I don't think it's "economically efficient" but "management risk aversion efficient". I'm working in a company with more than 15000 employees and I'm doing new development, integrations and migrations. The COBOL based mainframes are a pain in the ass and I wish IBM, HP, Siemens stoped the crap long time ago. They are providing new SOAP interfaces but behind the scenes you are still having terminal based applications and screen scraping technology. I agree that in some cases those applications are working faster than some new crap outsourced replacements but the integration with other applications is a hell, no transaction support, no standard for data types and in some cases is impossible to find if a timeout really means an error in the mainframe application or in the SOAP gateway. Yes, they are still working fine but on my nerves. Don't tell me about the money, you are spending more money in integrating those applications than replacing them and the result is just newly painted shit ready to hit the fan with every new requirement.
Thanks a lot for your response and all the other responses also. I will try to look more into books and entanglement experiments.
My main problem stays in "continuous vs discrete" problem as you mention it. I still believe that the discrete values are just "good values" in a wave equation like "Schrödinger equation" and not really discrete. The main problem as I see it is that "Schrödinger equation" is practically unsolvable using current mathematics and finding a continuous equation is like finding an inverse function of an unknown distribution.
Of course as somebody mention it I'm just a "layperson" but I'm trying to improve.
Thanks again for your responses.
Can somebody with physics background help me? For quantum computers to work you need entanglement and Heisenberg principle.
1. Entanglement. Is this a fact or a theory? Looking on web I found only few experiments with some possible loopholes. I found the principle hard to grok.
2. Heisenberg principle. It mainly states that observing an object you are changing the state of the object. The Heisenberg example from wikipedia is using a photon for measuring the position of an electron and the photon is changing the position of electron. What is happening if you are using a smaller particle that is not impacting the electron so much? Are you going to change the constant? Looks mostly like a limitation from a time when the atom was considered to be indivisible.
I have some background in learning physics in university but I was not very good at it. My personal opinion is that superposition is just a nice way of doing statistics using discrete values for covering the not so discrete results of experiments.
1. Stereographic images. What is the scope of your images? For having a stereo image of an object as far as a star the Earth orbit parallax is much too small. For calculating the distances to the stars is almost useless (you can calculate easier) and making photos with a very close star in front of a very far away star it's cool but a kind of useless from scientific point of view.
2. Holograms.
there are ways for non-coherent light to interfere with coherent light You are not making interferences for the sake of interferences, you want the result to give you data. In actual holograms all the image is composed of reflected light (coherent one) interacting with the original one for storing the difference. You will never see a fire in a hologram picture because is not reflecting light but produces it.
It would take a lot of new engineering No. It will take a breakthrough and it will be called different, something like nanoholography (everything is nowadays nano).
A few hundred thousand miles (opposite points on a geosynchronous orbit) is enough parallax I don't agree that 2 photo taken at 2 different times makes a real stereographic imagery. Things are moving in 6 months. It will be as real as a computer generated image. Even then you'll be able to obtain only differences between positions of stars not differences between the image of the star itself. Maybe our definition of stereographic imagery differs.
Even a few centimeters would be enough If you have a small distance between the the sensors you'll be able to see the difference in a photo only between the very close objects and the very distant one. The smaller the distance between sensors less spacial information you have.
I'm not sure you're ready to tackle holographic telescopics You can not have a photo hologram without 2 coherent light sources one reflected from the object and one not. At least not what is called now hologram. This is done now via lasers. I assume that you don't know a laser powerful enough to go to Proxima Centauri and back, and you are not patient 8 years for the response in the correct place at the correct time.
Let's assume that you find a natural coherent light doing the job for you. You will still need to filter all the non coherent light coming from the sun itself and the reflected light (if it's reflected from the sun at all). I can not even think about holograms containing multiple stars. If you really want you can "create" a hologram but not take one.
Maybe I'm not able to handle future "holographic telescopics" but I know what a hologram is.
No. Not even stereographic imagery is not possible. The distance to stars is too big. To have the equivalent of distance between eyes you will need very very big distances between the 2 telescopes.
For having a holographic image you'll need a laser, split the light in 2 coherent rays pointed to the star, and record the resulting reflexions interferences. Not even Enterprise have the required technology.
It's almost the same with microprocessors. Are the multi core better than a very quick single core (e.g. 2x2Ghz vs 4 Ghz)?
In the case of telescopes how big can you make a mirror without imperfections and tolerant to temperature changes? And then are coming the logistic problems.
For multiple telescopes you can enhance the image, compensate for defects in individual mirrors or atmospheric distortions but in absolute terms you'll obtain a better image from a single telescope with the equivalent mirror surface. There are other problems as well but these are the first coming in mind.
I believe that switching to ray tracing ceased to be a real technical problem some time ago. The only thing that kept rasterization going on was the possibility of increasing the GPU processor speed and the economical risk of implementing a new platform and standard.Now with CPU's/GPU's hitting the ceiling using brute speed increase approach, the switch to parallel processing will help ray tracing (did you notice the latest power hogs?).
For the moment rasterization still have a small breading space as long as NVidia/AMD are still struggling with SLI/CrossFire. Soon enough the technical problems will reach the directors. The main problem now is the amount of money needed for implementing a new concept and the risks involved (the CEO's hates long term plans). The only guys in the game are AMD (not so much money), NVidia (I hope that they have the balls and they will not stop after buying Ageia) and Intel (they are the guys in the article). The next war will be the API specification as it was the war OpenGL/DirectX (for the moment the only one is OpenRT). I only hope that the API will not be developed by Microsoft (last one was for Karma only)
For having a fun game you don't need realistic graphics. The Wii is the proof. But this doesn't mean that it not helps. Without graphic improvements we will still play pong.
The rendering equation is the same to rasterization as to the ray tracing. The problem is how well are both solution are scaling further. Rasterization needs to handle the overhead of drawing useless invisible poligons and calculate shadows, emulate the reflections sometimes by doubling the rendering effort and shaders tricks. Ray tracing if implemented in hardware can be more scalable and is more suitable to parallel processing.
In this case the developers will spend less time with ray tracing. You don't need to lose time with shadows (very hard to emulate and never perfect with the actual z-buffer rasterization method), depth of field tricks/shaders, emulating the infamous water refraction or a reflexion in a mirror. What baffles me is the ray tracing being introduced first on mobile and not on desktop computers.
I plan to send the following letter to Oliver Drewes spokesman for Charlie McCreevy EU commissioner and BBC. As I'm not native english speaker can somebody please help me as a human spellchecker. Ideas are also welcome. Thanks.
Dear Charlie McCreevy,
I read your proposal for extended copyright period and I'm deeply concerned about the motivation, solution and consequences of this proposal.
The purpose of this extension is to give old artists money for living and not for the record companies. To be more precise the target of this law will be "session musicians and lesser known artists" in their 70's for which "royalties are often their sole pension". In your press release were not presented any figures about how many artist will be impacted by this law, how much are they receiving now from royalties and what is the real need for this law. In all European countries the elderly people are having a decent protection and I do not see the reason for artists to be privileged compared to other people. Being paid 50 years after you did something is happening only to artists. I understand that being an artist is not easy and is not for everybody but the same is valid for a hundred other types of jobs.
The solution of extending the copyright from 45 to 90 years baffles me a lot. The reason is that some artists are in their 70's and "given life expectancy in the EU - 75 - 81 years" will soon be without protection. So the solution is to add 45 years until they reach the age of 115. This is more than the life of the artist and sound more like the american "Mickey Mouse Protection Act". "For session musicians, the record companies will set up a fund - a substantial fund reserving at least 20% of the income during the extended term to them." This 20% is coming from "gross income" (highly unlikely) or profit after taxes and expenses? In the last case the amount will be zero as all the media companies will distribute the profit to other companies using the "Hollywood accountancy".
How many old artists are the target of this action? How many artists did nothing in the last 50 years for providing a long term profit like a pension plan/royalties, are in an acute need and are not covered by the actual social laws valid for all persons in Europe?
Before proposing any extra taxes and copyright extensions do you have some figures about the amount and distribution of actual copyright levies (for phones, blank cds etc.)? I found that these taxes in 2005 amounted for 555 million Euro. How much money do artists actually receive now from these taxes? How can you make sure that these extra money are going to the artists and not to the record companies?
Regards
I didn't read the article or the patent either but calculating the average number of letters per word in the summary I believe the opposite (It is definitely odd)
You don't need to run uphill, you just need to have that speed at the launch. Changing the direction does not consume energy/slows you down in the case of perfect elastic collision with a huge object (Earth). In this case the tiger will lose some energy in the feet but that's all.
Are you sure about the fact that speed of sound is higher with the altitude? Acording to this the relation altitude/speed of sound is not straight forward. Speed of sound at sea level > v at 11000/20000 m altitude and < v at 29000 m.
The similarity example given will explain the high speed of objects entering the atmosphere but will not explain the fact that speed of sound in water (1497 m/s) is much higher than in air (344 m/s).
Am I the only one annoyed about the space news always being something like "xxx mil./bil. $ space stuff was lunched or did something"? I do not recall this kind of obsessive, "not once missed" remark on other type of news. With news like this there is no wonder that people make mistakes.
It's again the wrong reason for a lawsuit so Microsoft will win again. The problem with Microsoft is not software bundling but API's accessibility and interoperability with other 3rd party softwares. This can be solved by forcing royalty free documentation and API access. Last time EU tried to impose unbundling of Windows Media Player but at the time the only alternative was RealPlayer and they have been bought . The resulting decision was a joke for Microsoft and was forgotten.
Another big problem is hardware/software bundling. I will like to see an injunction for all computer sellers to provide at least one alternative OS for every computer type they are selling for maximum the same price. If this is not possible the computers should be provided "without OS" alternative with a reduced price that is really matching the price paid to Microsoft OS (the minimum of 1/2 from the retail price of Windows).
they can be trivially found by a simple byte compare Not necessarily. All the DVD's, CD's can be filled with redundant data so the difference between them will be hard to interpret. You can see the difference but not being able to read it.. It will be easier to delete the watermark, or at least to make it unreadable. But maybe the studios will say that possessing a not watermarked copy is illegal.
Another idea: just sign the watermark.
I really don't understand UK and US. You are so afraid of ID's but on the other side you are the only one complaining about identity theft. I'm from Europe, I always had an ID and never felt my freedom at risk. Any company here will ask you for an ID card for any kind of contract but they are not allowed to record your ID number. The only institution knowing some relevant personal details about you are the banks, the other ones can only send you some spam mail. The advantages of having an easy way of identifying yourself without the risk of identity theft outweighs the 1984 paranoia.
Disabling JavaScript is not a good solution. It is like not using knifes because you can cut yourself. The advantage of Firefox is coming from openness, features, multiplatform and being safer by not running inside the operating system. Instead of crippling the usability just try to make a safer Javascript engine.
So now the action of all home brewed, amateur games will happen in jungle and will involve fighting with realistic sticks made from realistic branches.
Slashdot Mirror
What about an ID card? I know, I'm from Europe (not UK).
71.000.000 kilograms = 71.000 tons. Related to the summary, maybe 71 million kilograms sounds cooler but for masses so big the ton is more appropiate.
I don't think it's "economically efficient" but "management risk aversion efficient". I'm working in a company with more than 15000 employees and I'm doing new development, integrations and migrations. The COBOL based mainframes are a pain in the ass and I wish IBM, HP, Siemens stoped the crap long time ago. They are providing new SOAP interfaces but behind the scenes you are still having terminal based applications and screen scraping technology. I agree that in some cases those applications are working faster than some new crap outsourced replacements but the integration with other applications is a hell, no transaction support, no standard for data types and in some cases is impossible to find if a timeout really means an error in the mainframe application or in the SOAP gateway. Yes, they are still working fine but on my nerves. Don't tell me about the money, you are spending more money in integrating those applications than replacing them and the result is just newly painted shit ready to hit the fan with every new requirement.
Thanks a lot for your response and all the other responses also. I will try to look more into books and entanglement experiments.
My main problem stays in "continuous vs discrete" problem as you mention it. I still believe that the discrete values are just "good values" in a wave equation like "Schrödinger equation" and not really discrete. The main problem as I see it is that "Schrödinger equation" is practically unsolvable using current mathematics and finding a continuous equation is like finding an inverse function of an unknown distribution.
Of course as somebody mention it I'm just a "layperson" but I'm trying to improve.
Thanks again for your responses.
Can somebody with physics background help me? For quantum computers to work you need entanglement and Heisenberg principle.
1. Entanglement. Is this a fact or a theory? Looking on web I found only few experiments with some possible loopholes. I found the principle hard to grok.
2. Heisenberg principle. It mainly states that observing an object you are changing the state of the object. The Heisenberg example from wikipedia is using a photon for measuring the position of an electron and the photon is changing the position of electron. What is happening if you are using a smaller particle that is not impacting the electron so much? Are you going to change the constant? Looks mostly like a limitation from a time when the atom was considered to be indivisible.
I have some background in learning physics in university but I was not very good at it. My personal opinion is that superposition is just a nice way of doing statistics using discrete values for covering the not so discrete results of experiments.
2. Holograms. there are ways for non-coherent light to interfere with coherent light You are not making interferences for the sake of interferences, you want the result to give you data. In actual holograms all the image is composed of reflected light (coherent one) interacting with the original one for storing the difference. You will never see a fire in a hologram picture because is not reflecting light but produces it. It would take a lot of new engineering No. It will take a breakthrough and it will be called different, something like nanoholography (everything is nowadays nano).
Let's assume that you find a natural coherent light doing the job for you. You will still need to filter all the non coherent light coming from the sun itself and the reflected light (if it's reflected from the sun at all). I can not even think about holograms containing multiple stars.
If you really want you can "create" a hologram but not take one.
Maybe I'm not able to handle future "holographic telescopics" but I know what a hologram is.
No. Not even stereographic imagery is not possible. The distance to stars is too big. To have the equivalent of distance between eyes you will need very very big distances between the 2 telescopes.
For having a holographic image you'll need a laser, split the light in 2 coherent rays pointed to the star, and record the resulting reflexions interferences. Not even Enterprise have the required technology.
It's almost the same with microprocessors. Are the multi core better than a very quick single core (e.g. 2x2Ghz vs 4 Ghz)?
In the case of telescopes how big can you make a mirror without imperfections and tolerant to temperature changes? And then are coming the logistic problems.
For multiple telescopes you can enhance the image, compensate for defects in individual mirrors or atmospheric distortions but in absolute terms you'll obtain a better image from a single telescope with the equivalent mirror surface. There are other problems as well but these are the first coming in mind.
I believe that switching to ray tracing ceased to be a real technical problem some time ago. The only thing that kept rasterization going on was the possibility of increasing the GPU processor speed and the economical risk of implementing a new platform and standard.Now with CPU's/GPU's hitting the ceiling using brute speed increase approach, the switch to parallel processing will help ray tracing (did you notice the latest power hogs?).
For the moment rasterization still have a small breading space as long as NVidia/AMD are still struggling with SLI/CrossFire. Soon enough the technical problems will reach the directors. The main problem now is the amount of money needed for implementing a new concept and the risks involved (the CEO's hates long term plans). The only guys in the game are AMD (not so much money), NVidia (I hope that they have the balls and they will not stop after buying Ageia) and Intel (they are the guys in the article). The next war will be the API specification as it was the war OpenGL/DirectX (for the moment the only one is OpenRT). I only hope that the API will not be developed by Microsoft (last one was for Karma only)
About the scalability of ray tracing vs. rasterization. ftp://download.intel.com/technology/itj/2005/volume09issue02/art01_ray_tracing/vol09_art01.pdf
For having a fun game you don't need realistic graphics. The Wii is the proof. But this doesn't mean that it not helps. Without graphic improvements we will still play pong. The rendering equation is the same to rasterization as to the ray tracing. The problem is how well are both solution are scaling further. Rasterization needs to handle the overhead of drawing useless invisible poligons and calculate shadows, emulate the reflections sometimes by doubling the rendering effort and shaders tricks. Ray tracing if implemented in hardware can be more scalable and is more suitable to parallel processing.
In this case the developers will spend less time with ray tracing. You don't need to lose time with shadows (very hard to emulate and never perfect with the actual z-buffer rasterization method), depth of field tricks/shaders, emulating the infamous water refraction or a reflexion in a mirror. What baffles me is the ray tracing being introduced first on mobile and not on desktop computers.
But can you calculate the flux of in information in the cable in LoC/(square furlong * lapse year)? Once you go metric you never go back.
Hours? Are you a rhino?
I plan to send the following letter to Oliver Drewes spokesman for Charlie McCreevy EU commissioner and BBC. As I'm not native english speaker can somebody please help me as a human spellchecker. Ideas are also welcome. Thanks.
Dear Charlie McCreevy,
I read your proposal for extended copyright period and I'm deeply concerned about the motivation, solution and consequences of this proposal.
The purpose of this extension is to give old artists money for living and not for the record companies. To be more precise the target of this law will be "session musicians and lesser known artists" in their 70's for which "royalties are often their sole pension". In your press release were not presented any figures about how many artist will be impacted by this law, how much are they receiving now from royalties and what is the real need for this law. In all European countries the elderly people are having a decent protection and I do not see the reason for artists to be privileged compared to other people. Being paid 50 years after you did something is happening only to artists. I understand that being an artist is not easy and is not for everybody but the same is valid for a hundred other types of jobs.
The solution of extending the copyright from 45 to 90 years baffles me a lot. The reason is that some artists are in their 70's and "given life expectancy in the EU - 75 - 81 years" will soon be without protection. So the solution is to add 45 years until they reach the age of 115. This is more than the life of the artist and sound more like the american "Mickey Mouse Protection Act". "For session musicians, the record companies will set up a fund - a substantial fund reserving at least 20% of the income during the extended term to them." This 20% is coming from "gross income" (highly unlikely) or profit after taxes and expenses? In the last case the amount will be zero as all the media companies will distribute the profit to other companies using the "Hollywood accountancy".
How many old artists are the target of this action? How many artists did nothing in the last 50 years for providing a long term profit like a pension plan/royalties, are in an acute need and are not covered by the actual social laws valid for all persons in Europe?
Before proposing any extra taxes and copyright extensions do you have some figures about the amount and distribution of actual copyright levies (for phones, blank cds etc.)? I found that these taxes in 2005 amounted for 555 million Euro. How much money do artists actually receive now from these taxes? How can you make sure that these extra money are going to the artists and not to the record companies?
Regards
I didn't read the article or the patent either but calculating the average number of letters per word in the summary I believe the opposite (It is definitely odd)
You don't need to run uphill, you just need to have that speed at the launch. Changing the direction does not consume energy/slows you down in the case of perfect elastic collision with a huge object (Earth). In this case the tiger will lose some energy in the feet but that's all.
Are you sure about the fact that speed of sound is higher with the altitude? Acording to this the relation altitude/speed of sound is not straight forward. Speed of sound at sea level > v at 11000/20000 m altitude and < v at 29000 m.
The similarity example given will explain the high speed of objects entering the atmosphere but will not explain the fact that speed of sound in water (1497 m/s) is much higher than in air (344 m/s).
Am I the only one annoyed about the space news always being something like "xxx mil./bil. $ space stuff was lunched or did something"? I do not recall this kind of obsessive, "not once missed" remark on other type of news. With news like this there is no wonder that people make mistakes.
It's again the wrong reason for a lawsuit so Microsoft will win again. The problem with Microsoft is not software bundling but API's accessibility and interoperability with other 3rd party softwares. This can be solved by forcing royalty free documentation and API access. Last time EU tried to impose unbundling of Windows Media Player but at the time the only alternative was RealPlayer and they have been bought . The resulting decision was a joke for Microsoft and was forgotten.
Another big problem is hardware/software bundling. I will like to see an injunction for all computer sellers to provide at least one alternative OS for every computer type they are selling for maximum the same price. If this is not possible the computers should be provided "without OS" alternative with a reduced price that is really matching the price paid to Microsoft OS (the minimum of 1/2 from the retail price of Windows).
Another idea: just sign the watermark.
I really don't understand UK and US. You are so afraid of ID's but on the other side you are the only one complaining about identity theft. I'm from Europe, I always had an ID and never felt my freedom at risk. Any company here will ask you for an ID card for any kind of contract but they are not allowed to record your ID number. The only institution knowing some relevant personal details about you are the banks, the other ones can only send you some spam mail. The advantages of having an easy way of identifying yourself without the risk of identity theft outweighs the 1984 paranoia.
Disabling JavaScript is not a good solution. It is like not using knifes because you can cut yourself. The advantage of Firefox is coming from openness, features, multiplatform and being safer by not running inside the operating system. Instead of crippling the usability just try to make a safer Javascript engine.
So now the action of all home brewed, amateur games will happen in jungle and will involve fighting with realistic sticks made from realistic branches.