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Comment Re:Not very plausible (Score 1) 745

by TwistedSpring (#46262837) Attached to: Mathematician: Is Our Universe a Simulation?

It's also miserably inefficient to emulate, say, an Amiga 500 inside an Amiga 500. The virtualised instance will be considerably slower than the host to the point where it's not feasible to use. However, from the perspective of the software running on that emulated instance nothing is different, it behaves as normal, instructions take the same number of CPU clocks as they would on real hardware.

It doesn't much matter how long the host takes to run one second of simulated time if we're part of that simulation. If one second of simulated time takes a year to simulate or a thousand years it'd still be one second of simulated time.

I'm with you, though, this is an interesting teleological plaything but little more. God isn't a computer scientist any more than he's a watchmaker.
Space

Sizzling Weather On a Dive-Bombing Planet 57

Posted by timothy from the much-sexier-after-computer-enhancement dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "A massive planet orbiting the star HD 80606 is on a roller-coaster orbit: it dive bombs the star, in just 55 days dropping from over 120 million km to just 4 million km from the star's surface! Astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to observe the heat from the planet as it gets blasted by its star, and used that data to make a beautiful computer-modeled image of what the planet must look like. Their results: an ube-rviolent storm that acts as if a bomb were exploded in the planet's atmosphere."
Government

US Senate & House Create YouTube Channels 199

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can't-wait-for-them-to-do-something-that-matters dept.
eldavojohn writes "Following an election in which online videos played an important role, the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate have opened YouTube channels (or 'hubs') advertised to be a 'backstage pass to your government.' Ideally this will bring transparency to citizens and inform them of their senators' & representatives' positions and ideas."

Comment Re:How Long? (Score 1) 362

by TwistedSpring (#23682817) Attached to: Happy Birthday! X86 Turns 30 Years Old
I meant no offense by it. The books you cite are common degree texts.

I can't say I agree with your suggestion that the x86 ISA is simple. I would say that it's an extremely complex ISA that takes a lot of unnecessary pre-decode logic to hack it up into micro ops. If the ISA was simpler that pre-decode logic would not need to be so hefty (or could be scrapped entirely) and more of the transistor budget could be spent on L1 and register file size, as happens in better designed, modern ISAs.
Earth

Bye Bye Bananas — the Return of Panama Disease 519

Posted by kdawson from the where-you-gonna-get-your-potassium dept.
Ant sends in a disturbing report in The Scientist on an imminent threat to worldwide banana production. "The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... [Now] Panama disease — or Fusarium wilt of banana — is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions..."
Transportation

Using Microwaves To Cook Ballast Stowaways 186

Posted by kdawson from the avast-and-adios dept.
Smivs writes "US researchers say they have developed an effective way to kill unwanted plants and animals that hitch a ride in the ballast waters of cargo vessels. Tests showed that a continuous microwave system was able to remove all marine life within the water tanks. The UN lists 'invasive species' dispersed by ballast water discharges as one of the four main threats to the world's marine ecosystems. For example European zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) have infested more than 40% of the US's inland waterways. Between 1989 and 2000, up to $1B is estimated to have been spent on controlling the spread of the alien invader."
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA doubts ray tracing is the future of games (pcper.com)

Submitted by SizeWise
SizeWise writes: After Intel's prominent work in ray tracing in the both the desktop and mobile spaces, many gamers might be thinking that the move to ray tracing engines is inevitable. NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Kirk, seems to think otherwise as revealed in an interview on the topic of rasterization and ray tracing. Kirk counters many of Intel's claims of ray tracing's superiority such as the inherent benefit to polygon complexity while pointing out areas where ray tracing engines would falter like basic antialiasing. The interview rounds out discussion on mixing the two rendering technologies and whether NVIDIA hardware can efficiently handle ray tracing calculations as well.
Google

Google Street a Slice of Dystopian Future? 325

Posted by Zonk from the they-see-you-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to a recent CNET article, Google Street View 'is just wrong'. The short piece which makes up part of a larger feature about 'technology that's just wrong' goes on to explain that Google Street View is like a scene from George Orwell's terrifying dystopian vision of 1984 and that it could ultimately change our behaviour because we'll never know when we're being watched. 'Google? Aren't they the friendly folk who help me find Web sites, cheat at pub quizzes, and look at porn? Yes, but since 2006 they're also photographing the streets of selected world cities and posting the results online for all to see. It was Jeremy Bentham who developed the idea of the Panopticon, a system of prison design whereby everybody could be seen from one central point, with the upshot being that prisoners learnt to modulate their behaviour — because they never knew if they were being watched. And that doesn't sound like much fun, does it?'"

Alienware Planning Android iPhone Killer? 152

Posted by CmdrTaco from the competition-means-better dept.
meteorit found a story about rumors of an Alienware phone based on Google's Android phone OS. As Dell has a history of bombing with handhelds, it would be interesting to try the Alienware brand instead. And I'm not exactly sure where they get off claiming that their drawings are the first pictures of the thing. Cheesy renderings designed explicitly for your website are not quite pictures of a product... they are artists impressions.
Microsoft

Microsoft Launches IT Superhero Comic 285

Posted by Zonk from the humor-doesn't-come-from-the-comic dept.
willdavid writes "Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft's new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. 'Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don't really have extraordinary powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who "stands between chaos and order" and says things like "begone vermin!"'" And because it's never easy, in order to read the archives of the comic you're going to need to install Microsoft's Silverlight.
Programming

Programming As Art — 13 Amazing Code Demos 210

Posted by Zonk from the i-know-it-when-i-see-it dept.
cranberryzero writes "The demo scene has been around for twenty years now, and it has grown by leaps and bounds. From the early days of programmers pushing the limits of Ataris and Amigas to modern landscapes with full lighting, mapping, and motion capture, demo groups have done it all and done it under 100k. To celebrate this art form, I heart Chaos takes a look at thirteen of the best demo programs on the web. Flash video links are included, but it's more fun to download them and give your processor something fun to chew on."
Security

CIA Claims Cyber Attackers Blacked Out Cities 280

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the say-g'night-dick dept.
Dotnaught writes to tell us InformationWeek is reporting that the CIA admitted today that recent power outages in multiple cities outside the United States are the result of cyberattacks. "We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet."
Math

Mathematician Theorizes a Crystal As Beautiful As A Diamond 302

Posted by Zonk from the i-prefer-my-stones-blood-free-thanks dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Why are diamonds so shiny and beautiful? A Japanese mathematician says it's because of their unique crystal structure and two key properties, called 'maximal symmetry' and 'strong isotropic property.' According to the American Mathematical Society (AMS), he found that out of all the crystals that are possible to construct mathematically, just one shares these two properties with the diamond. So far, his K4 crystal exists only as a mathematical object. And nobody knows if it exists — or if it can be synthesized."

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