"there are certainly times that something should appear in the foreground - and might even require focus"
Please state some examples when a program forcefully intruding on what I'm doing is a better thing than a more subtle notification (sound ping, flashing the taskbar etc).
There is. Gaim uses it, it flashes the holder in the taskbar(in windows) This is missing in the linux implementation and I find that annoying (probably not Gaim's failt though). Grab focus should be banned. can't we just grep through windows source code and remove all function call to that, or replace it with a null function???
Not to nit pick, but block ram/lut ram is intended for small functions needing ram, not for register files. If you want to have what you describe then you still have registers available to do exactly that. i.e. the same elements that are available to you on an asic are also ther in an FPGA.
And FPGAs are more general purpose than ASICs. That's why you can build a CPU on an FPGA - it'll just run slower than an ASIC doing the same thing. But then ask a CPU to simulate a 10 million gate FPGA and it'll do about 1ms per minute. So the FPGA can be said to do a better job of being a CPU than a CPU does of being an FPGA.
why yes IAAFAAE (I am an fpga and Asic engineer;-))
Ah it's comming back to me now... Isn't it something like the increased capacitance causes a greater charge to accumulate which enhances the depletion region thus increasing the conductivity of the silicon?
Is this not a case of terminology problems? Power "flowing" is a horrid concept. Current flows, power is a measure of work done. So no a capacitor will do no work (well, capacitors do get hot, but that's the resistive component of their physical construction). If you attatch a perfect capacitor to your AC supply most power meters will register power consumed (after all they're doing V*I) even though the transistor isn't dissapating any heat itself. The point being that the current is out of phase with the voltage so over an entire cycle all energy consumed is returned.
But this is all the field of power factor correction, and I feel I'm preaching to the choir...
Making transistors smaller certainly reduces their gate capacitance but it also reduces their current drive by the same proportion.
Are you sure? As I remember, let's say we take a transistor and halve every dimension. By C=(8.8542 x 10-12 K A)/D this will halve the capacitance. Now we've halved the conduction channel though, so at constant ohms/square (as is a fair model for most FETs in the conduction region) then the resistance of the channel stays constant. Assuming we keep the same drive voltage this equates to a higher drive current and therefore faster transistor.
Whether we can do that part though is admitadly doubtful, but I don't see a direct link between a smaller transistor and a lower drive current. Clearly you would want to reduce the drive current some ammount otherwise you power/area goes through the roof! But certainly if you just reduce the gate length, but keep the width constant you can get an increased drive current...
But all of this isn't taking into account the effect a reduced size will have on the gain of the transisto - I'll have to dig out my notes for that bit...
Actually to get faster people are trying to reduce the capacitance with low-K dielectrics. Not increase (hint: more capacinance = more charge to transfer = slower switch; if you can transfer less current to turn the switch on, it'll work faster). The reason to thin the gate is partially to do with Vp (propagation delay) issues, partially to do with just making the device physically smaller and partally (if I remember this bit of semiconductor physics correctly) to do with getting the gate polysilicon itself closer to the conduction channel causing a more severe depletion layer(and therefore higher conuctivity and faster turn on and turn off).
Not quite, cast your mind back to the industrial revolution for this point: If I patent the condeser mechanism as used in a steam engine, then no-one else can build a steam engine as efficient as mine! There is simply no way that you can make a mechanism to do the smae thing differently. It sounds to me that what we have now is very few revolutionary ideas like this, so people are nickle and dime-ing products and expecting the patent system to protect them. IMO that's what's wrong with the patent system, it's being used to protect trivial ideas that anyone could have had, rather than big ideas that not everyone can have and that clearly mark out the innovators.
"except that the "industry" in question is primarily scientific and not afraid of Unix"
While i do agree with this I'm slightly worried about the PHBs who would be making the call to sign the chequebook.
The PHB knows windows, they might not like this linux commie stuff. Besides MS took him out on a lovely free holiday, sorry, convention. Not that that will affect the decision...
Wasn't meaning to word parse, just limited lunchtime being the issue here:-)
The other issue being I was assuming someone was making the automatic link between AIDS and gay - and I dislike assumptions like that (so I made a similarly incorrect one myself - sorry!)
Ok, you've developed a computer program which microsoft say will save millions of people by it's analysis of the human genome and help with the construction of a life saving wdiget.
Microsoft wants it for this purpose. You don't trust their motives, you think they'll just use it for their own profit and exploit people and you just want to be left the hell alone. And saying that you'd release your program under GPL is not an option, as this option doesn't exist in the medical world.
Should I piss in your eye now?
You have a right to your property, if my body isn't my property, then what the hell is?
Wouldn't the courts equate that defense to a burgler saying "I broke into his house to steal his stuff because he was threatening to shit in my front room". Violating the law would still be a concious decision on your part - regardless of your reason for doing so.
Yes I know violation of copyright is not theft, but the brainwashing campaign by FACT seems to be working.
Hence my logic that FACT can have no argument with me, because I have not stolen any copyright ever. I have also not melted a gas either.
And how do these humans calculate the orbital/thrust/etc doo dads these days? I'm sure they could stick one of these calculator thingimy whatsits on? Seriously if you have radars reporting the data, computer controlled thrusters controlling the craft, computers calculating the thrust corrections, even if you wanted to man it, why bother? Why put a man in the loop that is slower and more unpredictable than a computer. Provided you've tested this system before you need it, the risk of bugs on the crucial asteroid should be low enough (especially if you have a second one - when have the military ever built one of anything?)
Really? I did wonder why they are so stuck to using the shuttle - that would explain it. Do you have a source for this as the only (unreliable) source I have puts the CEV at 3G, but it does make sense that the cargo only heavy lift vehicle would accellerate harder(no humans to squash). Although I have heard rumblings that they _might_ human rate that booster too - so it might be limited to the 4G that Saturn V had? http://uplink.space.com/printthread.php?Cat=&Board =missions&main=345068&type=thread
But do we really believe that they will finish it with the shuttle? Or will the next step to be to decide that it is too dangerous to carry on using the shuttle and instead finish it with the shuttle derived heavy lifter they have planned? That actually might make much more sense as if you can lift 100 tonns at a time, you'd do it in 2 flights - so why not (with the aim of completing the ISS asap) cancel the shuttle now and work on that instead? Possibly because you'd then have a large ammount of support staff twiddling their thumbs for about 5 years?
Humm so each space tourist is paying approx $10 million (probably not the real cost however...) You mean for $30 Million (2 actors, 1 camera man) we could have the first zero G porn? Ok It'll be the most expensive film of that kind ever made, but I'm sure it would a blockbuster:-) Forget the plumber comming to service her plumbing, the Astonaughts blasting their....
The problem with that argment that we keep god away, is that it contradicts with other concepts. Taking your example above the child stays away from his father. However There are literally billions on the earth accepting god as their saviour and therefore looking and searching and wanting to be with him, but scant actual evidence of this other than something that could be explained by a feeling they make up to make themselves feel better. There are people all over the world looking for answers, trying to find "him" (If he is the answer), but he's not giving anything back. Again in the above example that's a child who's lost his way home and is looking and although his father can see the child he just sits back and lets the child wander around lost. Similarly whether you take the belief that a child is born innocent or not, part of the baptism ritual as I understood it was to be washed away of sin and born again. This would then open you up to receive god. So that ritual is supposed to let you find your way home as per above example. Yet it clearly doesn't because there is no evidence of god having any greater effect on their lives after this ritual other than could be explained by a change in the receiver's attitude. Yes I know faith isn't supposed to require evidence, but a loving caring parent is supposed to help their children and that to me a strong contradiction in contemporary christian faith.
Hang on... Thought occurs: Space shuttle exists to complete the Space station. Space station now exists to be completed by the shuttle. Shuttle's other useful science missions like servicing hubble are cancelled because of space station. Is this now anything more than a perpetually self sustaning pork mission? Now I'm all for the idea of building LEO infrastructure, for use as handy stepping points. In the same way as when you settle a new continent, one of first things you do is build a port, we should be building a port up there. If they have admitted this is what needs to happen and so are putting all resources into that in the form of this space station, then great. However I'm a little concerned this is not the case. Especially after new they're cancelling research into nuke reactors for the moon base: http://www.space-travel.com/news/nasa-05zf.html
So what actually is NASA's goal if they're cancelling all the stuff you need before you get to the moon and all the stuff you need once you're there? This is beginning to look more and more like apollo 50 years later taking 10 years longer and acomplashing nothing more. And if they can't afford to maintain the space staion how will they maintain a moon base much further away, I just can't see it. Unless they will get the cash once other contries start playing around there too, so until then it's a spiral development program?
Is this an attempt at flamebait? If I make children I have every responsibility towards them and they have none to me. Try convincing anyone that I have no responsibilty to my children and I'd have a quick visit from the social services and possibly the local lynch mob. If god is there, the comparison of what he has done is give a young child a few harsh rules and spankings; then a single visit where some good moral lessons were handed out. Then he abandons this child and now all it's left with is a few hundred year old book with vague contradictory moral lessons in it. Oh and a warning that we'd better not get any of his intentions wrong otherwise we're in a lot of trouble?
If my parents did that to me I would not call them loving parents, I'd call them bastards and be calling the social services to have them up for child cruelty! If the love and care God has given his children this last two thousand years is a model for parents I'm glad parents are less and less following godly values and actually caring for their children. What did he do in the old testament? Well fire and brimstone arbitraraly was the impression I came away with - again not a good role model at all. The lessons of Jesus I can respect and take as a good moral foundation (with some careful interpretation). Otherwise I see the Jewish/Christian old testament god as a god of random wrath who has deserted his children for thousands of years. Say he's still around and listening to your prayers is the same thing you hear children who have been abandoned do, they think their parents still love them and will come for them, many of those children claim their parents can hear them and are still comming. I don't see the behaviour we observe of the Jewish christian god reflects anything other than a parent who has abandoned his children with little thought to the care of them.
Sorry for the angry post, I really am, but I can't see how anyone can miss this, please enlighten me as to what I've missed!
Slashdot Mirror
"there are certainly times that something should appear in the foreground - and might even require focus"
Please state some examples when a program forcefully intruding on what I'm doing is a better thing than a more subtle notification (sound ping, flashing the taskbar etc).
There is. Gaim uses it, it flashes the holder in the taskbar(in windows)
This is missing in the linux implementation and I find that annoying (probably not Gaim's failt though).
Grab focus should be banned. can't we just grep through windows source code and remove all function call to that, or replace it with a null function???
Thought not...
Most teenagers don't reproduce though...
Not to nit pick, but block ram/lut ram is intended for small functions needing ram, not for register files. If you want to have what you describe then you still have registers available to do exactly that. i.e. the same elements that are available to you on an asic are also ther in an FPGA.
And FPGAs are more general purpose than ASICs. That's why you can build a CPU on an FPGA - it'll just run slower than an ASIC doing the same thing. But then ask a CPU to simulate a 10 million gate FPGA and it'll do about 1ms per minute.
So the FPGA can be said to do a better job of being a CPU than a CPU does of being an FPGA.
why yes IAAFAAE (I am an fpga and Asic engineer;-))
Ah it's comming back to me now...
Isn't it something like the increased capacitance causes a greater charge to accumulate which enhances the depletion region thus increasing the conductivity of the silicon?
Is this not a case of terminology problems?
Power "flowing" is a horrid concept. Current flows, power is a measure of work done.
So no a capacitor will do no work (well, capacitors do get hot, but that's the resistive component of their physical construction). If you attatch a perfect capacitor to your AC supply most power meters will register power consumed (after all they're doing V*I) even though the transistor isn't dissapating any heat itself. The point being that the current is out of phase with the voltage so over an entire cycle all energy consumed is returned.
But this is all the field of power factor correction, and I feel I'm preaching to the choir...
Making transistors smaller certainly reduces their gate capacitance but it also reduces their current drive by the same proportion.
Are you sure? As I remember, let's say we take a transistor and halve every dimension. By C=(8.8542 x 10-12 K A)/D this will halve the capacitance. Now we've halved the conduction channel though, so at constant ohms/square (as is a fair model for most FETs in the conduction region) then the resistance of the channel stays constant. Assuming we keep the same drive voltage this equates to a higher drive current and therefore faster transistor.
Whether we can do that part though is admitadly doubtful, but I don't see a direct link between a smaller transistor and a lower drive current. Clearly you would want to reduce the drive current some ammount otherwise you power/area goes through the roof! But certainly if you just reduce the gate length, but keep the width constant you can get an increased drive current...
But all of this isn't taking into account the effect a reduced size will have on the gain of the transisto - I'll have to dig out my notes for that bit...
Actually to get faster people are trying to reduce the capacitance with low-K dielectrics. Not increase (hint: more capacinance = more charge to transfer = slower switch; if you can transfer less current to turn the switch on, it'll work faster). The reason to thin the gate is partially to do with Vp (propagation delay) issues, partially to do with just making the device physically smaller and partally (if I remember this bit of semiconductor physics correctly) to do with getting the gate polysilicon itself closer to the conduction channel causing a more severe depletion layer(and therefore higher conuctivity and faster turn on and turn off).
First google link on Low-K:
http://nepp.nasa.gov/index_nasa.cfm/934/
Not quite, cast your mind back to the industrial revolution for this point:
If I patent the condeser mechanism as used in a steam engine, then no-one else can build a steam engine as efficient as mine! There is simply no way that you can make a mechanism to do the smae thing differently.
It sounds to me that what we have now is very few revolutionary ideas like this, so people are nickle and dime-ing products and expecting the patent system to protect them.
IMO that's what's wrong with the patent system, it's being used to protect trivial ideas that anyone could have had, rather than big ideas that not everyone can have and that clearly mark out the innovators.
Have you ever had a PHB that choose the wrong solution regardless of advice from his employees because of the better salesman/familiarity/FUD?
I have and they would choose windows over linux if they could.
"except that the "industry" in question is primarily scientific and not afraid of Unix"
While i do agree with this I'm slightly worried about the PHBs who would be making the call to sign the chequebook.
The PHB knows windows, they might not like this linux commie stuff.
Besides MS took him out on a lovely free holiday, sorry, convention. Not that that will affect the decision...
"I'd try to take over the pocket calculator or security alarm markets."
Didn't they already try that with embedded windows - sorry, but this is the best link I could find:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/
Wasn't meaning to word parse, just limited lunchtime being the issue here :-)
The other issue being I was assuming someone was making the automatic link between AIDS and gay - and I dislike assumptions like that (so I made a similarly incorrect one myself - sorry!)
Ok, you've developed a computer program which microsoft say will save millions of people by it's analysis of the human genome and help with the construction of a life saving wdiget.
Microsoft wants it for this purpose. You don't trust their motives, you think they'll just use it for their own profit and exploit people and you just want to be left the hell alone.
And saying that you'd release your program under GPL is not an option, as this option doesn't exist in the medical world.
Should I piss in your eye now?
You have a right to your property, if my body isn't my property, then what the hell is?
Where do you get your information that he is part of the gay community? I didn't notice it in the article?
Wouldn't the courts equate that defense to a burgler saying "I broke into his house to steal his stuff because he was threatening to shit in my front room". Violating the law would still be a concious decision on your part - regardless of your reason for doing so.
Yes I know violation of copyright is not theft, but the brainwashing campaign by FACT seems to be working.
Hence my logic that FACT can have no argument with me, because I have not stolen any copyright ever. I have also not melted a gas either.
*Cough*
English Muffins
*Cough*
I can translate if required(or wikipedia can - it's much of a muchness)...
And how do these humans calculate the orbital/thrust/etc doo dads these days?
I'm sure they could stick one of these calculator thingimy whatsits on?
Seriously if you have radars reporting the data, computer controlled thrusters controlling the craft, computers calculating the thrust corrections, even if you wanted to man it, why bother? Why put a man in the loop that is slower and more unpredictable than a computer. Provided you've tested this system before you need it, the risk of bugs on the crucial asteroid should be low enough (especially if you have a second one - when have the military ever built one of anything?)
Really? I did wonder why they are so stuck to using the shuttle - that would explain it.d =missions&main=345068&type=thread
Do you have a source for this as the only (unreliable) source I have puts the CEV at 3G, but it does make sense that the cargo only heavy lift vehicle would accellerate harder(no humans to squash). Although I have heard rumblings that they _might_ human rate that booster too - so it might be limited to the 4G that Saturn V had?
http://uplink.space.com/printthread.php?Cat=&Boar
It's been done, not without problemns though:3 4.pdf for example
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/neep602/SPRING00/lecture
lots of other interesting links from a google search of "Soviet reactor orbit"
But do we really believe that they will finish it with the shuttle?
Or will the next step to be to decide that it is too dangerous to carry on using the shuttle and instead finish it with the shuttle derived heavy lifter they have planned?
That actually might make much more sense as if you can lift 100 tonns at a time, you'd do it in 2 flights - so why not (with the aim of completing the ISS asap) cancel the shuttle now and work on that instead?
Possibly because you'd then have a large ammount of support staff twiddling their thumbs for about 5 years?
Humm so each space tourist is paying approx $10 million (probably not the real cost however...) :-) Forget the plumber comming to service her plumbing, the Astonaughts blasting their....
You mean for $30 Million (2 actors, 1 camera man) we could have the first zero G porn?
Ok It'll be the most expensive film of that kind ever made, but I'm sure it would a blockbuster
Damn I shouldn't write this stuff while at work!
The problem with that argment that we keep god away, is that it contradicts with other concepts.
Taking your example above the child stays away from his father. However There are literally billions on the earth accepting god as their saviour and therefore looking and searching and wanting to be with him, but scant actual evidence of this other than something that could be explained by a feeling they make up to make themselves feel better.
There are people all over the world looking for answers, trying to find "him" (If he is the answer), but he's not giving anything back. Again in the above example that's a child who's lost his way home and is looking and although his father can see the child he just sits back and lets the child wander around lost.
Similarly whether you take the belief that a child is born innocent or not, part of the baptism ritual as I understood it was to be washed away of sin and born again. This would then open you up to receive god. So that ritual is supposed to let you find your way home as per above example. Yet it clearly doesn't because there is no evidence of god having any greater effect on their lives after this ritual other than could be explained by a change in the receiver's attitude.
Yes I know faith isn't supposed to require evidence, but a loving caring parent is supposed to help their children and that to me a strong contradiction in contemporary christian faith.
Hang on... Thought occurs:
Space shuttle exists to complete the Space station. Space station now exists to be completed by the shuttle. Shuttle's other useful science missions like servicing hubble are cancelled because of space station. Is this now anything more than a perpetually self sustaning pork mission?
Now I'm all for the idea of building LEO infrastructure, for use as handy stepping points. In the same way as when you settle a new continent, one of first things you do is build a port, we should be building a port up there. If they have admitted this is what needs to happen and so are putting all resources into that in the form of this space station, then great.
However I'm a little concerned this is not the case. Especially after new they're cancelling research into nuke reactors for the moon base:
http://www.space-travel.com/news/nasa-05zf.html
So what actually is NASA's goal if they're cancelling all the stuff you need before you get to the moon and all the stuff you need once you're there?
This is beginning to look more and more like apollo 50 years later taking 10 years longer and acomplashing nothing more. And if they can't afford to maintain the space staion how will they maintain a moon base much further away, I just can't see it. Unless they will get the cash once other contries start playing around there too, so until then it's a spiral development program?
Is this an attempt at flamebait?
If I make children I have every responsibility towards them and they have none to me. Try convincing anyone that I have no responsibilty to my children and I'd have a quick visit from the social services and possibly the local lynch mob.
If god is there, the comparison of what he has done is give a young child a few harsh rules and spankings; then a single visit where some good moral lessons were handed out. Then he abandons this child and now all it's left with is a few hundred year old book with vague contradictory moral lessons in it. Oh and a warning that we'd better not get any of his intentions wrong otherwise we're in a lot of trouble?
If my parents did that to me I would not call them loving parents, I'd call them bastards and be calling the social services to have them up for child cruelty! If the love and care God has given his children this last two thousand years is a model for parents I'm glad parents are less and less following godly values and actually caring for their children. What did he do in the old testament? Well fire and brimstone arbitraraly was the impression I came away with - again not a good role model at all.
The lessons of Jesus I can respect and take as a good moral foundation (with some careful interpretation). Otherwise I see the Jewish/Christian old testament god as a god of random wrath who has deserted his children for thousands of years. Say he's still around and listening to your prayers is the same thing you hear children who have been abandoned do, they think their parents still love them and will come for them, many of those children claim their parents can hear them and are still comming. I don't see the behaviour we observe of the Jewish christian god reflects anything other than a parent who has abandoned his children with little thought to the care of them.
Sorry for the angry post, I really am, but I can't see how anyone can miss this, please enlighten me as to what I've missed!