Hmm, is the US constitution that fixed a thing, then? Ours has been re-interpreted to within an inch of its life by the courts, and we have the government commission for constitutional law reform actively looking for sensible ways to change it.
It had better not be; it's the only major remaining serious general-purpose RISC chip, now that HP/Compaq has axed Alpha and PA-RISC development, and UltraSparc is going nowhere.
Itanium, however, has more of a future. There's limits to how far the 386 can be pushed, and Itanium might be nice on their higher spec machines (which, remember, are not immediately going Intel)
But 64-bitness is more of a big deal on the 386, because it gives that terribly register-poor processor eight more general purpose registers, and indeed does have a noticeable impact on many things (in particular, see Linux MySQL benchmarks on 32bit vs. 64bit). They'll go 64bit as soon as they can.
I wonder is the IA-64 part of their eventual game plan...
Okay, but a blind and deaf baby DOES have lots of sensory input. In particular, they move their arm, and it hits something. They can interact with their environment. As far as I know, this is necessary to development of conciousness (not a psychologist, could be wrong, but this is how it's generally presented).
Yep, if you let it switch itself off and it was unhappy enough to want to switch itself off, then it could do so.
It's also worth noting that lack of ads allows them to produce programming which wouldn't be economically viable with ads, or which might even drive advertisers away. They were the first major broadcaster to depict homosexuality in a positive light, for example.
It's long been a contentious issue that in Ireland we get BBC for FREE. (That's why Ireland (Republic of) is no longer covered in the weather reports, apparently). But yep, most of the world gets the BBC World Service, the only such service of any value (ever listened to Voice of America?) And the website.
Read the subject. The country concerned is the Republic of Ireland. The voting machines are gone indefinitely; there's huge public, academic and opposition government distrust of them. Considering the complexity of the system and potential for abuse (we use a rather complicated Proportional Representation system), I think this is a good thing.
Here, many of the state hospitals use at least OpenOffice and in some case Linux on the desktop, and the government has issued statements advocating the use of open-source software. However, to do your tax returns on the internet, you must currently be running Windows with the MS JVM, or MacOS 9. (CrossOver Office will also work). This sort of thing turns up in a number of places.
When the system crashed (which would be suprising; it's a fancy IBM-y thing), the entity could be recovered from backups; it would have been in a coma:).
Suicide's an interesting point; can't see offhand how it would be able to do that, any more than a human can think themselves dead (note that the whole thing basicallly centers around simulating a brain).
If the thing never had any sensory input, it would probably not be able to develop conciousness. Blind and deaf children still have sensory input...
IF it was anything close to a human brain, then yes, switching it off would be murder and sensory deprivation would be torture. Whether they'll actually achieve that, tho, is questionable. If they do, it opens up an ethical nightmare that has already been done to death by science fiction writers.
This was a problem here; the government tried to set up voting machines, with the contract being that once final delivery was complete they'd be given the source. They were used in some constiuencies in one election, then abandoned due to public unhappiness with them and a failure by the company to present the source. They're still lying round in a warehouse somewhere, and it looks like they're staying there for the time being.
Remember that the falling elevator can be used to generate power, tho. So you'll regain a fair amount of power that way (not sure if that was mentioned in the radio piece; am not going to bother to listen to it. I assume it was the usual space elevator thing that's been talked about since the end of WW2.)
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Hmm, is the US constitution that fixed a thing, then? Ours has been re-interpreted to within an inch of its life by the courts, and we have the government commission for constitutional law reform actively looking for sensible ways to change it.
Oh, don't be silly, Hitler was no more a socialist than Stalin was a communist, Tony Blair is a socialist, or Bush is a conservative.
Hmm, and to think some Americans got upset with me when I referred to the PATRIOT act as their Enablement Act...
The US is obviously turning into the SU ;)
It had better not be; it's the only major remaining serious general-purpose RISC chip, now that HP/Compaq has axed Alpha and PA-RISC development, and UltraSparc is going nowhere.
Itanium, however, has more of a future. There's limits to how far the 386 can be pushed, and Itanium might be nice on their higher spec machines (which, remember, are not immediately going Intel)
But 64-bitness is more of a big deal on the 386, because it gives that terribly register-poor processor eight more general purpose registers, and indeed does have a noticeable impact on many things (in particular, see Linux MySQL benchmarks on 32bit vs. 64bit). They'll go 64bit as soon as they can. I wonder is the IA-64 part of their eventual game plan...
Okay, but a blind and deaf baby DOES have lots of sensory input. In particular, they move their arm, and it hits something. They can interact with their environment. As far as I know, this is necessary to development of conciousness (not a psychologist, could be wrong, but this is how it's generally presented). Yep, if you let it switch itself off and it was unhappy enough to want to switch itself off, then it could do so.
That is EXTREMELY cool. I thought of doing one on a Xylinx, but...
It's also worth noting that lack of ads allows them to produce programming which wouldn't be economically viable with ads, or which might even drive advertisers away. They were the first major broadcaster to depict homosexuality in a positive light, for example.
It's long been a contentious issue that in Ireland we get BBC for FREE. (That's why Ireland (Republic of) is no longer covered in the weather reports, apparently). But yep, most of the world gets the BBC World Service, the only such service of any value (ever listened to Voice of America?) And the website.
Read the subject. The country concerned is the Republic of Ireland. The voting machines are gone indefinitely; there's huge public, academic and opposition government distrust of them. Considering the complexity of the system and potential for abuse (we use a rather complicated Proportional Representation system), I think this is a good thing.
Here, many of the state hospitals use at least OpenOffice and in some case Linux on the desktop, and the government has issued statements advocating the use of open-source software. However, to do your tax returns on the internet, you must currently be running Windows with the MS JVM, or MacOS 9. (CrossOver Office will also work). This sort of thing turns up in a number of places.
Tho that's ethically dubious as well. You can't just go around putting people in comas, you know :)
When the system crashed (which would be suprising; it's a fancy IBM-y thing), the entity could be recovered from backups; it would have been in a coma :).
Suicide's an interesting point; can't see offhand how it would be able to do that, any more than a human can think themselves dead (note that the whole thing basicallly centers around simulating a brain).
If the thing never had any sensory input, it would probably not be able to develop conciousness. Blind and deaf children still have sensory input...
They'll have to keep it a non-standard platform; otherwise people will simply run MacOS on PCs and they'll lose their hardware business.
Of course, this deal could have been in the pipeline for years.
Is the Intel Inside mandatory? I always thought it was just a promotional tool for the OEM.
IF it was anything close to a human brain, then yes, switching it off would be murder and sensory deprivation would be torture. Whether they'll actually achieve that, tho, is questionable. If they do, it opens up an ethical nightmare that has already been done to death by science fiction writers.
Wonder what will happen to this thing? It's based on Transmeta Tinside chips.
This was a problem here; the government tried to set up voting machines, with the contract being that once final delivery was complete they'd be given the source. They were used in some constiuencies in one election, then abandoned due to public unhappiness with them and a failure by the company to present the source. They're still lying round in a warehouse somewhere, and it looks like they're staying there for the time being.
That might be a problem. But remember that no manned object has as yet ever been hit by a significant meteorite. It's really not that probable.
Remember that the falling elevator can be used to generate power, tho. So you'll regain a fair amount of power that way (not sure if that was mentioned in the radio piece; am not going to bother to listen to it. I assume it was the usual space elevator thing that's been talked about since the end of WW2.)
Yep, obviously you'd at least have to give the thing a rocket.
It's turtles all the way down.