Recently an article concerning high efficiency (~250GB on an A4 sheet) paper based storage was posted on Slashdot. Assuming that the article wasn't a scam, then this would provide a good solution for long term archival. Long term archival of paper documents is well understood, provides massive redundancy through easy duplication and requires minimal maintainance.
If you were wondering (this is Slashdot, after all), according to the manufacturers specs, this beast consumes 1500W (!) of power. Any ideas what a comparable CRT would consume?
Perhaps coming from a math background, my priorities differ from those with a CS background, but...
Where's the proof?
Is it peer reviewed? Has it been published? Does it exist?
Although the lack of a proof does not make your algorithm is incorrect, I'd be suspicious. In fact, I would be unwilling to use any algorithm in my code without being sure that a good proof of its correctness exists somewhere.
Proofs are more than formalities, they're essential: without a good proof, you're just a crank selling snake oil.
Recently I read that some Autistic people dislike fluorescent light bulbs because they can detect the light flickering, where as most other people do not. Although I support Australia's desire for greater energy efficiency, it seems a shame that so many could be adversely affected by this decision. Are there any alternatives for more stable light sources? DC lights and power supplies perhaps?
(I'm not autistic myself, but I hate fluorescent light sources).
My 1.83Ghz Core Duo iMac has a very low power consumption. See here. 64w under heavy load and 48w idle. If I put it in sleep I'd expect that it uses of the order of 5w. Which is impressive given that this is almost half of the power consumption of the most efficient system on test here.
Besides the possible risk from malware infection if you have enabled file sharing, this really is the same man-in-the-middle attack that was so prominant in the 80's and early 90's. A problem which has been mostly fixed by the adoption of SSH over telnet. And is practically non-existant over HTTP today beacuse of the use of SSL on servers. And with regards to malware, how does this differ from picking up some spyware from the pr0n site you "accidently" visited?
I see no problem here that cannot be solved by adopting the same principles that you would use for ordinary domestic internet access:
1) Turn on your firewall and close all open ports.
2) Don't send sensitive data over an unsecured network.
I think this is great. The chips will contribute a huge amount of processing power which would be unavailable from current super computers, which will allow calculations with much greater resolution so we should learn a lot.
It would be interesting to actually know the performance of the chips. From the article,
The chips will be made on IBM's silicon germanium process and have a typical peak frequency, or speed, of around 200GHz. They will be made on the 130-nanometre process. Bearing in mind that these are ASICs and they run at 200GHz each this should allow for an incredibly detailed model to be formed. Can anyone hazard a guess to how the performance would compare to "standard" efficient code running on a microprocessor?
I think that this is inevitable. Mac OS X is a desktop OS, desktop customers demand shiny new features and Apple needs to compete with Microsoft in adding such features, otherwise it will fall behind in market share. These new features make for a supremely usable OS, but it means that development is always too fast. Security flaws are invariably human logic errors, and when a lot of new code is written really fast, errors are made. Conversely, take OpenBSD, its pace of development is slow and thorough and due to its comprehensive code audit (which slows development) very few security holes are found in the code. As complexity escalates, so will the number of bugs and until Apple's workforce is replaced with androids (Which I'm sure will have a negative impact on its cool reputation) errors will continue to be made.
Although inevitable, we need not accept that there should be quite as many flaws as there are - Apple is in a uniquely privilege position over microsoft in using the unix permission system and the mature core that mach and FreeBSD provides, it must not become complacent. Increasingly, it appears that Apple is becoming sloppy - There are reports of Apple not using automated bound checking and the such. Such arrogance is inexcusable from any developer, and as Apple's popularity increases poor security will invariably become more of an issue. Its time for Apple to seriously take stock of this issue.
I recently read this article stating how the UK government was considering implimenting a GPS (or Galileo) tracking system for road vehicles, in order to track their movement and tax the car according to the distance driven and where the location.
My movements are tracked by the government, in real time, with a spatial resolution of a few feet. Wherever I drive.
This is ridiculous. Given that there are few objections to the current UK taxing model, what is the motive for implementing this system? In fact, recen
PCM? What happened to the nanotubes? I wan't my petaflop-performance-lighter-than-air-stronger-tha n-steel-elevator-into-space-that-will-store-my-pr0 n-collection to replace my flash thumb drive.
Ok, so as long as this remains theoretical we don't know for certain. But, this is unlikely, very unlikely. We should first look at empirical evidence - Collisions with energies of this magnitude happen in space all the time from natural sources (solar radiation etc), and yet cause us no ill effect. So its clear that such an event occurring is very unlikely. Its good that we consider such possibilities, but I'm sure that the probabilities are tiny, one in several billion perhaps. I would consider this to be an acceptable margin to perform an experiment that could destroy the earth, especially one from which we can learn so much.
Just a thought: Could this be used on wired applications i.e. ethernet or generic wired TCP/IP networks to identify packets coming from an individual machine? Surely, in principle, a network card would be have the same variations in fingerprint as a wi-fi transmitter.
Its interesting how some tech predictions can be so wildly wrong. I read some advice in a magazine about 9 or 10 years ago which read something like this - "Don't buy a DVD-R drive, within a year or so they'll be replaced by holographic storage". I waited, but it just never came. Holographic storage has been just on the horizon for so long and never materialized, so its really great that a workable solution has been developed for technology with such promise. A little late, but better than not at all.
Ok, but only with GUI apps. With any command line executable, (binaries or scripts) the program runs without such a notice. As I can imagine very few malware writers producing a nice shiny GUI with their code, I see this feature as largely redundant.
Pah! My flashlight runs at 750000 Ghz (7.5 x 10^14 Hz). Its portable, has a 12 hour battery life, lets me see in the dark AND sports a durable andonized aluminum casing.
Slashdot Mirror
I've just read the article (I only remembered the headline) and I admit that this leaves my post completely redundant.
Never mind...
Recently an article concerning high efficiency (~250GB on an A4 sheet) paper based storage was posted on Slashdot. Assuming that the article wasn't a scam, then this would provide a good solution for long term archival. Long term archival of paper documents is well understood, provides massive redundancy through easy duplication and requires minimal maintainance.
If you were wondering (this is Slashdot, after all), according to the manufacturers specs, this beast consumes 1500W (!) of power. Any ideas what a comparable CRT would consume?
Perhaps coming from a math background, my priorities differ from those with a CS background, but...
Where's the proof?
Is it peer reviewed? Has it been published? Does it exist?
Although the lack of a proof does not make your algorithm is incorrect, I'd be suspicious. In fact, I would be unwilling to use any algorithm in my code without being sure that a good proof of its correctness exists somewhere.
Proofs are more than formalities, they're essential: without a good proof, you're just a crank selling snake oil.
Recently I read that some Autistic people dislike fluorescent light bulbs because they can detect the light flickering, where as most other people do not. Although I support Australia's desire for greater energy efficiency, it seems a shame that so many could be adversely affected by this decision. Are there any alternatives for more stable light sources? DC lights and power supplies perhaps?
(I'm not autistic myself, but I hate fluorescent light sources).
My 1.83Ghz Core Duo iMac has a very low power consumption. See here. 64w under heavy load and 48w idle. If I put it in sleep I'd expect that it uses of the order of 5w. Which is impressive given that this is almost half of the power consumption of the most efficient system on test here.
Besides the possible risk from malware infection if you have enabled file sharing, this really is the same man-in-the-middle attack that was so prominant in the 80's and early 90's. A problem which has been mostly fixed by the adoption of SSH over telnet. And is practically non-existant over HTTP today beacuse of the use of SSL on servers. And with regards to malware, how does this differ from picking up some spyware from the pr0n site you "accidently" visited?
I see no problem here that cannot be solved by adopting the same principles that you would use for ordinary domestic internet access:
1) Turn on your firewall and close all open ports.
2) Don't send sensitive data over an unsecured network.
It would be interesting to actually know the performance of the chips. From the article, The chips will be made on IBM's silicon germanium process and have a typical peak frequency, or speed, of around 200GHz. They will be made on the 130-nanometre process. Bearing in mind that these are ASICs and they run at 200GHz each this should allow for an incredibly detailed model to be formed. Can anyone hazard a guess to how the performance would compare to "standard" efficient code running on a microprocessor?
I hope that this leads to some great science.
I think that this is inevitable. Mac OS X is a desktop OS, desktop customers demand shiny new features and Apple needs to compete with Microsoft in adding such features, otherwise it will fall behind in market share. These new features make for a supremely usable OS, but it means that development is always too fast. Security flaws are invariably human logic errors, and when a lot of new code is written really fast, errors are made. Conversely, take OpenBSD, its pace of development is slow and thorough and due to its comprehensive code audit (which slows development) very few security holes are found in the code. As complexity escalates, so will the number of bugs and until Apple's workforce is replaced with androids (Which I'm sure will have a negative impact on its cool reputation) errors will continue to be made. Although inevitable, we need not accept that there should be quite as many flaws as there are - Apple is in a uniquely privilege position over microsoft in using the unix permission system and the mature core that mach and FreeBSD provides, it must not become complacent. Increasingly, it appears that Apple is becoming sloppy - There are reports of Apple not using automated bound checking and the such. Such arrogance is inexcusable from any developer, and as Apple's popularity increases poor security will invariably become more of an issue. Its time for Apple to seriously take stock of this issue.
Well, it is Micro soft .
I recently read this article stating how the UK government was considering implimenting a GPS (or Galileo) tracking system for road vehicles, in order to track their movement and tax the car according to the distance driven and where the location.
I know that my phone is monitored for keywords and randomly tapped (You think you have it bad in America) and I know my ISP is required to keep all my internet logs.
But this isn't just worrying, this is scary.
My movements are tracked by the government, in real time, with a spatial resolution of a few feet. Wherever I drive.
This is ridiculous. Given that there are few objections to the current UK taxing model, what is the motive for implementing this system?
In fact, recen
237paDfF%^&*HJN [NO CARRIER]
No one here cares just how much caffeine is in the drink.
'Cause its never enough.
PCM? What happened to the nanotubes? I wan't my petaflop-performance-lighter-than-air-stronger-tha n-steel-elevator-into-space-that-will-store-my-pr0 n-collection to replace my flash thumb drive.
(sigh) So many empty promises.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that this could be the first ever music video that features the Schrodinger equation.
Weird Al has genuine class.
...But who cares? The thing I want to know most about this alliance is Steve Ballmer's response.
Now that would be entertaining.
People, Its time to step outside of your parent's basement.
Ok, so as long as this remains theoretical we don't know for certain. But, this is unlikely, very unlikely. We should first look at empirical evidence - Collisions with energies of this magnitude happen in space all the time from natural sources (solar radiation etc), and yet cause us no ill effect. So its clear that such an event occurring is very unlikely. Its good that we consider such possibilities, but I'm sure that the probabilities are tiny, one in several billion perhaps. I would consider this to be an acceptable margin to perform an experiment that could destroy the earth, especially one from which we can learn so much.
These people watch too many movies.
Just a thought: Could this be used on wired applications i.e. ethernet or generic wired TCP/IP networks to identify packets coming from an individual machine? Surely, in principle, a network card would be have the same variations in fingerprint as a wi-fi transmitter.
Any ideas?
Weird Al, How could you? An MP3 encoded at 96 kbs at 22.05 kHz...
Today a piece of my inner audiophile died.
Universities may have tons of bandwidth, but the servers just can't take it. Looks like this site's dead.
Anyone seeding the torrents yet?
Its interesting how some tech predictions can be so wildly wrong. I read some advice in a magazine about 9 or 10 years ago which read something like this - "Don't buy a DVD-R drive, within a year or so they'll be replaced by holographic storage". I waited, but it just never came. Holographic storage has been just on the horizon for so long and never materialized, so its really great that a workable solution has been developed for technology with such promise. A little late, but better than not at all.
You must be in the 1% of slashdotters who actually leave their parent's basement.
Ok, but only with GUI apps. With any command line executable, (binaries or scripts) the program runs without such a notice. As I can imagine very few malware writers producing a nice shiny GUI with their code, I see this feature as largely redundant.
I wish that someone would swing, wave, shake, point, wiggle and/or jostle my wii wii.
Pah! My flashlight runs at 750000 Ghz (7.5 x 10^14 Hz). Its portable, has a 12 hour battery life, lets me see in the dark AND sports a durable andonized aluminum casing.
Beat that IBM.