Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
I think the problem behind the problem is that the only people who are willing to go into politics are the kind of people only in it for themselves. IOW, sociopaths. Anyone else wouldn't have the faintest interest and instead have other plans. Any attempt to draft politicians out of the populace thus runs into the familiar retort: what about my business/crops/whatever?
"Best thing you can have to a backdoor would be for all the western nations to chip in a build a colossal supercomputer and just brute force the encryption."
Don't laugh. This may actually exist. There's that huge data center in Utah. Could actually be a cover for a black-project working quantum computer breaking messages using Shor's Algorithm.
No, I think the problem you're overlooking is that, although von Neumann knew his architecture has limits, you neglect to realize that ALL of them have limits. Chief among them the unavoidable ceiling that is the Speed of Electricity. It's a hard-and-fast "Ya Cannae Fight Physics" limit. Everything else we do is to try to make the best of the situation. That's one reason for a central processing unit and why we are trying to move towards MORE rather than LESS centralization (Systems-on-Chips if you'll recall). Make things smaller and the electricity takes less time to get there, plain and simple. It's just that in larger setup, we need things big enough for human hands to handle. In essence, there are competing needs here meshed up against hard-and-fast limits, leading to one hell of a juggling act.
That'll never happen, though, because the company simply pool enough pull to get the laws changed or declawed. Otherwise, something like you describe would already be in the books.
All else fails, they and everyone else simply leave your jurisdiction as too risky.
I don't know about the branch prediction bit, but what NetBurst taught us was that raw speed wasn't a cure-all. Once you got into the 4GHz range, all you really did was make things get really hot. That's why Intel took a step back and used the P3 as the basis for an architectural fork that eventually became the Core line. The idea with Core is to dial back and instead focus on handling things more efficiently. Some top-end cores do creep into the 4GHz range again, and as a result they also generate plenty of heat again (thus why most need special cooling setups), but only after those efficiency improvements made them a whole lot better than the NetBurst CPUs could ever achieve.
Thing is, like raw speed, architectural efficiency has its limits; you can only trim things so much before you hit the bone. It seems we're starting to see bone in places and seeing side effects as a result. We've hit the speed wall, and now we're hitting the efficiency wall. We can probably get some results if we can solve the problem of fast context switching, but after that it's going to take a serious rethink to find new ways of improving things, and each new idea runs the risk of side effects.
"Given that DRAM latency is effectively governed by the speed of a signal along the PCB trace between the CPU and the SIMM, I'd say we're pretty much stuffed."
IOW, caching is basically a case of "Ye cannae fight physics," hitting a hard limit with the Speed of Electricity.
"I say a better approach would be to retreat from arbitrary code execution, and start thinking about how we might have remote presentation protocols instead. There's no particular need to run the code client side, just so long as the code output is visible client side."
Unless, of course, latency comes into play. Why do you think network computing has such limited use outside the controlled environment of LANs? Because the Internet is itself an untrusted, unreliable environment. You're simply trading one set of disadvantages for another. And for many, the reason the code MUST run client-side is because you need the speed you cannot get other than from a locally-run machine. Ask any gamer.
Problem being, how do you restore the cache state when you're already using the cache as it is? Sound like an "open the box with the crowbar inside" problem. Increasing the cache simply begs the question of not using it in general rather than in a segmented way. IOW, no matter what you try, it's bound to get ugly.
"What I hope we are to see on the desktop is something that takes us forward - not revisits where we have already been - and that will have more to do with the less-visible but vital improvements in the protection of memory (and cryptographic secrets in particular) and better segregation of trusted and untrusted code. And in that latter respect, I think we're going to have to get used to there being a little more than just "kernel" and "user" space to worry about."
If you want to see a real solution to this, you need to solve the problem of the performance penalty inherent to context switching. This is one key reason most OS's only use two contexts even when more are available (x86/x64 CPUs, for example, have four available, but because of the context switching penalty usually don't use more than two).
Then how come most video encoders aren't really MT-friendly and usually have to resort to tricks such as partitioning? It's telling that the x encoder suites (x264 and x265) still have a marked preference for CPU-based encoding. As I recall, certain e-coin systems use algorithms specifically meant to be easier for the CPU to do versus say a GPU, on similar principles.
"More seriously, they vote for Trump and Brexit and a host of other stupid, self-destructive things. The elephant curve has a lot to answer for."
That's easy. Desperation means anyone charismatic enough who says, "I can fix your problems for you" is going to get a lot of attention. That's part of the reason a desperate proletariat is dangerous: they become the fuel for a revolutionary fire.
"Who's going to write the code to allow the AI in the trucks?: humans."
A FEW humans, not several thousand. Furthermore, most of the jobs are already filled. So Zero opportunity.
"Who's designing the electronics (Chips, circuits, etc.)?: humans"
Again, A FEW humans, not several thousand.
"Who's doing the maintenance on the trucks?: humans."
Don't be so sure. Standardize the robotrucks and you can just put them through automated tunnels.
"Who's issuing the instructions?: humans."
To a lesser and lesser degree. As more and more orders are processed electronically, they become more machine-readable, reducing the human angle. Remember, elevators once had human operators. See any now?
"There are no longer people who come around in wagons to empty the outhouses and chamber pots."
Thanks to indoor plumbing. But go out into the sticks where they don't exists and you'll still find the odd outhouse.
"There are no longer people who come around in the morning with large urns of fresh milk to fill people's mil pails."
No, they come with pre-filled bottles. The milkman still exists in firms like Oberweis Dairies. That said, I still think they're vulnerable to automated deliveries.
"There are no longer people who ride on horses from coast-to-coast in relays to deliver mail."
They just drive trucks instead, so they still exist for now. And if you want a hurry, you now have pilots, who for the moment are still human.
"There are no longer people who come around with large ice-blocks to fill ice-boxes."
Maybe not in homes, but there are still ice chests in stores.
"There aren't many people who come around delivering bottles of gas for household gas usage (stoves), it's mostly all piped in now."
Maybe not, but the tanks still exist, the trucks still exist to transfer them. They just go to store cages instead of the home. Sort of a compromise to keep costs down. Plus, the delivery still exists in certain areas where the infrastructure's different.
"Things change. Adapt or stagnate."
Don't leave the proles behind. History shows that dead-ended proles with no food on the table tend to get violent.
Thing is, the Teamsters are one of the biggest unions in the country, meaning if they decide to go FU and go on strike, that's gonna put a crimp on UPS's business, especially the time-sensitive part (meaning a serious potential to lose money here). Trying to replace all of them at once and with immature tech is going to be difficult, meaning the Teamsters are currently bargaining from a position of strength.
"Nobody owes you a job, & if the job you're doing can be done faster, cheaper, & more efficiently by some(one/thing) else, you either have to up your game or be replaced.
It sucks, we all need to eat & pay bills, but that's the hard fact of life: adapt or die."
Well, look at it from another perspective. At least trucking companies still hired humans and actually reduced the biological burden by reducing the need to exploit horses. Here, however, the plan is to remove the human altogether, which raises issues. What happens when humans get dead-ended? Forced into a corner, they usually fight back: either by turning to crime out of desperation or rising up a la the Luddites. Either way, an increased crime and destitution rate is going to have collateral effects that creep onto the rest of us. Nobody may owe you a job, but the quality of life in general starts affecting us specifically eventually. Saying they can just die sounds great until you realize that MAD sounds nice to someone with nothing left to lose, meaning they may just decide to take you with them.
"At some point all internet activity is transmitted thru the air using frequencies allocated (auctioned) by the federal government."
Really? Can you prove this as, last I checked, over-the-air has tighter limits enforced by physics and most of the Internet is carried through physical cables: usually optical these days.
And WiFi actually doesn't count under your statement because 2.4GHz and 5GHz are UNlicensed spectra.
Itanium is immune for one simple reason; it doesn't have speculative execution. It was a strictly in-order processor built on the assumption the compiler could do all the optimization. I suggest you inspect the benchmarks for Itanium units shortly after they came out and compare them to other processors of that time. Last I recalled, the results were quite underwhelming because compilers simply can't know about about the programs they handle to optimize for all conditions (runtime conditions can lead to completely different optimization needs).
"The wording of Article 27 is quite clear. It makes no difference who a diplomatic courier is or what he is carrying. You can know for an absolute fact that he is transporting contraband and you still can't interfere while he is in transit between an Embassy and his home country."
I recall there's a different article in the same document that says you have to going on official diplomatic business with no side business involved (as one user put it, "taking the mick"). Otherwise, it's an abuse of immunity, revoking the immunity and rendering them open season. I also believe it's an earlier article and therefore takes precedence over Article 27 in the event of a conflict.
Which means as long as the UK can demonstrate Ecuador was abusing diplomatic immunity by revealing Assange in a search, the fault would lie in Ecuador, and if Russia and China pipe up, the UK would just counter, "You're a fine one to talk." given their histories.
The human missed it because he wasn't paying attention while the computer eye was supposed to be paying attention. Big difference. And let's not get started on all the attempts to foil computer eyes with infrared dazzlers and other assorted tech. What's one of the most common articles here at El Reg? The "AI Falls For Dumb Trick" article, like the computer ear that hears something completely different to what we hear, and all it took was changes (potentially possible in realtime) too subtle for human ears to pick up. Human senses are an evolved feature so have quite a few built-in adaptations (thus why newborn babies were able to recognize human faces in experiments). Just saying it's probably longer than you think before we get from here to there.
Well, the Z-80 on the C128 was hobbled by the bus design. And it couldn't be used in standard Commodore mode (it was simply used to handle behind-the-scenes stuff). Even in CP/M mode, it ran at 1/4 its rated speed in 40-column mode and 1/2 speed in 80-column mode (turning off the 40-column VDC removes a bottleneck, which is why FAST mode requires using the CGA-compatible 80-column mode).
But it still asks if there is more we can do because otherwise we can fall victim to other people's stupidity. Living in a world where we can be pwned without any involvement of our own (and indeed through someone else's involvement) makes things pretty scary. And unlike getting struck by lightning, the odds aren't as astronomical.
I think that's gonna have to be the new big goal. If they can make context switching quick (this includes cache management between contexts), then you can use more of them without having to worry about performance penalties. That's a huge reason most x86/x64 systems tend to only use two rings when they actually have four available.
"IIRC the Founding Fathers initially gave everyone an equal voice in the passing of laws."
Nope, the original Constitution didn't have universal suffrage (that really didn't hit until the 19th Amendment granted the vote to women; the 15th granted it to all men, and the 26th lowered the age to 18 to reflect draft injustices). To be able to vote originally, you had to be a landowner (IOW, have actual skin in the game). The Industrial Revolution IIRC reduced the dependency on land which is why that requirement went away (that and the fact recently-freed slaves were starting from scratch and would otherwise face vicious cycle issues).
Because it's an election year. Piss off the hardliners, and they'll respond with primary challengers. The biggest fear isn't the general election (which in general tend to be safe if not uncontested) but the primary election where the opponent is in the same party. Lose the primary and you don't get to go to the general election, as has been happening lately with moderates.
"Maybe elect a bunch of monkeys to go to Washington DC. They could hardly do worse than the last few batches of politicians have."
Um, look what happened in the 2016 elections. The trouble with the "Vote 'Em Out" attitude is the risk you actually find something WORSE enters in their stead. Didn't like the Beast? Say Hello to the Smiler.
I think that hit a bend when Android started supported encrypting storage. To store apps on SD in such a state, you have to encrypt the SD, which unfortunately locks the content to the phone. Now, I encrypt my internal storage as is proper, but since my SD contains media files and other low-priority stuff I would like to be able to transfer to my next phone should the need arise, I have to keep the SD unencrypted.
But sometimes whitelists get TOO restrictive, resulting in a lockout situation. For instance, your whitelist would trip on 1 (which is neither prime nor composite). It is not divisible by something other than 1. Problem is, it should really say, "Does it have EXACTLY TWO divisors: one and itself?" THIS whitelist would fail 1 as only having one divisor.
That's kind of the point the detractors are trying to make. Studies have shown that computers are pretty good at "thinking" functions like logic and so on but pretty poor at "sensing" functions like vision and voice recognition (see the bit about tricking computers with adjustments our ears can't detect).
Robotically-driven cars need plenty of both, and it's that latter that's going to (pardon the lame pun) rear-end them.
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