While people complain about needless flashy graphics what this is really intended for is a framework for putting the GPU to work on tasked like image processing. See how Apple's "Core Image" works.
"I would rather see a government avoid using brute force measures where gentle persuasion would suffice. Especially when the latter earns money rather than spends it on more traffic cops."
Traffic cops generally don't enforce parking. Most cities have specialized parking enforcement people. At least here in Redondo Beach, California these parking enforcement people MORE than pay their own salary and are a significant source of income for the city. It talked to one once dwon at the beach and he told me he can write 100 $30 tikets in one shift. That's $3K gross income (one a good day) There is some cost but overall parking is one of the city's largest sources of income. They offer $60 permit stickers that allow you to park on expired meters. So they make money even from me who has never gotten a ticket. The meters themselves cost $1/Hr and there are thousands of them even at 12:00am last night there were many cars in metered spots
So if those meters are like the ones here the three of them are puling in about $20K per year. Apple'
s offer of $35Kis not enough
You are right, your hardware is yours. Notice that Microsoft is careful not to modify your hardware. But apparently they reserve the right to mess with the software that they do own.
"If Microsoft has the ability to forcefully modify code running on your property without your consent, I'd call that a threat."
Did you read you EULA? The copy of Windows Vista you have is NOT your property. It belongs to Microsoft and they are just granting you a license to use it. Are you sure you did not give oncent? Maybe read it again.
What I can beleive is who many people agree with these license terms. If just 1% refused and returnd the product for a re-fund the terms would change. Consummers are stupid.
Hard to believe all the people posting here that think some how this is related to digital logic or CPU chips. Even the summary said "differential amplifier integrated circuit chip" I guess those words go over the heads of most readers. What this really means is that now, with this kind of chip you can have shorter wires leads on sensors even to the point of packaging a sensor and an operational amplifier in the same package. This will go a long way to lower noise in certain measurements.
Yes, the CDC6400. I was a system programmer working on that machine. We'd do some local custom mods to the OS and merge then with what CDC released. The OS was Open Source. CDC releaed surce code that would have to be compiled. I spent many nights at the Console. Was a real privlage to have a 12 million dollar machine all to yourself even if it was 3:00am. We had a copy of Wirth's compiler on the 6400. That's how I was exposed to Pascal.
I was still in school at the time. I was a CS major. All the other students had to make do with some old slow shared "junk" in a crowded lab and were using punched card or a teletype termial but I had, in 1975 a huge graphic console with a full screen text editor and what was then one of the powerful machines in the world. My home computer had something like 8Kb RAM and a paper tape reader.
First off, hold off on the astro-photography part. Get a very simple Dobsonian scope. Maybe 10" 12" in diameter. Get a few low power eye pieces and a good star atlas and some books.
Later you can attach a webcam to the scope and take photos of the moon and some of the other "easy". Without a tracking mount a webcam is perfect because it takes a series of short exposures that are later sorted and combined.
Some interresting projects you can do with just the web cam. One is try to make a composite photo of the full lunar disk but all taken at the same light angle. It would take 14 nights to colect all the data then a long time to combine them.
Later, in a few years maybe you save up some money and buy something 6X more expensive but if you bought a quality "Dob." you will continue to use it
So 1980's? It was not new then. My copy of Wirth's "Pascal User manual and report" was printed in 1975. Pascalhad been out for about a year at that point. Pascal in the 80's was about as new a Java is today. At mid life I'd say.
"Couldn't a solar craft just follow the sun around the earth, indefinitely?"
Have you done the math? How big is the Earth? It would have to fly all the way around once every 24 hours. It works out to just over 1000 miles per hour. Millitary jet fighters can do this speed for short sprints but you can't really do that with an electric driven propeller.
In short, It works. You don't have to change anything just say it's "A new version of Office" and few people notice. The reason is that 90% of users, the only feature they use is _maybe_ change the font or font size. And File->new and File->save. That's about it for most users.
"Open source usage of ZFS is no threat to NetApp as long as Sun persists in making the ZFS license incompatible with Linux."
So what about Linux. If you want to build an Open Source storage appliance I think the way to go would be to run ZFS under BSD UNIX.
I think NetApp is also worried about Apple. Apple has ported ZFS to Mac OS X and Apple does have some nice storage products that are cheaper than NetApp's. Wait 'till these run ZFS.
Michael Stonebraker is certainly a well respected nae and he was been right on these issues in the past. Coinsidently I'd testing my software with a new version of PostgreSQL as I type.
I think colum vs. row storage can be considered simply a option. I can even see it being an option that you specify at the table level.
Most DBMS users really don't have much data. Today a 1,000,000 row
table can be cached in RAM on even a low-end PC based server. Once cached in RAM row vs. column storage does not matter. I would imagine that 99& of the database table in te world have far fewer then a million rows. This discussion applies only to the very few that are really large.
Ok that sounds easy. But do you even know how to pump fuel between two tanks? It's not so easy. In 0 G water does not flow down hill. If you open a drain it will not find the drain on it's own. It gets worse. There is no air to move heat so an empty tank could have a higher presure than a full tank. If you simply conectthem and open a valve fuel could flow the wrong way. How do you even know how much fuel is in the tank? Those float sensor in your car's gas tank don't work in space. All of these are not trivial problems
Not a joke. With the ability to issue pardons a president can have one of his thugs shot an oponate dead in plain daylight with witnesses. All he has to do is promise a pardon. Of course he would not make it so obvious but the ability to offer pardons means he can act with impunity.
I would like to see the pardon power limited so that it could not be used for crime commited on the job by people employed by the person offering the pardon.
Most Linux boxes will never have a game instaled on them. But today graphics cards are being used for things like image processing and other computationaly expensive operations. And don't forget 3D desktop effects. Take a look at what Apple has done with Core Image. Doing this on Linux would be much easier if the hardware were opened up.
Things like photo editing and color correcting video can take advantage of graphic chips
Yes it's the collisions that will toss debris at us. But the time between the collision and the debris hitting us would be between millions of years or "only" a few centuries. What we need to care about is the debris from collisions that occurred long ago. But a collision would be very interesting to observe for other reasons but I'd gues they are very rare and one may not happen while humans live on Earth.
Don't all iPods made today have an audio input. I think there are third party iPod mics you can buy. Some people use them as audio recorder for lectures, dictations and so on. I doubt Apple would have changed the standard dock port.
You'd better not try to give any more examples until you study up a little. Your example had nothing to do with collation. Your point might have been to say the author's reasoning was no better than your. But no. Yours was flawed his was not. Using your non-logic I could write "50% of 16 year olds are shorter than 5 foot 5 inches and 50% are taller. The numbers exactly match therefore shortness is related to tallness." What the author did in the article was valid but his method was over the heads of most readers. What he did was compute the chances of this outcome happining by pure random chance. He said it would hapen 7% of the time. That is very different then comparing 50% and 50% and saying the groups most be the same.
I learned to fly in a Citabria. My first 16 ours and solo were in one. I agree. Unless he flew it into something solid (like the Earth) or had a medical problem in flight we would have heard from him. An engine out is not that serious and the airplane can be landed on any patch of clear dirt. The plane is made of a welded steel tube truss and is very strong
However a radio signal transmitted from the ground after a safe landing would not have much range. 25 miles at most. He may be waiting to see another airplane overhead before he transmits.
You seem to think this has not already happened. Most people only think that "space" is "people in space" but do you track activity at the cape? It's a busy place. More then one launch a month. Just got three eails asking me to do some work for three vehicle in the pipeline. The "people in space" stuff is just what makes the news and is not the bulk of the program.
So you assume the wold is closer to it's end than it's beginning? No, there are thousands of years still to go. we are only just beginning with computers. It is hardly "late".
Most end users could not tell the difference between Solaris and Linux. Users interact with the graphical desktops system, web browsers and text editors. Most sys admins deal with the server software, like Apache or the shell. All of this is exactly the same on both Linux and Solaris. The differences are closer to the kernel and how each handles virtualization and the file systems. Thinks most users don't know much about.
Today I think your hardware drives the choice between Linuux and Solaris. If you need high end SPARC hardware Solaris is the way to go but Linux runs better on commodity PC hardware. And Linux has been ported to embedded processors and I doubt Solaris ever will reach for the low end
Several things.
1) They need to know enough about you to determine that you really are the person you claim to be. So they go back to your old school and look at archived teachers roll books and see that you really do have a high school yearbook photo and that people who lived on the streets you have lived on do remember you or at least don't remember bad things about you. And they run your fingerprints through the FBI's database.
2) They don't care if you are gay or smoked pot. They do care if you lie about this and keep it secret. People with secrets can be blackmailed. This one trips people up a lot. They think it's best not to say but the fail to realize the investigator does not care
3) money is a big thing too. Are you spending more then you are making? If so where does that extra money come from. Also are you nearly bankrupt? if so you might be susceptible to bribes.
Slashdot Mirror
While people complain about needless flashy graphics what this is really intended for is a framework for putting the GPU to work on tasked like image processing. See how Apple's "Core Image" works.
"I would rather see a government avoid using brute force measures where gentle persuasion would suffice. Especially when the latter earns money rather than spends it on more traffic cops." Traffic cops generally don't enforce parking. Most cities have specialized parking enforcement people. At least here in Redondo Beach, California these parking enforcement people MORE than pay their own salary and are a significant source of income for the city. It talked to one once dwon at the beach and he told me he can write 100 $30 tikets in one shift. That's $3K gross income (one a good day) There is some cost but overall parking is one of the city's largest sources of income. They offer $60 permit stickers that allow you to park on expired meters. So they make money even from me who has never gotten a ticket. The meters themselves cost $1/Hr and there are thousands of them even at 12:00am last night there were many cars in metered spots So if those meters are like the ones here the three of them are puling in about $20K per year. Apple' s offer of $35Kis not enough
You are right, your hardware is yours. Notice that Microsoft is careful not to modify your hardware.
But apparently they reserve the right to mess with the software that they do own.
"If Microsoft has the ability to forcefully modify code running on your property without your consent, I'd call that a threat."
Did you read you EULA? The copy of Windows Vista you have is NOT your property. It belongs to Microsoft and they are just granting you a license to use it. Are you sure you did not give oncent? Maybe read it again.
What I can beleive is who many people agree with these license terms. If just 1% refused and returnd the product for a re-fund the terms would change. Consummers are stupid.
Hard to believe all the people posting here that think some how this is related to digital logic or CPU chips. Even the summary said "differential amplifier integrated circuit chip" I guess those words go over the heads of most readers. What this really means is that now, with this kind of chip you can have shorter wires leads on sensors even to the point of packaging a sensor and an operational amplifier in the same package. This will go a long way to lower noise in certain measurements.
All most users care about is "free" as in "free beer". Few understand are have read any license.
"If your phone is a node how easy would it be to listen in on conversations compared to how the phone systems currently work?"
It may be harder to listen in because second by second your phone could be switching the path it is using through the network.
Encrytion would solve the entire problem for all types of phone networks
"Who besides me doesn't want my conversation getting routed through someone else's phone"
Your cell phone already broadcasts the conversation through the air.
Yes, the CDC6400. I was a system programmer working on that machine. We'd do some local custom mods to the OS and merge then with what CDC released. The OS was Open Source. CDC releaed surce code that would have to be compiled. I spent many nights at the Console. Was a real privlage to have a 12 million dollar machine all to yourself even if it was 3:00am. We had a copy of Wirth's compiler on the 6400. That's how I was exposed to Pascal. I was still in school at the time. I was a CS major. All the other students had to make do with some old slow shared "junk" in a crowded lab and were using punched card or a teletype termial but I had, in 1975 a huge graphic console with a full screen text editor and what was then one of the powerful machines in the world. My home computer had something like 8Kb RAM and a paper tape reader.
First off, hold off on the astro-photography part. Get a very simple Dobsonian scope. Maybe 10" 12" in diameter. Get a few low power eye pieces and a good star atlas and some books.
Later you can attach a webcam to the scope and take photos of the moon and some of the other "easy". Without a tracking mount a webcam is perfect because it takes a series of short exposures that are later sorted and combined.
Some interresting projects you can do with just the web cam. One is try to make a composite photo of the full lunar disk but all taken at the same light angle. It would take 14 nights to colect all the data then a long time to combine them.
Later, in a few years maybe you save up some money and buy something 6X more expensive but if you bought a quality "Dob." you will continue to use it
So 1980's? It was not new then. My copy of Wirth's "Pascal User manual and report" was printed in 1975. Pascalhad been out for about a year at that point. Pascal in the 80's was about as new a Java is today. At mid life I'd say.
"Couldn't a solar craft just follow the sun around the earth, indefinitely?"
Have you done the math? How big is the Earth? It would have to fly all
the way around once every 24 hours. It works out to just over 1000 miles
per hour. Millitary jet fighters can do this speed for short sprints but you
can't really do that with an electric driven propeller.
In short, It works. You don't have to change anything just say it's "A new version of Office" and few people notice. The reason is that 90% of users, the only feature they use is _maybe_ change the font or font size. And File->new and File->save. That's about it for most users.
"Open source usage of ZFS is no threat to NetApp as long as Sun persists in making the ZFS license incompatible with Linux."
So what about Linux. If you want to build an Open Source storage appliance I think the way to go would be to run ZFS under BSD UNIX.
I think NetApp is also worried about Apple. Apple has ported ZFS to Mac OS X and Apple does have some nice storage products that are cheaper than NetApp's. Wait 'till these run ZFS.
Michael Stonebraker is certainly a well respected nae and he was been right on these issues in the past. Coinsidently I'd testing my software with a new version of PostgreSQL as I type. I think colum vs. row storage can be considered simply a option. I can even see it being an option that you specify at the table level. Most DBMS users really don't have much data. Today a 1,000,000 row table can be cached in RAM on even a low-end PC based server. Once cached in RAM row vs. column storage does not matter. I would imagine that 99& of the database table in te world have far fewer then a million rows. This discussion applies only to the very few that are really large.
Ok that sounds easy. But do you even know how to pump fuel between two tanks? It's not so easy. In 0 G water does not flow down hill. If you open a drain it will not find the drain on it's own. It gets worse. There is no air to move heat so an empty tank could have a higher presure than a full tank. If you simply conectthem and open a valve fuel could flow the wrong way. How do you even know how much fuel is in the tank? Those float sensor in your car's gas tank don't work in space. All of these are not trivial problems
Not a joke. With the ability to issue pardons a president can have one of his thugs shot an oponate dead in plain daylight with witnesses. All he has to do is promise a pardon. Of course he would not make it so obvious but the ability to offer pardons means he can act with impunity.
I would like to see the pardon power limited so that it could not be used for crime commited on the job by people employed by the person offering the pardon.
Most Linux boxes will never have a game instaled on them. But today graphics cards are being used for things like image processing and other computationaly expensive operations. And don't forget 3D desktop effects. Take a look at what Apple has done with Core Image. Doing this on Linux would be much easier if the hardware were opened up.
Things like photo editing and color correcting video can take advantage of graphic chips
Yes it's the collisions that will toss debris at us. But the time between the collision and the debris hitting us would be between millions of years or "only" a few centuries. What we need to care about is the debris from collisions that occurred long ago. But a collision would be very interesting to observe for other reasons but I'd gues they are very rare and one may not happen while humans live on Earth.
Don't all iPods made today have an audio input. I think there are third party iPod mics you can buy. Some people use them as audio recorder for lectures, dictations and so on. I doubt Apple would have changed the standard dock port.
You'd better not try to give any more examples until you study up a little. Your example had nothing to do with collation. Your point might have been to say the author's reasoning was no better than your. But no. Yours was flawed his was not. Using your non-logic I could write "50% of 16 year olds are shorter than 5 foot 5 inches and 50% are taller. The numbers exactly match therefore shortness is related to tallness." What the author did in the article was valid but his method was over the heads of most readers. What he did was compute the chances of this outcome happining by pure random chance. He said it would hapen 7% of the time. That is very different then comparing 50% and 50% and saying the groups most be the same.
I learned to fly in a Citabria. My first 16 ours and solo were in one. I agree. Unless he flew it into something solid (like the Earth) or had a medical problem in flight we would have heard from him. An engine out is not that serious and the airplane can be landed on any patch of clear dirt. The plane is made of a welded steel tube truss and is very strong
However a radio signal transmitted from the ground after a safe landing would not have much range. 25 miles at most. He may be waiting to see another airplane overhead before he transmits.
You seem to think this has not already happened. Most people only think that "space" is "people in space" but do you track activity at the cape? It's a busy place. More then one launch a month. Just got three eails asking me to do some work for three vehicle in the pipeline. The "people in space" stuff is just what makes the news and is not the bulk of the program.
"Isn't it all a bit late?"
So you assume the wold is closer to it's end than it's beginning? No, there are thousands of years still to go. we are only just beginning with computers. It is hardly "late".
Most end users could not tell the difference between Solaris and Linux. Users interact with the graphical desktops system, web browsers and text editors. Most sys admins deal with the server software, like Apache or the shell. All of this is exactly the same on both Linux and Solaris. The differences are closer to the kernel and how each handles virtualization and the file systems. Thinks most users don't know much about.
Today I think your hardware drives the choice between Linuux and Solaris. If you need high end SPARC hardware Solaris is the way to go but Linux runs better on commodity PC hardware. And Linux has been ported to embedded processors and I doubt Solaris ever will reach for the low end
Several things. 1) They need to know enough about you to determine that you really are the person you claim to be. So they go back to your old school and look at archived teachers roll books and see that you really do have a high school yearbook photo and that people who lived on the streets you have lived on do remember you or at least don't remember bad things about you. And they run your fingerprints through the FBI's database. 2) They don't care if you are gay or smoked pot. They do care if you lie about this and keep it secret. People with secrets can be blackmailed. This one trips people up a lot. They think it's best not to say but the fail to realize the investigator does not care 3) money is a big thing too. Are you spending more then you are making? If so where does that extra money come from. Also are you nearly bankrupt? if so you might be susceptible to bribes.