The 'r' in "dara" is obviously some sort of secret code. Perhaps it stands for DARPA, which would definitely have a vested interest in this sort of thing. And if you take the 'r' in DARPA and replace it with a 't', it becomes DATPA, which is meaningless. This proves my theory.
Another alternative is that the CIA is under control of a renegade communist band that fled Russia after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Notice the "da" in the beginning of both DARPA, data, and dara. And the 't' being changed to an 'r' has to be a secret message; perhaps they want to "transfer" top-secret government information about TEMPEST so they can spy on Microsoft, steal the source code for Windows, and take over the world!
Wait. How can the source code to Windows possibly help them?:-)
Because an FM radio channel is 200 KHz wide and an AM radio channel is 20 KHz wide (but often allocated on even finer boundaries, e.g. 10 KHz). You could get all of 5 FM broadcast channels into the entire AM band (550 KHz to 1610 KHz).
Exactly.
Actually, it's been done and I've heard it broadcast. My last car had an AM-stereo-capable radio.
I probably should rephrase my original statement. It's been done before, but it hasn't caught on due to the sheer inertia of the "peasants". In addition, it is very expensive to upgrade the transmitters and recording studio to stereo. The people won't upgrade until the stations do, the stations won't upgrade until the people do...
Piggy-backing information on existing services -- without the receivers for the existing services receiving it -- is far from a trivial task. For example, there has been a push for quite some time to replace one of the AM sidebands with a second channel, thereby allowing stereo reception, but this has never happened. Why? Because all of the existing radios would balk at this. One cannot ask the country to scrap the millions and millions of radios that it has. Anyway, the article stated that the frequencies allocated would be in the gigahertz range where spectrum is cheap.
Nowhere did I see that the car would constantly broadcast information. A device to warn cars of ice on a bridge would broadcast a low-power signal that would only reach cars at a distance of, say, 500 feet. Nowhere does the car have to broadcast anything. Cars would only have to send information in case of an emergency or for "interactive" services. If your car was in a ditch, of course you would want to radio your location to the police. And once you got out of the ditch, there would be no need to continue sending your position.
No, I'm not going to caution everyone about the dangers of microwaving metal objects. Instead, I wish to talk about the much greater risk of Microsoft CDs (insert scary music as needed). You must take heed of my message and make haste to surround your CDs with protective deletium lest these infernal products jump out and smite thee on thy noggin, causing you to lose control of yourseff and install Microsoft Windows 2000 Beta, Microsoft Office 2000, and Internet Explorer 5 (overwriting your Linux partition in the process). The resulting quantum explosion caused by having these three rip^H^H^Hproducts on the same machine at the same time may cause a quantum explosion that will take out much more than your microwave. Beware!
Q5-e3, but R5-k6 so 0-0! These people must be idiots! Everyone knows that Q5-34 is suicide, so why then Q3-a4 42.35 Rs01??? K4-e7 check so d4-d5 e46 y r u 1d10ts 1 3M W3R3Z D00DZ%@%@$$#!!!!
This patent is a hoax. It is part of an elaborate plot to bring to an end civilization as we know it. Let me clarify:
Transmeta posts a patent on the gov't web site. It is shrouded in gibberish to prevent anybody from actually interpreting it (and thus ruining the plot).
An observant/. reader finds it, wonders "wtf???", and being the dutiful netizen he is, forwards it to/. for analysis.
Slashdot posts his comment. Naturally, thousands of viewers immediately check out the government's patent site. This is compounded by the message board and the decoding attempts. A side effect of this is that babelfish is also flooded (see neuroid's post).
The government's site shuts down. The NSA thinks that hackers did it, and trace thousands of hits back to slashdot.
Slashdot's site mysteriously disappears a day later.
This is only the beginning of a great war that expands to include the entire armed forces pitted against the world's top hackers. This ends when a misguided cracker accidentally misses his intended target of fbi.gov, and accidentally triggers a nuke.
China and russia get pissed and start launching nukes. America launches mroe nukes to get back at them. Iraq launches a nuke just to get in on the fun. In the end, everybody dies.
What are your plans for the future? Now that you've published your first book, now what? More kernel hacking? Another book? A Linux startup maybe? Where do you want to be in five years?
Is it possible to form Linux in such a way so that:
It is immediately useful, and
It has infinite depth?
This, as I see it, is where the major conflict is in the above debate. Coaxial says that a "learning cliff" is necessary to keep the "don't know, don't care" type out of Linux. He implies that this would be a good thing, but I hold a different view. How can getting more users into Linux possibly be bad? They might not know what/proc does, or even that it exists, or even what a directory is at all, but they are still using the best OS on the planet and helping to spread goodwill.
The other side of this issue is from the techies, who would rather be placed on the rack than suffer under a wimpy OS. Take the mac (whack?), for example. It is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Linux. It has almost no learning curve, but it also has no depth. You can't lift up the hood and look at the engine (why do cars always have to get involved? I can't drive yet!:-) ), because all that exists under the hood is a large plastic box bearing the label "no user-serviceable parts inside".
So here we have Linux, which is almost unuseable for newbies, and Mac (whack! whack!) OS, which is almost unuseable for techies. But perhaps the true Good Thing (tm) lies in the middle.
I have a dream. A dream where all users can unite under one OS, where newbies and techies can stand proudly together under the banner of the One True Good Thing (not tm yet). An Operating System where one can just log in and go without knowing about anything inside of it. Where any complete moron can click the icon for "netscape" and be happy for the next 20 years. Yet it is also an Operating System that claims infinite depth; one can explore for years and still find new files to fool around with. It is the Operating System that will last for eternity.
So how will this happen?
First of all, Linux is already moving in the right direction. Linux is the perfect OS for people at the techie end of the spectrum, and my "dream" OS must start with a technical base.
But Linux still, in many ways, has a learning cliff, as the tsi said. This must be smoothed out at the bottom end while still remaining infinitely high at the other end. As the tsi said, one of the things needed is autorun. The other one is for applications to automatically place icons on the desktop. This way, computer neophytes must merely place the CD in the computer, follow the instructions to install, and from then on just click the icon on the desktop. All this can be done without removing the complexity of the OS from those who really want it. This means *no* cute MS Bob(tm, all you people named "bob" better change your name now) clones.
One of coaxial's claims was that a knowledgeable community is necessary for Linux. However, if Linux moves into the mainstream, all those kernel hackers will still be there, right? None of us want whining newbies flooding the newsgroups with "what's a faq? why is my cd not working! i am 37337 too!" But this viewpoint forgets several things:
Newbies don't know what a newsgroup is:-)
Most of the truly annoying calls are to tech support, which is fine for most of us who don't work at tech support:-). And tech support is designed for newbies anyway.
Could someone maybe open a loopback connection and keep it open for eternity? Just run Linux with *no* processes (sp?) open except the necessary ones, a server, and a client. With nothing to get in the way, could this connection last until Armageddon?
That would be cool but very hard to actually get working. One way to do it, I guess, would be to pit the neural net against a traditional AI and rank/feedback the results. The major problem, thoguh, is that software-based neural nets are not yet perfected to a level even equal to a traditional game AI. The neural net that you described would be perfect on the Learning Processor or something similar, but neural nets are not yet powerful enough for video games using traditional hardware.
"We are targeting four specific areas... These are mobile communications, automated image analysis, inertial navigation sensors, and network management for routers."
Cool. Very very cool. But they have failed to mention one possible application that I see as the most promising use for artificial neural nets (a-nets? I just coined a word!): Artificial Intelligence. Those four applications mentioned above all involve learning and AI to some degree, but I see much broader implications for their technology. Think about our brain for a moment. It handles:
Speech recognition
Spatial perception and image analysis
Muscular control
Sensor input
Critical systems (blood, breathing, digestion, etc.)
Learning, memory, thinking
Obviously, some systems such as muscular control and "critical systems" are better-handled by traditional processors; they involve no skill, only timing. However, other systems are best controlled by an a-net (ding!).
For example, speech recognition could be handled extremely easily by the Learning Processor. It deals primarily with fuzzy logic (i.e. what the word sounds most like), which is handled very poorly by traditional processors. Sensory input deals with conditioned responses -- butt sensors have low alert levels for pressure because we're used to sitting on chairs; however, extreme levels of heat should (hopefully) attract attention. This, too, is best handled by a-nets.
I purposely have left the one biggie for last. It is... (drumroll)... learning and memory. This may seem too ambiguous to be useful; one might argue that the 4 applications mentioned in the quote all employ some form of AI. I am talking about something completely different: An AI with no practical value whatsoever! An AI that is designed to be a true intelligence, not just a limited intelligence with a clear purpose (translation, image analysis, etc). An AI that tries to come as close as possible to sentience. It could be outfitted with a robotic body or whatever. Remember COG?
This goal would not be suitable for Axeon; they are a commercial company, and they have to make money somehow. However, once the Learning Processor becomes available to the public (or at least to research institutions), I can foresee such a machine coming into being.
BTW, whatever happened to COG? Is that project still going on? I haven't heard anything about it recently.
You're right, I guess that would work. Still, if you have 10 of these floating around or whatnot it might be more cost-effective to have the voice-recognition mounted on the client; processing power is not hugely expensive, and the server might already be loaded with other apps.
The FCC may or may not be able to help with the problem. They are very busy and have plenty on their hands just trying to bust the intentional interference. The FCC should only be used as a last resort; your first try should be to ask the neighbor to help you locate the problem, as quonsar said. Your neighbor should be more than happy to help.
I dunno... it seems to take a little more skill than your average script. Even if you get the plans for a HERF gun, you still have to know how to solder (and possibly weld; I can't tell without the plans). Anyone can copy and paste computer code, but it takes at least a tiny bit of skill to construct electrical/mechanical devices. At least the HERF gun will attract a higher class of script kiddees...:-/
This would be great, but the only problem is that data transmission rates are as yet too slow for this type of device; after all, voice recognition requires extremely high bandwidth (no, fm or ssb won't work because it has to be digitally encoded). Not even spread spectrum or other high-bandwidth transmission methods would work. And on some missions, the latency would get kind of awkward...
OK, these little orbs are really cool and everything, but how much will they cost? I'm not just talking about the cost per ball; I'm talking about all of the research, development, Vomit Comet flights, programming, hardware, man-hours, and evertyhing else that goes into the making of a successful prototype. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NASA has been facing the budgetary squeeze for quite some time now by members of Congress. The space station is barely staying afloat (with no help from the Russians;-) ), and NASA is struggling to find capital for numerous other projects. Could the money spent on this admittedly cool project have been better used elsewhere?
The astronauts originally wanted a "tricorder"-type device; a hand-held status report would have been just fine, and a floating sphere with voice recognition is overkill for this project. Was there perhaps a simpler and less expensive way to accomplish this task?
This competition is really cool, but the only problem is having to see your robot get destroyed after all of the work you put into it:-(. I guess the solution to that is to just win! Of course, that was Clinton's solution too and look where it got him;-).
>Sure there is, make it illegal for American businesses and organizations to accept email from specified domains and addresses.
How could that be implemented? You can't make it illegal to receive foreign mail, the same way that you can't make it illegal to receive junk mail from a certain address. Anyone with SMTP can send mail to anyone, so therefore blocking e-mail means restricting a piece of software, which unfortunately for them is not owned by anyone. As the original post said: "Logistics anyone?"
You are right on the mark. The key thing is that the media thinks "People who play games must get a kick out of violence, so therefore they are more likely to start shooting random people". The main problem with that is that they don't make the distinction between "I think violence is fun" and "I don't respect the rights of others". It takes both to make a madman. There are many people who think killing animated monsters in the computer is fun, but who also respect the rights of real people. And, sadly, there are many people who do not respect the rights of others, even if they don't play Quake. Each of these traits by themselves are o.k. (well not respecting the rights of others isn't). The problem is when people like computer violence *and* don't respect the rights of others. Then they view humans no differently than Quake monsters, and that's when trouble starts.
They can't get an entire PC that small. The chip, as a matter of fact, isn't even running an OS. It's just a PIC chip and an EEPROM. A PC still needs the hard drive, I/O cards, etc. so it won't get that small in the future.
But I like your theory anyway... I'd be dying to get my hands on a beowulf softball!:-)
I had that same problem. Maybe it was overloaded by the large number of hits it undoubtedly received after being written up in the news (how much stability can you get into 512 words anyway?:-) )
Slashdot Mirror
The 'r' in "dara" is obviously some sort of secret code. Perhaps it stands for DARPA, which would definitely have a vested interest in this sort of thing. And if you take the 'r' in DARPA and replace it with a 't', it becomes DATPA, which is meaningless. This proves my theory.
:-)
Another alternative is that the CIA is under control of a renegade communist band that fled Russia after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Notice the "da" in the beginning of both DARPA, data, and dara. And the 't' being changed to an 'r' has to be a secret message; perhaps they want to "transfer" top-secret government information about TEMPEST so they can spy on Microsoft, steal the source code for Windows, and take over the world!
Wait. How can the source code to Windows possibly help them?
Exactly.
I probably should rephrase my original statement. It's been done before, but it hasn't caught on due to the sheer inertia of the "peasants". In addition, it is very expensive to upgrade the transmitters and recording studio to stereo. The people won't upgrade until the stations do, the stations won't upgrade until the people do...
Piggy-backing information on existing services -- without the receivers for the existing services receiving it -- is far from a trivial task. For example, there has been a push for quite some time to replace one of the AM sidebands with a second channel, thereby allowing stereo reception, but this has never happened. Why? Because all of the existing radios would balk at this. One cannot ask the country to scrap the millions and millions of radios that it has. Anyway, the article stated that the frequencies allocated would be in the gigahertz range where spectrum is cheap.
Nowhere did I see that the car would constantly broadcast information. A device to warn cars of ice on a bridge would broadcast a low-power signal that would only reach cars at a distance of, say, 500 feet. Nowhere does the car have to broadcast anything. Cars would only have to send information in case of an emergency or for "interactive" services. If your car was in a ditch, of course you would want to radio your location to the police. And once you got out of the ditch, there would be no need to continue sending your position.
Chrisd mentioned above that he posted a mirror of this project. Some people predict these things too well :-)
No, I'm not going to caution everyone about the dangers of microwaving metal objects. Instead, I wish to talk about the much greater risk of Microsoft CDs (insert scary music as needed). You must take heed of my message and make haste to surround your CDs with protective deletium lest these infernal products jump out and smite thee on thy noggin, causing you to lose control of yourseff and install Microsoft Windows 2000 Beta, Microsoft Office 2000, and Internet Explorer 5 (overwriting your Linux partition in the process). The resulting quantum explosion caused by having these three rip^H^H^Hproducts on the same machine at the same time may cause a quantum explosion that will take out much more than your microwave. Beware!
Even better, they could give certain processes more HP according to how hard they are to destroy.
:-)
For example:
Netscape would require 5 pistol shots (or equivalent) to destroy.
xclock would take 2 punches
- and -
Internet Explorer running under Wine would take 10 BFGs
Q5-e3, but R5-k6 so 0-0! These people must be idiots! Everyone knows that Q5-34 is suicide, so why then Q3-a4 42.35 Rs01??? K4-e7 check so d4-d5 e46 y r u 1d10ts 1 3M W3R3Z D00DZ%@%@$$#!!!!
This patent is a hoax. It is part of an elaborate plot to bring to an end civilization as we know it. Let me clarify:
/. reader finds it, wonders "wtf???", and being the dutiful netizen he is, forwards it to /. for analysis.
Transmeta posts a patent on the gov't web site. It is shrouded in gibberish to prevent anybody from actually interpreting it (and thus ruining the plot).
An observant
Slashdot posts his comment. Naturally, thousands of viewers immediately check out the government's patent site. This is compounded by the message board and the decoding attempts. A side effect of this is that babelfish is also flooded (see neuroid's post).
The government's site shuts down. The NSA thinks that hackers did it, and trace thousands of hits back to slashdot.
Slashdot's site mysteriously disappears a day later.
This is only the beginning of a great war that expands to include the entire armed forces pitted against the world's top hackers. This ends when a misguided cracker accidentally misses his intended target of fbi.gov, and accidentally triggers a nuke.
China and russia get pissed and start launching nukes. America launches mroe nukes to get back at them. Iraq launches a nuke just to get in on the fun. In the end, everybody dies.
What are your plans for the future? Now that you've published your first book, now what? More kernel hacking? Another book? A Linux startup maybe? Where do you want to be in five years?
This, as I see it, is where the major conflict is in the above debate. Coaxial says that a "learning cliff" is necessary to keep the "don't know, don't care" type out of Linux. He implies that this would be a good thing, but I hold a different view. How can getting more users into Linux possibly be bad? They might not know what
The other side of this issue is from the techies, who would rather be placed on the rack than suffer under a wimpy OS. Take the mac (whack?), for example. It is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Linux. It has almost no learning curve, but it also has no depth. You can't lift up the hood and look at the engine (why do cars always have to get involved? I can't drive yet!
So here we have Linux, which is almost unuseable for newbies, and Mac (whack! whack!) OS, which is almost unuseable for techies. But perhaps the true Good Thing (tm) lies in the middle.
I have a dream. A dream where all users can unite under one OS, where newbies and techies can stand proudly together under the banner of the One True Good Thing (not tm yet). An Operating System where one can just log in and go without knowing about anything inside of it. Where any complete moron can click the icon for "netscape" and be happy for the next 20 years. Yet it is also an Operating System that claims infinite depth; one can explore for years and still find new files to fool around with. It is the Operating System that will last for eternity.
So how will this happen?
First of all, Linux is already moving in the right direction. Linux is the perfect OS for people at the techie end of the spectrum, and my "dream" OS must start with a technical base.
But Linux still, in many ways, has a learning cliff, as the tsi said. This must be smoothed out at the bottom end while still remaining infinitely high at the other end. As the tsi said, one of the things needed is autorun. The other one is for applications to automatically place icons on the desktop. This way, computer neophytes must merely place the CD in the computer, follow the instructions to install, and from then on just click the icon on the desktop. All this can be done without removing the complexity of the OS from those who really want it. This means *no* cute MS Bob(tm, all you people named "bob" better change your name now) clones.
One of coaxial's claims was that a knowledgeable community is necessary for Linux. However, if Linux moves into the mainstream, all those kernel hackers will still be there, right? None of us want whining newbies flooding the newsgroups with "what's a faq? why is my cd not working! i am 37337 too!" But this viewpoint forgets several things:
Could someone maybe open a loopback connection and keep it open for eternity? Just run Linux with *no* processes (sp?) open except the necessary ones, a server, and a client. With nothing to get in the way, could this connection last until Armageddon?
That would be cool but very hard to actually get working. One way to do it, I guess, would be to pit the neural net against a traditional AI and rank/feedback the results. The major problem, thoguh, is that software-based neural nets are not yet perfected to a level even equal to a traditional game AI. The neural net that you described would be perfect on the Learning Processor or something similar, but neural nets are not yet powerful enough for video games using traditional hardware.
Thanks for the info. It doesn't seem like they've published anything recently, though...
:-( :-( :-( ).
Note: If this message is double-posted, sorry (stupid enter key is too close to the shift key
Cool. Very very cool. But they have failed to mention one possible application that I see as the most promising use for artificial neural nets (a-nets? I just coined a word!): Artificial Intelligence. Those four applications mentioned above all involve learning and AI to some degree, but I see much broader implications for their technology. Think about our brain for a moment. It handles:
Obviously, some systems such as muscular control and "critical systems" are better-handled by traditional processors; they involve no skill, only timing. However, other systems are best controlled by an a-net (ding!).
For example, speech recognition could be handled extremely easily by the Learning Processor. It deals primarily with fuzzy logic (i.e. what the word sounds most like), which is handled very poorly by traditional processors. Sensory input deals with conditioned responses -- butt sensors have low alert levels for pressure because we're used to sitting on chairs; however, extreme levels of heat should (hopefully) attract attention. This, too, is best handled by a-nets.
I purposely have left the one biggie for last. It is... (drumroll)... learning and memory. This may seem too ambiguous to be useful; one might argue that the 4 applications mentioned in the quote all employ some form of AI. I am talking about something completely different: An AI with no practical value whatsoever! An AI that is designed to be a true intelligence, not just a limited intelligence with a clear purpose (translation, image analysis, etc). An AI that tries to come as close as possible to sentience. It could be outfitted with a robotic body or whatever. Remember COG?
This goal would not be suitable for Axeon; they are a commercial company, and they have to make money somehow. However, once the Learning Processor becomes available to the public (or at least to research institutions), I can foresee such a machine coming into being.
BTW, whatever happened to COG? Is that project still going on? I haven't heard anything about it recently.
You're right, I guess that would work. Still, if you have 10 of these floating around or whatnot it might be more cost-effective to have the voice-recognition mounted on the client; processing power is not hugely expensive, and the server might already be loaded with other apps.
The FCC may or may not be able to help with the problem. They are very busy and have plenty on their hands just trying to bust the intentional interference. The FCC should only be used as a last resort; your first try should be to ask the neighbor to help you locate the problem, as quonsar said. Your neighbor should be more than happy to help.
I dunno... it seems to take a little more skill than your average script. Even if you get the plans for a HERF gun, you still have to know how to solder (and possibly weld; I can't tell without the plans). Anyone can copy and paste computer code, but it takes at least a tiny bit of skill to construct electrical/mechanical devices. At least the HERF gun will attract a higher class of script kiddees... :-/
This would be great, but the only problem is that data transmission rates are as yet too slow for this type of device; after all, voice recognition requires extremely high bandwidth (no, fm or ssb won't work because it has to be digitally encoded). Not even spread spectrum or other high-bandwidth transmission methods would work. And on some missions, the latency would get kind of awkward...
OK, these little orbs are really cool and everything, but how much will they cost? I'm not just talking about the cost per ball; I'm talking about all of the research, development, Vomit Comet flights, programming, hardware, man-hours, and evertyhing else that goes into the making of a successful prototype. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NASA has been facing the budgetary squeeze for quite some time now by members of Congress. The space station is barely staying afloat (with no help from the Russians ;-) ), and NASA is struggling to find capital for numerous other projects. Could the money spent on this admittedly cool project have been better used elsewhere?
The astronauts originally wanted a "tricorder"-type device; a hand-held status report would have been just fine, and a floating sphere with voice recognition is overkill for this project. Was there perhaps a simpler and less expensive way to accomplish this task?
This competition is really cool, but the only problem is having to see your robot get destroyed after all of the work you put into it :-(. I guess the solution to that is to just win! Of course, that was Clinton's solution too and look where it got him ;-).
>Sure there is, make it illegal for American businesses and organizations to accept email from specified domains and addresses.
How could that be implemented? You can't make it illegal to receive foreign mail, the same way that you can't make it illegal to receive junk mail from a certain address. Anyone with SMTP can send mail to anyone, so therefore blocking e-mail means restricting a piece of software, which unfortunately for them is not owned by anyone. As the original post said: "Logistics anyone?"
LOL! Does that mean we can't use the clear cases until they invent a transparent RF shield? ...
You are right on the mark. The key thing is that the media thinks "People who play games must get a kick out of violence, so therefore they are more likely to start shooting random people". The main problem with that is that they don't make the distinction between "I think violence is fun" and "I don't respect the rights of others". It takes both to make a madman. There are many people who think killing animated monsters in the computer is fun, but who also respect the rights of real people. And, sadly, there are many people who do not respect the rights of others, even if they don't play Quake. Each of these traits by themselves are o.k. (well not respecting the rights of others isn't). The problem is when people like computer violence *and* don't respect the rights of others. Then they view humans no differently than Quake monsters, and that's when trouble starts.
They can't get an entire PC that small. The chip, as a matter of fact, isn't even running an OS. It's just a PIC chip and an EEPROM. A PC still needs the hard drive, I/O cards, etc. so it won't get that small in the future.
:-)
But I like your theory anyway... I'd be dying to get my hands on a beowulf softball!
I had that same problem. Maybe it was overloaded by the large number of hits it undoubtedly received after being written up in the news (how much stability can you get into 512 words anyway? :-) )