Given that they can measure time with a resolution in the billionth of a second, my guess is that they've measured the distance using light with the same accuracy. If that's the case, then that should rule out that 30cm difference.
The neutrinos go through solid rock and the detector is embedded nearly 1 mile underground. They are measuring the distance by a combination of GPS and AtomicClocks but that might not be perfect. Plus the detector is HUGE -- it seems like it would be easy to lose a foot in measurement somewhere there.
The detector is 732km away for the emitter and light travels at 299 792 458 m/s. In one billionth of a second, light only travels 29.9 cm. If they are off in the precision of measuring a 732km distance by even as little as 30 cm (~1ft), then their timings will be off by 1 billionth of a second.
Seriously, a low-performance core doing administrivia type work sounds great, but won't this require OS support? I can't imagine this detail is completely abstracted from the kernel.
Modern OS's can already use multiple cores (including non-power of 2 such as AMD 3-core CPUs) and already have the ability to suspend cores that are not in use. In fact the ACPI standard on all modern PC CPU's has supported this since 1996:
C0 is the operating state.
C1 (often known as Halt) is a state where the processor is not executing instructions, but can return to an executing state essentially instantaneously. All ACPI-conformant processors must support this power state. Some processors, such as the Pentium 4, also support an Enhanced C1 state (C1E or Enhanced Halt State) for lower power consumption.
C2 (often known as Stop-Clock) is a state where the processor maintains all software-visible state, but may take longer to wake up. This processor state is optional.
C3 (often known as Sleep) is a state where the processor does not need to keep its cache coherent, but maintains other state. Some processors have variations on the C3 state (Deep Sleep, Deeper Sleep, etc.) that differ in how long it takes to wake the processor. This processor state is optional.
It is true that you can search flights on Bing www.bing.com/travel/flight, but if you check the results at the bottom of the page it says "Results powered by KAYAK.com". So technically it's not Bing's search engine that is giving you the results - the Bing page is just a front end to Kayak's search engine. Does it matter? Maybe the user experience is similar, but it says something that Microsoft outsourced their travel search engine instead of developing it inhouse.
Kayak is enormously frustrating with the way it opens multiple windows, searches through popups, and redirects you to different sites. It feels clunky and not "legitimate" because most serious sites don't popup so much stuff and leave orphan browser windows all over your desktop.
The USER EXPERIENCE with Bing is much better than Kayak and IT DOES MATTER. Bing presents all the data in one spot right unobtrusively from a common search without a bunch of extra annoying popup windows... and thing's like adjusting the time and seeing the fare relative to specific time windows is in real-time rather than a re-search. It might be a "skin" on Kayak data but the frontend in Bing is much better.
It is true that you can search flights on Bing www.bing.com/travel/flight, but if you check the results at the bottom of the page it says "Results powered by KAYAK.com". So technically it's not Bing's search engine that is giving you the results - the Bing page is just a front end to Kayak's search engine. Does it matter? Maybe the user experience is similar, but it says something that Microsoft outsourced their travel search engine instead of developing it inhouse.
Kayak is enormously frustrating with the way it opens multiple windows, searches through popups, and redirects you to different sites. It feels clunky and not "legitimate" because most serious sites don't popup so much stuff and leave orphan browser windows all over your desktop.
The USER EXPERIENCE with Bing is much better than Kayak and IT DOES MATTER. Bing presents all the data in one spot right unobtrusively from a common search without a bunch of extra annoying popup windows... and thing's like adjusting the time and seeing the fare relative to specific time windows is in real-time rather than a re-search. It might be a "skin" on Kayak data but the frontend in Bing is much better.
You should just because of this manipulative shit.
There's a lot of anti-Microsoft hate on Slashdot. It's been my experience that posting anything pro-Microsoft... especially in a thread about Google or Apple gets you modded down. My post has gotten modded down and up several times. And yes, several other posts that mentioned Bing without the disclaimer I put out got modded down for no reason as well.
I know I'll get modded down for the but Microsoft's Bing search engine has been doing flight searches quite nicely for a time. Type in a flight query with dates and it will have a selection to choose matching flights at the top of your search results. You can even limit by take off or arrival times and it has a pretty good "price predictor" to tell you whether to buy now or wait (and what is the likelihood of the cost going down). They have good price history tools and charts too.
If you want to find a good price on a domestice flight, the price history is great to see what days the airlines "price pulse" that route.
If I had a cat like this I'd install the blacklights in my light fixtures and keep the normal lights off all the time.
If you have a cat and install blacklights, you might not like what you see. Cat urine glows. And you'd be surprised where cats get their urine. Sometimes they spray carpet and furniture, sometimes your bed or sheets, floorboards, all around the litter box etc. Seriously, taking a blacklight into a cat-owners home is usually not a pretty revelation.
No amount of software tuning or tweaking is ever going to make 5ms random seek times magically disappear. Eliminating the last moving part still used to perform computation will.
Yup... the biggest speedup I've experienced recently is an SSD. It provides and enormous bang-for-the-buck as long as you already have a decent CPU and memory. SSD's actually allow things like a virus scan to run in the backgroun without your computer turning as slow as molasses in January.
Tablets were never going to sell like they were forever. We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them.
There is a huge market for tablets if the price drops. I think the fact that HP was able to move 400,000 tablets in a day when they lowered the price shows their is a lot of demand. Furthermore, the sales of iPad 2 keep CLIMBING. I have lots of techie friends. Only about 5-10% of them own a tablet but the other 90% of the would probably buy one if they could something competitive with iPad 2 specs at half the price.
There is another tablet market and that is of course the eReader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book_reader market. Basically the tablet is a content consumption device, with a teensy bit of interactivity and form filling thrown in.
Acer doesn't want to get into the content distribution market, and Amazon's Kindle is just crap in comparison.
I would like to disagree with you here. While the Kindle is a table (i.e. a content consumption device), it is not "crap" in comparison. The Kindle is just a specialized content consumption device for people who want to read books on the go. It is incredibly light, the battery lasts for a month of actual reading time, and you can carry an entire library around with you easily, plus you can easily get buy more books nearly anywhere over free 3G. Need a new book before you take a long flight? Boom - select, click, start reading. Furthermore, try reading on your LCD-based tablet on the beach, by a pool, in a park, or anywhere outdoors where you might have bright sunlight. Even indoor reading on an LCD-screen causes much more eyestrain than reading on e-Paper.
The Kindle (or Nook) are both designed to be a replacement for carrying around books -- and it does this incredibly well.
One Word: Android. I doubt it will be more than 1-2 months before someone Jailbreaks it and has an Android install. Then you will have the world's cheapest full featured Android tablet for $400 less than anyone else with a similarly featured tablet.
The Google Voice app is capable of sending/receiving messages using your phone's data plan already. If you and the people you message have Google Voice you might be able to reduce the amount of actual SMS messages you use per month. Plus it has other useful features too...
I tried using Google Voice for texts but the app is absolutely horrid on iPhone. If you get a message or update while you are typing, you lose the entire message you are typing. Plus message updates take a while and it's clunky. It's a good idea but it's 100X more frustrating to use for having a conversation because you have a big delay on receiving data and you lose work in progress when your inputs are discarded as new messages come in.
I'm guessing whoever works on the iPhone app would be quick to change it though if they were forced to only use that app for messaging. Either that or Google is trying to deliberately keep the iPhone app sub-par to the Android experience with Google Voice.
The Google Voice app is capable of sending/receiving messages using your phone's data plan already. If you and the people you message have Google Voice you might be able to reduce the amount of actual SMS messages you use per month. Plus it has other useful features too...
I tried using Google Voice for texts but the app is absolutely horrid on iPhone. If you get a message or update while you are typing, you lose the entire message you are typing. Plus message updates take a while and it's clunky. It's a good idea but it's 100X more frustrating to use for having a conversation because you have a big delay on receiving data and you lose work in progress when your inputs are discarded as new messages come in.
This is why they should just let piracy go, especially for the OS and Visual Studio, that way when people enter the workforce, they already are accustomed to these things..
The OS should be cheaper... no way should the basic crippled version of the OS cost $100 for an upgrade and $200 for the full version. Mac OS X is $29.99 and has almost no OS Piracy.
Also, just FWIW, MS does have a free version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio Express that works quite well for students.
Apple dropped the price of OS updates from $129.99 to $29.99. Piracy for OS updates dropped significantly and they actually make more money at the lower price point. Plus since more machines are running the latest version of the OS, they have less problems with old OS issues.
It's done so that the housing can be thinner and lighter. You may not care for the tradeoff, but millions do, and they matter to Apple and you don't.
Exactly, the sockets and extra daughterboards for expandable memory take up some weight and space. If you are trying to be on the bleeding edge of thin and light and still be reasonably priced (the MacBook Air is Apple's cheapest laptop at $999), you have to make some tradeoffs and internal expandability is the easiest one to make -- especially since 99% of notebook owners never change a thing inside their computer.
Doesn't Australia have a 10% GST / VAT included in the price. So a $999 Macbook Air in the US (where tax is added later) would be $1099 alone with with this built-in tax. Then shipping costs are higher and operational costs are higher as well but at least 1/3 of the $300 "price difference" can be directly explained by the hiddne sales tax which Apple has to pay the gov't.
uSSD sticks with current 6Gbps speeds but ditches traditional Serial ATA connectors, allowing SSD controller chips to be soldered directly to motherboards.
You best be joking.
MacBook Airs are flying off the shelve with RAM already soldered onto the MB. Soldering on the SSD allows a little more space (perhaps for more battery) or for even more weight savings.
Probably due to the attitude coming from an Anonymous Coward. Calling $100K "fucking peanuts" is pretty ridiculous -- it's looking a gift horse in the mouth and it's insulting. Google has donate $100K more than any other company with big pockets and they're trying to make a grass roots effort to have the area sustainably supported. Knocking their efforts as "not enough" when as a private company they have ZERO OBLIGATION to do anything at all is displaying a remarkable disrespect for the nature of charity.
They did donate $100K.
FTA: Google already played a crucial role at Bletchley - the company contributed an hefty amount of some $100,000, which was used to assist in securing the papers of Alan Turing- a leading seminal computer scientist and code breaker who worked at the venue.
FTA: Google's Prius struck another Prius, which then struck her Honda Accord that her brother was driving. That Accord then struck another Honda Accord, and the second Accord hit a separate, non-Google-owned Prius.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that they can measure time with a resolution in the billionth of a second, my guess is that they've measured the distance using light with the same accuracy. If that's the case, then that should rule out that 30cm difference.
The neutrinos go through solid rock and the detector is embedded nearly 1 mile underground. They are measuring the distance by a combination of GPS and AtomicClocks but that might not be perfect. Plus the detector is HUGE -- it seems like it would be easy to lose a foot in measurement somewhere there.
The detector is 732km away for the emitter and light travels at 299 792 458 m/s. In one billionth of a second, light only travels 29.9 cm. If they are off in the precision of measuring a 732km distance by even as little as 30 cm (~1ft), then their timings will be off by 1 billionth of a second.
Seriously, a low-performance core doing administrivia type work sounds great, but won't this require OS support? I can't imagine this detail is completely abstracted from the kernel.
Modern OS's can already use multiple cores (including non-power of 2 such as AMD 3-core CPUs) and already have the ability to suspend cores that are not in use. In fact the ACPI standard on all modern PC CPU's has supported this since 1996:
From Wikipedia
C0 is the operating state.
C1 (often known as Halt) is a state where the processor is not executing instructions, but can return to an executing state essentially instantaneously. All ACPI-conformant processors must support this power state. Some processors, such as the Pentium 4, also support an Enhanced C1 state (C1E or Enhanced Halt State) for lower power consumption.
C2 (often known as Stop-Clock) is a state where the processor maintains all software-visible state, but may take longer to wake up. This processor state is optional.
C3 (often known as Sleep) is a state where the processor does not need to keep its cache coherent, but maintains other state. Some processors have variations on the C3 state (Deep Sleep, Deeper Sleep, etc.) that differ in how long it takes to wake the processor. This processor state is optional.
Sorry that post got formatted wrong... reposting :-(
It is true that you can search flights on Bing www.bing.com/travel/flight, but if you check the results at the bottom of the page it says "Results powered by KAYAK.com". So technically it's not Bing's search engine that is giving you the results - the Bing page is just a front end to Kayak's search engine. Does it matter? Maybe the user experience is similar, but it says something that Microsoft outsourced their travel search engine instead of developing it inhouse.
Kayak is enormously frustrating with the way it opens multiple windows, searches through popups, and redirects you to different sites. It feels clunky and not "legitimate" because most serious sites don't popup so much stuff and leave orphan browser windows all over your desktop. The USER EXPERIENCE with Bing is much better than Kayak and IT DOES MATTER. Bing presents all the data in one spot right unobtrusively from a common search without a bunch of extra annoying popup windows... and thing's like adjusting the time and seeing the fare relative to specific time windows is in real-time rather than a re-search. It might be a "skin" on Kayak data but the frontend in Bing is much better.
It is true that you can search flights on Bing www.bing.com/travel/flight, but if you check the results at the bottom of the page it says "Results powered by KAYAK.com". So technically it's not Bing's search engine that is giving you the results - the Bing page is just a front end to Kayak's search engine. Does it matter? Maybe the user experience is similar, but it says something that Microsoft outsourced their travel search engine instead of developing it inhouse. Kayak is enormously frustrating with the way it opens multiple windows, searches through popups, and redirects you to different sites. It feels clunky and not "legitimate" because most serious sites don't popup so much stuff and leave orphan browser windows all over your desktop.
The USER EXPERIENCE with Bing is much better than Kayak and IT DOES MATTER. Bing presents all the data in one spot right unobtrusively from a common search without a bunch of extra annoying popup windows... and thing's like adjusting the time and seeing the fare relative to specific time windows is in real-time rather than a re-search. It might be a "skin" on Kayak data but the frontend in Bing is much better.
I know I'll get modded down
You should just because of this manipulative shit.
There's a lot of anti-Microsoft hate on Slashdot. It's been my experience that posting anything pro-Microsoft... especially in a thread about Google or Apple gets you modded down. My post has gotten modded down and up several times. And yes, several other posts that mentioned Bing without the disclaimer I put out got modded down for no reason as well.
I know I'll get modded down for the but Microsoft's Bing search engine has been doing flight searches quite nicely for a time. Type in a flight query with dates and it will have a selection to choose matching flights at the top of your search results. You can even limit by take off or arrival times and it has a pretty good "price predictor" to tell you whether to buy now or wait (and what is the likelihood of the cost going down). They have good price history tools and charts too.
If you want to find a good price on a domestice flight, the price history is great to see what days the airlines "price pulse" that route.
If I had a cat like this I'd install the blacklights in my light fixtures and keep the normal lights off all the time.
If you have a cat and install blacklights, you might not like what you see. Cat urine glows. And you'd be surprised where cats get their urine. Sometimes they spray carpet and furniture, sometimes your bed or sheets, floorboards, all around the litter box etc. Seriously, taking a blacklight into a cat-owners home is usually not a pretty revelation.
Get an SSD.
No amount of software tuning or tweaking is ever going to make 5ms random seek times magically disappear. Eliminating the last moving part still used to perform computation will.
Yup... the biggest speedup I've experienced recently is an SSD. It provides and enormous bang-for-the-buck as long as you already have a decent CPU and memory. SSD's actually allow things like a virus scan to run in the backgroun without your computer turning as slow as molasses in January.
Tablets were never going to sell like they were forever. We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them.
There is a huge market for tablets if the price drops. I think the fact that HP was able to move 400,000 tablets in a day when they lowered the price shows their is a lot of demand. Furthermore, the sales of iPad 2 keep CLIMBING. I have lots of techie friends. Only about 5-10% of them own a tablet but the other 90% of the would probably buy one if they could something competitive with iPad 2 specs at half the price.
There is another tablet market and that is of course the eReader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book_reader market. Basically the tablet is a content consumption device, with a teensy bit of interactivity and form filling thrown in.
Acer doesn't want to get into the content distribution market, and Amazon's Kindle is just crap in comparison.
I would like to disagree with you here. While the Kindle is a table (i.e. a content consumption device), it is not "crap" in comparison. The Kindle is just a specialized content consumption device for people who want to read books on the go. It is incredibly light, the battery lasts for a month of actual reading time, and you can carry an entire library around with you easily, plus you can easily get buy more books nearly anywhere over free 3G. Need a new book before you take a long flight? Boom - select, click, start reading. Furthermore, try reading on your LCD-based tablet on the beach, by a pool, in a park, or anywhere outdoors where you might have bright sunlight. Even indoor reading on an LCD-screen causes much more eyestrain than reading on e-Paper.
The Kindle (or Nook) are both designed to be a replacement for carrying around books -- and it does this incredibly well.
Does anyone know the policy for someone who bought one at a higher price from Newegg ?
One Word: Android. I doubt it will be more than 1-2 months before someone Jailbreaks it and has an Android install. Then you will have the world's cheapest full featured Android tablet for $400 less than anyone else with a similarly featured tablet.
The Google Voice app is capable of sending/receiving messages using your phone's data plan already. If you and the people you message have Google Voice you might be able to reduce the amount of actual SMS messages you use per month. Plus it has other useful features too...
I tried using Google Voice for texts but the app is absolutely horrid on iPhone. If you get a message or update while you are typing, you lose the entire message you are typing. Plus message updates take a while and it's clunky. It's a good idea but it's 100X more frustrating to use for having a conversation because you have a big delay on receiving data and you lose work in progress when your inputs are discarded as new messages come in.
I'm guessing whoever works on the iPhone app would be quick to change it though if they were forced to only use that app for messaging. Either that or Google is trying to deliberately keep the iPhone app sub-par to the Android experience with Google Voice.
The Google Voice app is capable of sending/receiving messages using your phone's data plan already. If you and the people you message have Google Voice you might be able to reduce the amount of actual SMS messages you use per month. Plus it has other useful features too...
I tried using Google Voice for texts but the app is absolutely horrid on iPhone. If you get a message or update while you are typing, you lose the entire message you are typing. Plus message updates take a while and it's clunky. It's a good idea but it's 100X more frustrating to use for having a conversation because you have a big delay on receiving data and you lose work in progress when your inputs are discarded as new messages come in.
This is why they should just let piracy go, especially for the OS and Visual Studio, that way when people enter the workforce, they already are accustomed to these things..
The OS should be cheaper... no way should the basic crippled version of the OS cost $100 for an upgrade and $200 for the full version. Mac OS X is $29.99 and has almost no OS Piracy.
Also, just FWIW, MS does have a free version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio Express that works quite well for students.
To be honest, if Windows was $29.99 instead of closer to $200, they probably wouldn't even need DRM and they'd still have very little piracy.
Apple dropped the price of OS updates from $129.99 to $29.99. Piracy for OS updates dropped significantly and they actually make more money at the lower price point. Plus since more machines are running the latest version of the OS, they have less problems with old OS issues.
It's done so that the housing can be thinner and lighter. You may not care for the tradeoff, but millions do, and they matter to Apple and you don't.
Exactly, the sockets and extra daughterboards for expandable memory take up some weight and space. If you are trying to be on the bleeding edge of thin and light and still be reasonably priced (the MacBook Air is Apple's cheapest laptop at $999), you have to make some tradeoffs and internal expandability is the easiest one to make -- especially since 99% of notebook owners never change a thing inside their computer.
Doesn't Australia have a 10% GST / VAT included in the price. So a $999 Macbook Air in the US (where tax is added later) would be $1099 alone with with this built-in tax. Then shipping costs are higher and operational costs are higher as well but at least 1/3 of the $300 "price difference" can be directly explained by the hiddne sales tax which Apple has to pay the gov't.
uSSD sticks with current 6Gbps speeds but ditches traditional Serial ATA connectors, allowing SSD controller chips to be soldered directly to motherboards.
You best be joking.
MacBook Airs are flying off the shelve with RAM already soldered onto the MB. Soldering on the SSD allows a little more space (perhaps for more battery) or for even more weight savings.
Why is this comment moderated -1?
sorry, I'm new here
Probably due to the attitude coming from an Anonymous Coward. Calling $100K "fucking peanuts" is pretty ridiculous -- it's looking a gift horse in the mouth and it's insulting. Google has donate $100K more than any other company with big pockets and they're trying to make a grass roots effort to have the area sustainably supported. Knocking their efforts as "not enough" when as a private company they have ZERO OBLIGATION to do anything at all is displaying a remarkable disrespect for the nature of charity.
They did donate $100K.
FTA: Google already played a crucial role at Bletchley - the company contributed an hefty amount of some $100,000, which was used to assist in securing the papers of Alan Turing- a leading seminal computer scientist and code breaker who worked at the venue.
FTA: Google's Prius struck another Prius, which then struck her Honda Accord that her brother was driving. That Accord then struck another Honda Accord, and the second Accord hit a separate, non-Google-owned Prius.