Slashdot Mirror


User: cnettel

cnettel's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,662
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,662

  1. Re:Dontcha just love... on Linux Hardware Looks at Core 2 · · Score: 1

    Uh, what about a Pentium D a month ago? (before the most recent price cuts)

  2. Re:Woo Woo science on Under the Hood of Quantum Computing · · Score: 1

    For fermions, yes. One point in models of (some) superconductors is a special pairing of electrons to form a boson-like structure. The common exclusion principle is just an idealized special case, not a general law for all wave functions. Ever heard of L.A.S.E.R.?

  3. Re:Poor V'ger on Voyager 1 Passes 100 AU from the Sun · · Score: 1

    The cloud would reasonably be centered around the current position, so the closest point would still be some 60 AU away.

  4. Re:Detection on Blue Pill Myth Debunked · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, that's mostly not because of virtualization, but because of coexistence with the host OS. In this case, there is no host, just a hypervisor hacking specific calls. Any call to the graphics hardware could be let through, if desired. The performance hit would be acceptable for the non-inquisitive user.

  5. Re:6502 on PC-BSD: The Most Beginner Friendly OS · · Score: 1

    Look up how the original IBM PC BIOS works/worked. Of course, the machine was in a somewhat different league, but the complete hooking of calls and the basic design of exposing all needed functionality through those calls were there. The biggest problem was, of course, that everyone discovered the simple fact that direct access to segment B000 or B800 was so much faster than a generic BIOS call with the operation "print string/print char" could ever be.

  6. Re:Oh? on Next Generation Stack Computing · · Score: 0, Redundant

    ENIAC was digital. That, and electronic, and programmable (and Turing complete).

  7. Re:Non-damaging? on Breakthrough Gives 3-D Vision of Dawn of Life · · Score: 1
    Heisenberg called. He wants your insight back.

    Anyway, I think it would be quite harmless for fossilized structures, as those minerals are simply quite stable. Even the odd ionization is most likely to just revert after a while. If we would ever want to survey what miniscule remains there might be of actual organic material, then that's a completely different thing. For most fossils, that's completely out of the question anyway.

  8. Re:Torpark on The Face of One AOL Searcher Exposed · · Score: 1

    Your searches, combined with Google Adsense data for that same IP, gives you a very good picture of who the person is, possibly close enough to an identity (and certainly close enough to give an accurate estimate of demographics).

  9. Re:Not a hardware bug.. it modifies the pagefile on Vista Hacking Challenge Answered · · Score: 1

    A (non-paged) kernel filter on raw disk access would be another solution. Even software that was allowed raw disk write access would then require ANOTHER level to actually modify the pagefile of a running system.

  10. Re:Your knowledge of GC is 10 years out of date on Xcode Update Gives Objective-C Garbage Collection · · Score: 2, Insightful
    True. The most adverse effect of Java-like GCing is not the allocation method, it's the amount of allocations, and the references to wherever and whatever all the time. In C/C++, you can really store a string locally with an object. If you do it smart, you can even allocate the memory for several strings with dynamic size and still have guaranteed locality and a single heap allocation. In Java (or C#), you're almost bound to have several references, each with a separate vtable reference and so on. Structs in C# is a step in the right direction here, because they remove a tiny bit of the paradox that you have to choose between a nice OO representation or roll your own memory manager with no other primitives than, essentially, bytes.

    And, to some degree, GC is responsible for the fact that it's impossible to do nice data structures on your own, as a GC needs to be able to track and relocate references. To do that, it has to grok your data structure.

  11. Re:In response to the naysayers... on Xcode Update Gives Objective-C Garbage Collection · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For now, but it seems to me that interoperability with a library that used garbage collection would require you to use it as well, or suffer some real pain while trying to work out the memory ownership semantics of a library that simply wasn't designed in those terms.

  12. Re:That math makes no sense to me. Help me out. on An Older, Larger Universe · · Score: 1
    Nope. Compare with the old "dough" analogy, with the yeast causing expansion in every part of the dough at each point in time -- no specific signal is transferred to tell the universe to expand. It's an inherent property in spacetime. On the other hand gravity and the other fundamental forces are actively "transmitting" information, limited at the speed of light, to try to keep things together at an energy minimum. You're expanded by some atto-meter or whatever per second, but the electrostatic forces tie you together again.

    Or: no movement takes place, the "rest" state of spacetime is expansion.

  13. Re:So what you want... on Java Regular Expressions · · Score: 1

    While technically correct, I think it's more to the point to say that parsers are based on tree structures or expansion rules. True transformation rules are so much more powerful, but with far less appealing computational properties.

  14. Re:My main complaint on Java Regular Expressions · · Score: 1
    Overkill, noun:

    1. Beating something that's already dead.

    2. Using an Apache-licensed software package and creating an external file dependency to solve the fact that your language doesn't support raw strings.

  15. Re:Wait a second... on The Future of Closed Source Software and Linux · · Score: 2, Informative

    The "open" kernel API of Linux is not constant, and it's not open in the sense that you can link even non-open code to it. That's why you have those thunkings to binary "drivers", with a thin layer under a GPL license, that just communicates with the binary code.

  16. Re:I believe just the opposite on The Future of Closed Source Software and Linux · · Score: 1

    Firefox is not GPL... Anyway, I think you CAN get in trouble if you use the graphics/trademark, despite the fact that they are also part of the code. So, you would be allowed to rebrand, but possibly not try to stick your own heavily modified version and sell it with the goodwill of the Firefox "brand".

  17. Re:Infrared visibility still a problem on How to Become Invisible · · Score: 1

    What about an invisible Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park?

  18. Re:What about the 586? on The Next Three Days are the x86 Days · · Score: 1

    The instruction sets implemented by different i586s differ (MMX added some real niceties even to common code), and for i686 even more so. (MMX? Not on PPro. SSE? Only on Pentium III and up. SSE-2? Only on Banias and up, if you consider them i686s. And... what the heck is Netburst? i786? What's Core 2?)

  19. Re:Questionable statistic... on Tech Replaces Diamonds As Girl's Best Friend · · Score: 1

    Why are equally sized samples relevant? It seems to me that they were interested in the habits of women, but wanted some additional baseline for men. This way, they can create specific slices of women demographics while retaining some significance, but look at the group of men as a whole.

  20. Re:First real users will be... on Liquid Armor the New Bulletproof Vest · · Score: 1

    Yeah. However, the phase change reaction has the attractive property of actually absorbing some of the energy completely for a time, with less immediate heat and spread-out kinetic effect. I was highly "optimistic", but pointing out that even then the scenario of the original poster was quite farfetched. (as in: damn violating thermodynamics, with anything similar to the here stated armor approach)

  21. Re:Other uses on Image Recognition on Mobile Phones · · Score: 3, Funny
    Fancy a set of scrabble-like plastic pieces, with additional barcode cues (barcode + distinct letter form would be easier than just the letter). Then you "set" your text message almost like on an old-style printing press, take a snapshot and voilà!

    Coming next: Non-invasive optical punch card recognition. Preserve your valuable yellow-tinted records in pristine condition, while emulating your IBM from the 60s on the cellphone.

  22. Re:Bar code scanning powered phones? on Image Recognition on Mobile Phones · · Score: 1

    All you need to harness energy is an area of low entropy... The bar code certainly qualifies!

  23. Re:First real users will be... on Liquid Armor the New Bulletproof Vest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You'll still get an impact from the energy alone. You're not thrown back, but certainly hit. I imagine that hundreds of bullets would be enough to cause some quite significant effects anyway. (The total heating alone could be "interesting".)

  24. Re:Not Funny- this is actually happening on Parexel Destroys Immune Systems, Not Liable · · Score: 1

    Since, you know, you don't need any medical personnel for monitoring and performing a clinical trial, even if you're allowing yourself to be lax due to a somewhat lower economical risk.

  25. Re:No, not really. on Microsoft Adds Risky System-Wide Undelete to Vista · · Score: 1

    When you talk about APIs in NT, do you mean ntdll and the executive (ntoskrnl), or Win32?