be used (if such usage is explicitly pointed out on a case-by-case basis) until such time that prefixes for binary multiples are adopted by an appropriate standards body.
Hopefully, it will remain that no "appropriate standards body" adopts this ridiculous notation!
A tiny number of textbooks that end up making quite a lot of money, typically things like first year economics or commerce textbooks, that have a large student body and a long shelf-life.
The vast majority of textbooks don't make a significant amount of money. Certainly not enough to justify writing them for that purpose alone.
Not really. That shows that mass can be turned into energy, and vice versa, but that doesn't mean that mass and energy are the same, any more than it means that a beam of light is the same as a lump of lead.
For another example, all forms of energy are 'equivalent' but that doesn't mean that a fast car is the same thing as a hot room.
Well, the RIAA (and probably every other copyright organization) has a long and infamous history of ripping off copyright holders whenever they can. There are a handful cases of songs which, for some technical reason, ended up not copyrighted, even though the author (or immediate family) are still alive, arising from interactions of obscure copyright law in different countries. Do you think an RIAA company would pay royalties anyway, to comply with the spirit of copyright? Not on your life!
Correction, they currently come in 44th. This presumably doesn't include the extra 1000 processors mentioned in the article, doubling the performance would place it as 16 - although in practice for a distributed calculation you wouldn't get anything like double the performance by doubling the number of boxes.
Look at the difference in R_max (maximum achieved performance in a real LINPACK benchmark) and R_peak (theoretical maximum) - you can see that it is not a machine built for distributed calculations.
The calculations for the AI were quite separate from the rendering. The animated movements were not tracking every polygon all of the time, instead there was a (large) bunch of pre-set moves, and the AI simply chose which is the best move for each character at each timestep. I doubt this was particularly CPU-intensive.
I don't know whether filling in the individual polygons was a separate step from the frame rendering, but if so then that itself is 'embarrasingly parallel'.
The implication from the article is that the cluster wouldn't make the top 500. that suggests they have a poor interconnect (in this context, gigabit ethernet would count as poor), so I doubt they were doing many distributed calculations on it.
Hmm. I think it hurts the USA generally to accuse someone of wishing the US ill when all he was doing was making a simple statement about US government and corporate foreign policy.
The BBC is indeed 100% a part of the government in the UK. Its directors are government appointees.
Dare I say you are obviously from the USA? Most other governments are in fact capable of setting up organizations that are independent of 'themselves' (or even hostile toward the government - as the BBC sometimes is).
The US government seems to be singularly incapable of this. Indeed, I have the impression that 'separation of powers' or is a concept that the USA never embraced at all.
Absolutely. These dumb fuck scientists don't know the first thing about how to do research! They could have saved half a million pounds if they had simply asked teh TyrranzzX from Slashdot first!
Yeah you're probably right. I was actually half-asleep when I wrote that, and fortunately there seems to be not that many Swedes or Danes that read slashdot, because Faarbog is actually in Denmark!
I'm glad I didn't also mention the second example I had in mind (Aarhus), 'cause then it would have been really obvious I was an idiot!
Hmm, "Å" is equivalent to "aa", and in the place name Faarbog at least (where I have visited several times) the pronounciation is an 'o' sound, like in "ogg".
Slashdot Mirror
What CPU/OS combination do you use?
Err, how did you arrive at that implication?
Exactly. Everyone has to come up with their own mechanism for holding the DVD in, microscopically different from their competitors, and none of them work very well (well, presumably one mechanism does work, but I've never seen it and presumably the patent holder isn't licencing it).
How hard is it to devise a mechanism to hold a DVD in? Surely, pretty easy. But how hard is it to devise a mechanism to hold a DVD, that doesn't infringe on the multitude of patents already issued? Tremendously difficult.
This is what writing software will be like, if software patents are ever systematically enforced.
Of course, if there as something truely novel assocated with it then perhaps a patent would be appropriate, but the vast majority of patents that are actually issued don't have this as far as I can see, even 'traditional' hardware engineering type patents hve been corrupted.
Additionally, I wonder, from a psychology perspective, to what extent pictures of kiddie porn incite people to commit physical acts against kids. That is really, to my mind, where the focus of policing efforts should be. If someone could show some scientifc evidence that links kiddie porn pics to physical offences, then by all means go after the pics as well (even the paintshop ones!), but as far as I know, no such studies have been done.
Considering that people have been sent to jail for writing fantasy stories in their private diary, I think the angle you present is unfortunately the reality.
Maybe that was an average ?
But by the time the Beta was over, the job was done - no one (except for a few adventurous folk) would use the DR-DOS / Win combination.
Umm, doesn't Wine already do this? I'm sure there are per-application options for the version of 'Doze you want to run.
But, Microsoft could release some of their source under the GPL (as the copyright holders, they can release it under any and all licenses they like). What do you reckon the chances of that are?
LOL! They did stop DR-DOS, PC DOS and Pro DOS! Don't you remember the lawsuits?
Once Australia, Europe and India have software patents, there are not so many other places for developers to flee too. Besides, patents also allow (at least in principle) end-user lawsuits, so that cuts down the userbase as well.
If you wanted an SI unit of information, it would be more sensible to use 10 bits as the basic unit (or even one bit), rather than a byte (which is actually not even a fixed unit, but is usually read as 'octet'). Attempting to graft MB = 10^6 bytes is at least as arbitary (even more so, IMHO) than defining MB = 2^20 bytes.
You should read you own links:
It is important to recognize that the new prefixes for binary multiples are not part of the International System of Units (SI), the modern metric system.
...
Faced with this reality, the IEEE Standards Board decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes. Mega will mean 1 000 000, except that the base-two definition may be used (if such usage is explicitly pointed out on a case-by-case basis) until such time that prefixes for binary multiples are adopted by an appropriate standards body.
Hopefully, it will remain that no "appropriate standards body" adopts this ridiculous notation!
The vast majority of textbooks don't make a significant amount of money. Certainly not enough to justify writing them for that purpose alone.
For another example, all forms of energy are 'equivalent' but that doesn't mean that a fast car is the same thing as a hot room.
Well, the RIAA (and probably every other copyright organization) has a long and infamous history of ripping off copyright holders whenever they can. There are a handful cases of songs which, for some technical reason, ended up not copyrighted, even though the author (or immediate family) are still alive, arising from interactions of obscure copyright law in different countries. Do you think an RIAA company would pay royalties anyway, to comply with the spirit of copyright? Not on your life!
Look at the difference in R_max (maximum achieved performance in a real LINPACK benchmark) and R_peak (theoretical maximum) - you can see that it is not a machine built for distributed calculations.
I don't know whether filling in the individual polygons was a separate step from the frame rendering, but if so then that itself is 'embarrasingly parallel'.
The implication from the article is that the cluster wouldn't make the top 500. that suggests they have a poor interconnect (in this context, gigabit ethernet would count as poor), so I doubt they were doing many distributed calculations on it.
Hmm. I think it hurts the USA generally to accuse someone of wishing the US ill when all he was doing was making a simple statement about US government and corporate foreign policy.
Dare I say you are obviously from the USA? Most other governments are in fact capable of setting up organizations that are independent of 'themselves' (or even hostile toward the government - as the BBC sometimes is).
The US government seems to be singularly incapable of this. Indeed, I have the impression that 'separation of powers' or is a concept that the USA never embraced at all.
Are these guys offering wireless internet access? or just a web proxy stuffed with adds?
Absolutely. These dumb fuck scientists don't know the first thing about how to do research! They could have saved half a million pounds if they had simply asked teh TyrranzzX from Slashdot first!
And how often to programmers actually go to the effort of doing this?
I'm glad I didn't also mention the second example I had in mind (Aarhus), 'cause then it would have been really obvious I was an idiot!
Hmm, "Å" is equivalent to "aa", and in the place name Faarbog at least (where I have visited several times) the pronounciation is an 'o' sound, like in "ogg".