I'm afraid you've not kept up on current technology. A laser diode is about the size of a grain of rice, and uses milliwatts of power. Also, laser diodes aren't very expensive (consider that you can buy a laser pointer for $20). While the laser diode in a laser pointer isn't the same as the lasers they are using in this, it's not THAT much different.
This really isn't "opening" the Playstation 2. This is just allowing other companies to buy the chips. There is no mention of whether the specs for the chips will be under NDA ("You can buy the chips from us, and if you do we'll let you have the specs, but you cannot share them"), nor is there any indication that any other company could make video games. Kiosks, embedded displays yes, but how knows about games.
However, it's still a very good sign. Perhaps Sony "gets it"?
One of the interesting comments in the article was about "gcc's default dynamic memory allocation": technically this isn't gcc's memory allocator, but libc's. I wonder a) if the Cygnus malloc/free routines are as optimal as those under glibc2, and b) if there aren't better routines out there.
It's a bit unfair to blame gcc for poor memory allocation: unlike Java memory allocation isn't built into C.
Loose-knit simply means "without a rigidly defined organizational structure", and is both an apt description of Open Source development and not uncomplimentary.
Chill out the paranoia - it sounds like SiS is trying to Do The Right Thing within the limits they must operate under.
DOOM had one of the best musical scores of any video game.
I'm glad to hear somebody else feels this way! I really am tired of the "heavy-metal-bang-your-head-until-your-ears-bleed" music in modern games. It's distracting! In Doom[I|II], the music helped set the mood: If you were bopping along and suddenly the music went from "da-da-dant-da" to "BWAHH-BWAHH-BWAHH", you know something BAD was coming! Try doing that gracefully with Redbook audio: the glitch as you change tracks will be quite jarring! Granted, you wanted to have a good FM synth card, but with an AWE-64, the music was excellent!
Open mouth, insert foot. I didn't realize that there were two distinct products, and was looking at the wrong one. Comes from trying to bang code and do research at the same time. Mod me down, boys, I deserve it...
I went to their site, and was interested in looking at this. "OK, I'll download it. What, login? No, thanks.". Now, how can they require a login to distribute something GPL?
And my second question: Why do they want me to log in to their service? I want to see a privacy policy, thank you very much.
Space-like intervals in space-time are ones for which the "proper time" dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - c^2 dt^2 is positive. Time-like intervals are those where this value is negative. IIRC the proper time is Lorentz invariant (it is the same for all inertial reference frames) but the separations in space and time (dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 and dt^2) are not.
I think that any two events separated by a space-like interval can appear to happen in either order depending on your reference frame. This means that in some reference frames the light would travel back in time.
I was trying to state it in a fashion that would be easier to grasp for most folks, and I think what we are saying is basically equivelent. You are correct that from some frames of reference, the 300C pulse would seem to arrive before the instigating pulse, however from any frame of reference that included the origin of the light pulse causality would not be violated.
In other words: from the other side of the tank, a light pulse exits the tank, a reflect pulse travels backward in the tank, and meets and cancels a light pulse entering the tank. A strange co-incidence, but not a causality violation.
From the side of the tank that the light pulse was launched from, causality is preserved because the 300C pulse still exits from the tank after the main pulse hits. To truly violate causality, you must have a closed timelike path through the tank and back to the event point the light was launched at, which you cannot do with this setup.
I think it's the reflected wave that is the key: without it, you would see (from the other side of the tank) a light pulse exit the tank, and then a light pulse enter the tank (a causality violation). With the reflected wave, the events as viewed from the far side of the tank may be strange, but they aren't a casuality violation: just a damn strange coincidence.
Actually, the Xterm was dead and the Sun was on the verge of death. It had been hit with lightning in 1995 and had faulty RAM. Enough to boot, get up on the network and
then crash about half an hour later. Not worth my time to repair it.
Someone else went off on me because of the same thing and said I should have donated it. Every school/church around here won't take donations unless it'll run Windows 98 or Mac OS 9. The local high school gives Mac Quadras and PPC boxen to me because they're getting rid of them. I turn around and use the parts to repair/refurbish/upgrade systems of random people in town.
So, it was a mercy killing <Audience: "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!">
Sorry, but even if we assume the light pulse traversed the chamber at V=300*Cvacuum, this is still not time travel. The light did not traverse an interval with a negative timelike value, it traversed a spacelike interval with a positive timelike component, to use relatavistic terms.
For those of you who's relativity is a bit rusty, when talking about distance and time in relativity you must talk about interval, since time and space are related.
A timelike interval is one in which two seperate events can be seen, from at least one non-accelerated frame of reference, as happening in the same place but at different times. Think of a clock striking 1 and 2: if you are moving with the clock, it was in the same place, but at different times.
A spacelike interval is one in which two seperate events can be seen, from at least one non-accelerated frame of reference, as happening at the same time but in different places. Think of two bombs going off: at the right place they will seem to be going off at the same time, but never in the same place.
Light normal covers an interval that is neither spacelike nor timelike, but a 50/50 mix of both. However, in this case (if the experiment is to be beleived) the light going through the chamber covered a spacelike interval, but even if you sent the pulse through the chamber and back, it would still not have covered a negative timelike interval. So, you cannot report back the date of the Microsoft breakup and cash in on the stock market.
In my perusal of the messages in this thread, I see a common mistake being made. Too many young kids seem to think that PHP, Zope, and such are going to have some form of longevity.
Wrong.
You want to have a job when you are 40? Learn the fundimentals. Learning the latest thing is wonderful, as long as you also learn the history so that when the new latest thing comes along, you have the ability to pick it up quickly. If all you know is the latest thing and nothing else, you will be sunk when it ceases to be "the latest thing" and becomes old-hat.
Also, if you think that because you are studly in some area you don't need a college degree, I have a phrase I want you to learn:
You want fries with that?
A degree tells a potential employer two things:
You have had at least some training the "the fundimentals".
You have the perserverance to stick it out and get a 4 year degree
Notice that I didn't say a degree means you are competent, nor did I say it means you will be able to keep up. But it does tell me that at least you aren't some punk who will never be able to do more than one thing.
Hear Hear! But let me give you a couple of more things to consider.
First, my background: I'm one of the principal engineers at my company, and am one of the people that does technical interveiwing of candidates. You want to know what I look for?
Breadth of experience: If all you've ever done is device drivers, or UI, or databases, or.*, then you will be lost when I ask you to do something else. Ditto if all you've ever worked with is Windows (or Linux, or Unix, or VMS, or.*).
Motivation: I give you a task to do, I cannot afford to babysit you to make it get done. I've got work of my own to do.
Personality: I don't care if you could teach Linus about OS design, if you don't play well with others you don't stay on my team.
Willingness to learn: This doesn't just mean learning programming; it means that if I show you how to operate a radio, or 'scope, or soldering iron you pay attention and "save the file to disk". If I have to repeatedly show you the same thing over and over, you're out.
Now, young punks often lack these skills, which for some reason are not taught in college. They often think because they know all about RAID controllers they know everything (mistaking great knowledge in a small area for great knowledge in a large area). Older programmers have (usually) learned these things.
That said, unfortunately older programmers bring more value to a company and therefor cost more. When you have a real PHB who things "a programmer is a programmer" (like a VB programmer is going to do real well programming a DSP in assembly! or vise versa) they think by going cheap they can get the work done. Wrong.
However, there will always be companies that listen to their technical leads and hire quality. Just don't be afraid to relocate. The Valley is, unfortunately, completely screwed in this regard: high prices for labor + large amounts of talent walking around = tough times for older people. But look to Colorado Springs, or Dallas, and you might do better.
If you really would like to generate random data, I suggest you get a local EE to whomp up a diode noise generator: you take a zener diode, and lightly reverse bias it (if I remember correctly; I'm not in my office right now). As a result, you get a lot of random thermal noise, which you feed into a digitizer. Instant real random noise with two caveats
Your soundcard has a lowpass filter on it: therefor any data sampled by the soundcard will have a high degree of short-term correlation. Better wait at least 10ms between reads to get good uncorrelated data
Unless you are very careful in how you adjust the levels of the signal, it will not cover the whole range of values from the card. You are best off taking the data and gzipping/bzipping it to increase the entropy of the data to maximum.
You can also use an FM radio that does not have muting: tune it off frequency and the FM discriminator will spit out band limited white noise. However, the same caveats apply, and the nice thing about the diode approach is that nobody can screw up your random number source with a simple carrier of reasonable amplitude.
I didn't know that it cost.au mirrors that much to download from them. I used to pick.au mirrors because of the time diffence (the middle of the day in Kansas is about the middle of the night in.au, and that oft allowed me to get better throughput.) I'll keep that in mind when I pick my download sites in the future.
the average bloke who doesn't have glorious co-ax running past his castle (thanks to the freak'n greenies - 'no more overhead cables!')
I assume you are a resident of.au, so may I ask a couple of questions (this one and the next): what is the frequency of lightning storms there? I live in Kansas, US (the heart of the US "Tornado Alley") and I love underground cabling as it greatly reduces the chances of my gear getting fried. Granted, it's somewhat more expensive to install....
What is keeping McDonald's from doing this? Nothing. They are working on it right now; a McD's that is run by 2 people + robots. I've said for a long time: if you raise the minimum wage enough, then it will be more cost effective to use robotics than people. Given that McD's already has every part of making your order down to a science (I've said before that if McD's wanted to become ISO-9000 certified, they could do so in about 5 minutes), it would be no problem for them to automate everything.
If you've ever read the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, you know where we are going: McSwineys, where you speak your order into a mike, and the food is prepared automatically. Although given current state of the art, I'd expect more of an ATM type system: You push the Big Mac button, the extra onions button, the Large Coke button, and feed your $5 in, and your food pops out a little door. After all, that's all the cash registers are now!
Sorry, but wrong. I follow the XF4 devel list, and have built XF4 from scratch. The Voodoo support under XF3.3x is also a Direct Rendering system: DR simply means that the 3D routines go directly to the hardware, not through the X system. In XF3.3x, running Mesa with the 3DFX drivers, as soon as you go full screen, the Mesa system goes directly to the hardware, bypassing X completely. Just like DRI under XF4.0
The differences between XF3.3x+Mesa+Glide and XF4.0+DRI are:
XF3.3 can only do hardware accelerated 3D in full screen, XF4 can do it in a window
XF3.3 can only support 1 client accessing the 3D hardware at a time, XF4 can allow multiple programs to access the hardware "at the same time" (actually, they switch the contexts, just like Linux switches contexts on the processor).
monitor send a brief signal burst every few seconds until it gets a return message from the vid card that acknowledges the monitors existence and stats. Why isn't that implemented in hardware?
It is implemented in hardware: it's called DCC, for digital communications channel, and any modern (plug&play) monitor supports this, as does any modern card. However, the video card makers made each card access this in a different way, and the code to access this is in the video card BIOS and runs only in X86 real mode. Not good, when you are running X86 protected mode (Linux/86) or on something else (Alpha, PPC, MIPS,....)
The newest XFree (XFree86 V4.0) does access this information by setting up a virtual real mode processor, and calling the video card BIOS. However, the XFree guys haven't yet tied this into the modeline code to allow X to read the monitor's data & set itself up automatically. However, this is coming soon.
Kids today, you don't know how good you've got it. When I was a whippersnapper, I was lucky, because my oldest brother worked for JPL, and I got all sorts of free pictures from Voyager (the good space probe, not the lame space show), Viking, Pioneer, and Mariner. I was special.
Now anyone can download the pics from the 'Net, print them off on their 600dpi color printer, and have them.
</VOICE>
Seriously: be thankful you can download these with a mouseclick. It wasn't that long ago that you'd've been lucky to get any look at these...
One common misconception I see being repeated in this thread is that a nuke can go off without explictly being triggered WRONG
A nuke requires a precise detonation sequence of the shaped charges to bring the core into a supercritical gemometry withing the few milliseconds you have before it vaporizes itself. Miss the mark, and you "just" have plutonium chunks scattered around.
This is what cracks me up about so many movies and TV shows: they have the guys trying to disarm the nuke that's about to go off; in reality they'd just slap a shaped charge on the side of the device,throw a Kevlar blanket over the device, and PAFF! scratch one nuke. Cleanup, isle 6.
By definition: Open Source software places damn few restrictions on who can use it, what they can use it for, and where they can use it. This license prevents usage of Motif on any non-OSS operating system; therefor it is NOT open source!
When well we start taking companies to task for abusing the term "Open Source"?
Paging Mr. Stallman, Mr. Stallman to the white courtesy phone...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid you've not kept up on current technology. A laser diode is about the size of a grain of rice, and uses milliwatts of power. Also, laser diodes aren't very expensive (consider that you can buy a laser pointer for $20). While the laser diode in a laser pointer isn't the same as the lasers they are using in this, it's not THAT much different.
So I'm sitting here on the group W bench, when the biggest, meanest father-raper comes over to me and asks, "What'd you get?"
I said, "I didn't get nothing - I had to clean up the mess."
He said, "What are you in for?"
I said, "Spamming." And they all moved away. "And creating a public nuisanse." And they all moved back....
With apologies to Arlo Guthrey
</Humor>
I'll be the other prisoners will love him.
However, it's still a very good sign. Perhaps Sony "gets it"?
It's a bit unfair to blame gcc for poor memory allocation: unlike Java memory allocation isn't built into C.
Chill out the paranoia - it sounds like SiS is trying to Do The Right Thing within the limits they must operate under.
I'm glad to hear somebody else feels this way! I really am tired of the "heavy-metal-bang-your-head-until-your-ears-bleed
Open mouth, insert foot. I didn't realize that there were two distinct products, and was looking at the wrong one. Comes from trying to bang code and do research at the same time. Mod me down, boys, I deserve it...
And my second question: Why do they want me to log in to their service? I want to see a privacy policy, thank you very much.
I was trying to state it in a fashion that would be easier to grasp for most folks, and I think what we are saying is basically equivelent. You are correct that from some frames of reference, the 300C pulse would seem to arrive before the instigating pulse, however from any frame of reference that included the origin of the light pulse causality would not be violated.
In other words: from the other side of the tank, a light pulse exits the tank, a reflect pulse travels backward in the tank, and meets and cancels a light pulse entering the tank. A strange co-incidence, but not a causality violation.
From the side of the tank that the light pulse was launched from, causality is preserved because the 300C pulse still exits from the tank after the main pulse hits. To truly violate causality, you must have a closed timelike path through the tank and back to the event point the light was launched at, which you cannot do with this setup.
I think it's the reflected wave that is the key: without it, you would see (from the other side of the tank) a light pulse exit the tank, and then a light pulse enter the tank (a causality violation). With the reflected wave, the events as viewed from the far side of the tank may be strange, but they aren't a casuality violation: just a damn strange coincidence.
So, it was a mercy killing <Audience: "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!">
That's OK then.
For those of you who's relativity is a bit rusty, when talking about distance and time in relativity you must talk about interval, since time and space are related.
A timelike interval is one in which two seperate events can be seen, from at least one non-accelerated frame of reference, as happening in the same place but at different times. Think of a clock striking 1 and 2: if you are moving with the clock, it was in the same place, but at different times.
A spacelike interval is one in which two seperate events can be seen, from at least one non-accelerated frame of reference, as happening at the same time but in different places. Think of two bombs going off: at the right place they will seem to be going off at the same time, but never in the same place.
Light normal covers an interval that is neither spacelike nor timelike, but a 50/50 mix of both. However, in this case (if the experiment is to be beleived) the light going through the chamber covered a spacelike interval, but even if you sent the pulse through the chamber and back, it would still not have covered a negative timelike interval. So, you cannot report back the date of the Microsoft breakup and cash in on the stock market.
Wrong.
You want to have a job when you are 40? Learn the fundimentals. Learning the latest thing is wonderful, as long as you also learn the history so that when the new latest thing comes along, you have the ability to pick it up quickly. If all you know is the latest thing and nothing else, you will be sunk when it ceases to be "the latest thing" and becomes old-hat.
Also, if you think that because you are studly in some area you don't need a college degree, I have a phrase I want you to learn:
A degree tells a potential employer two things:
Notice that I didn't say a degree means you are competent, nor did I say it means you will be able to keep up. But it does tell me that at least you aren't some punk who will never be able to do more than one thing.
Breadth, Breadth, Breadth!
First, my background: I'm one of the principal engineers at my company, and am one of the people that does technical interveiwing of candidates. You want to know what I look for?
Now, young punks often lack these skills, which for some reason are not taught in college. They often think because they know all about RAID controllers they know everything (mistaking great knowledge in a small area for great knowledge in a large area). Older programmers have (usually) learned these things.
That said, unfortunately older programmers bring more value to a company and therefor cost more. When you have a real PHB who things "a programmer is a programmer" (like a VB programmer is going to do real well programming a DSP in assembly! or vise versa) they think by going cheap they can get the work done. Wrong.
However, there will always be companies that listen to their technical leads and hire quality. Just don't be afraid to relocate. The Valley is, unfortunately, completely screwed in this regard: high prices for labor + large amounts of talent walking around = tough times for older people. But look to Colorado Springs, or Dallas, and you might do better.
From what I gathered reading the article, the Sun and the Xterm were still alive when shot.
Sacrilege!
Putting down broken hardware is one thing, but killing still working Unix hardware boarders on blasphemey!
May their weapons jam and their clip's springs weaken!
You can also use an FM radio that does not have muting: tune it off frequency and the FM discriminator will spit out band limited white noise. However, the same caveats apply, and the nice thing about the diode approach is that nobody can screw up your random number source with a simple carrier of reasonable amplitude.
Of course, you always could use a Lava lamp
I didn't know that it cost .au mirrors that much to download from them. I used to pick .au mirrors because of the time diffence (the middle of the day in Kansas is about the middle of the night in .au, and that oft allowed me to get better throughput.) I'll keep that in mind when I pick my download sites in the future.
I assume you are a resident of
If you've ever read the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, you know where we are going: McSwineys, where you speak your order into a mike, and the food is prepared automatically. Although given current state of the art, I'd expect more of an ATM type system: You push the Big Mac button, the extra onions button, the Large Coke button, and feed your $5 in, and your food pops out a little door. After all, that's all the cash registers are now!
The differences between XF3.3x+Mesa+Glide and XF4.0+DRI are:
This is in Wichita, KS. If you are interested, reply and I'll tell you how to contact our HR dept.
It is implemented in hardware: it's called DCC, for digital communications channel, and any modern (plug&play) monitor supports this, as does any modern card. However, the video card makers made each card access this in a different way, and the code to access this is in the video card BIOS and runs only in X86 real mode. Not good, when you are running X86 protected mode (Linux/86) or on something else (Alpha, PPC, MIPS,....)
The newest XFree (XFree86 V4.0) does access this information by setting up a virtual real mode processor, and calling the video card BIOS. However, the XFree guys haven't yet tied this into the modeline code to allow X to read the monitor's data & set itself up automatically. However, this is coming soon.
<VOICE TYPE="old.fart">
Kids today, you don't know how good you've got it. When I was a whippersnapper, I was lucky, because my oldest brother worked for JPL, and I got all sorts of free pictures from Voyager (the good space probe, not the lame space show), Viking, Pioneer, and Mariner. I was special.
Now anyone can download the pics from the 'Net, print them off on their 600dpi color printer, and have them.
</VOICE>
Seriously: be thankful you can download these with a mouseclick. It wasn't that long ago that you'd've been lucky to get any look at these...
One common misconception I see being repeated in this thread is that a nuke can go off without explictly being triggered
WRONG
A nuke requires a precise detonation sequence of the shaped charges to bring the core into a supercritical gemometry withing the few milliseconds you have before it vaporizes itself. Miss the mark, and you "just" have plutonium chunks scattered around.
This is what cracks me up about so many movies and TV shows: they have the guys trying to disarm the nuke that's about to go off; in reality they'd just slap a shaped charge on the side of the device,throw a Kevlar blanket over the device, and PAFF! scratch one nuke. Cleanup, isle 6.
When well we start taking companies to task for abusing the term "Open Source"?
Paging Mr. Stallman, Mr. Stallman to the white courtesy phone...