In 2004 there were over 200 million cars in the US. Average mileage is of the order of 10,000 per car. Using energy density figures from wikipedia and assuming 100% efficiency (I only care about orders of magnitude) those 200 million cars will draw 8.6X10^12 MJ per year, or 273.7GW. The Russian GRES-2 power station, one of the largest coal powered generators in the world, produces 4GW. So you'd need at least 68 extra of the largest power stations in the world to keep the US car fleet running. Better get building!
Of course it also means that someone is more likely to chop your hand off if they desperately want your data
Has this ever happened? People always bring it out as an argument against fingerprint scanners (or other biometrics) but I've never seen a news report of anyone having their bits chopped off to access their data. And you'd think if it happened it would definitely make the headlines just for the yuck factor.
Quantum computing cards will be a requirement for Duke Nukem Forever. That's why it's taking so long to ship... So when these become widespread, DNF will surely not be far behind!
I have a reasonably normal machine (Athlon XP, nVidia, P-ATA hard drive, VIA BIOS) and have yet to see Kubuntu wake it up correctly. It appears to do something while putting itself to sleep, but on wake-up the HD whirs for a bit and it crashes stone dead. (This happens on other machines, too..) It seems to be the only thing that linux has consistently sucked at, for a long long time, so I suppose it's a pretty hard thing to program. In which case, MS probably deserve a tiny bit of a break too...
they are doing the previously unthinkable and publishing the *machine language* for their shader engines!
This could be of huge benefit to F/OSS - if it's possible to write a decent GPL driver for an AMD GPU, there's suddenly a huge lever to persuade nVidia to open their GPU machine language too. Yay for AMD (again...)
Dvorak is smoking some good stuff this month. Oracle etc. have been selling proprietary software running on Linux for ages without resort to the kind of stuff he describes. Let's face it, the only decent software (well okay, at any rate the biggest commercial piece of software) MS have is Office, and there's nothing stopping them selling a Linux version already (and nothing that would require them to GPL it or anything remotely like that). Even if they want to do something with the kernel (and why would they, since they sell their own distinctly different OS already?), nVidia have shown it's possible to get away with binary modules there, too. Fud fud fud...
I upgraded my Athlon XP, VIA chipset box using the instructions on kubuntu.org and on reboot the kernel panicked immediately. So I burned an install CD - same thing, the kernel on that panicked too. Eventually I rescued my system using a 6.06 install CD, chrooting, apt-get installing the kernel source and rolling my own. I have no idea what the crash was - ACPI was mentioned in the final bit of panic report on the screen, but I've used ACPI kernels before and since with no problems. And nobody else seems to be experiencing this... Perhaps it's flaky hardware, but it's weird that I've never seen it with any other kernel build.
It's effectively a scanner with a fast data transfer; not like this is some wonderful new development in CCDs. The price seems pretty steep when you compare it with the PhaseOne P45 back that incorporates a 39Mpixel non-scanning back, too. I'm sure it's very nice, and has its niche, but I'm not convinced it's News That Matters...
I'd use a good pigment ink photo printer (the Epson Photo R series are pretty good) and the best archival photo paper you can afford. And lock the prints in a fireproof, dark safe.
I suppose George Washington should have been banged up for days, then - he wasn't just playing with a cherry tree, he chopped the thing down! Still, he pleaded guilty so might have got his sentence cut I suppose...
"Opponents cited the growing popularity of online gambling." How is this relevant? Law making should not be about whether something is popular or not, but whether it's desirable or not. It's as though, when Moses came down from the mountain with his commandments, the thieves' guild had expressed opposition, noting the current popularity of theft - popularity wouldn't necessarily make it right.
Note, I'm not coming down for or against online gambling, just making the point that its popularity is a specious argument when it comes to legislation.
Perhaps a neat way to extend this idea would be to have the filter scan your outgoing mail, too; not to search for spam as such, but to look for changes in behaviour. Then, supposing you emailed sales@igottagetmearolex.com enquiring the price of a Rolex, the filter could modify the spam and ham probabilities of rolex. I suppose it would have to be clever enough to ignore emails sent to abuse@ addresses reporting spam and attaching the spam message, among other things I can't be bothered to think of now, but it's an idea that comes more readily from the immune system metaphor than the pure probability metaphor.
The conductor is pretty much there to check fares and make sure the train doesn't leave the station while people are getting on. In other words, in driving terms he's pretty much there just to press the "start" button. The military are already using UAVs pretty extensively (true UAVs rather than radio-controlled ones) and reckon that this is the last generation where "fighter pilot" will be a job option. Perhaps for the military the parameters are somewhat different, since the g-tolerance of the human frame imposes operational limitations, but it's pretty clear that the technology is good enough. If you're worried about reliability, have several independent systems. The only reason to keep people for much longer might be that they remain cheaper than the technology, and once that's no longer true I, for one, will welcome our autopilot overlords:-)
Maybe there should be a button the pilot can press that irreversibly hands over control of the plane to the autopilot, which then makes for a nearby airport and lands, attempting to avoid overflying populated areas. Obviously it isn't something you'd normally ever want to do as there's a small danger of the autopilot going wrong, but if a terrorist tried to storm the cockpit in order to seize control and deliberately crash the plane into a particular target the pilot could just hit the "lock-down" button and there would be nothing the terrorist could do. (Of course, he could still blow up the plane but he couldn't use the plane as a weapon.) Perhaps the risk of the autopilot going haywire would sometimes be smaller than the risk of the plane being forced into a building.
Use an OpenDocument office package on a *nix operating system. Any loss of speed incurred by using OpenDocument will be more than compensated for by the gain in speed from ditching Windows:-)
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In 2004 there were over 200 million cars in the US. Average mileage is of the order of 10,000 per car. Using energy density figures from wikipedia and assuming 100% efficiency (I only care about orders of magnitude) those 200 million cars will draw 8.6X10^12 MJ per year, or 273.7GW. The Russian GRES-2 power station, one of the largest coal powered generators in the world, produces 4GW. So you'd need at least 68 extra of the largest power stations in the world to keep the US car fleet running. Better get building!
Of course it also means that someone is more likely to chop your hand off if they desperately want your data
Has this ever happened? People always bring it out as an argument against fingerprint scanners (or other biometrics) but I've never seen a news report of anyone having their bits chopped off to access their data. And you'd think if it happened it would definitely make the headlines just for the yuck factor.
These days you need a TacTom Cruise Missile to kill those xenu bastards :-/
My car does 28 rods to the hogshead, and that's good enough for me!...
Anyone care to post a video of their passport in the microwave...?
Butt-Area Network? As in "you can take your poxy 56k modem and route it via your BAN"...? Hm, maybe I should go and read teh article!
Quantum computing cards will be a requirement for Duke Nukem Forever. That's why it's taking so long to ship... So when these become widespread, DNF will surely not be far behind!
I have a reasonably normal machine (Athlon XP, nVidia, P-ATA hard drive, VIA BIOS) and have yet to see Kubuntu wake it up correctly. It appears to do something while putting itself to sleep, but on wake-up the HD whirs for a bit and it crashes stone dead. (This happens on other machines, too..) It seems to be the only thing that linux has consistently sucked at, for a long long time, so I suppose it's a pretty hard thing to program. In which case, MS probably deserve a tiny bit of a break too...
they are doing the previously unthinkable and publishing the *machine language* for their shader engines!
This could be of huge benefit to F/OSS - if it's possible to write a decent GPL driver for an AMD GPU, there's suddenly a huge lever to persuade nVidia to open their GPU machine language too. Yay for AMD (again...)
Dvorak is smoking some good stuff this month. Oracle etc. have been selling proprietary software running on Linux for ages without resort to the kind of stuff he describes. Let's face it, the only decent software (well okay, at any rate the biggest commercial piece of software) MS have is Office, and there's nothing stopping them selling a Linux version already (and nothing that would require them to GPL it or anything remotely like that). Even if they want to do something with the kernel (and why would they, since they sell their own distinctly different OS already?), nVidia have shown it's possible to get away with binary modules there, too. Fud fud fud...
I upgraded my Athlon XP, VIA chipset box using the instructions on kubuntu.org and on reboot the kernel panicked immediately. So I burned an install CD - same thing, the kernel on that panicked too. Eventually I rescued my system using a 6.06 install CD, chrooting, apt-get installing the kernel source and rolling my own. I have no idea what the crash was - ACPI was mentioned in the final bit of panic report on the screen, but I've used ACPI kernels before and since with no problems. And nobody else seems to be experiencing this... Perhaps it's flaky hardware, but it's weird that I've never seen it with any other kernel build.
It's effectively a scanner with a fast data transfer; not like this is some wonderful new development in CCDs. The price seems pretty steep when you compare it with the PhaseOne P45 back that incorporates a 39Mpixel non-scanning back, too. I'm sure it's very nice, and has its niche, but I'm not convinced it's News That Matters...
If you pre-order Duke Nukem Forever now, you'll get a free relativistic microwave flying car when the game ships.... ;-)
I'd use a good pigment ink photo printer (the Epson Photo R series are pretty good) and the best archival photo paper you can afford. And lock the prints in a fireproof, dark safe.
Paper is definitely the way to go for long term storage. Even if you erase and write over it there's still a good chance of data recovery, even thousands of years later.
I suppose George Washington should have been banged up for days, then - he wasn't just playing with a cherry tree, he chopped the thing down! Still, he pleaded guilty so might have got his sentence cut I suppose...
"Opponents cited the growing popularity of online gambling." How is this relevant? Law making should not be about whether something is popular or not, but whether it's desirable or not. It's as though, when Moses came down from the mountain with his commandments, the thieves' guild had expressed opposition, noting the current popularity of theft - popularity wouldn't necessarily make it right.
Note, I'm not coming down for or against online gambling, just making the point that its popularity is a specious argument when it comes to legislation.
Perhaps a neat way to extend this idea would be to have the filter scan your outgoing mail, too; not to search for spam as such, but to look for changes in behaviour. Then, supposing you emailed sales@igottagetmearolex.com enquiring the price of a Rolex, the filter could modify the spam and ham probabilities of rolex. I suppose it would have to be clever enough to ignore emails sent to abuse@ addresses reporting spam and attaching the spam message, among other things I can't be bothered to think of now, but it's an idea that comes more readily from the immune system metaphor than the pure probability metaphor.
Noted. Our men will be round shortly to remove your brain. Do not attempt to leave your current location.
- The MPAA.
The conductor is pretty much there to check fares and make sure the train doesn't leave the station while people are getting on. In other words, in driving terms he's pretty much there just to press the "start" button. The military are already using UAVs pretty extensively (true UAVs rather than radio-controlled ones) and reckon that this is the last generation where "fighter pilot" will be a job option. Perhaps for the military the parameters are somewhat different, since the g-tolerance of the human frame imposes operational limitations, but it's pretty clear that the technology is good enough. If you're worried about reliability, have several independent systems. The only reason to keep people for much longer might be that they remain cheaper than the technology, and once that's no longer true I, for one, will welcome our autopilot overlords :-)
Maybe there should be a button the pilot can press that irreversibly hands over control of the plane to the autopilot, which then makes for a nearby airport and lands, attempting to avoid overflying populated areas. Obviously it isn't something you'd normally ever want to do as there's a small danger of the autopilot going wrong, but if a terrorist tried to storm the cockpit in order to seize control and deliberately crash the plane into a particular target the pilot could just hit the "lock-down" button and there would be nothing the terrorist could do. (Of course, he could still blow up the plane but he couldn't use the plane as a weapon.) Perhaps the risk of the autopilot going haywire would sometimes be smaller than the risk of the plane being forced into a building.
Use an OpenDocument office package on a *nix operating system. Any loss of speed incurred by using OpenDocument will be more than compensated for by the gain in speed from ditching Windows :-)
5.4 minutes ago :-P
AS far as I remember konqueror CVS correctly renders ACID2 now. According to the CVS-digest the other week anyway, I haven't run it myself yet.
... with a big enough hammer :-)
That's why it costs $5k :-) The cost to them was, like, $200, but they just had to stick to that price/performance ratio...