One thing to note is that virgin and NASA have different requirements.
Virgin want test pilots, sure the computer may do most of the work but what they need in the pilots seat is someone who can remain calm and make rational decisions under the conditions of flight gone wrong. Hell I wouldn't even really call what virgin are doing spaceflight.
NASA otoh do want some pilots but they also want astronaughts with other specilisations. This will be especially true if NASA ever manage to set up a base on the moon or mars.
or just stop and request the human driver to take control.
The thing is when traveling at speed you can't "just stop", you have to maintain control and avoid obstacles for long enough to bring the car to a halt.Road vehicles are worse than airplanes in this regard. Airplanes have a lot of space arround them. Even with airplanes we require the pilots to be in the cockpit at all times and limit what non-flying activities are allowable (afaict the pilots are all).
So if the system is going to require a human driver to take control in unexpected situations then that human driver needs to be sitting in the drivers seat and ready to take over at a moments notice (which means they must be paying attention to the car's surroundings BEFORE they are requested to take over) at all times when the vehicle is operating.
I think enforcing that drivers continue to pay attention (even to the limited extent they do now) could make a "give-up" function a non-starter for automated driving systems.
Sometimes code fails to work correctly on a particular architecture. Sometimes that is the programmers fault for doing something that is technically undefined. Sometimes it's the compiler vendors fault for writing a buggy compiler.
Whatever the reason it takes time and effort to find the code that has the problem, figure out what is breaking and then either fix the bug in your code or create a testcase for the comiler vendor.
My understanding is there are eight registerers that are regarded as "more of less general purpose" EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, ESI, EDI, ESP and EBP
Of these ESP is basically locked up for use as a stack pointer. EBP was traditonally used for the base of the current stack frame to make accessing local variables simpler but it's not really nessacery if the compiler keeps track of the current stack pointer. That leaves 6-7 regsiters for regular use.
AMD64 has 64-bit versions of all these registerers plus 8 new 64-bit general purpose registers.
Just out of curiosity do you have any figures to support that claim? just how well or badly do ia64 processors compare to contemporary x86 processors and how does that comparison change over time.
There is a tool out there called "activation backup and restore" that can back up the big brand OEM activation and restore it onto a clean install of windows made using generic windows media. Alternatively you can use the product key on the COA sticker to activate though this may require a phone call to MS
We're now talking about optical drives being optional for the next generation of ultra-portable laptops.
Truly ultra-portable laptops have never had internal optical drives. They didn't have internal floppy drives either. When you are trying to shave off every last bit of volume and weight off a machine removable media drives are one of the first things to go. Some did ship with external optical drives largely because it's only fairly recently that there has been a standard way of making external bootable optical drives*
What has happened is
1:after being a small niche for many years ultraportables are starting to become more mainstream as people realise they no longer need to carry a big heavy laptop around. 2:apple has started pushing the macbook air which is thin and light but not particularly small (originally 13 inch, now also comes in 11 inch, rumours say it may later come in 15 inch). As always everyone is trying to copy apple**
* which means USB to IDE/SATA chips that BIOSes know how to talk to. ** of course copying apple doesn't guarantee copying apple's success, look at the lukewarm reception to andriod tables for example.
Physical media that requires steam to decrypt and install so if you can't get online or steam disappears the disc wont help you.
I also remember reading (during the early days of steam) that you were forced to update as part of the install and that said update meant substantial downloading even if you did have the disc. Dunno if that is still true.
Whether it's skyscrapers, subway trains, pedestrian subways, elavated walkways or whatever solutions are considered in the centre of major cities that would not be considered elsewhere. They are considered reasonable in the center of big cities because people are prepared to pay a lot of money for space there.
Afaict thunderbolt is implemented as a seperate chip connected via PCIe and displayport. So I don't see any reason why you couldn't have a system with an AMD processor but an intel thunderbolt chip.
One of the key design features of PNG was that any PNG should be able to be read by any decoder. That is why PNG has relatively few options on how the core data is encoded*
Adding optional stuff is ok (unless it's animation......) but if you want to make a key change to the core of the format I suspect the PNG guys would tell you to go make your own format based on PNG but with it's own specification, file extension and "magic number" (as was done for MNG, and JNG).
* a handful of filter types all of which are easy to implement, one compression algorith, one byte order standard, 15 allowed color/bitdepth combintions (the majority of which represent very comon combinations and all of which can be easilly mapped to 24-bit RGB).
I wonder if it would be a good idea to quietly setup a backup of the svn repos using svnsync (which does not require any special privilages on the source server).
Also afaict linux raid can support raid1 sets with more than two drives. So you can mirror onto a drive for backup purposes while still having two drives in the live system at all times.
Do you have a source for that? (not doubting you, just curious about it and I couldn't seem to turn it up with a quick google)
Also you say it displays the date. Does it determine the date from the passage of time (a highly complex process due to the oddities of our calender) or do some of the rules have to be implemented through manual adjustments?
Sometimes it is nessacery to know what the time is when away from mod-cons and/or in an area controlled by other people (so even if there are clocks you don't know how accurate they are). So a timepeice that you carry on your person is useful.
Sounds like you use the clock on your cellphone as a watch substitute which is fine as long as you remember to keep it charged and as long as you actually want to carry a phone all the time.
Virgin media* like to talk fiber in their adverts (why advertising standards allow this I have no idea) but what they really offer (at least to normal end users) is cable TV/cable modem service which I belive is backhauled over fiber.
But afaict the real issue with virgin media is that they are essentially an amalgamation of various failed attempts to compete with BT (telecommunication/internet service) and SKY (pay TV) and while they are keeping the network ticking over and pushing higher speeds over it they are not trying to expand at all. So in many parts of the UK it's BT or nothing.
There is "BT Retail", which rents phonelines and is an ISP. Then there is "BT Wholesale"
Afaict with BT ADSL/phone service there are actually THREE parts of BT group involved. BT retail, BT wholesale and BT openreach.
BT openreach maintain the physical lines. BT wholesale operate the ADSL/pots/etc equipment that runs on those lines BT retail sell service to end users.
Big providers (like o2/be*, sky, talktalk/tiscali/etc**) can buy access to the phone lines direct off BT openreach and colocate their own POTS and/or ADSL gear in the BT exchange (a practice known as local loop unbundling). Small providers are bascially forced to buy off BT wholesale (in principle they could buy off one of the LLU providers but only if the LLU provider is willing to sell them service) and pay BT wholesale's (very high) backhaul prices. This is why you will find that most small ISPS have data usage limits and/or horrible congestion.
The question that is being argued about at the moment is what will happen with the introduction of fiber. With most fiber networks you can't just sell access to each customers local loop because each customer no longer has a dedicated local loop. From TFA it appears that BT is planning to sell connections through the fiber network to other broadband providers but heavilly restrict what those connections can be used for.
* o2 and be are owned by the same parent company and sell service using the same LLU infrastructure. ** talktalk and tiscali bought out a LOT of isps as they tried to expand their llu infrastructure
I remember my parents talking about what phone service used to be like. I remember them talking of messages like "all the lines to birmingham are in use". I remember phone call prices that made the phone something you used for short calls to get important information across. Long chats on the phone were a rare indulgence.
Nowadays the phone network seems to connect calls extremely reliably and unmetered call packages are common so you can chat as much as you like (provided you keep each individual call less than an hour).
How much of this is down to competition (enabled by regulators forcing BT to share infrastructure) and how much is down to technological improvements I do not know
Well, in fairness, on the memory side, you do that with some combination of memory modules which are addressable by powers of two. (eg. 2GB + 1GB, or 4GB + 4GB + 1GB), each of which is discrete from the others. I don't believe you can buy a 3GB or 9GB memory module.
However certain intel processors do use interleaved triple channel memory so there must be a division by 3 going on in the memory addressing system somewhere.
Oh many designs use one or two of them to glue stuff together but other than a few masochists noone builds large systems out of them anymore. The world has moved on, micrcontrollers for the non speed critical stuff, programable logic for the speed critical stuff.
True enough BUT a PC is a bad place to be putting analog audio circuitry in the first place because it's an electrically noisy environment. If sound quality is your pritority you are probablly better off running S/PDIF, TOSLINK or HDMI to an external DAC.
True but equally the cost of a fix must be weighed against the benefit of that fix. This "fix" seems to be high cost (dramatically increasing the cost of forwarding a block) for dubious benefit.
Even if the asshole density got to high for transactions to propogate through random public connections i'm sure people would form other arragenements for getting transactions to miners.
The researchers haven't even made it clear (at least from my reading of the paper, please tell me if I missed something) if they think this complex system can be implemented without changing the blockchain system to accomodate the new transactions with pre-ordained fee split.
The UK actually have the second highest total-debt-to-gdp ratios in the world. Only slightly below Japan
The "total debt to GDP ratio" may be only slightly below japan but the government debt is a MUCH smaller proportion of the total debt than with japan.
But more important than the amount of debt is what that debt is denominated in. If a government has debts denominated in their own currency they can order their central bank (in practice they probably won't even need to make the order) to offer them unlimited loans at a fixed interest rate so the only way they will default is if they chose to do so.
OTOH if a government has large debts denominated in a currency under outside control they are at the mercy of the countries that control those currencies. That is why greece and italy are in so much trouble, they sacrificed their financial sovereignty by joining the Euro.
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One thing to note is that virgin and NASA have different requirements.
Virgin want test pilots, sure the computer may do most of the work but what they need in the pilots seat is someone who can remain calm and make rational decisions under the conditions of flight gone wrong. Hell I wouldn't even really call what virgin are doing spaceflight.
NASA otoh do want some pilots but they also want astronaughts with other specilisations. This will be especially true if NASA ever manage to set up a base on the moon or mars.
or just stop and request the human driver to take control.
The thing is when traveling at speed you can't "just stop", you have to maintain control and avoid obstacles for long enough to bring the car to a halt.Road vehicles are worse than airplanes in this regard. Airplanes have a lot of space arround them. Even with airplanes we require the pilots to be in the cockpit at all times and limit what non-flying activities are allowable (afaict the pilots are all).
So if the system is going to require a human driver to take control in unexpected situations then that human driver needs to be sitting in the drivers seat and ready to take over at a moments notice (which means they must be paying attention to the car's surroundings BEFORE they are requested to take over) at all times when the vehicle is operating.
I think enforcing that drivers continue to pay attention (even to the limited extent they do now) could make a "give-up" function a non-starter for automated driving systems.
Sometimes code fails to work correctly on a particular architecture. Sometimes that is the programmers fault for doing something that is technically undefined. Sometimes it's the compiler vendors fault for writing a buggy compiler.
Whatever the reason it takes time and effort to find the code that has the problem, figure out what is breaking and then either fix the bug in your code or create a testcase for the comiler vendor.
8? ITYM 4.The other registers are address etc
My understanding is there are eight registerers that are regarded as "more of less general purpose" EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, ESI, EDI, ESP and EBP
Of these ESP is basically locked up for use as a stack pointer. EBP was traditonally used for the base of the current stack frame to make accessing local variables simpler but it's not really nessacery if the compiler keeps track of the current stack pointer. That leaves 6-7 regsiters for regular use.
AMD64 has 64-bit versions of all these registerers plus 8 new 64-bit general purpose registers.
IA64 makes a very good Linux box
Just out of curiosity do you have any figures to support that claim? just how well or badly do ia64 processors compare to contemporary x86 processors and how does that comparison change over time.
apparently digitalriver are a MS distribtion partner and there are freely downloadable links on thier servers for windows ISOs. http://techpp.com/2009/11/11/download-windows-7-iso-official-direct-download-links/
There is a tool out there called "activation backup and restore" that can back up the big brand OEM activation and restore it onto a clean install of windows made using generic windows media. Alternatively you can use the product key on the COA sticker to activate though this may require a phone call to MS
We're now talking about optical drives being optional for the next generation of ultra-portable laptops.
Truly ultra-portable laptops have never had internal optical drives. They didn't have internal floppy drives either. When you are trying to shave off every last bit of volume and weight off a machine removable media drives are one of the first things to go. Some did ship with external optical drives largely because it's only fairly recently that there has been a standard way of making external bootable optical drives*
What has happened is
1:after being a small niche for many years ultraportables are starting to become more mainstream as people realise they no longer need to carry a big heavy laptop around.
2:apple has started pushing the macbook air which is thin and light but not particularly small (originally 13 inch, now also comes in 11 inch, rumours say it may later come in 15 inch). As always everyone is trying to copy apple**
* which means USB to IDE/SATA chips that BIOSes know how to talk to.
** of course copying apple doesn't guarantee copying apple's success, look at the lukewarm reception to andriod tables for example.
just in case, I have physical media, too.
Physical media that requires steam to decrypt and install so if you can't get online or steam disappears the disc wont help you.
I also remember reading (during the early days of steam) that you were forced to update as part of the install and that said update meant substantial downloading even if you did have the disc. Dunno if that is still true.
Whether it's skyscrapers, subway trains, pedestrian subways, elavated walkways or whatever solutions are considered in the centre of major cities that would not be considered elsewhere. They are considered reasonable in the center of big cities because people are prepared to pay a lot of money for space there.
Afaict thunderbolt is implemented as a seperate chip connected via PCIe and displayport. So I don't see any reason why you couldn't have a system with an AMD processor but an intel thunderbolt chip.
The iMac shipped with a 56Kb/s modem
It also shipped with 10/100 ethernet.
One of the key design features of PNG was that any PNG should be able to be read by any decoder. That is why PNG has relatively few options on how the core data is encoded*
Adding optional stuff is ok (unless it's animation......) but if you want to make a key change to the core of the format I suspect the PNG guys would tell you to go make your own format based on PNG but with it's own specification, file extension and "magic number" (as was done for MNG, and JNG).
* a handful of filter types all of which are easy to implement, one compression algorith, one byte order standard, 15 allowed color/bitdepth combintions (the majority of which represent very comon combinations and all of which can be easilly mapped to 24-bit RGB).
I wonder if it would be a good idea to quietly setup a backup of the svn repos using svnsync (which does not require any special privilages on the source server).
Also afaict linux raid can support raid1 sets with more than two drives. So you can mirror onto a drive for backup purposes while still having two drives in the live system at all times.
Do you have a source for that? (not doubting you, just curious about it and I couldn't seem to turn it up with a quick google)
Also you say it displays the date. Does it determine the date from the passage of time (a highly complex process due to the oddities of our calender) or do some of the rules have to be implemented through manual adjustments?
Sometimes it is nessacery to know what the time is when away from mod-cons and/or in an area controlled by other people (so even if there are clocks you don't know how accurate they are). So a timepeice that you carry on your person is useful.
Sounds like you use the clock on your cellphone as a watch substitute which is fine as long as you remember to keep it charged and as long as you actually want to carry a phone all the time.
Virgin media* like to talk fiber in their adverts (why advertising standards allow this I have no idea) but what they really offer (at least to normal end users) is cable TV/cable modem service which I belive is backhauled over fiber.
But afaict the real issue with virgin media is that they are essentially an amalgamation of various failed attempts to compete with BT (telecommunication/internet service) and SKY (pay TV) and while they are keeping the network ticking over and pushing higher speeds over it they are not trying to expand at all. So in many parts of the UK it's BT or nothing.
*Who virgin only have a minority stake in BTW.
There is no such thing as "BT".
Well there is "BT group".....
There is "BT Retail", which rents phonelines and is an ISP. Then there is "BT Wholesale"
Afaict with BT ADSL/phone service there are actually THREE parts of BT group involved. BT retail, BT wholesale and BT openreach.
BT openreach maintain the physical lines.
BT wholesale operate the ADSL/pots/etc equipment that runs on those lines
BT retail sell service to end users.
Big providers (like o2/be*, sky, talktalk/tiscali/etc**) can buy access to the phone lines direct off BT openreach and colocate their own POTS and/or ADSL gear in the BT exchange (a practice known as local loop unbundling). Small providers are bascially forced to buy off BT wholesale (in principle they could buy off one of the LLU providers but only if the LLU provider is willing to sell them service) and pay BT wholesale's (very high) backhaul prices. This is why you will find that most small ISPS have data usage limits and/or horrible congestion.
The question that is being argued about at the moment is what will happen with the introduction of fiber. With most fiber networks you can't just sell access to each customers local loop because each customer no longer has a dedicated local loop. From TFA it appears that BT is planning to sell connections through the fiber network to other broadband providers but heavilly restrict what those connections can be used for.
* o2 and be are owned by the same parent company and sell service using the same LLU infrastructure.
** talktalk and tiscali bought out a LOT of isps as they tried to expand their llu infrastructure
I remember my parents talking about what phone service used to be like. I remember them talking of messages like "all the lines to birmingham are in use". I remember phone call prices that made the phone something you used for short calls to get important information across. Long chats on the phone were a rare indulgence.
Nowadays the phone network seems to connect calls extremely reliably and unmetered call packages are common so you can chat as much as you like (provided you keep each individual call less than an hour).
How much of this is down to competition (enabled by regulators forcing BT to share infrastructure) and how much is down to technological improvements I do not know
Well, in fairness, on the memory side, you do that with some combination of memory modules which are addressable by powers of two. (eg. 2GB + 1GB, or 4GB + 4GB + 1GB), each of which is discrete from the others. I don't believe you can buy a 3GB or 9GB memory module.
However certain intel processors do use interleaved triple channel memory so there must be a division by 3 going on in the memory addressing system somewhere.
many designs actually use them still.
Oh many designs use one or two of them to glue stuff together but other than a few masochists noone builds large systems out of them anymore. The world has moved on, micrcontrollers for the non speed critical stuff, programable logic for the speed critical stuff.
True enough BUT a PC is a bad place to be putting analog audio circuitry in the first place because it's an electrically noisy environment. If sound quality is your pritority you are probablly better off running S/PDIF, TOSLINK or HDMI to an external DAC.
True but equally the cost of a fix must be weighed against the benefit of that fix. This "fix" seems to be high cost (dramatically increasing the cost of forwarding a block) for dubious benefit.
Even if the asshole density got to high for transactions to propogate through random public connections i'm sure people would form other arragenements for getting transactions to miners.
The researchers haven't even made it clear (at least from my reading of the paper, please tell me if I missed something) if they think this complex system can be implemented without changing the blockchain system to accomodate the new transactions with pre-ordained fee split.
The UK actually have the second highest total-debt-to-gdp ratios in the world. Only slightly below Japan
The "total debt to GDP ratio" may be only slightly below japan but the government debt is a MUCH smaller proportion of the total debt than with japan.
But more important than the amount of debt is what that debt is denominated in. If a government has debts denominated in their own currency they can order their central bank (in practice they probably won't even need to make the order) to offer them unlimited loans at a fixed interest rate so the only way they will default is if they chose to do so.
OTOH if a government has large debts denominated in a currency under outside control they are at the mercy of the countries that control those currencies. That is why greece and italy are in so much trouble, they sacrificed their financial sovereignty by joining the Euro.
If a LARGE proportion of bitcoin nodes are run by assholes who refuse to distribute transactions then the network may fall apart.
This system seems to add a lot of complexity to solve something that has not proven a problem.