For the life of me I can't figure out the connection between a client's FPS and his ability to perform unreasonable jumps in the game world as generated on the server. But what the hell, the devs pro'lly know what they're talking about.
More to the point though (on FPS limiting) - can someone with GPU/DirectX internals knowledge explain why doesn't a game (or a GPU) that realizes its churning more than the 30fps that the human eye can discern dynamically (and automatically) enable FSAA (AntiAliasing) and/or AF and use the spare GPU power to enhance picture quality, then dynamically stop doing so once you need the power to keep up with a playable 30 FPS?
Seems like a MUCH more efficient way to use your GPU. At LP's I'd always switch off FSAA&AF even when most of the time I'm pumping 70fps, just to keep above 30 on those few tight&insane spots.
The word for what this software does it not SPY. It's RAPE.
It should promptly be dubbed RAPEware.
Why? Because it rapes your computer and the computer user.
It presents its intentions to Joe User and to Joe PowerUser about as much as a child-rapist presents his true intentions when he offers candy to a 5-year-old girl.
Sure, they may have a user or two who understood what it is they were installing and, out of the sheer mazochistic wish of being violated installed them. But truth be told, 99.99999% of their users who did the sorry mistake of letting these creeps in by mistake and have all the intention and absolutely no clue as to how to take them out.
And Joe has as much chance of removing these rapists from his computer as the said 5-year-old has of removing Mr. child-rapist while he's busy doing his thing.
The law should treat unwarranted invasion of one's virtual space with the same severity that they treat the unwarranted invasion of one's body or personal residence.
>> I imagine the reason [to cancel out caddies] was simply so the DVD drives could be backwards compatable with CDs.
Uh? A Caddy-driven DVD drive today would be no less compatible with CDs than the x4 Yamaha caddy CD-burner that I have in the office. As long as a user can open his caddies, there's no compatibility issue.
Furthermore, nobody says you have to buy them sealed. Buy them on spindles and either own a caddy or two and swap'em (in which case it would probbably make more sense owning a tray or trayless drive) or, if you take protecting your data seriously, have a caddy for each disk, in which case those caddies may well be worth their weight in gold.
Today, the option's plain not there - not a single modern CD/CDR/DVD/DVD*R drive comes with a caddy or similar protection system that wraps your disk both on the shelf and in the drive. It's a shame, as I for one value my material enough to pay for the extra caddies. And my guess would be there's a whole market segment there that would.
I just bought 3 USB dongles, 2 Nokia 3650 Phones and a headset that support it. Here's what I've learned.
Hardwarewise, Once you manage the drivers to do enough of what they were designed to do, it works. Windowswise, it reminds me of Trumpet winsock, when it was still a BETA, under windows 3.0. You have Company A making the OS (Microsoft), Company B (WIDCOMM) [Note: In the unlikely event you're the WIDCOMM R&D Manager, FIRE YOUR ENGINEERS AND HIRE MY DOG. You will have a better product.] WIDCOMM makes the drivers (but doesn't allow you to download them), sells them in an SDK to company C (The dongle maker), while still in pre-ALPHA phase (to get a PCphone connection, I need to initiate a BT connection, hit okay on an error message, my tray icon stops reacting and THEN it works. Direct OBEX doesn't work).
Now, While Company D (another dongle maker) is selling you dongles with WIDCOMM driver 1.4.1.4, which is, well, "beta", YOUR dongle company is still issuing a pre-pre-alpha (1.2.x) version of said driver. Needless to say, your company wants to re-issue a new version of the SDK as much as they want to file for chapter 11. Sure, you can go get "WIDCOMM 1.4.1.4", illegaly tamper with some DLL using a HEX-EDITOR to disable the LICENSE-CHECK of the driver [urp?!?!] and it works. In the unlikely event that you can fiddle with stuff. Sure, we/.ers can do it. But Joe user? Might as well ask him to build you a gcc canadian cross for a MIPS CPU.
Furthermore, you'd think that buying two products that have the bluetooth logo on them means they'll work.
The short answer to that - well, ehm, NO. Not even when it's obvious that it should. Since a BT device may support only PART of the protocol stack, nobody is guaranteeing it supports those you need.
Now I can understand that a headphone does not need to support the video profile. That's obvious.
But WHY for crying out loud does the Nokia 3650 Phone (built around an ARM processor, an MMC memory card and an almost-decent OS) can't support the _HEADSET_ profile? Surely someone will want to use a bluetooth headset with it?
But no. Nokia showed us just how well they can annoy their customers and make a profit. Their phones only support the "HANDSFREE" profile (designed for car handsfree kits), which can also be used by headsets, but is incidentally supported ONLY by the NOKIA headset (all other bluetooth headsets on the market will simply not work with it), which incidentally costs more than all the rest.
Oh yeah, and since its a handsfree profile, guess what. When the headset is synced, it rings using the bluetooth device instead of the phone speaker. Fine if you're in a car, but unhearable if you're with the headset, as you don't always wear it.
The ugly bit is that if you google for "Nokia 3650 profile" you'll find ZILCH on which profiles the phone supports. Nokia knows they've got an incomplete product, but instead of paying engineers to make firmware that supports it, they pay marketpeople to wash over the ugly parts. So they're hiding it behind a "supports bluetooth" logo. Not a PEEP about exactly which profiles they do [not] support.
In contrast, if you google for "Nokia HDW-2 profile" (that's the headset model) - you'll find a colorful description on Nokia's site of what a smart headset it is and how it supports both HEADSET and HANDSFREE profiles. Ooooh. Since when did the product specs on their site get so technical all of a sudden?!
But does it stop there? No, it only gets better.
What would we geeks do with a mobile phone that has an OS, an arm processor and an MMC card? Yes, someone already wrote an MP3 playback program called mp3go. Now the phone's audio jack is mono, buggers, but that's offtopic. But wait, there's Bluetooth. or is there? "bluetooth support" isn't enough. You need the phone to support the "A2DP profile", the profile for carrying cd-quality audio in Stereo. Does the BLUETOOTH phone support it? NO. Does Nokia i
1. China is laying down lots of money on its carbon nanotube research - they were mentioned as the 2nd most serious research after CNI.
2. They're beefing up their space program. Collecting the knowhow. Launching their own vehicles. Tackling the being-in-space problems on their own.
3. A little prophecy from the Space Elevator's Phase I NIAC paper:
"Let's consider two roughly equal entities (governments, private enterprise etc.). At year zero, entity one begins building a space elevator behind closed doors. The second is looking at building a space elevator and thinks it is important but has not begun building it yet. At year five the news gets out that the first entity is building the space elevator. The second now jumps into its program and starts building. At year ten the first entity has its first elevator operating and the second entity is 18 months from launch of its initial spacecraft. At year fifteen the first entity has six cables up including two 106 kg cables, has a manned station at geosynchronous, has recouped much of the construction cost through selling two cables and through hundreds of launches on its eight cables, and is beginning construction of a Mars cable. The second entity has up its first cable. Note that two additional entities also have cables now because of entity one's sales. At year twenty, entity one is making billions from the tens of cables it has produced, has a manned station on Mars, has a hotel at Geo station which now has a permanent population of over one hundred. Entities two, three, four, five,E each own a handful of cables and are trying to compete with entity one."
Is anyone adding this up?
Here's some ideas for future slashdot headlines: 2004: NASA announces new-and-improved winged-spacetruck candidate. 2009: NASA launches first new winged spacetruck 2015: NASA announces last shuttle of their new shuttle fleet has been delivered. 2015: NASA disassembles shuttle, sends it to space in pieces using chinese elevators to save up on launch costs.
We can all safely assume that one sixth the population of our planet would very much like it to happen _just like that_. I'd be amused.
Hide secret colony on Pluto, Asteroids, in Europa's ocean, on PlanetX or on Haley's comet.
Send vault to secret colony.
Install OpenBSD on secret colony.
Set a crontab on OpenBSD to open vault in 1000 years, and every so and so years hence.
Await economic cataclysm, utter social collapse, disintegration of society, DRM, assimilation by borg, and a second bubonic plague. If you build it, it will come.
Did you take into account how much energy moving the energy to the space elevator climbers costs?
Using microwave the climber gets about 0.5% (that's HALF a percent) of what you beam up from the ground.
Using laser, you get a whopping 2%. So effectively 2% of the energy you buy goes into lifting, and a measly 98% of it goes into bringing the former 2 to where it is needed.
At least, until we invent superconductors.
Then again, same problem with the fuel: You need more fuel to lift the fuel itself.
OTOH, An energy calculation is almost irrelevant to price calculations (it factors in, but is far from being the determining factor). X jouls in rocket fuel could cost Y dollars, whereas same X jouls in electricity from your local power company would cost a measly fraction of Y.
This is so cool! The signs saying "This software may expose you to child pornography" on your favourite P2P proggie. It's like putting up a "AOL users do not go beyond this point" sign without offending a single AOL user. Admirably genious. In fact, it's probbably the most effective AOL-user barrier anyone has thought of to date. They should patent it, at least they'll be making money of something.
Go RIAA!
Re:They should be happy
on
Cracking GSM
·
· Score: 1
Yep. They definitely should be. That way they can make a new (slightly more secure) standard, call it GSM2, and then sell us another 850 million phones that support it.
>> Surely they are not suggesting ligting a million plus kg to orbit the old fashioned way ?
no and yes.
I am in no way suggesting you lift 1000 tons of anything into space. Said material is not only strong, it's light. I'm no expert in the field, but what I read says a 3mm-diameter string lifts 45 tons, and that a full kilometer of it weighs in the 7.5kg (!) vicinity, given you can epoxy enough carbon molecules together into such a long string.
And you don't need to lift a full elevator ribbon to space. So you do exactly what you suggested - use the Ol'fashion Golden-Gate-Bridge-method. Send over a string. Use it to gradually lift much bigger supports.
You Send 2 shuttles with a lot of very thin cable to LEO. Unspool it down while gradually moving the small counterweight up, until one end touches ground and the other plus counterweight are above GEO and the center-of-weight of the whole system is exactly in GEO. The end is actually way above GEO, isr wants it to be around 91,000km so you can slingshot payloads as far as Jupiter without incorporating big and needless propulsion systems.
Then start using this very thin cable to send climbers that attach more cable to existing ribbon thereby strengthening it. 200 climbers & 3 years later, you have a 20 ton elevator. Then you build a martian one on earth, spool it, sent it to the top of earth elevator, and slingshot it to Mars. Once in Mars orbit, unspool into atmosphere, dock, serve chilled.
I agree this seems very far-fetched, but the barriers to such a project are actually much smaller than we tend to think. A tunnel in the Swiss alps costs around 70Bil$. Iraq costs the US Govt 1Bil$/week.
>> Instead of touting what might be possible IF IF IF IF... There are very few IFs. There are many "By Whom"s, and "How much money will said whoms make"s.
This whole 20-year-project is estimated at 40Bil$, and requires adaptation of existing technologies (like power-beaming and ways to epoxy nanotubes together) rather than actual breakthroughs. Once in place you can cover your investment almost immediately.
If you look at it through the eyes of people who ran projects on the scale of the tunnel that connects England to France, it's anything but impossible.
>> Till then lets hatch the eggs before we count chickens.
Wasn't there supposed to be this little bothersome thingie called PALADIUM in Longhorn? This thing that, coupled with a Fritz chip (or worse, Fritz functionality in an Intel CPU) won't let "sec[cough]ure" apps (read: apps that play unencrypted mp3's such as winamp, and that don't make you pay-per-play) run? or worse, delete your "illegal" (read: what you ripped from your own CD) mp3's? Hardware that enables remote policy to be dictated to your machine by Herr senator Fritz? An attempt to spread the sick DMCA concept worldwide (courtesy of RIAA/MPAA-bribed US lawmakers)?
I can't say I'm losing more sleep over it than I did over CSS, and it took very little time for CSS to get broken, and yet somehow I'm just not looking forward to Longhorn as much as I would have had I not known about Paladium...
Some people think this is about NASA. That this organization is the goal. So they think about what NASA needs, and what would be good and bad for its image, etc.
Other people think that getting in space and making money is the goal, and that NASA is a means. Not even THE means, A means.
>> "Cheaper, Better, Faster doesn't work." You'd be surprised.
MANY industries will gain a lot of money from elevators. Pharmaceutics, Comms, what not. Instead of trying to milk a few more dimes for NASA from the taxpayer's money to sustain nasa a decade or two longer by showing US taxpayers pretty space planes (that, on elevator scale, do next to zlip other than get americans kids proud), people who really want to get to space should be running powerpoint presentations before Fortune0.5K executives who have fat VC checkbooks, vision, and either the desire to make big money or the understanding that not hopping on this train in time will cost them much more of it, even if it's a long-term investment. Cell-Phone companies (which will presumably replaced by sat-phones) come to mind.
Personally, I'd like to think that more people are investing in nanotube R&D behind closed doors than we (or at least most of us) are aware of. And quite likely some of them are not americans.
We can start a new open-source multi-network client, call it, say, xTrillianBase5, base it in Jenin, or Beirut or maybe aboard the ISS, announce war on Microsoft, and get busy breaking the 3DES-keys they're going to place in every MSN client starting with the next version using the average Joe's home PC. Does the DMCA apply aboard the ISS? I think not, otherwise NASA will be forced to lug hundreds of pounds of needless encryption chips along with every electronic device they send into space to protect the interests of copyright owners.
Oh wait. Microsoft has enough money to lease Israel for about a year given Israel's annual budget. And leasing Israel would put people with guns at their disposal. Err, forget it. Bad idea.
If I understood what I read correctly, you need a method to expoxy short pieces together rather than grow 35000km-long ones. I've read someplace that Brad Edwards carries around a 2ft-long piece of nanotube "cable"(sheet?).
Either way, no substantial scientific breakthroughs are any longer neccesary, only research and improvement on existing tech - and not only in nanotubes and epoxy, but also in energy beaming (microwave or laser technology) and probbably some other stuff too. This is provided for in both isr's, portlift's elevator-design plan, and is more something that determines the amount of time before we have an operational one (~15 years) rather than prevents us from having one altogether and dictates using shuttles until we invent teleportation.
You obviously haven't read the "Common misconceptions" on ISR's website.
Here's a few you just made that are worth pointing out: 1. Materials not only exist, but are under mass production. Go google for nanotubes. 2. Actually, it's a giveaway. A 10-40B$ expenditure spread across 15 years? Or across many nations like the I$$? The war in Iraq costs a billion a week. Many skyscrapers, tunnels, bridges, and other architectural endeavors have cost much much more. And considering that by making space accessible for a fraction of the amount any shuttle will ever cost (think 100$/kg on first cable, or 5$/kg when you'll have many many elevators, say, 50 years down the road), it will return the investment quite shortly after being built.
Worth pointing out is that the elevator also gives you the ultra-cheap inter-solar-system propulsion solution. Think 'Slingshot'. _BIG_ slingshot. No big engines required. Could actually lay out a neccesity for that hot-aired russian nuke-reactor-on-mars-within-30-years idea.
So why are they laying their money on new shuttle designs? All we'll ever need is to put the initial cable in space. 2-7 shuttle launches, pending design. Then we can forget what a shuttle is altogether. Let alone design a new one.
Old men with old ideas would be my guess. Same reason the RIAA can't let go of its business model. No visionaries or evangelists among their decision makers, only solidified rigid-thinking fossils.
Too bad actually. We'd all reap the benefits. Cheap comms, cheap medicine... So, anyone wanna lay down a couple of billion$ and design a new steam engine instead?
Shouldn't they first build a nice working supercluster of AT-sized or rack machines communicating via WiFi/BlueTooth/whatever, then try to build a single spraynetathingie that can handle house a CPU, a power souce and a wireless hookup, and only then go about making fancy declarations?
On another note, they can use that tech the japanese made declarations about a week ago about using glucose to generate power for these things...
For #3: traceroute download.es5.com traceroute to download.es5.com (213.152.119.5), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets . . .
5 152.158.76.51 (152.158.76.51) 23.493 ms 42.253 ms 43.220 ms
6 gblond2101cr2--1-2-0-1.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.212.117) 113.963 ms 122.484 ms 120.430 ms
7 gblond2101er1-0-0.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.216.82) 123.007 ms 130.772 ms 137.641 ms
8 GigabitEthernet5-0.linx1.lon1.level3.net (195.66.224.77) 141.757 ms 147.321 ms 149.597 ms
9 so-1-2-0.gar1.London1.level3.net (212.113.0.114) 150.951 ms 126.912 ms 116.748 ms 10 so-7-0-0.mp1.London1.Level3.net (212.113.3.1) 120.096 ms 132.085 ms 122.844 ms 11 so-2-0-0.mp1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (212.187.128.26) 131.153 ms 125.381 ms 117.740 ms 12 gige10-2.ipcolo1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (213.244.165.99) 120.368 ms 135.722 ms 124.808 ms 13 unknown.Level3.net (213.244.164.18) 119.065 ms 141.180 ms 114.956 ms 14 213.152.119.253 (213.152.119.253) 117.879 ms 118.867 ms 121.646 ms 15 213.152.119.5 (213.152.119.5) 123.119 ms 120.446 ms 117.858 ms
traceroute www.es5.com
traceroute to www.es5.com (213.152.100.163), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets . . .
5 haif1br1-1-0-0.hai.il.ip.att.net (152.158.76.50) 26.458 ms 22.403 ms 23.585 ms
6 152.158.76.51 (152.158.76.51) 30.377 ms 27.755 ms 26.237 ms
7 gblond2101cr2--1-2-0-1.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.212.117) 115.158 ms 141.150 ms 117.909 ms
8 gblond2101er1-0-0.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.216.82) 117.579 ms 134.486 ms 190.747 ms
9 linx.lon.seabone.net (195.66.224.153) 105.875 ms 106.502 ms 108.723 ms 10 pal6-pal7-racc1.pal.seabone.net (195.22.218.225) 134.928 ms 224.966 ms 240.859 ms 11 goldenlines-3-il-pal6.seabone.net (195.22.205.26) 120.600 ms 108.191 ms 108.804 ms 12 212.199.28.4 (212.199.28.4) 121.527 ms 105.599 ms 137.969 ms 13 212.199.28.242 (212.199.28.242) 105.692 ms 105.591 ms 120.404 ms 14 212.199.26.35 (212.199.26.35) 136.349 ms 132.239 ms 128.527 ms 15 212.199.218.130.forward.012.net.il (212.199.218.130) 150.590 ms 150.544 ms 162.713 ms 16 213.152.100.254 (213.152.100.254) 143.302 ms 134.650 ms * 17 * 213.152.100.163 (213.152.100.163) 157.286 ms 157.126 ms
. . Meine ISP . .
5 haif1br1-1-0-0.hai.il.ip.att.net (152.158.76.50) 55.525 ms 60.377 ms 48.906 ms
6 152.158.76.51 (152.158.76.51) 55.562 ms 55.079 ms 56.811 ms
7 gblond2101cr2--1-2-0-1.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.212.117) 133.682 ms 153.168 ms 145.561 ms
8 gblond2101er1-0-0.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.216.82) 131.242 ms 142.402 ms 127.796 ms
9 linx.lon.seabone.net (195.66.224.153) 144.938 ms 123.508 ms 124.356 ms 10 pal6-pal7-racc1.pal.seabone.net (195.22.218.225) 126.011 ms 106.684 ms 105.806 ms 11 goldenlines-3-il-pal6.seabone.net (195.22.205.26) 111.244 ms 114.594 ms 105.824 ms 12 212.199.28.4 (212.199.28.4) 116.399 ms 113.340 ms 111.291 ms 13 212.199.28.242 (212.199.28.242) 145.503 ms 226.056 ms 114.003 ms 14 212.199.26.35 (212.199.26.35) 121.996 ms 116.210 ms 114.957 ms 15 212.199.218.130.forward.012.net.il (212.199.218.130) 107.576 ms 109.418 ms 110.020 ms 16 213.152.100.254 (213.152.100.254) 116.361 ms 126.803 ms 133.752 ms 17 213.152.100.163 (213.152.100.163) 127.310 ms 115.863 ms 108.819 ms
Now, this is a FreeBSD traceroute. a Windows traceroute has the words "reports: Destination net unreachable" appended to the last line. heh.
Okay, I'm picking this one up. This is just waaaaaay too amusing.
1. CINEMA - Israeli law doesn't give a yellow doggypoo about DVD-related offences. Our DVD libraries hold movies from just about every region there is out there, Airline Region7/8 not excluded. Out in the open. Our locally-produced DVD's say "Region 2" but are actually unencrypted. 2. CINEMA - Most of our DVD appliances are sold in an already-patched-to-RPC1 state. 3. Our courts of law will let a home-end-user off the hook 100% of the time if he pleads being naive to the law or to what his actions mean (Oh, this is illegal? Sorry!). This has already happened a few times. 4. RIAA, local version - Our "RIAA-thingie" commonly known as ACUM is this pathetic granny-organization. Every once in a while they realize local artists who haven't recorded a single track in 18 years are not making enough money, so they make a commercial with said artists looking at the ground and shutting up for about 30 seconds. Some people complained of a strange gut feeling after watching this, not unlike what you get when you see 15kg starving human beings in Somalia. It is claimed that this is induced by their morbidly grim (and silent) stares rather than their weight. The failure of the campaign lay in the fact that it caused people to rush to the toilet and throw up rather than rush to their favorite CD store and buy a CD. 5. RIAA, local version - Probbably the worst lawsuit that got headlines in the last two years was a 2-seat hair-saloon that got sued when an ACUM undercover agent (urp?!) who realized they were playing a CD (and did not receive explicit permission from the artist to play it in a public place). This made headlines. The saloon got sued for ~2K$. 2K$ is not a whole damn lot in Israel. But definitely worth its entertainment weight in gold. Yes, Israelis steal local content, but at least our RIAA-wannabe-thingamabob doesn't think it can just shut the internet down. Then again, I don't think they understand what an internet is or how you turn it on. Same for the record labels, most of whose sites are made up of four FrontPage95-Generated HTMLs. (but with anchors!).
6. Software - Businesses that heavily use illegal software are sometimes prosecuted. That's because the local M$/ADOBE-sponsored BSA (anti-sw-piracy) organization is sponsored relatively well. Then again I believe they're employing mostly lawyers, and aren't aware that P2P is around, or, for the matter, what P2P is in the first place. I don't think I ever read anything said by the BSA regarding P2P in the press. EVER.
And, the sweetest of the lot: 7. Palestine? Copyright Laws? _LAWS_? MUA. MUAHA. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry. Spontaneous Burst. Palestine is an anarchy, a no-mans-land, theoretically controlled by the Israeli military (who periodically run around and have very itchy trigger fingers, and for a good, or at least healthy reason), and several ""palestinian"" criminal gangs like the Hammas, the Islamic Jihad, etc. I say "criminal gangs" because these people couldn't care less if the entire _palestinian_ people, their own mothers included, had an eye torn out with a fishhook and no anaesthetic tomorrow. Said criminals are into power, politics, and proving to the world that they have the longest ***O by blowing up all the civvies they can. And to hell with their own mother. Copyright laws to them... sorta like a PhD in quantum physics is to a fish (which hasn't figured out what to do with the bycicle yet).
The one realistic observation one has to make on the matter of this whole thing being a farce is that 90% of the palestinian people are well below the poverty line. This means they don't have enough to feed their children. So either this guy has a wealthy dad (in which case he'd probbably be living in Europe/USA/Down-Under) and absolutely zlip to do with his money, or he plain isn't where he says he is. Keep in mind that Internet in Israel/PALand costs more than it does in the US. You pay more than 2$/Gig a month here. More like 50$/1.5M. Do the math.
Half that much buys you a fully-modded Asetek's PhaseChange-cooled system.
200$ more would buy you an additional high-quality water-cooling kit, with heatsinks for everything from your harddrive to the coolant reservoir.
Oh, and the Asetek next to this looks like a 21'' TFT next to a 1947 osciloscope.
Ah, actually, the getting-lots-of-mass-up-there is quite feasible well within two thirds of that time.
What isn't is the price tag. Shouldn't they be busy seeing to employing their lot before getting back into the "my ___ is bigger" race?
Anyhows, _IF_ this will be up by, say, 2020 (including the martian side), and the Russians will be relying on American transport infrastructure, (is anyone counting the ifs here?) it _might_ actually be feasible.
But hey, people in the eighties would laugh at us if we told them what we're up to today. We shouldn't be laughing at ideas. Especially when they're technically doable.
I remember reading some IBM statement that a single cell chip (with 4 to 16 cores on-die), which you can put several of together, will outperform 100 (One Hundred) P-4 2.x Gig CPU's. I also remember him saying something that when it's available, there will be only two CPU companies, of which Intel will be the smaller.
Nice. Dubious, but nice.
Let's, for the sport of the matter, assume that IBM can pull this off.
This will mean the following: 1. They will have a very cheap very massive cluster. 2. They will not need a GPU. Back to CPU MHz counting days. (Rather, core-counting days). 3. They will have to develop a new Process and Thread model (and an OS to implement it), where each process is split into N parallel threads without the application explicitly asking for this to be done. 4. They will have to reeducate a whole damn worldfull of programmers into thinking up non-serial algorithms. The OS can parallelize a task only to a certain point before your calculations begin to rely on previous ones. 5. They will have to stop the inertia of currently-existing programming models, not to speak of currently-existing shelf products.
The one thing I _can_ say is that were I IBM, and were I seriously contemplating this kind of stuff, PS3 would be the perfect showcase for this technology. A CPU-power-hungry killer-application-monster (if you take away its GPU and can substitute the amount of raw CPU required to generate a similar-quality picture, which is a _LOT_..(myltiply by factor of ~100)), running on a platform where you can actually re-educate your developers every new generation.
Well, I'm a consumer, and all I can think of to say is... "Go Big Blue Go!".
Slashdot Mirror
For the life of me I can't figure out the connection between a client's FPS and his ability to perform unreasonable jumps in the game world as generated on the server. But what the hell, the devs pro'lly know what they're talking about.
More to the point though (on FPS limiting) - can someone with GPU/DirectX internals knowledge explain why doesn't a game (or a GPU) that realizes its churning more than the 30fps that the human eye can discern dynamically (and automatically) enable FSAA (AntiAliasing) and/or AF and use the spare GPU power to enhance picture quality, then dynamically stop doing so once you need the power to keep up with a playable 30 FPS?
Seems like a MUCH more efficient way to use your GPU. At LP's I'd always switch off FSAA&AF even when most of the time I'm pumping 70fps, just to keep above 30 on those few tight&insane spots.
ATI? nVidia? Microsoft? Anyone?
The word for what this software does it not SPY.
It's RAPE.
It should promptly be dubbed RAPEware.
Why? Because it rapes your computer and the computer user.
It presents its intentions to Joe User and to Joe PowerUser about as much as a child-rapist presents his true intentions when he offers candy to a 5-year-old girl.
Sure, they may have a user or two who understood what it is they were installing and, out of the sheer mazochistic wish of being violated installed them. But truth be told, 99.99999% of their users who did the sorry mistake of letting these creeps in by mistake and have all the intention and absolutely no clue as to how to take them out.
And Joe has as much chance of removing these rapists from his computer as the said 5-year-old has of removing Mr. child-rapist while he's busy doing his thing.
The law should treat unwarranted invasion of one's virtual space with the same severity that they treat the unwarranted invasion of one's body or personal residence.
>> I imagine the reason [to cancel out caddies] was simply so the DVD drives could be backwards compatable with CDs.
Uh?
A Caddy-driven DVD drive today would be no less compatible with CDs than the x4 Yamaha caddy CD-burner that I have in the office. As long as a user can open his caddies, there's no compatibility issue.
Furthermore, nobody says you have to buy them sealed. Buy them on spindles and either own a caddy or two and swap'em (in which case it would probbably make more sense owning a tray or trayless drive) or, if you take protecting your data seriously, have a caddy for each disk, in which case those caddies may well be worth their weight in gold.
Today, the option's plain not there - not a single modern CD/CDR/DVD/DVD*R drive comes with a caddy or similar protection system that wraps your disk both on the shelf and in the drive. It's a shame, as I for one value my material enough to pay for the extra caddies. And my guess would be there's a whole market segment there that would.
I just bought 3 USB dongles, 2 Nokia 3650 Phones and a headset that support it. Here's what I've learned.
/.ers can do it. But Joe user? Might as well ask him to build you a gcc canadian cross for a MIPS CPU.
Hardwarewise, Once you manage the drivers to do enough of what they were designed to do, it works.
Windowswise, it reminds me of Trumpet winsock, when it was still a BETA, under windows 3.0.
You have Company A making the OS (Microsoft), Company B (WIDCOMM) [Note: In the unlikely event you're the WIDCOMM R&D Manager, FIRE YOUR ENGINEERS AND HIRE MY DOG. You will have a better product.] WIDCOMM makes the drivers (but doesn't allow you to download them), sells them in an SDK to company C (The dongle maker), while still in pre-ALPHA phase (to get a PCphone connection, I need to initiate a BT connection, hit okay on an error message, my tray icon stops reacting and THEN it works. Direct OBEX doesn't work).
Now, While Company D (another dongle maker) is selling you dongles with WIDCOMM driver 1.4.1.4, which is, well, "beta", YOUR dongle company is still issuing a pre-pre-alpha (1.2.x) version of said driver. Needless to say, your company wants to re-issue a new version of the SDK as much as they want to file for chapter 11.
Sure, you can go get "WIDCOMM 1.4.1.4", illegaly tamper with some DLL using a HEX-EDITOR to disable the LICENSE-CHECK of the driver [urp?!?!] and it works. In the unlikely event that you can fiddle with stuff. Sure, we
Furthermore, you'd think that buying two products that have the bluetooth logo on them means they'll work.
The short answer to that - well, ehm, NO. Not even when it's obvious that it should.
Since a BT device may support only PART of the protocol stack, nobody is guaranteeing it supports those you need.
Now I can understand that a headphone does not need to support the video profile. That's obvious.
But WHY for crying out loud does the Nokia 3650 Phone (built around an ARM processor, an MMC memory card and an almost-decent OS) can't support the _HEADSET_ profile? Surely someone will want to use a bluetooth headset with it?
But no. Nokia showed us just how well they can annoy their customers and make a profit. Their phones only support the "HANDSFREE" profile (designed for car handsfree kits), which can also be used by headsets, but is incidentally supported ONLY by the NOKIA headset (all other bluetooth headsets on the market will simply not work with it), which incidentally costs more than all the rest.
Oh yeah, and since its a handsfree profile, guess what. When the headset is synced, it rings using the bluetooth device instead of the phone speaker. Fine if you're in a car, but unhearable if you're with the headset, as you don't always wear it.
The ugly bit is that if you google for "Nokia 3650 profile" you'll find ZILCH on which profiles the phone supports. Nokia knows they've got an incomplete product, but instead of paying engineers to make firmware that supports it, they pay marketpeople to wash over the ugly parts. So they're hiding it behind a "supports bluetooth" logo. Not a PEEP about exactly which profiles they do [not] support.
In contrast, if you google for "Nokia HDW-2 profile" (that's the headset model) - you'll find a colorful description on Nokia's site of what a smart headset it is and how it supports both HEADSET and HANDSFREE profiles. Ooooh. Since when did the product specs on their site get so technical all of a sudden?!
But does it stop there? No, it only gets better.
What would we geeks do with a mobile phone that has an OS, an arm processor and an MMC card?
Yes, someone already wrote an MP3 playback program called mp3go.
Now the phone's audio jack is mono, buggers, but that's offtopic.
But wait, there's Bluetooth. or is there?
"bluetooth support" isn't enough. You need the phone to support the "A2DP profile", the profile for carrying cd-quality audio in Stereo.
Does the BLUETOOTH phone support it?
NO.
Does Nokia i
1. China is laying down lots of money on its carbon nanotube research - they were mentioned as the 2nd most serious research after CNI.
2. They're beefing up their space program. Collecting the knowhow. Launching their own vehicles. Tackling the being-in-space problems on their own.
3. A little prophecy from the Space Elevator's Phase I NIAC paper:
"Let's consider two roughly equal entities (governments, private enterprise etc.). At year zero, entity one begins building a space elevator behind closed doors. The second is looking at building a space elevator and thinks it is important but has not begun building it yet. At year five the news gets out that the first entity is building the space elevator. The second now jumps into its program and starts building. At year ten the first entity has its first elevator operating and the second entity is 18 months from launch of its initial spacecraft. At year fifteen the first entity has six cables up including two 106 kg cables, has a manned station at geosynchronous, has recouped much of the construction cost through selling two cables and through hundreds of launches on its eight cables, and is beginning construction of a Mars cable. The second entity has up its first cable. Note that two additional entities also have cables now because of entity one's sales. At year twenty, entity one is making billions from the tens of cables it has produced, has a manned station on Mars, has a hotel at Geo station which now has a permanent population of over one hundred. Entities two, three, four, five,E each own a handful of cables and are trying to compete with entity one."
Is anyone adding this up?
Here's some ideas for future slashdot headlines:
2004: NASA announces new-and-improved winged-spacetruck candidate.
2009: NASA launches first new winged spacetruck
2015: NASA announces last shuttle of their new shuttle fleet has been delivered.
2015: NASA disassembles shuttle, sends it to space in pieces using chinese elevators to save up on launch costs.
We can all safely assume that one sixth the population of our planet would very much like it to happen _just like that_.
I'd be amused.
Let the guy work a few years.
Make him predict stuff.
Film him predicting stuff.
Lock film in vault.
Build space elevator.
Colonize solar system.
Hide secret colony on Pluto, Asteroids, in Europa's ocean, on PlanetX or on Haley's comet.
Send vault to secret colony.
Install OpenBSD on secret colony.
Set a crontab on OpenBSD to open vault in 1000 years, and every so and so years hence.
Await economic cataclysm, utter social collapse, disintegration of society, DRM, assimilation by borg, and a second bubonic plague. If you build it, it will come.
Open Vault.
Voilla! We saved humanity!
Eat Robin's Minstrels.
Rejoice.
Did you take into account how much energy moving the energy to the space elevator climbers costs?
Using microwave the climber gets about 0.5% (that's HALF a percent) of what you beam up from the ground.
Using laser, you get a whopping 2%. So effectively 2% of the energy you buy goes into lifting, and a measly 98% of it goes into bringing the former 2 to where it is needed.
At least, until we invent superconductors.
Then again, same problem with the fuel: You need more fuel to lift the fuel itself.
OTOH, An energy calculation is almost irrelevant to price calculations (it factors in, but is far from being the determining factor). X jouls in rocket fuel could cost Y dollars, whereas same X jouls in electricity from your local power company would cost a measly fraction of Y.
This is so cool! The signs saying "This software may expose you to child pornography" on your favourite P2P proggie.
It's like putting up a "AOL users do not go beyond this point" sign without offending a single AOL user. Admirably genious. In fact, it's probbably the most effective AOL-user barrier anyone has thought of to date. They should patent it, at least they'll be making money of something.
Go RIAA!
Yep. They definitely should be.
That way they can make a new (slightly more secure) standard, call it GSM2, and then sell us another 850 million phones that support it.
>> Surely they are not suggesting ligting a million plus kg to orbit the old fashioned way ?
...
:-)
no and yes.
I am in no way suggesting you lift 1000 tons of anything into space. Said material is not only strong, it's light. I'm no expert in the field, but what I read says a 3mm-diameter string lifts 45 tons, and that a full kilometer of it weighs in the 7.5kg (!) vicinity, given you can epoxy enough carbon molecules together into such a long string.
And you don't need to lift a full elevator ribbon to space. So you do exactly what you suggested - use the Ol'fashion Golden-Gate-Bridge-method. Send over a string. Use it to gradually lift much bigger supports.
You Send 2 shuttles with a lot of very thin cable to LEO. Unspool it down while gradually moving the small counterweight up, until one end touches ground and the other plus counterweight are above GEO and the center-of-weight of the whole system is exactly in GEO. The end is actually way above GEO, isr wants it to be around 91,000km so you can slingshot payloads as far as Jupiter without incorporating big and needless propulsion systems.
Then start using this very thin cable to send climbers that attach more cable to existing ribbon thereby strengthening it. 200 climbers & 3 years later, you have a 20 ton elevator. Then you build a martian one on earth, spool it, sent it to the top of earth elevator, and slingshot it to Mars. Once in Mars orbit, unspool into atmosphere, dock, serve chilled.
I agree this seems very far-fetched, but the barriers to such a project are actually much smaller than we tend to think. A tunnel in the Swiss alps costs around 70Bil$. Iraq costs the US Govt 1Bil$/week.
>> Instead of touting what might be possible IF IF IF IF
There are very few IFs. There are many "By Whom"s, and "How much money will said whoms make"s.
This whole 20-year-project is estimated at 40Bil$, and requires adaptation of existing technologies (like power-beaming and ways to epoxy nanotubes together) rather than actual breakthroughs. Once in place you can cover your investment almost immediately.
If you look at it through the eyes of people who ran projects on the scale of the tunnel that connects England to France, it's anything but impossible.
>> Till then lets hatch the eggs before we count chickens.
Let's start laying eggs
Like this , in less than 20 years given adequate funding.
Wasn't there supposed to be this little bothersome thingie called PALADIUM in Longhorn?
This thing that, coupled with a Fritz chip (or worse, Fritz functionality in an Intel CPU) won't let "sec[cough]ure" apps (read: apps that play unencrypted mp3's such as winamp, and that don't make you pay-per-play) run? or worse, delete your "illegal" (read: what you ripped from your own CD) mp3's? Hardware that enables remote policy to be dictated to your machine by Herr senator Fritz? An attempt to spread the sick DMCA concept worldwide (courtesy of RIAA/MPAA-bribed US lawmakers)?
I can't say I'm losing more sleep over it than I did over CSS, and it took very little time for CSS to get broken, and yet somehow I'm just not looking forward to Longhorn as much as I would have had I not known about Paladium...
Some people think this is about NASA. That this organization is the goal. So they think about what NASA needs, and what would be good and bad for its image, etc.
Other people think that getting in space and making money is the goal, and that NASA is a means. Not even THE means, A means.
>> "Cheaper, Better, Faster doesn't work."
You'd be surprised.
MANY industries will gain a lot of money from elevators. Pharmaceutics, Comms, what not. Instead of trying to milk a few more dimes for NASA from the taxpayer's money to sustain nasa a decade or two longer by showing US taxpayers pretty space planes (that, on elevator scale, do next to zlip other than get americans kids proud), people who really want to get to space should be running powerpoint presentations before Fortune0.5K executives who have fat VC checkbooks, vision, and either the desire to make big money or the understanding that not hopping on this train in time will cost them much more of it, even if it's a long-term investment. Cell-Phone companies (which will presumably replaced by sat-phones) come to mind.
Personally, I'd like to think that more people are investing in nanotube R&D behind closed doors than we (or at least most of us) are aware of. And quite likely some of them are not americans.
We can start a new open-source multi-network client, call it, say, xTrillianBase5, base it in Jenin, or Beirut or maybe aboard the ISS, announce war on Microsoft, and get busy breaking the 3DES-keys they're going to place in every MSN client starting with the next version using the average Joe's home PC. Does the DMCA apply aboard the ISS? I think not, otherwise NASA will be forced to lug hundreds of pounds of needless encryption chips along with every electronic device they send into space to protect the interests of copyright owners.
Oh wait. Microsoft has enough money to lease Israel for about a year given Israel's annual budget. And leasing Israel would put people with guns at their disposal. Err, forget it. Bad idea.
If I understood what I read correctly, you need a method to expoxy short pieces together rather than grow 35000km-long ones. I've read someplace that Brad Edwards carries around a 2ft-long piece of nanotube "cable"(sheet?).
Either way, no substantial scientific breakthroughs are any longer neccesary, only research and improvement on existing tech - and not only in nanotubes and epoxy, but also in energy beaming (microwave or laser technology) and probbably some other stuff too.
This is provided for in both isr's, portlift's elevator-design plan, and is more something that determines the amount of time before we have an operational one (~15 years) rather than prevents us from having one altogether and dictates using shuttles until we invent teleportation.
You obviously haven't read the "Common misconceptions" on ISR's website.
Here's a few you just made that are worth pointing out:
1. Materials not only exist, but are under mass production. Go google for nanotubes.
2. Actually, it's a giveaway. A 10-40B$ expenditure spread across 15 years? Or across many nations like the I$$? The war in Iraq costs a billion a week. Many skyscrapers, tunnels, bridges, and other architectural endeavors have cost much much more.
And considering that by making space accessible for a fraction of the amount any shuttle will ever cost (think 100$/kg on first cable, or 5$/kg when you'll have many many elevators, say, 50 years down the road), it will return the investment quite shortly after being built.
Worth pointing out is that the elevator also gives you the ultra-cheap inter-solar-system propulsion solution. Think 'Slingshot'. _BIG_ slingshot. No big engines required.
Could actually lay out a neccesity for that hot-aired russian nuke-reactor-on-mars-within-30-years idea.
So why are they laying their money on new shuttle designs? All we'll ever need is to put the initial cable in space. 2-7 shuttle launches, pending design. Then we can forget what a shuttle is altogether. Let alone design a new one.
Old men with old ideas would be my guess. Same reason the RIAA can't let go of its business model. No visionaries or evangelists among their decision makers, only solidified rigid-thinking fossils.
Too bad actually. We'd all reap the benefits. Cheap comms, cheap medicine...
So, anyone wanna lay down a couple of billion$ and design a new steam engine instead?
Shouldn't they first build a nice working supercluster of AT-sized or rack machines communicating via WiFi/BlueTooth/whatever, then try to build a single spraynetathingie that can handle house a CPU, a power souce and a wireless hookup, and only then go about making fancy declarations?
On another note, they can use that tech the japanese made declarations about a week ago about using glucose to generate power for these things...
Excelent proposal!
MPAA: Take! TAKE! PLEASE TAKE!
On behalf of the state of Israel, I GIVE!
And Ummm... Could we have California in return?
For #3:
traceroute download.es5.com
traceroute to download.es5.com (213.152.119.5), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
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5 152.158.76.51 (152.158.76.51) 23.493 ms 42.253 ms 43.220 ms
6 gblond2101cr2--1-2-0-1.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.212.117) 113.963 ms 122.484 ms 120.430 ms
7 gblond2101er1-0-0.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.216.82) 123.007 ms 130.772 ms 137.641 ms
8 GigabitEthernet5-0.linx1.lon1.level3.net (195.66.224.77) 141.757 ms 147.321 ms 149.597 ms
9 so-1-2-0.gar1.London1.level3.net (212.113.0.114) 150.951 ms 126.912 ms 116.748 ms
10 so-7-0-0.mp1.London1.Level3.net (212.113.3.1) 120.096 ms 132.085 ms 122.844 ms
11 so-2-0-0.mp1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (212.187.128.26) 131.153 ms 125.381 ms 117.740 ms
12 gige10-2.ipcolo1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (213.244.165.99) 120.368 ms 135.722 ms 124.808 ms
13 unknown.Level3.net (213.244.164.18) 119.065 ms 141.180 ms 114.956 ms
14 213.152.119.253 (213.152.119.253) 117.879 ms 118.867 ms 121.646 ms
15 213.152.119.5 (213.152.119.5) 123.119 ms 120.446 ms 117.858 ms
traceroute www.es5.com
traceroute to www.es5.com (213.152.100.163), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
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5 haif1br1-1-0-0.hai.il.ip.att.net (152.158.76.50) 26.458 ms 22.403 ms 23.585 ms
6 152.158.76.51 (152.158.76.51) 30.377 ms 27.755 ms 26.237 ms
7 gblond2101cr2--1-2-0-1.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.212.117) 115.158 ms 141.150 ms 117.909 ms
8 gblond2101er1-0-0.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.216.82) 117.579 ms 134.486 ms 190.747 ms
9 linx.lon.seabone.net (195.66.224.153) 105.875 ms 106.502 ms 108.723 ms
10 pal6-pal7-racc1.pal.seabone.net (195.22.218.225) 134.928 ms 224.966 ms 240.859 ms
11 goldenlines-3-il-pal6.seabone.net (195.22.205.26) 120.600 ms 108.191 ms 108.804 ms
12 212.199.28.4 (212.199.28.4) 121.527 ms 105.599 ms 137.969 ms
13 212.199.28.242 (212.199.28.242) 105.692 ms 105.591 ms 120.404 ms
14 212.199.26.35 (212.199.26.35) 136.349 ms 132.239 ms 128.527 ms
15 212.199.218.130.forward.012.net.il (212.199.218.130) 150.590 ms 150.544 ms 162.713 ms
16 213.152.100.254 (213.152.100.254) 143.302 ms 134.650 ms *
17 * 213.152.100.163 (213.152.100.163) 157.286 ms 157.126 ms
#2 is in Israel, #1 isn't.
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Meine ISP
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5 haif1br1-1-0-0.hai.il.ip.att.net (152.158.76.50) 55.525 ms 60.377 ms 48.906 ms
6 152.158.76.51 (152.158.76.51) 55.562 ms 55.079 ms 56.811 ms
7 gblond2101cr2--1-2-0-1.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.212.117) 133.682 ms 153.168 ms 145.561 ms
8 gblond2101er1-0-0.lo.uk.ip.att.net (165.87.216.82) 131.242 ms 142.402 ms 127.796 ms
9 linx.lon.seabone.net (195.66.224.153) 144.938 ms 123.508 ms 124.356 ms
10 pal6-pal7-racc1.pal.seabone.net (195.22.218.225) 126.011 ms 106.684 ms 105.806 ms
11 goldenlines-3-il-pal6.seabone.net (195.22.205.26) 111.244 ms 114.594 ms 105.824 ms
12 212.199.28.4 (212.199.28.4) 116.399 ms 113.340 ms 111.291 ms
13 212.199.28.242 (212.199.28.242) 145.503 ms 226.056 ms 114.003 ms
14 212.199.26.35 (212.199.26.35) 121.996 ms 116.210 ms 114.957 ms
15 212.199.218.130.forward.012.net.il (212.199.218.130) 107.576 ms 109.418 ms 110.020 ms
16 213.152.100.254 (213.152.100.254) 116.361 ms 126.803 ms 133.752 ms
17 213.152.100.163 (213.152.100.163) 127.310 ms 115.863 ms 108.819 ms
Now, this is a FreeBSD traceroute. a Windows traceroute has the words "reports: Destination net unreachable" appended to the last line. heh.
Okay, I'm picking this one up. This is just waaaaaay too amusing.
1. CINEMA - Israeli law doesn't give a yellow doggypoo about DVD-related offences. Our DVD libraries hold movies from just about every region there is out there, Airline Region7/8 not excluded. Out in the open. Our locally-produced DVD's say "Region 2" but are actually unencrypted.
2. CINEMA - Most of our DVD appliances are sold in an already-patched-to-RPC1 state.
3. Our courts of law will let a home-end-user off the hook 100% of the time if he pleads being naive to the law or to what his actions mean (Oh, this is illegal? Sorry!). This has already happened a few times.
4. RIAA, local version - Our "RIAA-thingie" commonly known as ACUM is this pathetic granny-organization. Every once in a while they realize local artists who haven't recorded a single track in 18 years are not making enough money, so they make a commercial with said artists looking at the ground and shutting up for about 30 seconds. Some people complained of a strange gut feeling after watching this, not unlike what you get when you see 15kg starving human beings in Somalia. It is claimed that this is induced by their morbidly grim (and silent) stares rather than their weight. The failure of the campaign lay in the fact that it caused people to rush to the toilet and throw up rather than rush to their favorite CD store and buy a CD.
5. RIAA, local version - Probbably the worst lawsuit that got headlines in the last two years was a 2-seat hair-saloon that got sued when an ACUM undercover agent (urp?!) who realized they were playing a CD (and did not receive explicit permission from the artist to play it in a public place). This made headlines. The saloon got sued for ~2K$. 2K$ is not a whole damn lot in Israel. But definitely worth its entertainment weight in gold. Yes, Israelis steal local content, but at least our RIAA-wannabe-thingamabob doesn't think it can just shut the internet down. Then again, I don't think they understand what an internet is or how you turn it on. Same for the record labels, most of whose sites are made up of four FrontPage95-Generated HTMLs. (but with anchors!).
6. Software - Businesses that heavily use illegal software are sometimes prosecuted. That's because the local M$/ADOBE-sponsored BSA (anti-sw-piracy) organization is sponsored relatively well. Then again I believe they're employing mostly lawyers, and aren't aware that P2P is around, or, for the matter, what P2P is in the first place. I don't think I ever read anything said by the BSA regarding P2P in the press. EVER.
And, the sweetest of the lot:
7. Palestine? Copyright Laws? _LAWS_? MUA. MUAHA. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry. Spontaneous Burst.
Palestine is an anarchy, a no-mans-land, theoretically controlled by the Israeli military (who periodically run around and have very itchy trigger fingers, and for a good, or at least healthy reason), and several ""palestinian"" criminal gangs like the Hammas, the Islamic Jihad, etc. I say "criminal gangs" because these people couldn't care less if the entire _palestinian_ people, their own mothers included, had an eye torn out with a fishhook and no anaesthetic tomorrow. Said criminals are into power, politics, and proving to the world that they have the longest ***O by blowing up all the civvies they can. And to hell with their own mother.
Copyright laws to them... sorta like a PhD in quantum physics is to a fish (which hasn't figured out what to do with the bycicle yet).
The one realistic observation one has to make on the matter of this whole thing being a farce is that 90% of the palestinian people are well below the poverty line. This means they don't have enough to feed their children.
So either this guy has a wealthy dad (in which case he'd probbably be living in Europe/USA/Down-Under) and absolutely zlip to do with his money, or he plain isn't where he says he is. Keep in mind that Internet in Israel/PALand costs more than it does in the US. You pay more than 2$/Gig a month here. More like 50$/1.5M. Do the math.
Half that much buys you a fully-modded Asetek's PhaseChange-cooled system. 200$ more would buy you an additional high-quality water-cooling kit, with heatsinks for everything from your harddrive to the coolant reservoir.
Oh, and the Asetek next to this looks like a 21'' TFT next to a 1947 osciloscope.
At least as the other article linked in the first comment of the article in question plainly states.
Ah, actually, the getting-lots-of-mass-up-there is quite feasible well within two thirds of that time.
What isn't is the price tag. Shouldn't they be busy seeing to employing their lot before getting back into the "my ___ is bigger" race?
Anyhows, _IF_ this will be up by, say, 2020 (including the martian side), and the Russians will be relying on American transport infrastructure, (is anyone counting the ifs here?) it _might_ actually be feasible.
But hey, people in the eighties would laugh at us if we told them what we're up to today. We shouldn't be laughing at ideas. Especially when they're technically doable.
Not exactly.
I remember reading some IBM statement that a single cell chip (with 4 to 16 cores on-die), which you can put several of together, will outperform 100 (One Hundred) P-4 2.x Gig CPU's.
I also remember him saying something that when it's available, there will be only two CPU companies, of which Intel will be the smaller.
Nice. Dubious, but nice.
Let's, for the sport of the matter, assume that IBM can pull this off.
This will mean the following:
1. They will have a very cheap very massive cluster.
2. They will not need a GPU. Back to CPU MHz counting days. (Rather, core-counting days).
3. They will have to develop a new Process and Thread model (and an OS to implement it), where each process is split into N parallel threads without the application explicitly asking for this to be done.
4. They will have to reeducate a whole damn worldfull of programmers into thinking up non-serial algorithms. The OS can parallelize a task only to a certain point before your calculations begin to rely on previous ones.
5. They will have to stop the inertia of currently-existing programming models, not to speak of currently-existing shelf products.
The one thing I _can_ say is that were I IBM, and were I seriously contemplating this kind of stuff, PS3 would be the perfect showcase for this technology. A CPU-power-hungry killer-application-monster (if you take away its GPU and can substitute the amount of raw CPU required to generate a similar-quality picture, which is a _LOT_..(myltiply by factor of ~100)), running on a platform where you can actually re-educate your developers every new generation.
Well, I'm a consumer, and all I can think of to say is...
"Go Big Blue Go!".