Just how are Jose and McDonalds in competition? Does he own a restaurant? Does McD's not buy cheese? And why don't you respond to any of the points made in this thread that your message is irrelevant, that Jose depends on trade laws that ultimately hurt everyone other than a few European farmers? Must you kiss the asses of all/. readers and simplify even the issue of whether you should be posting such stories to a site like this?
No one in this thread seems to be mentioning the added ability to sense call waiting beeps and put the connection on holduntil you're done handling whoever called. Currently, I have to change my modem init string to include "atm2", and then listen to the white modem noise through my computer speaker for call waiting beeps by ear. People w/ less modem knowledge don't have any choice. There's more to this new standard than increased upstream (which helps Quake playability) and better compression (which makes a difference when downloading 500K of Slashdot comments), which everyone here seems to be poo-pooing. Looks like I'll actually use that flashable-firmware feature on my modem after all.
just checked out the source to their page, and discovered that the reason I didn't see too many words was that their nonstandard HTML put black text on a black background in my nonstandard browser (iCab).
Not that what they do say gives them any more credibility;v) . It gives them less. If they're gonna defraud millions of dollars, they should at least make a decent website.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
I'd feel sorry for RadioShack, if I didn't hate them as a company. This website doesn't give me much confidence in LunaCorp's rover-building abilities. I smell extortion (or at least fraud), and judging by the quality of their products, RadioShack is stupid enough to deserve it.
For example, the page "comparing Mars Polar Lander to IceBreaker" has a picture of Mars Pathfinder on the surface of Mars (anyone who follows NASA, even just through NY Times headlines, knows MPL crashed a long time ago, and that the one that landed was Pathfinder), and would have an artist's rendition of their mission if they'd got the URL of the graphic right. And no text whatsoever to redeem them. Ouch.
Hmmmm... Just looked at their site again... I wouldn't be surprised if the entire company was just one artist that made all those renditions. There's hardly a complete sentence anywhere. Their only products seem to be educational CD-ROMs - mebbe Radio Shack execs saw this, got confused, and offered the guy millions of dollars if he'd build them a space probe. The projected cost of the mission is $130mill. (I really don't like RadioShack, in case you haven't noticed.)
I just looked at more pages of this site, and realized that Slashdot (and especially the guy who suggested that this be posted) should be very, very embarrassed. Good reference to Fight Club, tho. Just saw it. Great movie.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
for the few million years ppl have been on earth, they lived for a few decades and then died. Yer eyes will last for 40 years of staring at the sun, but evolution doesn't care about anyone too old to have children.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Someone introduces a new manufacturing process that might not only shrink computer chips, but also shrink other crystalline or finely repeating structures (LCDs, for example), and:
80% of Slashdotters bicker over whether the plural of virus is viruses, viri, or virii (and because they're all getting moderated as "redundant", no one gets moderated up),
16% of posters can't get over the fact that some organic molecules are used in the process, so somehow this will be used to create sentient beings or connect our brains to computers,
3% of posters make absolutely no sense. Maybe they should be moderated up as "imaginative",
1% of posters (not including this post here) make genuinely insightful and intelligent comments, and make the whole thread worth reading. I like Slashdot.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Neurons don't output electrical signals. Electricity is used to spread impulses inside the neuron, but neural activity between neurons is in the form of chemicals that are released. Creating these chemicals from building blocks on one side of the neuron and generating electricity to transmit impulses on the other side are what make neurons incredibly energy-inefficient. Neurons, biologically, are designed to grow and shrink as part of the learning process of the system. This is just one of many reasons why neurons can never be used in machines. Neurons in you brain, as a rule, can never be pinned down to one specific function (at least, no function anyone would be interested in. Ooh, I made a neural machine to regulate reflexive breathing!). This precludes them from being tied to some ultimate computer interface.
This does open new manufacturing possibilities, but I won't hold my breath until the day we can create systems of computers (as each cell in the paste you would be spreading on the wall would have to be some kind of unit, if it were independent of the paste around it) that are able to organize to that accuracy, on that scale. Our bodies use fractal geometry and chemical gradients to organize cells; you would have to paint the wall with a pattern enabling each cell of the paste to determine its position from the cells around it and the wall below it.
It seems to me that this new process might make LCD screens of incredible density, or electron grilles for CRT monitors. For now, that's what I'll drool over.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
This is just a new technique for creating conventional silicon (or other crystalline-material based) chips, promising to be better than laser etching.
Neural networks have nothing to do with connecting people's minds together, nor can people's minds be connected together. Consciousness is a high-level function of the brain, you can't "make a pipe" to let it flow out. Sorry.
And seeing that the comment before yours takes a similar tone, as well as comment 28, makes me wonder if there's a new wave of "neural net" trolls (wh@t 1f y0u m4k3 a n3ur41 n37 0f th353?) coming on.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Re:I don't blame you for posting that as AC
on
Inside Transmeta
·
· Score: 1
No really, they have a product catalog, and mass production and shipment is scheduled for the next month or 2. IBM is manufacturing them, so that kinda narrows the gap between prototype and shipping:v).
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Huge screenfulls of point-and-click options don't work so well, either. For clicking buttons or drawing/writing, use a pen; for scrolling tilt it. For such small and flexible things, context variability can be good. And what's more everyday than XWindows and Doom?
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Re:I don't blame you for posting that as AC
on
Inside Transmeta
·
· Score: 1
They do have a product, the article (if you read it) says that they've been running prototypes for a few years, and no you haven't been moderated down, tho you should be for making smart-ass comments w/o reading the article first.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Less painful than x86. These ppl know ISAs. I'd like to see what it can do w/ a reasonable architecture, like PPC. Mebbe the performance gains would be smaller, since there's less to optimize, but it would be more parallel... Anyway, seeing what it can do w/ newer architectures will probably give a hint at what "native" ISAs will give. And how does less morphing affect power requirements?
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
The way I've been figgerin' it... Since they plan on changing the VLIW engine in the future and all, they won't ever tell people to release binaries specifically for that level of the processor. I imagine they'd get much better performance w/ an instruction set designed to be easily code-morphable. But, such a set would be a commitment, and therefore generate a legacy. And to make it good would take a lot of engineers. Engineers cost money, and they aren't really selling anything yet. They don't even have a real direction to their company - they haven't commited to competing with Intel/IBM, and for good reason. Wait for them to become a big company. Then they'll assign the needed engineers to the job and we'll see the Transmeta ISA.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Re:How does Code Morphing software integrate?
on
Inside Transmeta
·
· Score: 1
How would you realistically use code morphing?
Code morphing is more efficient than running x86 code on a Pentium. The purpose isn't to make emulators run better, it's there to eliminate problems of legacy in instruction sets, etc. by adding an extra abstraction layer between the execution and the software. I guess you could flash the code morphing engine's internal RAM or whatever, to make code for different architectures run without program-level emulation, but that's not the main point.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Well, I dunno if I should be making the 962nd post to this thread, but here are my 2 bits anyway. The most important thing is that they don't feel they have to be doing this. It's the difference between school and play. Also, they want to be making interesting apps w/out the experience. My suggestion is to make little, nice, simple apps using your best form and clarity, but with little features missing. They may then, at their leisure, read through your code to see how it works and add the missing features themselves. This is roughly how I learned to program, and I think it worked very well:v).
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
If they want to be portable to, say, IA64, then they have to use a high-level language. If they have it in a high-level language, why not compile to other platforms as well? Getting PPCBSD out doesn't mean they're not still optimizing for x86's, and they're definitely reaching more people, as well as reducing Intel's (and x86's) hegemony over the processor world.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Looking at the original Aqua, and given a graphics engine to work on top of w/ capabilities like Quartz's, you could duplicate this? W/ all the vector animations and all, that's pretty incredible. This interface is big on glitz - lotsa animation, movement, and transparency - and that is hard to duplicate (and impossible in X11).
All that says nothing about its usability. Aqua is only a theme built on top of quartz (see my post a few comments up from yours). There will probably be a lot of themes out soon after OSX's release, and UI hackers like you will have a sweet set of tools to use for creating your own skins.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
A point missed in this discussion is that Aqua is essentially just a skin designed to show off the power of Quartz. You can remove it, even w/o tools like ResEdit, to get an interface like MacOS 8/9's Platinum, or, presumably, replace it with a skin of your own choosing.
Ramble on! mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Slashdot Mirror
My browser loaded really slowly, so I was fooled for a little while, too... The "bot" was hilarious tho.
Ramble on!
foo = bar/*myPtr;
Just how are Jose and McDonalds in competition? Does he own a restaurant? Does McD's not buy cheese? /. readers and simplify even the issue of whether you should be posting such stories to a site like this?
And why don't you respond to any of the points made in this thread that your message is irrelevant, that Jose depends on trade laws that ultimately hurt everyone other than a few European farmers? Must you kiss the asses of all
Ramble on!
foo = bar/*myPtr;
No one in this thread seems to be mentioning the added ability to sense call waiting beeps and put the connection on holduntil you're done handling whoever called. Currently, I have to change my modem init string to include "atm2", and then listen to the white modem noise through my computer speaker for call waiting beeps by ear. People w/ less modem knowledge don't have any choice.
There's more to this new standard than increased upstream (which helps Quake playability) and better compression (which makes a difference when downloading 500K of Slashdot comments), which everyone here seems to be poo-pooing.
Looks like I'll actually use that flashable-firmware feature on my modem after all.
Ramble on!
foo = bar/*myPtr;
just checked out the source to their page, and discovered that the reason I didn't see too many words was that their nonstandard HTML put black text on a black background in my nonstandard browser (iCab).
;v) . It gives them less. If they're gonna defraud millions of dollars, they should at least make a decent website.
Not that what they do say gives them any more credibility
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
I'd feel sorry for RadioShack, if I didn't hate them as a company. This website doesn't give me much confidence in LunaCorp's rover-building abilities. I smell extortion (or at least fraud), and judging by the quality of their products, RadioShack is stupid enough to deserve it.
For example, the page "comparing Mars Polar Lander to IceBreaker" has a picture of Mars Pathfinder on the surface of Mars (anyone who follows NASA, even just through NY Times headlines, knows MPL crashed a long time ago, and that the one that landed was Pathfinder), and would have an artist's rendition of their mission if they'd got the URL of the graphic right. And no text whatsoever to redeem them. Ouch.
Hmmmm... Just looked at their site again... I wouldn't be surprised if the entire company was just one artist that made all those renditions. There's hardly a complete sentence anywhere. Their only products seem to be educational CD-ROMs - mebbe Radio Shack execs saw this, got confused, and offered the guy millions of dollars if he'd build them a space probe. The projected cost of the mission is $130mill.
(I really don't like RadioShack, in case you haven't noticed.)
I just looked at more pages of this site, and realized that Slashdot (and especially the guy who suggested that this be posted) should be very, very embarrassed. Good reference to Fight Club, tho. Just saw it. Great movie.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
moderators- that's ethanol, or drinkin' booze. Mod him/her up.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
No, I would swat you.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
If you ingested the leftover paste, would you become a Teletubbie?
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
for the few million years ppl have been on earth, they lived for a few decades and then died. Yer eyes will last for 40 years of staring at the sun, but evolution doesn't care about anyone too old to have children.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Neurons don't output electrical signals. Electricity is used to spread impulses inside the neuron, but neural activity between neurons is in the form of chemicals that are released. Creating these chemicals from building blocks on one side of the neuron and generating electricity to transmit impulses on the other side are what make neurons incredibly energy-inefficient.
Neurons, biologically, are designed to grow and shrink as part of the learning process of the system. This is just one of many reasons why neurons can never be used in machines.
Neurons in you brain, as a rule, can never be pinned down to one specific function (at least, no function anyone would be interested in. Ooh, I made a neural machine to regulate reflexive breathing!). This precludes them from being tied to some ultimate computer interface.
This does open new manufacturing possibilities, but I won't hold my breath until the day we can create systems of computers (as each cell in the paste you would be spreading on the wall would have to be some kind of unit, if it were independent of the paste around it) that are able to organize to that accuracy, on that scale. Our bodies use fractal geometry and chemical gradients to organize cells; you would have to paint the wall with a pattern enabling each cell of the paste to determine its position from the cells around it and the wall below it.
It seems to me that this new process might make LCD screens of incredible density, or electron grilles for CRT monitors. For now, that's what I'll drool over.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
It would have to do a better job than our immune system (which uses the same strategy) as well as avoid it. But cool idea.
Mebbe it could be used to make trickier vaccines, or do general molecular trickery inside cells. Mebbe not.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
This is just a new technique for creating conventional silicon (or other crystalline-material based) chips, promising to be better than laser etching.
Neural networks have nothing to do with connecting people's minds together, nor can people's minds be connected together. Consciousness is a high-level function of the brain, you can't "make a pipe" to let it flow out. Sorry.
And seeing that the comment before yours takes a similar tone, as well as comment 28, makes me wonder if there's a new wave of "neural net" trolls (wh@t 1f y0u m4k3 a n3ur41 n37 0f th353?) coming on.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
No really, they have a product catalog, and mass production and shipment is scheduled for the next month or 2. IBM is manufacturing them, so that kinda narrows the gap between prototype and shipping :v).
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Why, do you have a short attention span?
/. troll-haters.
Just saving trouble for the
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Huge screenfulls of point-and-click options don't work so well, either. For clicking buttons or drawing/writing, use a pen; for scrolling tilt it. For such small and flexible things, context variability can be good.
And what's more everyday than XWindows and Doom?
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
They do have a product, the article (if you read it) says that they've been running prototypes for a few years, and no you haven't been moderated down, tho you should be for making smart-ass comments w/o reading the article first.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Except it is likely to be pretty painful...
Less painful than x86. These ppl know ISAs. I'd like to see what it can do w/ a reasonable architecture, like PPC. Mebbe the performance gains would be smaller, since there's less to optimize, but it would be more parallel...
Anyway, seeing what it can do w/ newer architectures will probably give a hint at what "native" ISAs will give.
And how does less morphing affect power requirements?
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
The way I've been figgerin' it...
Since they plan on changing the VLIW engine in the future and all, they won't ever tell people to release binaries specifically for that level of the processor. I imagine they'd get much better performance w/ an instruction set designed to be easily code-morphable. But, such a set would be a commitment, and therefore generate a legacy. And to make it good would take a lot of engineers. Engineers cost money, and they aren't really selling anything yet. They don't even have a real direction to their company - they haven't commited to competing with Intel/IBM, and for good reason.
Wait for them to become a big company. Then they'll assign the needed engineers to the job and we'll see the Transmeta ISA.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
How would you realistically use code morphing?
Code morphing is more efficient than running x86 code on a Pentium. The purpose isn't to make emulators run better, it's there to eliminate problems of legacy in instruction sets, etc. by adding an extra abstraction layer between the execution and the software. I guess you could flash the code morphing engine's internal RAM or whatever, to make code for different architectures run without program-level emulation, but that's not the main point.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
that's fine, 'cuz QT player does AVIs.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Well, I dunno if I should be making the 962nd post to this thread, but here are my 2 bits anyway. :v).
The most important thing is that they don't feel they have to be doing this. It's the difference between school and play. Also, they want to be making interesting apps w/out the experience.
My suggestion is to make little, nice, simple apps using your best form and clarity, but with little features missing. They may then, at their leisure, read through your code to see how it works and add the missing features themselves. This is roughly how I learned to program, and I think it worked very well
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
If they want to be portable to, say, IA64, then they have to use a high-level language. If they have it in a high-level language, why not compile to other platforms as well? Getting PPCBSD out doesn't mean they're not still optimizing for x86's, and they're definitely reaching more people, as well as reducing Intel's (and x86's) hegemony over the processor world.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Looking at the original Aqua, and given a graphics engine to work on top of w/ capabilities like Quartz's, you could duplicate this? W/ all the vector animations and all, that's pretty incredible. This interface is big on glitz - lotsa animation, movement, and transparency - and that is hard to duplicate (and impossible in X11).
All that says nothing about its usability. Aqua is only a theme built on top of quartz (see my post a few comments up from yours). There will probably be a lot of themes out soon after OSX's release, and UI hackers like you will have a sweet set of tools to use for creating your own skins.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
A point missed in this discussion is that Aqua is essentially just a skin designed to show off the power of Quartz. You can remove it, even w/o tools like ResEdit, to get an interface like MacOS 8/9's Platinum, or, presumably, replace it with a skin of your own choosing.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0