I am so uploading this where people will see it. Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn ate a full gig of memory before I killed it, and my system load average hit 9.9 in an instant.
However, Nautilus 2.18.0.1 had absolutely no problems thumbnailing the image. Hooray! danamania, you just made my day.
I find Ubuntu easier to install than Windows. Not only do you get to enjoy a working system during installation, when it finishes I get a fully functional system without having to mess with drivers. I certainly do not miss the endless parade of CDs and updates I have to put Windows through. Hell, the wireless card in my machine that Windows has difficulty finding a signal on was already connected to my network with at least double the signal strength, and hasn't dropped since.
Ubuntu is easy, fast, and in at least in my case, the easiest install I have ever experienced for any operating system, ever, including OS X.
The answer is no. To represent the properties of every single particle in the universe, you would need to store a measurement for each of those properties. If we consider the universe to be particle based, we would actually need every single one of them to achieve the data density required for the memory. So, to simulate the universe, we need to build either an exact duplicate (impossible!) or something isomorphic to the system as a whole, destroying the universe that we're trying to simulate in the process.
Of course, we could always just consider the actual universe to be our simulation, take our measurements from that, and make predictions based on simplified or incomplete models. Oddly enough, this is what we already do in science.
Sort of reminds me an old question, "Is it life imitating art, or art imitating life?"
Then again, who's to say that some wildly different way of interpreting the universe wouldn't make it possible? What if the particles we measure and observe are merely the manifestation of emergent properties based on rules we aren't armed to comprehend? Then it's all up for grabs, but I'd like to see someone "jump out of the system" and describe the indescribable. Read Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter and check out everything about level crossing to see what I mean here.
And what's the point of 2Gigs of RAM in a media system?
When pausing TV with Media Center Edition, video is buffered into RAM before touching the HDD to keep the system responsive and reduce competition for one of the slower IO devices in a computer. If it went straight to HDD, you start to seriously bottleneck other applications. What if you're recording on one tuner for later viewing, while watching something else? Use hard drives for storage, and RAM for most anything temporary.
I can't speak for other carriers, but Cingular has placed WCDMA and HSDPA (an upgraded version of WCDMA often called 3.5G) in its upgrade path for the entire network.
The main reason old AT&T customers still cling to TDMA was the better coverage. Using lower frequency bands than in the 1900/850MHz pair used in (Cingular's, at least) GSM, wireless devices could get a clear signal far further from a tower than 2.5G GSM ever could. With HSDPA, the band used is dropped to 850MHz, thus extending the coverage range per tower, all while offering 14.4MB/s data transfer rates.
So yes, interestingly enough, TDMA will indeed be biting the dust relatively soon (as far as getting 2G coverage from AT&T, anyway). It's already extremely difficult to get a replacement for that TDMA phone from AT&T/Cingular; TDMA is being actively phased out by Cingular in an attempt to unify the network and simply absorb whatever is left of AT&T Wireless.
As for GSM vs. CDMA... with each revision, GSM is becoming more like the latest CDMA. The specs are growing close enough together that transitioning from a limited 2.5G GSM system to a high speed HSDPA system with UMTS can be done relatively painlessly.
One of the many reasons I use Linux is because of the multimedia support. WMP doesn't seem to come equipped to play DVDs; when I insert a disc, it cries, screams, and runs home to mommy, who doesn't have any codecs to give. On the other hand, everything is always perfect with xine. It even loads faster than WMP. Come to think of it, I have yet to run into a video format that xine wouldn't play.
It doesn't even seem to (in my case) require much special setup if anything. It worked great in Gentoo, and just dandy under Ubuntu. No problems either way... though playing videos sure as hell was a problem not all that long ago. The last time I remember running into these problems was back when Mandrake 6.0 was cutting edge.
But hey, you're right that people run into problems. The fact that I haven't (in at least the last year) doesn't speak for everyone else's experience. So really, what I'd like to know is why people are having such a hard time when they don't have to.
In my first year of university, I sold about 8 birth control pills to a guy who wanted to try ecstasy. I told him that since they were so small, he'd have to take at least half, but would probably be alright with all of them. They're small so you can easily control your dosage, right? Well, the next day he showed up and couldn't stop talking about how amazing it was, and how he danced like a maniac all night. He felt like such a rebel. The poor guy was always very concerned with maintaining his "masculine" image, so (unfortunately) he didn't take the truth (or the jokes about his developing body) too well.
But seriously, now. How would that many birth control pills affect a guy if he didn't have any expectations?
Aliant here in New Brunswick already does something similar. They have a billing option that "allows" the use of a router for an additional monthly charge per machine, in the style of software licenses.
I'm paying for bandwidth, not for some "Personal intarweb viewer service".
Of course, (almost) no one actually pays for this "service", anyway. However, there are fools who do....
1) Augmented memory. No more forgetting names or passwords. Though it does add some real interesting issues for DRM (can you force me to forget a movie after remembering it X times)
I find choline and piracetam works remarkably well for this purpose. At higher dosages, I find my memory can be enhanced to the point of being photographic; furthermore, it leaves my mind unnaturally limber and quick. The effects remind me of what I like best about dextroamphetamine (or even low dose methamphetamine), minus the body load, addiction potential, and obvious "speedy" effect.
It's classed as a nootropic drug, and fits the bill perfectly.
Unfortunately, hoarding and greed are also parts of human nature.
In this case, the law enables a system where people who have an existing advantage can enforce continued personal gain... for legitimate and illegitimate uses....
Popular Science ran an article about just that in November with their "Worst Jobs in Science" sequel. Read the cute and cuddly here: Lab-Animal Veterinarian.
Some people are on the list because they have a hard time saying no to telemarketers. These are the people who don't just want protection, but need it.
Actually, the excess Pu is already very useful in Candu reactors. These reactors can burn weapons grade Pu into lighter isotopes useless for weapons production, while at the same time providing electricity for a whole region.
As a matter of fact, this was done intentionally (I'm not sure if the practice is continued, but I hope so) in the disarmament effort. Not only does it provide the above two benefits, but the resulting radioactive waste is easier to store.
It gets better, too... Candu reactors have quite possibly the safest design ever implemented for public power generation.
So here's why it's so good... we have a very safe nuclear reactor for which we have fuel being diverted from weapons production in large amounts, providing cheap and remarkably clean (by today's standards... just look at coal or oil) energy. It takes care of a whole pile of problems all at the same time, with ease!
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but it just occurred to me that it might be possible to exploit the simple fact that there *are* state changes every time the particle is observed.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me will correct me, but couldn't it be possible to use two particles:
1) a clock pair, jumping to different values at a predetermined rate,
2) a phase pair, jumping values *supposed* to be in sync with the clock pair.
The information is send by choosing when to change the rate of observation of the phase pair, temporarily putting the rate of reception of random values out of sync with the clock pair. Using this scheme, parties A and B could share a "half duplex" communication channel with binary values "in sync" and "not in sync". Of course, we assume both ends have properly working equipment, in constant interaction (but not necessarily communication), thus solving the problem of not knowing if a transmission is being sent.
Possibly overcomplicated and probably wrong, but just an idea... I'd like for someone to point out the problem(s):)
In the War on Jaywalking, $25 million couldn't be better spent. Jaywalkers will have nowhere to hide. We can now feel safe on the streets. Thank you, law enforcement, for protecting me from this heinous crime. Thank you.
You'd be surprised. Out of boredom, late one night, a friend and myself rolled some Starbucks and smoked it. Well... it didn't taste half bad! It was all a big joke to us, but I noticed that about half way through the coffee joint we were talking nonstop. Sleep was a long time in coming. There can't have been much caffeine there between the two of us, but it still seemed to work, shockingly well. Yes, we were tired, but just... couldn't sleep. We just had to do something, anything. Though already tired, smoking a coffee spliff resulted in about 6 hours of study, beginning at 5:00am. Yikes.
This leads up to my reply to your comment... Since smoking worked, I thought I'd try snorting. However, granules are far too rough to snort; pulverizing them into a powder, though, works well. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I've done this quite a few times since. It seems to work. About three coffee hits off the back of your hand (snuff style) gets you going, but doesn't last long. If you try this, make sure you wipe the brown smear off your upper lip... O_O
BTW, I find that instant coffee works best. It makes coffee right inside your nose, right up there near the brain. Zang.
This method is flawed. Just what happens should the student keep copies of their own work on their web page? The page gets indexed by Google, and suddenly you (and the student!) are faced by false positives.
Furthermore, has anyone worked out the mean likelihood for a pair of 10 word fragments to be duplicated between unconnected works? The assumption that "chances of someone coming up with the same wording of some subject in two disjoint fragments of 10 words are abysmally small" seems a bit less rigorous than I would like to be judged by. One can't simply work out chances based on chances of matching permutations of words in the language of your choice; one must consider grammar, and troublesome abstracts such as "similar style".
Just as in the SCO case, finding matching code does not necessarily imply connection; very often, even in natural language, there is a "best way" to say something. Surely the tendency for writers to strive for clarity of argument tends to increace the chances for repetition of word fragments, even at the length of 10 words.
I'm guessing you picked 10 words, because that is a common sentence length? Ask yourself how many times someone has ever said the exact same sequence of 10 words. My guess is it happens more often than you think. The last sentence was 10 words long; have you seen that sentence before?
It may be that it's frightfully easy to write your own plagiarism detector. All professors, I'm sure, would be interested in making such automation possible; however, I don't feel that such an easy method takes as much into account as it should.
Now I'd like you to notice that my post would be flagged as plagiarism. Within the italics, you can find two 10 word fragments of your own post, which just so happen to be part of my own argument text.
Slashdot Mirror
I am so uploading this where people will see it. Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn ate a full gig of memory before I killed it, and my system load average hit 9.9 in an instant.
However, Nautilus 2.18.0.1 had absolutely no problems thumbnailing the image. Hooray! danamania, you just made my day.
I find Ubuntu easier to install than Windows. Not only do you get to enjoy a working system during installation, when it finishes I get a fully functional system without having to mess with drivers. I certainly do not miss the endless parade of CDs and updates I have to put Windows through. Hell, the wireless card in my machine that Windows has difficulty finding a signal on was already connected to my network with at least double the signal strength, and hasn't dropped since.
Ubuntu is easy, fast, and in at least in my case, the easiest install I have ever experienced for any operating system, ever, including OS X.
The answer is no. To represent the properties of every single particle in the universe, you would need to store a measurement for each of those properties. If we consider the universe to be particle based, we would actually need every single one of them to achieve the data density required for the memory. So, to simulate the universe, we need to build either an exact duplicate (impossible!) or something isomorphic to the system as a whole, destroying the universe that we're trying to simulate in the process.
Of course, we could always just consider the actual universe to be our simulation, take our measurements from that, and make predictions based on simplified or incomplete models. Oddly enough, this is what we already do in science.
Sort of reminds me an old question, "Is it life imitating art, or art imitating life?"
Then again, who's to say that some wildly different way of interpreting the universe wouldn't make it possible? What if the particles we measure and observe are merely the manifestation of emergent properties based on rules we aren't armed to comprehend? Then it's all up for grabs, but I'd like to see someone "jump out of the system" and describe the indescribable. Read Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter and check out everything about level crossing to see what I mean here.
And what's the point of 2Gigs of RAM in a media system?
When pausing TV with Media Center Edition, video is buffered into RAM before touching the HDD to keep the system responsive and reduce competition for one of the slower IO devices in a computer. If it went straight to HDD, you start to seriously bottleneck other applications. What if you're recording on one tuner for later viewing, while watching something else? Use hard drives for storage, and RAM for most anything temporary.
I can't speak for other carriers, but Cingular has placed WCDMA and HSDPA (an upgraded version of WCDMA often called 3.5G) in its upgrade path for the entire network.
The main reason old AT&T customers still cling to TDMA was the better coverage. Using lower frequency bands than in the 1900/850MHz pair used in (Cingular's, at least) GSM, wireless devices could get a clear signal far further from a tower than 2.5G GSM ever could. With HSDPA, the band used is dropped to 850MHz, thus extending the coverage range per tower, all while offering 14.4MB/s data transfer rates.
So yes, interestingly enough, TDMA will indeed be biting the dust relatively soon (as far as getting 2G coverage from AT&T, anyway). It's already extremely difficult to get a replacement for that TDMA phone from AT&T/Cingular; TDMA is being actively phased out by Cingular in an attempt to unify the network and simply absorb whatever is left of AT&T Wireless.
As for GSM vs. CDMA... with each revision, GSM is becoming more like the latest CDMA. The specs are growing close enough together that transitioning from a limited 2.5G GSM system to a high speed HSDPA system with UMTS can be done relatively painlessly.
One of the many reasons I use Linux is because of the multimedia support. WMP doesn't seem to come equipped to play DVDs; when I insert a disc, it cries, screams, and runs home to mommy, who doesn't have any codecs to give. On the other hand, everything is always perfect with xine. It even loads faster than WMP. Come to think of it, I have yet to run into a video format that xine wouldn't play.
It doesn't even seem to (in my case) require much special setup if anything. It worked great in Gentoo, and just dandy under Ubuntu. No problems either way... though playing videos sure as hell was a problem not all that long ago. The last time I remember running into these problems was back when Mandrake 6.0 was cutting edge.
But hey, you're right that people run into problems. The fact that I haven't (in at least the last year) doesn't speak for everyone else's experience. So really, what I'd like to know is why people are having such a hard time when they don't have to.
I can't handle RSS-Grab scrolling by this fast.
I can't ignore the articles no matter how hard I try.
Please, think of the children.
In my first year of university, I sold about 8 birth control pills to a guy who wanted to try ecstasy. I told him that since they were so small, he'd have to take at least half, but would probably be alright with all of them. They're small so you can easily control your dosage, right? Well, the next day he showed up and couldn't stop talking about how amazing it was, and how he danced like a maniac all night. He felt like such a rebel. The poor guy was always very concerned with maintaining his "masculine" image, so (unfortunately) he didn't take the truth (or the jokes about his developing body) too well.
But seriously, now. How would that many birth control pills affect a guy if he didn't have any expectations?
Aliant here in New Brunswick already does something similar. They have a billing option that "allows" the use of a router for an additional monthly charge per machine, in the style of software licenses.
I'm paying for bandwidth, not for some "Personal intarweb viewer service".
Of course, (almost) no one actually pays for this "service", anyway. However, there are fools who do....
1) Augmented memory. No more forgetting names or passwords. Though it does add some real interesting issues for DRM (can you force me to forget a movie after remembering it X times)
I find choline and piracetam works remarkably well for this purpose. At higher dosages, I find my memory can be enhanced to the point of being photographic; furthermore, it leaves my mind unnaturally limber and quick. The effects remind me of what I like best about dextroamphetamine (or even low dose methamphetamine), minus the body load, addiction potential, and obvious "speedy" effect.
It's classed as a nootropic drug, and fits the bill perfectly.
Unfortunately, hoarding and greed are also parts of human nature.
In this case, the law enables a system where people who have an existing advantage can enforce continued personal gain... for legitimate and illegitimate uses....
Popular Science ran an article about just that in November with their "Worst Jobs in Science" sequel. Read the cute and cuddly here: Lab-Animal Veterinarian.
Some people are on the list because they have a hard time saying no to telemarketers. These are the people who don't just want protection, but need it.
Actually, the excess Pu is already very useful in Candu reactors. These reactors can burn weapons grade Pu into lighter isotopes useless for weapons production, while at the same time providing electricity for a whole region.
As a matter of fact, this was done intentionally (I'm not sure if the practice is continued, but I hope so) in the disarmament effort. Not only does it provide the above two benefits, but the resulting radioactive waste is easier to store.
It gets better, too... Candu reactors have quite possibly the safest design ever implemented for public power generation.
So here's why it's so good... we have a very safe nuclear reactor for which we have fuel being diverted from weapons production in large amounts, providing cheap and remarkably clean (by today's standards... just look at coal or oil) energy. It takes care of a whole pile of problems all at the same time, with ease!
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but it just occurred to me that it might be possible to exploit the simple fact that there *are* state changes every time the particle is observed.
:)
Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me will correct me, but couldn't it be possible to use two particles:
1) a clock pair, jumping to different values at a predetermined rate,
2) a phase pair, jumping values *supposed* to be in sync with the clock pair.
The information is send by choosing when to change the rate of observation of the phase pair, temporarily putting the rate of reception of random values out of sync with the clock pair. Using this scheme, parties A and B could share a "half duplex" communication channel with binary values "in sync" and "not in sync". Of course, we assume both ends have properly working equipment, in constant interaction (but not necessarily communication), thus solving the problem of not knowing if a transmission is being sent.
Possibly overcomplicated and probably wrong, but just an idea... I'd like for someone to point out the problem(s)
I've somehow confused it with the idea of getting computing power out of the atoms themselves
We already do this. They're called Computrons
That probability is 1 in 10 for most of the current experiments, compared to your box in front of you which is more like 1 in 10 billion.
..."
The future of debugging: "Try it now! No? Okay... try it now! No?
In other news, mass numbers of quantum computer programmers suddenly develop gambling problems....
...and jaywalking
In the War on Jaywalking, $25 million couldn't be better spent. Jaywalkers will have nowhere to hide. We can now feel safe on the streets. Thank you, law enforcement, for protecting me from this heinous crime. Thank you.
You'd be surprised. Out of boredom, late one night, a friend and myself rolled some Starbucks and smoked it. Well... it didn't taste half bad! It was all a big joke to us, but I noticed that about half way through the coffee joint we were talking nonstop. Sleep was a long time in coming. There can't have been much caffeine there between the two of us, but it still seemed to work, shockingly well. Yes, we were tired, but just... couldn't sleep. We just had to do something, anything. Though already tired, smoking a coffee spliff resulted in about 6 hours of study, beginning at 5:00am. Yikes.
This leads up to my reply to your comment... Since smoking worked, I thought I'd try snorting. However, granules are far too rough to snort; pulverizing them into a powder, though, works well. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I've done this quite a few times since. It seems to work. About three coffee hits off the back of your hand (snuff style) gets you going, but doesn't last long. If you try this, make sure you wipe the brown smear off your upper lip... O_O
BTW, I find that instant coffee works best. It makes coffee right inside your nose, right up there near the brain. Zang.
"I get enough drugs *outside* my rice, thank you very... whoa! I'm in a FIELD OF WHEAT! whoaaaaaaaa....."
"Uhhhh... Steve?"
This method is flawed. Just what happens should the student keep copies of their own work on their web page? The page gets indexed by Google, and suddenly you (and the student!) are faced by false positives.
Furthermore, has anyone worked out the mean likelihood for a pair of 10 word fragments to be duplicated between unconnected works? The assumption that "chances of someone coming up with the same wording of some subject in two disjoint fragments of 10 words are abysmally small" seems a bit less rigorous than I would like to be judged by. One can't simply work out chances based on chances of matching permutations of words in the language of your choice; one must consider grammar, and troublesome abstracts such as "similar style".
Just as in the SCO case, finding matching code does not necessarily imply connection; very often, even in natural language, there is a "best way" to say something. Surely the tendency for writers to strive for clarity of argument tends to increace the chances for repetition of word fragments, even at the length of 10 words.
I'm guessing you picked 10 words, because that is a common sentence length? Ask yourself how many times someone has ever said the exact same sequence of 10 words. My guess is it happens more often than you think. The last sentence was 10 words long; have you seen that sentence before?
It may be that it's frightfully easy to write your own plagiarism detector. All professors, I'm sure, would be interested in making such automation possible; however, I don't feel that such an easy method takes as much into account as it should.
Now I'd like you to notice that my post would be flagged as plagiarism. Within the italics, you can find two 10 word fragments of your own post, which just so happen to be part of my own argument text.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
No less than 1100000000 birds die because of wind turbines each million years.
Please donate and help save the birds!
I like to use a baseball bat. What do you use?
My parents gave me six tins of tuna and a jar of cherries.
Nothing geekier than following the instructions, hunh?!