I saw a very funny and insightful study that was done.
People have been complaining about "not having enough free time - we used to have so much free time, but we don't anymore. We have too much work!" The theory was that we don't have as much leisure time as we once did - that work was somehow consuming it all.
So, they had these people record what they were doing for a few weeks.
They found that the people were correct in that the didn't have as much "free" (i.e. uncommitted) time. However, they had VASTLY more leisure time - it was just crammed full of leisure activities!
Yes, you can time shift/time compress TV and radio, listen to books on tape while you drive, read/. while "taking care of business" in the bathroom in the morning, whatever. And if that allows you to better enjoy life, power to you!
But please, should you do this, don't bitch about not having enough "free" time - you chose to live that way, you have the problem with knowing what activities you cannot do without, YOU CONSUMED ALL YOUR FREE TIME!
RSA's next annoucment will be tags that will block the operation of the tags that block the operation of the tags on the things you buy. This will be offered as a security enhancement to stores to prevent the RFID system from being jammed.
Look folks, don't think of this as a very small PC.
Think of this as a PDA that can run standard applications.
For example, one of the main uses I have for portable computing is running trip planning software like Delorme's MapNGo products. Currently, such products are pretty much Windows-ia32 only. I really don't NEED a full-size laptop for this, and the software was designed to run acceptably well on a 25MHz 486 with 32M of memory fercrissakes! Running this on a 1GHz Crusoe with a quarter-gig of RAM will be child's play.
Yes, it would be nice if you could run this software on an XScale or MIPs based PDA. It would be nice if I didn't have a mortgage payment, too. But I do and it doesn't.
So having a PDA that can run ia32 code is not a bad thing.
I love that one of the "failings" of Gnumeric was that the random number generator function RND was *too* random - Gnumeric uses the/dev/urandom device that generates random numbers from noise sources in the system (noise diodes, interrupt events, user input, etc.) rather than using a psuedo-random number generator with a predictable sequence.
True, there are times it is nice to have a "random" number generator that you can re-run for testing, but having a really random number generator is better for a host of problems.
The thing I like about Stargate:SG1 is that it is relatively sensible about its science and proceedures - these people really act more like military people than certain other shows I could name.
However, this sounds suspiciously like we might be calling upon the services of Bruce the Shark fairly soon - will somebody help me set up the ramps?
Too damn many times "flooding" happens because stupid people said "OOOH, predddy! I want to build my house here, by the river!" "OOOH, preddy! I want to build my house on the beach here!"
How about telling these morons that they will NOT receive government money to rebuild their house, and that the insurance companies are NOT required to insure a new house built on the site?
There is a far simpler solution to the problem of DUI.
Public flogging.
Think about it - the first time somebody DUI's, is caught, and is flogged, that person will in all likelyhood never DUI again. And the likelyhood of other people DUI'ing goes way down.
Ask yourself this - how many people do YOU personally know who were busted for DUI.
Now, look at the DUI statistics. Given how many people are busted for DUI, do you know enough people to match those statistics? In all likelyhood, you DO know somebody who was busted, you simple don't KNOW that you know them.
At the same time, the sentence is over and done with fairly quickly - you don't lock somebody up for months at a time, so they don't lose their job. They lose a couple of days.
In many ways, a public flogging is far less "cruel" than locking somebody up for many months.
Perhaps I am missing something. One of the first things I did when I upgraded the disk in my Indy was to put Gnome on it, because in my opinion 4DWM is a lousy environment.
Perhaps somebody could enlighten me (no pun intended) about what makes 4DWM so great?
Re:Glad I'm a Neilson family this week
on
WB Cancels Angel
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· Score: 1
I'm not sure how Nielson gets folks - I think they do it by a random sampling of telephone numbers.
Watching network television (or indeed any television) is not necessary - it is not as though there are commercials - "Hi, want to control what is on TV? Apply now - 1-800-MAKE-ME-NLSON"
Re:NASA-esque mistake!
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
Given how nit-picky some folks are on Slashdot, I felt it best to allow for the shift of the barycenter, as well as possible non-linear effects as the mass grows large enough that general relativity starts to rear its head.
PCI express is a bus, logically - any board can access any portion of the shared address space, and so in that way it is a "bus" - OK, technically a fully connected star configuration, but in trying to keep it simple for the majority of/.'ers who would not know what a "fully connected star configuration" is, I used the common terminology.
And as for AGP supporting DMA - yes, AGP cards can do OK accessing system memory IN THE AGP aperture, but not very well - which is why we are seeing cards with the enormous texture RAM onboard, because going off-card to access system RAM over AGP is very slow.
OK, I can accept your qualification with an addtional caveat:
While the total energy input to the object is the same if it continues to move at 1m/sec with acceleration, the total energy expended will be greater, as no system will have 100% of the energy going into the object being accelerated.
Even if the object is some form of "ramscoop" so that the reaction mass does not count against the mass of the object, the energy needed to accelerate the reaction mas is greater for a continuous acceleration device than for a single short boost. Consider a rail launcher pushing against the earth vs. a ramscoop. The rail launcher puts relatively little kinetic energy into the earth, the ramscoop puts a LOT of energy into the reaction mass.
PCI, AGP, and ISA are all parallel systems - you have a wire for each data bit.
PCI express uses a VERY high-speed serial bus to carry the data. How high speed? One serial channel will carry more data than a standard 64 bit 66MHz PCI bus.
The advantages to a serial system are:
No timing skew. With a high speed parallel bus, you have to insure that all the data paths are the same electrical length, or else some bits get to the card before other bits, and you have to reduce the clock rate to prevent errors. With a serial system you have far fewer lines to worry about.
Simpler board design. When you are dealing with a 64 bit data bus, 64 bit address bus, plus control lines, the board design gets a bit complex. With a serial system, you have less than ten lines per channel - a much simpler board layout.
Serial systems usually use a MUCH lower signaling voltage, resulting in MUCH lower EMI and on-board noise.
PCI express allows you to gang serial channels for more bandwidth. Video card saturating one channel? Use two.
Unlike AGP, PCI express is a bus - so each device can busmaster to system memory or to other cards as needed. This helps you when your video card wants to store textures in system RAM rather than on-card. Imagine how much fun John Carmack could have with a video card that can support 1G of textures.
It is far easier to design disconnects for a serial bus, thus allowing for PCI hotswap. In fact, the PC card group is working on a new standard for PC cards (nee PCMCIA) that brings 2 PCI-X channels to card - Cardbus on steroids.
It is possible to route a PCI-express channel out of the computer case to an external chassis. While this is of limited use to the usual computer user, for guys like me it is a boon to be able to have an external chassis that looks just like it is on the main system bus, because it IS.
PCI express *could* allow you to have a computer that has bays that accept anything - hard disk, video card, extra CPU, NIC, whatever, and plug them it without restarting (unless you are running Windows (cheap shot, as I beleive MS is working on fixing that)). It will allow your video card to REALLY have fast access to system RAM, and especially in 64 bit systems, that could be a LOT of system RAM.
Good stuff - I can hardly wait 'til it becomes commonly accepted.
Re:Old news - they handled my brother
on
Space Burial
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· Score: 1
I can give you very little information about the actual process - Bob's wife handled the whole thing.
Personally, I have a Klingon attitude toward the handling of human remains. Funerals, wakes, internment, are all for the benefit of the *survivors* of the deceased, not the deceased - he no longer cares.
Personally, I would rather my estate conserve money and creamate me cheaply and dispose of the ashes cheaply, so that any value in the estate can go to those who survive me.
And you do not want to get me started on funeral homes, caskets, and burial plots (clue: I highlighted the word "plots" for a reason).
I could make a 6502 address more than 4G of memory. Of course, it would spend all of its time paging in paging tables to figure out what to page in, but it could be done.
However, writing 6502 code to access that memory would be a nightmare.
Simillarly, writing ia32 code to access more than 4G of memory per thread is a nightmare of paging - instead of simply mmap'ing a file and moving a pointer, I now have to bring the paging logic into my program, and make my code all the more complicated. And complicated code tends to be buggier than simple code.
Re:Yes and no
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The energy required to achieve escape velocity is the same as going one meter per second. If you're going one m/s, you need to fight the pull of gravity, but if you're going escape velocity you're speed would exactly compensate for gravity.
IANAP (physicist), but I will be in two years.
Not if you keep making mistakes like that. Escape velocity is defined as the velocity needed to escape from a gravity well with no additional energy input. True, IF I move a meter per second radially away from the earth, and IF I continue to apply force to overcome gravity, THEN I will escape from the earth (in the limit), HOWEVER that is not "escape velocity" since I am continuing to oppose the force of gravity.
However, IF I want to take a "running start" at it, and then coast, I need to be moving at roughly 7 miles per second to have enough kinetic energy to be able to convert it to the potential energy of being "infinitely far" from the earth (escape conditions).
Re:NASA-esque mistake!
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
I never specified "short tons" - I simply said "tons", which in the usage I was using it was metric tons. It is not required to use the Britishism "tonnes" when referring to metric tons.
And had you read any of the other posts, you would have seen that even hundreds of tons per day is insignificant compared to the mass of the earth.
And if you had bothered to study science at all in school, you would know that the orbit of a planet-sized mass around a solar-sized mass is not significantly effected by the mass of the planet.
Have your kayak and heat it too.
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
Here's a sick and twisted thought:
If you were grossly overweight, and had liposuction, and had the fat so removed cremated, would Celestis launch it if you paid the fee?
Re:Only so much carbon...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The amount of mass being launched is measured in the hundreds of kilograms per year.
The amount of mass falling onto the earth from space is measured in the hundreds of tons per day.
Do the math.
Old news - they handled my brother
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This is old news - Celestis handled my brother back in 2000.
Re:Glad I'm a Neilson family this week
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 1
Fudging a few things is one thing, having a 6V battery be able to pull a shoe imprint, a 12V battery throw 5 foot arcs, stating that "the iron in this man's blood conducted the electricity" - that is what I have a real problem with.
No, CSI doesn't just fudge science to "protect the kids" or to keep the criminals in the dark - they consistently get it wrong because they cannot be bothered to get it right. If you can, go watch old episodes of "Quincy" to see forensic science on TV done (more) correctly.
We have a Tektronics Logic analyzer at work - basically a PXI chassis with specialized hardware and an embedded computer running Windows 2000.
It is comical to walk past it when nobody's touched it in a while, as there will invariably be a dialog on the screen:
"Module VXI to PXI bridge has prevented the system from going into sleep mode [OK] [cancel]"
Yes, technically it is Tek's fault for not making their module not support sleep mode correctly, but anybody who has had the misfortune to see what it takes to make a hardware driver support power management under WDM will understand why Tek probably didn't do it.
I too would love to see a good stable software platform upon which to build instrumentation.
Slashdot Mirror
When I do the download on the GiS I get an invalid data received message.
The Appleseed went through quite nicely.
I saw a very funny and insightful study that was done.
/. while "taking care of business" in the bathroom in the morning, whatever. And if that allows you to better enjoy life, power to you!
People have been complaining about "not having enough free time - we used to have so much free time, but we don't anymore. We have too much work!" The theory was that we don't have as much leisure time as we once did - that work was somehow consuming it all.
So, they had these people record what they were doing for a few weeks.
They found that the people were correct in that the didn't have as much "free" (i.e. uncommitted) time. However, they had VASTLY more leisure time - it was just crammed full of leisure activities!
Yes, you can time shift/time compress TV and radio, listen to books on tape while you drive, read
But please, should you do this, don't bitch about not having enough "free" time - you chose to live that way, you have the problem with knowing what activities you cannot do without, YOU CONSUMED ALL YOUR FREE TIME!
The Ghost in the shell torrent is busted.
Just run the SELinux patches and then it won't matter if the kiddies get root!
RSA's next annoucment will be tags that will block the operation of the tags that block the operation of the tags on the things you buy. This will be offered as a security enhancement to stores to prevent the RFID system from being jammed.
Look folks, don't think of this as a very small PC.
Think of this as a PDA that can run standard applications.
For example, one of the main uses I have for portable computing is running trip planning software like Delorme's MapNGo products. Currently, such products are pretty much Windows-ia32 only. I really don't NEED a full-size laptop for this, and the software was designed to run acceptably well on a 25MHz 486 with 32M of memory fercrissakes! Running this on a 1GHz Crusoe with a quarter-gig of RAM will be child's play.
Yes, it would be nice if you could run this software on an XScale or MIPs based PDA. It would be nice if I didn't have a mortgage payment, too. But I do and it doesn't.
So having a PDA that can run ia32 code is not a bad thing.
I love that one of the "failings" of Gnumeric was that the random number generator function RND was *too* random - Gnumeric uses the /dev/urandom device that generates random numbers from noise sources in the system (noise diodes, interrupt events, user input, etc.) rather than using a psuedo-random number generator with a predictable sequence.
True, there are times it is nice to have a "random" number generator that you can re-run for testing, but having a really random number generator is better for a host of problems.
The thing I like about Stargate:SG1 is that it is relatively sensible about its science and proceedures - these people really act more like military people than certain other shows I could name.
However, this sounds suspiciously like we might be calling upon the services of Bruce the Shark fairly soon - will somebody help me set up the ramps?
Does this sim offer the choice of
NOT BUILDING WHERE FLOODING HAPPENS?
Too damn many times "flooding" happens because stupid people said "OOOH, predddy! I want to build my house here, by the river!" "OOOH, preddy! I want to build my house on the beach here!"
How about telling these morons that they will NOT receive government money to rebuild their house, and that the insurance companies are NOT required to insure a new house built on the site?
There is a far simpler solution to the problem of DUI.
Public flogging.
Think about it - the first time somebody DUI's, is caught, and is flogged, that person will in all likelyhood never DUI again. And the likelyhood of other people DUI'ing goes way down.
Ask yourself this - how many people do YOU personally know who were busted for DUI.
Now, look at the DUI statistics. Given how many people are busted for DUI, do you know enough people to match those statistics? In all likelyhood, you DO know somebody who was busted, you simple don't KNOW that you know them.
At the same time, the sentence is over and done with fairly quickly - you don't lock somebody up for months at a time, so they don't lose their job. They lose a couple of days.
In many ways, a public flogging is far less "cruel" than locking somebody up for many months.
Perhaps I am missing something. One of the first things I did when I upgraded the disk in my Indy was to put Gnome on it, because in my opinion 4DWM is a lousy environment.
Perhaps somebody could enlighten me (no pun intended) about what makes 4DWM so great?
I'm not sure how Nielson gets folks - I think they do it by a random sampling of telephone numbers.
Watching network television (or indeed any television) is not necessary - it is not as though there are commercials - "Hi, want to control what is on TV? Apply now - 1-800-MAKE-ME-NLSON"
Given how nit-picky some folks are on Slashdot, I felt it best to allow for the shift of the barycenter, as well as possible non-linear effects as the mass grows large enough that general relativity starts to rear its head.
PCI express is a bus, logically - any board can access any portion of the shared address space, and so in that way it is a "bus" - OK, technically a fully connected star configuration, but in trying to keep it simple for the majority of /.'ers who would not know what a "fully connected star configuration" is, I used the common terminology.
And as for AGP supporting DMA - yes, AGP cards can do OK accessing system memory IN THE AGP aperture, but not very well - which is why we are seeing cards with the enormous texture RAM onboard, because going off-card to access system RAM over AGP is very slow.
OK, I can accept your qualification with an addtional caveat:
While the total energy input to the object is the same if it continues to move at 1m/sec with acceleration, the total energy expended will be greater, as no system will have 100% of the energy going into the object being accelerated.
Even if the object is some form of "ramscoop" so that the reaction mass does not count against the mass of the object, the energy needed to accelerate the reaction mas is greater for a continuous acceleration device than for a single short boost. Consider a rail launcher pushing against the earth vs. a ramscoop. The rail launcher puts relatively little kinetic energy into the earth, the ramscoop puts a LOT of energy into the reaction mass.
PCI, AGP, and ISA are all parallel systems - you have a wire for each data bit.
PCI express uses a VERY high-speed serial bus to carry the data. How high speed? One serial channel will carry more data than a standard 64 bit 66MHz PCI bus.
The advantages to a serial system are:
PCI express *could* allow you to have a computer that has bays that accept anything - hard disk, video card, extra CPU, NIC, whatever, and plug them it without restarting (unless you are running Windows (cheap shot, as I beleive MS is working on fixing that)). It will allow your video card to REALLY have fast access to system RAM, and especially in 64 bit systems, that could be a LOT of system RAM.
Good stuff - I can hardly wait 'til it becomes commonly accepted.
I can give you very little information about the actual process - Bob's wife handled the whole thing.
Personally, I have a Klingon attitude toward the handling of human remains. Funerals, wakes, internment, are all for the benefit of the *survivors* of the deceased, not the deceased - he no longer cares.
Personally, I would rather my estate conserve money and creamate me cheaply and dispose of the ashes cheaply, so that any value in the estate can go to those who survive me.
And you do not want to get me started on funeral homes, caskets, and burial plots (clue: I highlighted the word "plots" for a reason).
I could make a 6502 address more than 4G of memory. Of course, it would spend all of its time paging in paging tables to figure out what to page in, but it could be done.
However, writing 6502 code to access that memory would be a nightmare.
Simillarly, writing ia32 code to access more than 4G of memory per thread is a nightmare of paging - instead of simply mmap'ing a file and moving a pointer, I now have to bring the paging logic into my program, and make my code all the more complicated. And complicated code tends to be buggier than simple code.
The energy required to achieve escape velocity is the same as going one meter per second. If you're going one m/s, you need to fight the pull of gravity, but if you're going escape velocity you're speed would exactly compensate for gravity.
IANAP (physicist), but I will be in two years.
Not if you keep making mistakes like that. Escape velocity is defined as the velocity needed to escape from a gravity well with no additional energy input. True, IF I move a meter per second radially away from the earth, and IF I continue to apply force to overcome gravity, THEN I will escape from the earth (in the limit), HOWEVER that is not "escape velocity" since I am continuing to oppose the force of gravity.
However, IF I want to take a "running start" at it, and then coast, I need to be moving at roughly 7 miles per second to have enough kinetic energy to be able to convert it to the potential energy of being "infinitely far" from the earth (escape conditions).
I never specified "short tons" - I simply said "tons", which in the usage I was using it was metric tons. It is not required to use the Britishism "tonnes" when referring to metric tons.
And had you read any of the other posts, you would have seen that even hundreds of tons per day is insignificant compared to the mass of the earth.
And if you had bothered to study science at all in school, you would know that the orbit of a planet-sized mass around a solar-sized mass is not significantly effected by the mass of the planet.
Here's a sick and twisted thought:
If you were grossly overweight, and had liposuction, and had the fat so removed cremated, would Celestis launch it if you paid the fee?
The amount of mass being launched is measured in the hundreds of kilograms per year.
The amount of mass falling onto the earth from space is measured in the hundreds of tons per day.
Do the math.
This is old news - Celestis handled my brother back in 2000.
Fudging a few things is one thing, having a 6V battery be able to pull a shoe imprint, a 12V battery throw 5 foot arcs, stating that "the iron in this man's blood conducted the electricity" - that is what I have a real problem with.
No, CSI doesn't just fudge science to "protect the kids" or to keep the criminals in the dark - they consistently get it wrong because they cannot be bothered to get it right. If you can, go watch old episodes of "Quincy" to see forensic science on TV done (more) correctly.
We have a Tektronics Logic analyzer at work - basically a PXI chassis with specialized hardware and an embedded computer running Windows 2000.
It is comical to walk past it when nobody's touched it in a while, as there will invariably be a dialog on the screen:
"Module VXI to PXI bridge has prevented the system from going into sleep mode [OK] [cancel]"
Yes, technically it is Tek's fault for not making their module not support sleep mode correctly, but anybody who has had the misfortune to see what it takes to make a hardware driver support power management under WDM will understand why Tek probably didn't do it.
I too would love to see a good stable software platform upon which to build instrumentation.