How about measuring that in actual computer usage? X MHz on Y cores per Z nodes over A hours? Or at least say it would have taken one X MHz processor 35 years to compute it.
Um, they did. From the article:
it would take a good desktop PC (Intel Nehalem, four-core, 2.8GHz) 1.1 billion seconds, or about 35 CPU years, to perform this calculation
Yes, today's placebo is almost twice as powerful as those used as little as 5 years ago.
You joke, but there's actually quite a bit of truth to that statement.
Heck with the way things are now, the Auto Pilot can nearly land a plane by itself.
Actually, autopilot can land a plane without any human help, and in some cases it's even required to. I was talking to a pilot for United (friend's uncle) a couple years ago, and he said that in high winds or poor visibility, airline regulations prevent the pilot from landing the plan manually. The pilot is required to allow the autopilot to land the plane. Pretty crazy stuff.
--Bruce
--Bruce
An interesting, relatively unknown fact that I picked up while working on telephony systems a while back: carriers get paid (by other carriers) for incoming calls.
Not only do you pay more to your carrier to listen to the inane voicemail prompt (since you might use more minutes), but your carrier also pays more to your friend's carrier. For example, if I'm an AT&T customer and I call a Verizon customer to leave a voicemail, AT&T has to pay Verizon for every second that I'm on the phone. This (perverse) incentive makes more sense than charging people for more minutes, since often the company charging for minutes (AT&T in this case) is not the company that controls the recorded message (Verizon).
--Bruce
This sounds a lot like the 40-year-old Carterfone decision, where AT&T argued that allowing people to connect third-party devices to their network could disrupt or degrade service. I'm pretty sure that modems and Panasonic phones didn't ruin the telephone system, and I have a feeling that jailbroken iPhones wouldn't be the end of the world, either.
--Bruce
It's not a "problem" that can be "worked on". It's the character of the author. As any decent psychologist will tell you that character is inborn and cannot be changed or "worked on".
That's a pretty dismal view of human nature. I, on the other hand, believe people can change.
--Bruce
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
I don't the think the publishers are just going to give their content to Amazon for free, even if Amazon gives it away free.
--Bruce
It sounds to me like the EFF is overreacting again. When the new iPod shuffle came out, the they sounded the alarm about headphones requiring "DRM authentication". They later retracted their statement. Turns out that the "DRM" was just an electrical signaling protocol that allowed the headphones to send button press events to the iPod. You knowâ"the kind that any EE would design. The headphones and the iPod have to communicate somehow.
It sounds to me like this is more of the same. From the article:
car manufacturers now severely limit the number of repair shops that are allowed to have the tools, diagnostic codes and updated repair information essential to being able to repair late-model cars
A lack of information, or the need for sophisticated test equipment does not automatically imply DRM.
I'm all for making information on car diagnostic protocols and diagnostic code semantics more freely available, but let's call it what it really is.
--Bruce
If by "exponential", you mean "large linear", then maybe.
--Bruce
Georgia Tech has a campus in France that teaches (surprise!) technical courses in English.
--Bruce
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them over the horizon. -- K.A. Arsdall
