Very interesting. Presumably you'd be adding energy to the system in the process of teasing out the data so the laws of conservation are obeyed.
So, let's say a perfect bit can be represented as 0 or 1. A bit switched from 0 to 1 may only go to 0.999, while a bit switched from 1 to 0 only goes to 0.001.
But then a bit switched from 0 to 1 back to 0 is coming from 0.999 not 1.000 on that second switch, so may go to 0.0001.
Likewise, when a 0 switched to 1, which is expressed as 0.999, gets overwritten by another 1, it becomes 0.9995, coming closer to the ideal alignment.
A 1 is different than a 1 switched from a 0, is different from a 1 switched from a 0 and then overwritten with a 1, is different from a 1 switched to a 0 and switched back to a 1, and so on.
There are some practical issues. One is the starting point. We can't assume new magnet media starts as all perfect 0s. There must be some limit, not only to say, 'beyond this number of rewrites we cannot determine the state of the media,' but in fact to say, 'beyond this limit, the state of the media does not effect the data we are able to retrieve.' The process must work equally with a disk that was born as all 0s as well as one born as all 1s and in the case we do not know which disk is which.
A second issue is predictability, consistency, precision. Does a perfect 0 switched to 1 always end up at 0.999? Or is it sometimes 0.9993? Such imprecision could make practical data retrieval impossible. Even if we cannot distinguish all discrete transitions, perhaps information can be teased out by statistical methods. If a current state could be the result of one of many possible histories, data could be reconstructed similar to way we create words with a telephone key pad.
The third issue is chaos. This puzzle won't be solved by brute force. You won't build some huge translation table by performing every possible series of operations and recording the result, however that may be the only way to actually do this. Will two states that are similar reach similar end points when undergoing the same transition? If X is larger than Y, does that mean f(X) is larger (or smaller) than f(Y)? If the relationship of X and Y does not provide enough information about the relationship of f(X) and f(Y), then there may not be a way to predict the final state of a 1 switched to 0 overwritten by 0 switched to 1 switched to 0 without actually switching a 1 to 0 overwritten with 0, etc.
So while I do not accept that this may be theoretically possible, I do agree it may be possibly theoretically possible. However, as a practical matter of opening up a hard drive and retrieving data from an arbitrary number of overwrites, I don't think so.
Bruce Schneier mentioned that magnetic media can be read using magnetic dust and a microscope...irrespective of the number of overwrites
I'm very skeptical of this claim. He's essentially claiming any magnetic media has an infinite capacity.
For example, take a disk with a capacity of 100 GB. I fill that with data; I read the data.
Then I overwrite the entire disk with another 100 GB of data. Of course I can read the new data. And supposedly with enough time and patience I can read the data that has been overwritten. By overwriting I've doubled the capacity of the media.
When I overwrite the disk again I can read the new data, I can recover the data I've just overwritten, and because this process is irrespective of the number of overwrites, I can retrieve the original data that has been overwritten twice.
This seems to defy some basic laws of physics, but I admit I do not know all the inner workings of magnetic media.
I do think that mindless idiots should have the right to vote. But why encourage it?
Because maybe voting will lead at least one mindless idiot to get more involved in the democratic process.
Whatever the outcome of the election, George W. is still president until January--maybe enough time for him to become a leader instead of a "follower of American politics."
Yeah, the check-in procedure did not exactly meet my expectations this morning.
I expected to have to show ID, especially since I recently moved and this would be the first time voting in my new precinct.
At the check-in table for my precinct I was asked my address, and then my name. Polling guy shuffles his papers, "John Doe?" [former resident of my house]
Now this is no huge social engineering feat on my part, and not really a big revelation--I know who I bought the house form; I've been getting his mail for the last 6 months--but how easy would it have been for me to just go along, "Why yes, I am John Doe."
But even after I corrected the polling worker on the name, I wasn't asked for ID or proof of residency. Shouldn't there be something in the rolls indicating a new registration? Also, this is the first time I have voted without signing anything. The poll worker just checked a box next to my name.
Given my location (gee, you think Kerry will carry MA?) there isn't much motivation to exploit the situation. But if this was a swing state, or there was a local race I had an interest in, what (other than my own honesty) would stop me from going back to polling the place after work as John Doe? And what's stopping John Doe from coming back and voting where he really doesn't have a legal right to vote?
(When I registered at my new home, I received a letter from my old home town stating I had been removed from their system, but I only moved 5 miles down the road. John Doe moved out of state. While his appearance on the rolls this morning could mean he has not registered yet at his new address, and so could not vote twice, it could also mean his new registration has not been communicated back his old precinct. Perhaps new voter registrations should contain a step that confirms either the previous registration has been cancelled or the voter is registering for the first time.)
Plenty of business at my polling place this morning in solidly-kerryville Massachusetts. Got a big piece of paper and a pen and filled in the little ovals, just the way god intended.
I don't recall the name of the machine taking the completed ballots--I do recall it was not 'diebold'.
They did have print-outs posted for each machine to confirm the counts started at zero.
Ron Reagan was on Howard Stern this morning making some goods points in the anti-bush campaign. Some guy who already voted for bush called to say what a mistake he had made. If only others can learn from that mistake.
Yes, stay home. Don't vote. Just because your vote probably won't decide the next president, punt on voting for senator, house rep, governor, state legislature, mayor, school council, and dog catcher.
So please, republicans in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California--don't do something stupid like voting. You're not really contributing to the presidential race, and you're fscking up your home state by electing horrible local officials.
Anyway, yes, trademark != copyright != patent, but apparently that's too complicated for the/. crowd.
I've given up on reading intelectual property threads because the folks here do not know what they are talking about and the mods are no better. I pop in, see if someone like Breakfast Pants makes this point and then continue on my way over to fark to see if there are any new boobies links.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Honest Abe
I'd really like to know what a "Polar Year" is.
I click on the International Polar Year link. On that page I click on the What is IPY link.
What is IPY
The Polar Regions are remote areas of the Earth that have profound significance for the Earth's climate and ultimately environments, ecosystems and human society. However we still remain remarkably ignorant of many aspects of how polar climate operates and its interaction with polar environments, ecosystems and societies. To have any hope of understanding the current global climate and what might happen in future the science community needs a better picture of conditions at the poles and how they interact with and influence the oceans, atmosphere and land masses. Existing climate models do not work well in the polar regions and have for example failed to predict the dramatic break-up of Antarctic ice shelves observed in recent years. The three fastest warming regions on the planet in the last two decades have been Alaska, Siberia and parts of the Antarctic Peninsula, Thus the Polar Regions are highly sensitive to climate change and this raises real concern for the future of polar ecosystems and Arctic society.
There have been a number of major international science initiatives in Polar Regions since the first International Polar Year in 1882-83 and all have had a major influence in overhauling our understanding of global processes in these important areas. These initiatives have involved an intense period of interdisciplinary research, collecting a broad range of measurements that provide a snapshot in time of the state of the polar regions. The last such initiative was the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, involving 80,000 scientists from 67 countries.
It produced unprecedented exploration and discoveries in many fields of research and fundamentally changed how science was conducted in the polar regions. Fifty years on, technological developments such as earth observation satellites, autonomous vehicles and molecular biology techniques offer enormous opportunities for a further quantum step upwards in our understanding of polar systems. An IPY in 2007-2008 also affords an opportunity to engage the upcoming generation of young Earth System scientists and to get the public to realize just how much the cold ends of the sphere we all live on really do influence us.
So WTF is a "Polar Year"?? I know a little bit about polar climate. I know the three fastest warming regions in the last two decades. I know when the first and last "Polar Years" were. I still don't know what a "Polar Year" is or how we know when the next one is.
Is this a political thing like Black History Month? Is it one of those made up holidays to sell more greeting cards like Secretaries Day? Is there some super-seasonal cycle of weather that affects the polls?
I love the environment and all. I'd really like to give two shits. But first I'd have to have some clue as to wtf you are talking about.
I think you're on to something with the comparison to a movie like Pearl Harbor.
Ed Wood was a great film maker because he understood what film should be. Entertainment. It's great to appreciate the skill in creating a certain mood or a certain special effect, but movie making isn't a skills competition. I don't want to see how a certain technique is utilized. I want to be entertained.
We could go on all day about movies that have decent acting, good effects, competent camera work and editing, big budgets and still are worse than Ed Wood taking a crap in his hat. (Pitch Black, American Pie II, The English Patient)
What is lacking in too many films is that initial urge to entertain. Stay true to that, and you don't need a big budget, or special effects, or actors who know their lines. Start a movie without an honest drive to entertain--not impress or show off or demonstrate mad skillz, but entertain--and all the special effects in the world won't save you.
I would expect the Earth's temp, if it is affected significantly by the Sun, to lag behind it by several years, because it has one hell of a lot of "thermal inertia".
If? IF?? To say the Earth's temp is affected significantly by the Sun is understatement of an absurd degree.
Yes, there is internal heat from radioactive decay, and perhaps some warming due to tidal forces, but I'd wager 99+% of the Earth's heat comes from the Sun.
As for "thermal inertia" let's take the extreme case. The Sun goes bye-bye, or its energy output drops to zero. How long do expect the Earth's temp would lag? More practically, seasonal changes in weather--are they more closely tied to the positions of the Earth and the Sun today? Or their positions several years ago, due to "thermal inertia"?
Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers' conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.
I think Neal is a little too much into the Tenacious D
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting. Presumably you'd be adding energy to the system in the process of teasing out the data so the laws of conservation are obeyed.
So, let's say a perfect bit can be represented as 0 or 1. A bit switched from 0 to 1 may only go to 0.999, while a bit switched from 1 to 0 only goes to 0.001.
But then a bit switched from 0 to 1 back to 0 is coming from 0.999 not 1.000 on that second switch, so may go to 0.0001.
Likewise, when a 0 switched to 1, which is expressed as 0.999, gets overwritten by another 1, it becomes 0.9995, coming closer to the ideal alignment.
A 1 is different than a 1 switched from a 0, is different from a 1 switched from a 0 and then overwritten with a 1, is different from a 1 switched to a 0 and switched back to a 1, and so on.
There are some practical issues. One is the starting point. We can't assume new magnet media starts as all perfect 0s. There must be some limit, not only to say, 'beyond this number of rewrites we cannot determine the state of the media,' but in fact to say, 'beyond this limit, the state of the media does not effect the data we are able to retrieve.' The process must work equally with a disk that was born as all 0s as well as one born as all 1s and in the case we do not know which disk is which.
A second issue is predictability, consistency, precision. Does a perfect 0 switched to 1 always end up at 0.999? Or is it sometimes 0.9993? Such imprecision could make practical data retrieval impossible. Even if we cannot distinguish all discrete transitions, perhaps information can be teased out by statistical methods. If a current state could be the result of one of many possible histories, data could be reconstructed similar to way we create words with a telephone key pad.
The third issue is chaos. This puzzle won't be solved by brute force. You won't build some huge translation table by performing every possible series of operations and recording the result, however that may be the only way to actually do this. Will two states that are similar reach similar end points when undergoing the same transition? If X is larger than Y, does that mean f(X) is larger (or smaller) than f(Y)? If the relationship of X and Y does not provide enough information about the relationship of f(X) and f(Y), then there may not be a way to predict the final state of a 1 switched to 0 overwritten by 0 switched to 1 switched to 0 without actually switching a 1 to 0 overwritten with 0, etc.
So while I do not accept that this may be theoretically possible, I do agree it may be possibly theoretically possible. However, as a practical matter of opening up a hard drive and retrieving data from an arbitrary number of overwrites, I don't think so.
I'm very skeptical of this claim. He's essentially claiming any magnetic media has an infinite capacity.
For example, take a disk with a capacity of 100 GB. I fill that with data; I read the data.
Then I overwrite the entire disk with another 100 GB of data. Of course I can read the new data. And supposedly with enough time and patience I can read the data that has been overwritten. By overwriting I've doubled the capacity of the media.
When I overwrite the disk again I can read the new data, I can recover the data I've just overwritten, and because this process is irrespective of the number of overwrites, I can retrieve the original data that has been overwritten twice.
This seems to defy some basic laws of physics, but I admit I do not know all the inner workings of magnetic media.
Wouldnt a photoblog be a phlog?
Kinda like the sauce with cocktail weenies. "It looks like ketchup, it tastes like ketchup, but brother, it aint ketchup."
But seriously, isn't this just a cigarette-sized version of the old vaporizers?
Because maybe voting will lead at least one mindless idiot to get more involved in the democratic process.
Whatever the outcome of the election, George W. is still president until January--maybe enough time for him to become a leader instead of a "follower of American politics."
Yeah, the check-in procedure did not exactly meet my expectations this morning.
I expected to have to show ID, especially since I recently moved and this would be the first time voting in my new precinct.
At the check-in table for my precinct I was asked my address, and then my name. Polling guy shuffles his papers, "John Doe?" [former resident of my house]
Now this is no huge social engineering feat on my part, and not really a big revelation--I know who I bought the house form; I've been getting his mail for the last 6 months--but how easy would it have been for me to just go along, "Why yes, I am John Doe."
But even after I corrected the polling worker on the name, I wasn't asked for ID or proof of residency. Shouldn't there be something in the rolls indicating a new registration? Also, this is the first time I have voted without signing anything. The poll worker just checked a box next to my name.
Given my location (gee, you think Kerry will carry MA?) there isn't much motivation to exploit the situation. But if this was a swing state, or there was a local race I had an interest in, what (other than my own honesty) would stop me from going back to polling the place after work as John Doe? And what's stopping John Doe from coming back and voting where he really doesn't have a legal right to vote?
(When I registered at my new home, I received a letter from my old home town stating I had been removed from their system, but I only moved 5 miles down the road. John Doe moved out of state. While his appearance on the rolls this morning could mean he has not registered yet at his new address, and so could not vote twice, it could also mean his new registration has not been communicated back his old precinct. Perhaps new voter registrations should contain a step that confirms either the previous registration has been cancelled or the voter is registering for the first time.)
Plenty of business at my polling place this morning in solidly-kerryville Massachusetts. Got a big piece of paper and a pen and filled in the little ovals, just the way god intended.
I don't recall the name of the machine taking the completed ballots--I do recall it was not 'diebold'.
They did have print-outs posted for each machine to confirm the counts started at zero.
Ron Reagan was on Howard Stern this morning making some goods points in the anti-bush campaign. Some guy who already voted for bush called to say what a mistake he had made. If only others can learn from that mistake.
http://jackperr.free.fr/monica_bellucci.jpg
She has a voice? I remember her from the movies, but I didn't hear a thing she said.
s /grayscale/monicagray006.jpg
http://www.superiorpics.com/monica_bellucci/image
http://www.iv4k.com/
They actually have a show coming up in Montclair, NJ
Yes, stay home. Don't vote. Just because your vote probably won't decide the next president, punt on voting for senator, house rep, governor, state legislature, mayor, school council, and dog catcher.
So please, republicans in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California--don't do something stupid like voting. You're not really contributing to the presidential race, and you're fscking up your home state by electing horrible local officials.
Thank you for your cooperation.
I thought they went the way of the Van Buren Boys
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
So, you're saying George Bush is as evil as Saddam?
Which is exactly why we need to stem the ride of Rubik's cube knock-offs. Think of the children!
Wish I had mod points today.
/. crowd.
Anyway, yes, trademark != copyright != patent, but apparently that's too complicated for the
I've given up on reading intelectual property threads because the folks here do not know what they are talking about and the mods are no better. I pop in, see if someone like Breakfast Pants makes this point and then continue on my way over to fark to see if there are any new boobies links.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Honest Abe
So WTF is a "Polar Year"?? I know a little bit about polar climate. I know the three fastest warming regions in the last two decades. I know when the first and last "Polar Years" were. I still don't know what a "Polar Year" is or how we know when the next one is.
Is this a political thing like Black History Month? Is it one of those made up holidays to sell more greeting cards like Secretaries Day? Is there some super-seasonal cycle of weather that affects the polls?
I love the environment and all. I'd really like to give two shits. But first I'd have to have some clue as to wtf you are talking about.
I think you're on to something with the comparison to a movie like Pearl Harbor.
Ed Wood was a great film maker because he understood what film should be. Entertainment. It's great to appreciate the skill in creating a certain mood or a certain special effect, but movie making isn't a skills competition. I don't want to see how a certain technique is utilized. I want to be entertained.
We could go on all day about movies that have decent acting, good effects, competent camera work and editing, big budgets and still are worse than Ed Wood taking a crap in his hat. (Pitch Black, American Pie II, The English Patient)
What is lacking in too many films is that initial urge to entertain. Stay true to that, and you don't need a big budget, or special effects, or actors who know their lines. Start a movie without an honest drive to entertain--not impress or show off or demonstrate mad skillz, but entertain--and all the special effects in the world won't save you.
If? IF?? To say the Earth's temp is affected significantly by the Sun is understatement of an absurd degree.
Yes, there is internal heat from radioactive decay, and perhaps some warming due to tidal forces, but I'd wager 99+% of the Earth's heat comes from the Sun.
As for "thermal inertia" let's take the extreme case. The Sun goes bye-bye, or its energy output drops to zero. How long do expect the Earth's temp would lag? More practically, seasonal changes in weather--are they more closely tied to the positions of the Earth and the Sun today? Or their positions several years ago, due to "thermal inertia"?
I'll see you at the next ice age!
What tipped you off? The YETI@Home project?
Your theory doesn't involve a B-ark, does it?
This is gonna be the best prom ever.
We'll just have dumb terminals. Isn't that how the past looked like?
Let me guess...aelbric, you haven't seen our glorious Big Dig during rush hour, have you?
I think Neal is a little too much into the Tenacious D