Just in case you read TFA. It states that "When running at full 3.9 GHz, I would save about 26 megawatts a month. Sweet!" This is incorrect. 26 megawatt is the energy consumption of a medium sized city. Units for saving should in any case be watts, or kilowatthours per month to make it easier to convert to $$$. (note that this is again just watts multiplied by a constant: "kilo" and "hours/month")
I notice in the data that unstructured programming has been making a big leap forward. I guess I need to update my skills here. It also appears that spaghetti code is becoming more common.
You do not know what "precise part placement based on thermo-fluid analysis to achieve semi-hermetic construction" means? Well, lets break it up: a) "precise part placement" b) "thermo-fluid analysis" c) "semi-hermetic construction" It means that A) the CPU is placed close to the case, so B)the case functions as a heat sink. Therefore, no fan is needed and the box is C) dustproof.
Next time you fly commecially, and look at the engines, you may wonder why that plane is not powered by a rocket also. The answer is quite simple: A rocket engine is incredible inefficient, and has absolutely no advantages over a jet or prop other than that it can operate in vacuum. Also in vacuum, you do not need wings. A rocket powered plane is therefore almost an oxymoron. So this sounds like an idea that is not very likely to take off.
Everybody should know that when you kill a big dangerous animal, after it has received the bane-wound, you stay away as it rages and fights, and hits everything it can reach. When this is a big dinosaur, this precaution is extra important.
All you can do is to help it die fast. This is good for both the dying animal, and you. Don't give it any first aid, and in the case of RIAA, don't give them any money.
One big error in the article is that life started on earth and then led directly to modern life forms.
It seems quite feasible, possibly likely, that the first few times life started on earth, in the early solar system, it got extinguished by another big impact causing a global disaster. How far along evolution got between these total extinctions is unknown. All we know of today is the last time life started, and was not extinguished by some global disaster yet.
Here is just some useful unit conversations: suns = 2E30 kg light year = 1E16 meters So this cloud has a density of 28 H2 molecules per liter. That is pretty good vacuum. Actually about a million times better vacuum than "deep vacuum" in outer space here in our solar system, which again is much better vacuum than what is achievable here on earth.
So this "collision" will be quite soft in terms of energy density: One feather landing on an area the size of the earth.
Flashforward to 2010: CDs Gets Its Groove Back; Ripping a CD gives you better sound than downloading the track off the net. Music industry trying to relaunch the CD is claiming superior sound. "The bits gets scratched and dented a lot when traveling through the long pipes on the internet. When you rip a CD, the bits only travel through the shorter pipes inside your computer, and does not get as many scratches"
Audiophiles also claim to be able to hear the difference.
Google CEO has some private jets, and wanted to land on the airstrip next to the Googleples. Unfortunately, Moffet field is a military airfield operated by NASA. NASA and Google however agreed to scratch each others backs: Googles private jets will be part of NASA's scientific research program, and the can land the jets right next to the Googleplex.
I'm guessing giving the NASA guys a few rides in a private jet, and serving a few bottles of champagne is a small price to pay to be able to park your fleet of jets outside you office, and at the same time avoid all normal hassles.
I hope the pictures of the meteores turn out well.
I would like to suggest that this fund auction off "Lunch with Ray Beckerman" once a month. Maybe other celebrities will donate their lunches to the fund as well. That could generate both revenue and keep the fund in the news.
I would like to suggest that this fund auction off "Lunch with Ray Beckerman" once a month. Maybe other celebrities will donate their lunches to the fund as well. That could generate both revenue and keep the fund in the news.
I am sure there is a lot of poor equipment that needs to be upgraded, but otherwise this sounds more like ISP crying that they need more revenue.
Backbone fiber: the fiber cables contain 768 non-dispersion shifted cable. This, and the last mile, is the big and expensive part of the network. Each of these fibers can, with end equipment upgrade, carry at least 10Gb * 135 colors = 1.35Tb, so the cable carries 1Eb/s. Now, an x264 encoded HD video is 50mb/s, so this cable will carry 20 million HD channels. (So one cable covers northern california. There are at least three)
A 40GB edge router can support about 1k users, and costs $10k. Thats $100/user. Estimate the same cost/Mb for the core. Factoring 5 year lifetime on equipment you end up with $4/user/month for 50Mb/s.
My house is already connected with fiber(GB Ethernet choked down to a few Mb/s) , and you can probably (soon) get 50Mb/s over DSL, so the last mile cost is at least incremental, and probably similar to the above estimate of $4, so the urban part of us should get it for $8 + ISP profit and administrative cost.
So $10/month for 50Mb/s should be the cost to support this upgrade.
This is an interesting point. It is reasonable to assume this bomb was a Teller-Ulam design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller-Ulam_design If the uranium tamper is replaced with lead, the overall efficiency is cut in half. The fallout, however, is cut by a lot more, and is relatively low. That Soviet union, knowing their desire for showing off their power, choose to do this, is pretty good.
Yes, so basically it continues forever with NOP as soon as it has finished the program, like the PC on my desk here. This does however, require an infinite program "tape".
The original Universal Turing machine was defined to end with the *HALT* instruction. The 2,3 Turing Machine can not halt, and is therefore not universal. It appears that Wolfram conceded that computers today dont really halt, they just keep ticking after the program is complete, so they accepted the 2,3 machine as universal, and the proof as completed.
Maybe someone should submit the same proof, concluding that it is *not* a universal Turing machine, and claim the $25k.
I think this article was meant for Dora the Explorer club, and not/.
The journalist is either completely clueless or trying to make it comprehensible for kindergarten. The result is so wrong and incomprehensible that it is worthless:...The cable itself looks, like the cables used to hook up cable television networks...But the similarity stops there...Incoming light generates electrons in the outer shell, which are then swept into the second layer and the inner core along micropores. These "holes", as they are called, carry an equal, but opposite, charge as electrons, which means that the two particles move in opposite directions in the presence of an electric field.
Every year http://www.transparency.org/ publishes a ranking of all countries with regards to corruption. Any country high up on the list can do the following to any country further down on the list: -lecture -point finger at -ridicule -feel sorry for -your pick
I am not from the USA, but there is a _huge_ difference between the USA and Brazil. In the USA you feel there is justice on the bottom of the corruption. In Brazil it just feels like the mafia is running much of country. In the old soviet union it felt like the mafia ran all of the country.
BTW, Western europe has not been somewhat clean for very long. The old feudal system was basically structured and sanctioned corruption.
Anyone that has ever tried to do business in Brazil or many other developing nations are familiar with the hassles of dealing with a thoroughly corrupt system.
If you are installing some infrastructure in Brazil, you will have to pay off corrupt officials at every turn.
The biggest hassle is often toward the end of a project when you need to express ship some equipment to finish the work, and find that customs are holding onto the items awaiting a bribe. Maybe the customs officials are leaving the shipment outside in the rain to make sure you understand the importance of the bribe.
If the box you are shipping has a declared value of $100,000 you will be shaken down and hassled as infinitum as all the officials know you will and can pay a lot to get the box.
If you on the other hand ship the same box with a declared value of $50, it goes under the radar, or you may have to pay some low-level agent a few $$ to get it through.
This problem is magnified by the fact that US law does makes it illegal to pay bribes. Therefore you can not enter the item on the expense report. It is often money out of your own pocket.
So basically your choices are: 1. Do everything properly: Declare value, refuse to pay bribes (Illegal by US law), and have all your gear lost in customs for months, and very likely damaged. 2. Declare the value, and pay bribes out of your own pocket or with the assistance of your company. You have now committed a crime in the USA. 3. Declare the value low to go under the radar in the corrupt country. You have now committed a crime in the corrupt country, but hey, you can alway bribe your way out of it if you are cought.
Slashdot Mirror
Just in case you read TFA. It states that "When running at full 3.9 GHz, I would save about 26 megawatts a month. Sweet!"
This is incorrect.
26 megawatt is the energy consumption of a medium sized city. Units for saving should in any case be watts, or kilowatthours per month to make it easier to convert to $$$. (note that this is again just watts multiplied by a constant: "kilo" and "hours/month")
I notice in the data that unstructured programming has been making a big leap forward. I guess I need to update my skills here. It also appears that spaghetti code is becoming more common.
You do not know what "precise part placement based on thermo-fluid analysis to achieve semi-hermetic construction" means?
Well, lets break it up:
a) "precise part placement"
b) "thermo-fluid analysis"
c) "semi-hermetic construction"
It means that
A) the CPU is placed close to the case, so B)the case functions as a heat sink. Therefore, no fan is needed and the box is C) dustproof.
This happens to be a fairly common design.
Next time you fly commecially, and look at the engines, you may wonder why that plane is not powered by a rocket also. The answer is quite simple: A rocket engine is incredible inefficient, and has absolutely no advantages over a jet or prop other than that it can operate in vacuum. Also in vacuum, you do not need wings.
A rocket powered plane is therefore almost an oxymoron.
So this sounds like an idea that is not very likely to take off.
It was of meant to read 725 MJ, and the magnetic field is 10 GJ.
IT means that the energy stored as a magnetic field is 725 MJ
See http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/MagneticFieldEnergyDensity.html
The energy of the beam is 725 MJ, and the magnetic field is 725 MJ. This is the same as 160kg and 2.5 tons of TNT.
I would recommend to be in the vicinity of the "beam dump" when the beam for on of about a million failsafe conditions is aimed there.
If nothing happens, you can probably induce a beamdump in any of a thousand ways. Use your imagination, or just look for big red buttons.
Everybody should know that when you kill a big dangerous animal, after it has received the bane-wound, you stay away as it rages and fights, and hits everything it can reach. When this is a big dinosaur, this precaution is extra important.
All you can do is to help it die fast. This is good for both the dying animal, and you. Don't give it any first aid, and in the case of RIAA, don't give them any money.
Just stay away, and let it die.
One big error in the article is that life started on earth and then led directly to modern life forms.
It seems quite feasible, possibly likely, that the first few times life started on earth, in the early solar system, it got extinguished by another big impact causing a global disaster. How far along evolution got between these total extinctions is unknown. All we know of today is the last time life started, and was not extinguished by some global disaster yet.
Here is just some useful unit conversations:
suns = 2E30 kg
light year = 1E16 meters
So this cloud has a density of 28 H2 molecules per liter.
That is pretty good vacuum. Actually about a million times better vacuum than "deep vacuum" in outer space here in our solar system, which again is much better vacuum than what is achievable here on earth.
So this "collision" will be quite soft in terms of energy density: One feather landing on an area the size of the earth.
Flashforward to 2010:
CDs Gets Its Groove Back; Ripping a CD gives you better sound than downloading the track off the net. Music industry trying to relaunch the CD is claiming superior sound. "The bits gets scratched and dented a lot when traveling through the long pipes on the internet. When you rip a CD, the bits only travel through the shorter pipes inside your computer, and does not get as many scratches"
Audiophiles also claim to be able to hear the difference.
Google CEO has some private jets, and wanted to land on the airstrip next to the Googleples. Unfortunately, Moffet field is a military airfield operated by NASA. NASA and Google however agreed to scratch each others backs: Googles private jets will be part of NASA's scientific research program, and the can land the jets right next to the Googleplex.
I'm guessing giving the NASA guys a few rides in a private jet, and serving a few bottles of champagne is a small price to pay to be able to park your fleet of jets outside you office, and at the same time avoid all normal hassles.
I hope the pictures of the meteores turn out well.
I would like to suggest that this fund auction off "Lunch with Ray Beckerman" once a month. Maybe other celebrities will donate their lunches to the fund as well. That could generate both revenue and keep the fund in the news.
How about it Ray?
I would like to suggest that this fund auction off "Lunch with Ray Beckerman" once a month. Maybe other celebrities will donate their lunches to the fund as well. That could generate both revenue and keep the fund in the news.
How about it Ray?
I am sure there is a lot of poor equipment that needs to be upgraded, but otherwise this sounds more like ISP crying that they need more revenue.
/Mb for the core. Factoring 5 year lifetime on equipment you end up with $4/user/month for 50Mb/s.
Backbone fiber: the fiber cables contain 768 non-dispersion shifted cable. This, and the last mile, is the big and expensive part of the network. Each of these fibers can, with end equipment upgrade, carry at least 10Gb * 135 colors = 1.35Tb, so the cable carries 1Eb/s.
Now, an x264 encoded HD video is 50mb/s, so this cable will carry 20 million HD channels.
(So one cable covers northern california. There are at least three)
A 40GB edge router can support about 1k users, and costs $10k. Thats $100/user. Estimate the same cost
My house is already connected with fiber(GB Ethernet choked down to a few Mb/s) , and you can probably (soon) get 50Mb/s over DSL, so the last mile cost is at least incremental, and probably similar to the above estimate of $4, so the urban part of us should get it for $8 + ISP profit and administrative cost.
So $10/month for 50Mb/s should be the cost to support this upgrade.
From TFA: "if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan."
Is that more than a LoC(Libraries of congress)?
Actually, I am "the people over there"...
This is an interesting point. It is reasonable to assume this bomb was a Teller-Ulam design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller-Ulam_design If the uranium tamper is replaced with lead, the overall efficiency is cut in half. The fallout, however, is cut by a lot more, and is relatively low.
That Soviet union, knowing their desire for showing off their power, choose to do this, is pretty good.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=338339&cid=21104157
Multiply that with Avogadro's number, and you get the energy of a regular bullet with 'cosmic ray' speed:
6x10^20 J. That, amazingly, equals the total enery production on earth in one year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
Yes, so basically it continues forever with NOP as soon as it has finished the program, like the PC on my desk here. This does however, require an infinite program "tape".
The original Universal Turing machine was defined to end with the *HALT* instruction. The 2,3 Turing Machine can not halt, and is therefore not universal. It appears that Wolfram conceded that computers today dont really halt, they just keep ticking after the program is complete, so they accepted the 2,3 machine as universal, and the proof as completed.
Maybe someone should submit the same proof, concluding that it is *not* a universal Turing machine, and claim the $25k.
I think this article was meant for Dora the Explorer club, and not /.
...The cable itself looks, like the cables used to hook up cable television networks...But the similarity stops there...Incoming light generates electrons in the outer shell, which are then swept into the second layer and the inner core along micropores. These "holes", as they are called, carry an equal, but opposite, charge as electrons, which means that the two particles move in opposite directions in the presence of an electric field.
The journalist is either completely clueless or trying to make it comprehensible for kindergarten. The result is so wrong and incomprehensible that it is worthless:
Every year http://www.transparency.org/ publishes a ranking of all countries with regards to corruption. Any country high up on the list can do the following to any country further down on the list:
-lecture
-point finger at
-ridicule
-feel sorry for
-your pick
I am not from the USA, but there is a _huge_ difference between the USA and Brazil. In the USA you feel there is justice on the bottom of the corruption. In Brazil it just feels like the mafia is running much of country. In the old soviet union it felt like the mafia ran all of the country.
BTW, Western europe has not been somewhat clean for very long. The old feudal system was basically structured and sanctioned corruption.
Anyone that has ever tried to do business in Brazil or many other developing nations are familiar with the hassles of dealing with a thoroughly corrupt system.
If you are installing some infrastructure in Brazil, you will have to pay off corrupt officials at every turn.
The biggest hassle is often toward the end of a project when you need to express ship some equipment to finish the work, and find that customs are holding onto the items awaiting a bribe. Maybe the customs officials are leaving the shipment outside in the rain to make sure you understand the importance of the bribe.
If the box you are shipping has a declared value of $100,000 you will be shaken down and hassled as infinitum as all the officials know you will and can pay a lot to get the box.
If you on the other hand ship the same box with a declared value of $50, it goes under the radar, or you may have to pay some low-level agent a few $$ to get it through.
This problem is magnified by the fact that US law does makes it illegal to pay bribes. Therefore you can not enter the item on the expense report. It is often money out of your own pocket.
So basically your choices are:
1. Do everything properly: Declare value, refuse to pay bribes (Illegal by US law), and have all your gear lost in customs for months, and very likely damaged.
2. Declare the value, and pay bribes out of your own pocket or with the assistance of your company. You have now committed a crime in the USA.
3. Declare the value low to go under the radar in the corrupt country. You have now committed a crime in the corrupt country, but hey, you can alway bribe your way out of it if you are cought.