Now this is one configuration where this drive will make a large difference in bootup speeds. Office apps, audio, video and other media should be happy on the old 7200 rpm drives for a few years still.
"In any case, I think that a 100% solar earth is unlikely"
In the near future it is highly unlikely. However, once alternative resources have been exhausted (even the oceans are finite), we will have no choice but to either find other places with resources to exploit or find a way to efficiently harvest the energy from the sun. There are some interesting articles about a concept called "dyson sphere", which IMHO seems like one of the more logical progressions of an energy hungry civilization.
"I've almost given up on cell-phones. Even if I buy one specifically marketed as sturdy (e.g. Nokia 514), it is almost guaranteed to fail within two years (usually within a year). I would be willing to pay a lot more to get a phone where I don't have to worry about random breakage any time I fall on it."
A Co-Worker of mine drove over his Samsung A660 with a pickup truck (not sure if it was an accident or not) and, except for a distorted LCD screen, it still worked. I used to have an old (~2001) LG flip which was dropped more than a few times including a couple of times onto cement. I've found Cell phones to be surprisingly durable. My RCA Lyra mp3 player was another story. Broke 2 days after the warranty was up..
Ahh the good old days. I still have a 9 pin kicking around somewhere in my pile of junk (which I just might use sometime in the distant future).
Your post of bludgeoning someone with a keyboard reminded me of a video that was floating around the web a few years ago. It was of an overweight office worker having problems with his computer, slowly getting more irate as time progresses. First a smack on the side of the monitor, and then an all out bludgeoning of the monitor with his keyboard. Ahh, maybe I'll try that the day I go postal. If anyone has a link to that old vid, I'd love to see it again.
I seem to recall a version of Mandriva (or maybe Mandrake at the time) actually came packaged with a version of The Sims. This was a few years ago though.
"Hopefully Americans will recognize this before we merrily join the UK and strap video cameras to every public park, building, and employee"
A couple of years ago I returned to a park close to where I used to live. It had been a few years since I was at this park. To my surprise, there was a sign posted at the entrance to the park stating that the area was being monitored by video surveillance. This is in Canada. Unfortunately it seems like industrialized societies are moving towards this type of monitored future, all in the name of security...
I seem to recall a successful experiment in which a set of mirrors were setup in certain angles in a tabletop apparatus. Hand/Arm amputees would position their remaining limb on the table beside this apparatus. What they would see when looking at the table in front of them would be a mirror representation of their remaining limb. The amputees would then rate their phantom limb pain levels and results showed that the mirrored image of their existing appendage greatly reduced the pain. I see this research as an extension of this. If the brain is fooled into believing that the missing limb is actually there, then too the brain, the limb just might be there. Perception is reality in these instance.
Thinking about how much television we watch also reminds me of what that guy said. We seem preoccupied trying to live someone elses life, even if that other life is media manufactured.
Geez, I really live in a place stuck in the stoneage. We just upgraded to 3g in my area about a month ago... And we're the only 3g area for about an 800 km radius. Hell, we're the only area with digital capabilities (2g?) in an 800 km radius.. And if you go about 15 km outside of populated areas, there's no cell service at all. Ahhh, the great white north..
"And it will probably be too slow to have become intelligent yet. In short: it will be boring."
I think you're missing the point here. If Life (and I mean any type of life) is discovered elsewhere, that would be a huge discovery. Maybe one of the largest discoveries of all times.
Parent just posted truthfully that CDs deteriorate over time - enough to threaten data loss in the timespan you are describing. Decay times can be from as little as 5 years for a CD-R to decades for a factory stamped CD. Obviously if you kept the CDs in a chamber with constant humidity/temperature and no air currents never using them, you will probably end up extending the life. As far as the medial outlasting your lifetime, I highly doubt it, unless you eat at McDonalds alot or walked uphill to school both ways when you were young...
"Wow, just wow. That's just an incredible amount of power to be putting in a datacenter. Is it even possible for these centers to run off the grid?"
The generators have to supply enough on demand power to satisfy peak requirements. Examples could be getting the elevator(s) stuck between floors to where they're supposed to go. Air conditioning is another large power drain and in a datacentre, there are huge quantities of heat contributing components to deal with. Even backup lighting utilizes a surprising amount of power.
"in the real 3D world most "noobs" can't even stand up for 10-15 months and many people never achive fluid motion even after a lifetime of practice!"
I reckon this "fluid motion" that many people are lacking is probably due to too much time in front of the boob tube, monitor, basically sedentary living and not enough time actually moving around as we were designed to. We need our treadmills, just like the hamster in their cage needs his. It just seems like ours will be more interesting.
That so sounds like calls I used to receive when I was supporting a certain company's home PCs. Ahh, fond memories. A few times I had to put them on hold just because I couldn't contain my laughter. However, I did feel bad about the shit some of the the callers had to go through. But then again, they bought a PC manufactured by this certain company. Anybody guess which company this is?
Back in Highschool when I lifted weights, there was a combination of pills, called an E/C/A stack, we took to speed up our metabolism/raise our body temperature which burned more calories than if we had not taken the pills. The E stood for Ephedrine, C for Caffeine, and A for Aspirin (which prolongs the effect of the caffeine I think).
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Now this is one configuration where this drive will make a large difference in bootup speeds. Office apps, audio, video and other media should be happy on the old 7200 rpm drives for a few years still.
Um, This is Slashdot... Who the fuck do you think you are? Lecturing on gramer. Sheesh.
Mod Parent Funny!! Or am I the only one who laughed when I read the post.
Am I the only one who read this title as "Weed, DS, Not Cannabis"
"In any case, I think that a 100% solar earth is unlikely"
In the near future it is highly unlikely. However, once alternative resources have been exhausted (even the oceans are finite), we will have no choice but to either find other places with resources to exploit or find a way to efficiently harvest the energy from the sun. There are some interesting articles about a concept called "dyson sphere", which IMHO seems like one of the more logical progressions of an energy hungry civilization.
"I've almost given up on cell-phones. Even if I buy one specifically marketed as sturdy (e.g. Nokia 514), it is almost guaranteed to fail within two years (usually within a year). I would be willing to pay a lot more to get a phone where I don't have to worry about random breakage any time I fall on it."
A Co-Worker of mine drove over his Samsung A660 with a pickup truck (not sure if it was an accident or not) and, except for a distorted LCD screen, it still worked. I used to have an old (~2001) LG flip which was dropped more than a few times including a couple of times onto cement. I've found Cell phones to be surprisingly durable. My RCA Lyra mp3 player was another story. Broke 2 days after the warranty was up..
Ahh the good old days. I still have a 9 pin kicking around somewhere in my pile of junk (which I just might use sometime in the distant future).
Your post of bludgeoning someone with a keyboard reminded me of a video that was floating around the web a few years ago. It was of an overweight office worker having problems with his computer, slowly getting more irate as time progresses. First a smack on the side of the monitor, and then an all out bludgeoning of the monitor with his keyboard. Ahh, maybe I'll try that the day I go postal. If anyone has a link to that old vid, I'd love to see it again.
I seem to recall a version of Mandriva (or maybe Mandrake at the time) actually came packaged with a version of The Sims. This was a few years ago though.
"Hopefully Americans will recognize this before we merrily join the UK and strap video cameras to every public park, building, and employee"
A couple of years ago I returned to a park close to where I used to live. It had been a few years since I was at this park. To my surprise, there was a sign posted at the entrance to the park stating that the area was being monitored by video surveillance. This is in Canada. Unfortunately it seems like industrialized societies are moving towards this type of monitored future, all in the name of security...
I seem to recall a successful experiment in which a set of mirrors were setup in certain angles in a tabletop apparatus. Hand/Arm amputees would position their remaining limb on the table beside this apparatus. What they would see when looking at the table in front of them would be a mirror representation of their remaining limb. The amputees would then rate their phantom limb pain levels and results showed that the mirrored image of their existing appendage greatly reduced the pain. I see this research as an extension of this. If the brain is fooled into believing that the missing limb is actually there, then too the brain, the limb just might be there. Perception is reality in these instance.
RC2 != Official Release. Alpha and Beta releases, even Release Candidates seem to traditionally eat up more RAM than official releases.
However, this is Windows. Most Microsoft Official Releases should really be classified as beta.
Thinking about how much television we watch also reminds me of what that guy said. We seem preoccupied trying to live someone elses life, even if that other life is media manufactured.
"you might very well have CPUs with eight cores available"
I'm wondering if they'll just skip the 8 cores and move to 16.
Geez, I really live in a place stuck in the stoneage. We just upgraded to 3g in my area about a month ago... And we're the only 3g area for about an 800 km radius. Hell, we're the only area with digital capabilities (2g?) in an 800 km radius.. And if you go about 15 km outside of populated areas, there's no cell service at all. Ahhh, the great white north..
"And it will probably be too slow to have become intelligent yet. In short: it will be boring."
I think you're missing the point here. If Life (and I mean any type of life) is discovered elsewhere, that would be a huge discovery. Maybe one of the largest discoveries of all times.
Parent just posted truthfully that CDs deteriorate over time - enough to threaten data loss in the timespan you are describing. Decay times can be from as little as 5 years for a CD-R to decades for a factory stamped CD. Obviously if you kept the CDs in a chamber with constant humidity/temperature and no air currents never using them, you will probably end up extending the life. As far as the medial outlasting your lifetime, I highly doubt it, unless you eat at McDonalds alot or walked uphill to school both ways when you were young...
Meh, I wanted Lynx. Who needs pr0n anyways...
"Wow, just wow. That's just an incredible amount of power to be putting in a datacenter. Is it even possible for these centers to run off the grid?" The generators have to supply enough on demand power to satisfy peak requirements. Examples could be getting the elevator(s) stuck between floors to where they're supposed to go. Air conditioning is another large power drain and in a datacentre, there are huge quantities of heat contributing components to deal with. Even backup lighting utilizes a surprising amount of power.
This would introduce partial redundancy into the system. However, synchronizing with 50/60 hz between gensets might pose an issue.
Just wear a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses. Or go for a few rounds of boxing making sure to receive a few facial shots to induce swelling...
"in the real 3D world most "noobs" can't even stand up for 10-15 months and many people never achive fluid motion even after a lifetime of practice!" I reckon this "fluid motion" that many people are lacking is probably due to too much time in front of the boob tube, monitor, basically sedentary living and not enough time actually moving around as we were designed to. We need our treadmills, just like the hamster in their cage needs his. It just seems like ours will be more interesting.
Strike one. But good guess. That's what I'd have said first.
That so sounds like calls I used to receive when I was supporting a certain company's home PCs. Ahh, fond memories. A few times I had to put them on hold just because I couldn't contain my laughter. However, I did feel bad about the shit some of the the callers had to go through. But then again, they bought a PC manufactured by this certain company. Anybody guess which company this is?
Google is just software, not hardware. Or am I wrong on this one?
Back in Highschool when I lifted weights, there was a combination of pills, called an E/C/A stack, we took to speed up our metabolism/raise our body temperature which burned more calories than if we had not taken the pills. The E stood for Ephedrine, C for Caffeine, and A for Aspirin (which prolongs the effect of the caffeine I think).