Solar energy: No problem - no atmosphere, no clouds etc.
Yes problem -- only present during the day. And the night is pretty long. But we still can use it while it's there, of course, and that might still be enough to top up the oxygen supplies.
Cooling: No problem. Do you know how *cold* it is in the shadows on the moon?
Yeah, we can just blow some cold hard vacuum over the heat sink.. oh, wait..
I'm sure it can be solved, but it might not be all that easy.
Nuclear energy: [...] "Oh hell, the reactor's melted down. Good thing we sited it 100Km from the base".
A big advantage here is that the Moon is empty. There aren't any neighbouring towns to take into account. (And no winds to blow radioactive cesium over to Sweden, where it can be detected and reported to the IAEA...)
Up there we have to start from scratch, but on the other hand, we know pretty well in advance what we have to deal with.
Because robots and machines don't eat, breathe and.. eh.. defecate. Not yet, anyway.
If we want to use plants to generate oxygen (and food), we need to bring an entire ecosystem. Of course, it shouldn't be impossible to send up worms and insects to make up "the other half" of the system, while we're setting things up.
Or we could go with nanobots, as long as you provide them.:-)
The temperature on the moon reaches -387 Fahrenheit (-233 Celsius) at night.
If we can't figure out how to use that to our advantage, we deserve to be stuck here.
But we'd be stuck trying to radiate all the heat away, since there's no cool air or cold water to blow over or pump through whatever we want cooled. And radiating away heat might not turn out to be so easy.
(I didn't find any good link to illustrate it, but I know that it's a serious (but solvable) issue on places such as the ISS. That is, it's something you at least have to take into consideration, it's not an easily fixed non-problem.)
Not to mention that it's significantly hotter during the day. And the day is quite long.
But if you could just move the heat on a big enough scale... (Sundiver, anyone?)
1. Lost sale - piratee would have bought the software
2. Lost lower sale - pirate would have bought a cheaper version of the software ie Photoshop Elements 3. Lost competition's lower sale - pirate would have bought Ulead PhotoImpact
4. Lost nothing - pirate would have used GIMP or Picasa or nothing
In return for that piracy, you receive recognition. I.e. image editing = Photoshop. Word processing = Word, etc.
If every 15-year-old that wanted to erase bikinis from celebrity pics (or, however most peoople get started) actually, really had no choice but to get and learn GIMP, they wouldn't be as likely to get Photoshop later when they could afford it. Same thing when you start your own company. Why buy into the whole Microsoft/Windows deal when you and everyone you know knows about the free alternatives?
It would be interesting to know what various marketing departments say about this, behind closed doors. But I suppose we never will.
And while we're at it, Space fountains deserve a mention too. (They get bonus points for sounding absolutely outrageous, but are apparently completely possible even today.)
And with a combination of all mentioned techniques, who knows what will be possible? It's certainly not technology that's holding us back.
If you want to be a smartass, you could point out that this is essentially the exact same trick that various charities have used to put starving children in our other entertainment boxes (that is, advertising on TV). But that seems to work , so why not?
During the late 80's packet radio was starting out. When most people were calling bbs's using modems, hams were sending wireless data.
And some were doing both. There was a BBS around here that ran a node off packet radio, at 1200 and/or 9600 bps. (This was back when the expensive modems were doing 14400 bps, by the way.) I thought it was really cool at the time, especially with the prospect of not having to pay the phone company for downloading files and mail. They even had some people getting their Fidonet fix via radio, if I'm not mistaken. The Fidonet bit was probably technically illegal, if nothing else because a law prohibiting "redistributing radio communications".
I came pretty close to getting a technical license so I could run packet, but lost interest when I realized the regulations pretty much disallowed anything "fun", or things that didn't fit the traditional view of what ham radio was supposed to be.
7 out of 14 would be expected if it were random...
That's like saying there's a 50% chance you're scratching your ass when you read this comment. Because either you are or you're not, right?
But if someone showed me that, indeed, 50% of Slashdot readers were scratching their asses while reading the comment, I'd conclude that the post really had something to do with it.
(In fact, don't you have an itch there right now? The one that you noticed a minute ago but ignored?)
Self-awareness leads to complications for economy and society in general. Its the foundation of rights. We tie a horse to a plow because it is presumed to be unaware. Would you kill an infestation of termites to save your house if they are self-aware? Would you purchase books to read knowing that each book produced decreased the habitat of self-aware creatures?
Would you shoot a burglar entering your house if you knew he was self-aware?
Seriously, I don't see the problem. We humans kill other living beings all the time, including other humans. Recognizing that other animals also have self-awareness is only going to lead to ethical problems if your ethics are built on the foundation that they aren't.
Currently we operate under the assumption that we are the only self-aware creature.
Actually, I'd go so far as to say that most people don't. (Ask any pet owner..) And I'm having a real hard time imagining that anyone that is interested in animals, or at least watches Animal Planet from time to time does not extend self-awareness to hold for at least some "famous" species (dolphins, great apes..).
Back then MTV played music videos (I know, I'm dating myself); but even the international version was waaaaaaay better than what we received in the US.
Well, International became European (UK based), then Nordic, and now, since recently, it's national. With a healthy dose of guaranteed-to-sell US/international artists, obviously. And of course it's 50% "Pimp my ride" and "Cribs" now... International doesn't seem to even be on cable networks. MTV2 is, though.
It started to make me wonder if people outside the USA have a better picture of what's going on (even in our own country) since we are so "sheltered" from information. How many more networks/info-outlets perform this "double broadcasting"?
Sorta kinda maybe. BBCW seems to be geared more towards the business traveller/news junkie type of audience, and so has a more serious news profile. I'd imagine that the same thing goes for CNNi, even if I can't get here.
That (BBC/CNN/etc) is not what most people are watching for news though. We probably get more international news, but then we're also much more affected by what goes on in the (rest of the) EU, for example; hence more coverage of things like the Italian election, the German economy, etc.
As for "double broadcasting", you pretty much have to do it in English to be relevant for anyone but a relatively small group of expatriates. And for that group, providing news from home and "apple pie" type entertainment is probably going to be even more important than having your own offices in every country in the world.
That's my 14.56 öre anyway. (Or, 1.563 Euro cent.)
I'm fairly certain it's available for free via satellite. I've had it included in the standard cable package (for free) at several places I've lived here in Sweden. There's no way the cable companies would give it away for free if they had to pay for it.
10-20% more transistor switching and fossile-fuel consumption to feed some bullshit academic?
It's likely he means 10-20% overhead when the OS is running. As long as your program is running, and not calling the OS, there is 0% overhead.
If your program needs to call the operating system, say, 5% of the time (for disk I/O or whatever), you will have 10-20% of 5%, or 0.5-1% of additional overhead. That can certainly be an acceptable tradeoff.
AmigaOS is actually pretty microkernel-ish, so the comparison is not entirely useless.
Moreover, just because the 68000 doesn't have an MMU doesn't mean you can't write a MK-based operating system for it. You just don't have the hardware support for strict separation. (and so you lose some advantages)
You're going to have problems keeping data synchronized between CPUs whether you choose a monolithic or a microkernel model. How exactly is "monolithic" going to magically solve that?
With a MK design, you can at least choose to split the operating system over multiple CPUs, with user programs running "near" the part of the OS they are interacting with (e.g. movie player on the same CPU as the graphics subsystem, database on the same CPU as the file system, etc.). Move only the data that needs to be moved.
I should admit that I didn't understand everything you said ("can't trust them to give even correct pointers"). Feel free to elaborate.
One of the biggest problems I continually have with technical people
It's rather presumptuous (and in your own word, "arrogant") to assume that we (the tech people) "latch on to a specific phrase" simply because we don't understand that a single phrase might have multiple meanings. Most technical people, including myself, I have worked with understand perfectly that a phrase can have multiple meanings.
He was simply using the phrase "technical people" in place of "you idiots on Slashdot". No one is going to admit to being an idiot, but call them technical, and they just might swallow the criticism along with the compliment.
Of course, you are obviously one of the shining counterexamples.
Not really, NetBSD is pretty far in the other direction; absolutely minimal install, all the "desktoppy" things are extra. Not many people seem to be using it on their desktop.
There's nothing that says they couldn't. Ever heard about Open Firmware? And with EFI, I'm not so sure "real" PCs won't have it soon either.
Anyway - you asked. If you really are concerned about restarting parts of the system when the disk is inaccessible, there is a solution. I'm not saying you could start using a MK-based system on your average x86 Dell desktop and it would make your farts smell like roses, just that a MK architecture can do some things better, if you let it.
On the "as if nothing happened" scenario.
Well, if you're constantly writing to disk, you might very well be screwed. If you're constantly *reading* from disk, this just might save you, though. And what about journalling file systems? There's a good chance you could actually know what's been written.
Like others who have replied to me, I think you are going beyond what a microkernel can accomplish. If a program is in the middle of a disk write operation, either that program has a backup plan when that write times out or it crashes. The kernel isn't of much help.
Perhaps. It certainly isn't going to be a magic bullet for existing programs.
But then OTOH, a backup plan as simple as "retry" might work.
I'm not sure what you mean by "nasty circumstances". Broken hardware? Nothing can guard against that (except redundancy). A program holding file descriptors and unflushed data when the file system/network has crashed? I expect that is a solvable problem, similar things has been solved before. A buggy driver writes all over the disk? (Well, MK design doesn't protect against bugs, it just limits their scope.)
Privileges. I propose to get rid of the "single user that has full administrator privileges". And there is not always a single master key for all buildings, not if the building is supposed to be secure.
Anyway, I don't think we're going anywhere. Agree to disagree?
Would a different designed CPU be better for microkernels?
It seems plausible that they would, at least. CPUs already have lots of optimization for function calls (and C-like code, putting arguments on the stack), but none that I know of for message passing. It'd be interesting to see.
BTW I've always found it weird that in many systems parameters are passed on the same stack that's used to hold return addresses. [...]
Whereas I'm thinking that if there were separate stacks for code and data that would make things more robust (not sure whether performance would be better or slower), however how many modern CPUs have support for that?
Ask the FORTH people; they have been using two stacks for exactly this purpose for ages. Of course, I remember seeing this page that argued that switching to FORTH would give a 10x improvement in speed, size, and productivity, (over C) so keep the pinch of salt handy.:-)
(And as far as I can see, you don't need any explicit support for the second stack. The 68000 did fine with "move" instructions for both purposes.)
You're still dependent on sane message passing for the system to function.
Yes. And the message passing microkernel is, obviously, the single point of failure.
What you gain is that the critical component is much smaller. QNX's MK is, what, 4K? Or was it 8K? That's a lot less code to have to go through for vulnerabilities or bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure it can be solved, but it might not be all that easy.
A big advantage here is that the Moon is empty. There aren't any neighbouring towns to take into account. (And no winds to blow radioactive cesium over to Sweden, where it can be detected and reported to the IAEA...)Up there we have to start from scratch, but on the other hand, we know pretty well in advance what we have to deal with.
If we want to use plants to generate oxygen (and food), we need to bring an entire ecosystem. Of course, it shouldn't be impossible to send up worms and insects to make up "the other half" of the system, while we're setting things up.
Or we could go with nanobots, as long as you provide them. :-)
(I didn't find any good link to illustrate it, but I know that it's a serious (but solvable) issue on places such as the ISS. That is, it's something you at least have to take into consideration, it's not an easily fixed non-problem.)
Not to mention that it's significantly hotter during the day. And the day is quite long.
But if you could just move the heat on a big enough scale... (Sundiver, anyone?)
If every 15-year-old that wanted to erase bikinis from celebrity pics (or, however most peoople get started) actually, really had no choice but to get and learn GIMP, they wouldn't be as likely to get Photoshop later when they could afford it. Same thing when you start your own company. Why buy into the whole Microsoft/Windows deal when you and everyone you know knows about the free alternatives?
It would be interesting to know what various marketing departments say about this, behind closed doors. But I suppose we never will.
And while we're at it, Space fountains deserve a mention too. (They get bonus points for sounding absolutely outrageous, but are apparently completely possible even today.)
And with a combination of all mentioned techniques, who knows what will be possible? It's certainly not technology that's holding us back.
If you want to be a smartass, you could point out that this is essentially the exact same trick that various charities have used to put starving children in our other entertainment boxes (that is, advertising on TV). But that seems to work , so why not?
I came pretty close to getting a technical license so I could run packet, but lost interest when I realized the regulations pretty much disallowed anything "fun", or things that didn't fit the traditional view of what ham radio was supposed to be.
[Look at me! I'm the old sea captain. Arr!]
Treehouse of Horror XI, by the way.
But if someone showed me that, indeed, 50% of Slashdot readers were scratching their asses while reading the comment, I'd conclude that the post really had something to do with it.
(In fact, don't you have an itch there right now? The one that you noticed a minute ago but ignored?)
Seriously, I don't see the problem. We humans kill other living beings all the time, including other humans. Recognizing that other animals also have self-awareness is only going to lead to ethical problems if your ethics are built on the foundation that they aren't.
Actually, I'd go so far as to say that most people don't. (Ask any pet owner..) And I'm having a real hard time imagining that anyone that is interested in animals, or at least watches Animal Planet from time to time does not extend self-awareness to hold for at least some "famous" species (dolphins, great apes..).At least it's what I believe that people think.
That (BBC/CNN/etc) is not what most people are watching for news though. We probably get more international news, but then we're also much more affected by what goes on in the (rest of the) EU, for example; hence more coverage of things like the Italian election, the German economy, etc.
As for "double broadcasting", you pretty much have to do it in English to be relevant for anyone but a relatively small group of expatriates. And for that group, providing news from home and "apple pie" type entertainment is probably going to be even more important than having your own offices in every country in the world.
That's my 14.56 öre anyway. (Or, 1.563 Euro cent.)
I'm fairly certain it's available for free via satellite. I've had it included in the standard cable package (for free) at several places I've lived here in Sweden. There's no way the cable companies would give it away for free if they had to pay for it.
(And the Royal Institute of Technology did the same to Gates...)
If your program needs to call the operating system, say, 5% of the time (for disk I/O or whatever), you will have 10-20% of 5%, or 0.5-1% of additional overhead. That can certainly be an acceptable tradeoff.
Come on.
Moreover, just because the 68000 doesn't have an MMU doesn't mean you can't write a MK-based operating system for it. You just don't have the hardware support for strict separation. (and so you lose some advantages)
With a MK design, you can at least choose to split the operating system over multiple CPUs, with user programs running "near" the part of the OS they are interacting with (e.g. movie player on the same CPU as the graphics subsystem, database on the same CPU as the file system, etc.). Move only the data that needs to be moved.
I should admit that I didn't understand everything you said ("can't trust them to give even correct pointers"). Feel free to elaborate.
Of course, you are obviously one of the shining counterexamples.
(It's serious, laugh.)
Good one. It's quite impressive to see that a well placed "BSD is dying" troll still can work, if you place it right. I wouldn't have thought it.
Not really, NetBSD is pretty far in the other direction; absolutely minimal install, all the "desktoppy" things are extra. Not many people seem to be using it on their desktop.
Anyway - you asked. If you really are concerned about restarting parts of the system when the disk is inaccessible, there is a solution. I'm not saying you could start using a MK-based system on your average x86 Dell desktop and it would make your farts smell like roses, just that a MK architecture can do some things better, if you let it.
On the "as if nothing happened" scenario.
Perhaps. It certainly isn't going to be a magic bullet for existing programs. But then OTOH, a backup plan as simple as "retry" might work.Well, if you're constantly writing to disk, you might very well be screwed. If you're constantly *reading* from disk, this just might save you, though. And what about journalling file systems? There's a good chance you could actually know what's been written.
Privileges. I propose to get rid of the "single user that has full administrator privileges". And there is not always a single master key for all buildings, not if the building is supposed to be secure.
Anyway, I don't think we're going anywhere. Agree to disagree?
(And as far as I can see, you don't need any explicit support for the second stack. The 68000 did fine with "move" instructions for both purposes.)
What you gain is that the critical component is much smaller. QNX's MK is, what, 4K? Or was it 8K? That's a lot less code to have to go through for vulnerabilities or bugs.