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Load balancing? Easy to write, hard to make work well. You need to compare the cost of migration to the benefits of balancing, and you need to make decisions based on partial and outdated information. Many early systems thrashed because everybody would migrate to the idle processor, which then became overloaded, so everybody migrated somewhere else, etc.

Speaking of migration, it's a mess. The only system I know of that implemented migration fully was Locus, out of UCLA. The trouble is that whenever a process has a dependency on or a hook into its environment, that connection must be migrated too. Open files, working directory, sockets, controlling tty, signals, process parent/child relationships, and many more details must be handled. Not fun, and the benefits turned out to be mostly minor (though I do recall writing a cool version of "find" that migrated itself to the machine that stored the current subtree as it ran).

The issue of supporting distributed applications is generally considered to be separate from writing a truly distributed OS. Most of what a distributed application needs can be provided by a good communications library. To some extent, we're still learning exactly what such a library should have. What about SETI@home is specialized to it, and what's universal? I don't think we've completely figured it out.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of major concerns and design issues that must be addressed in a distributed OS. We have fairly good solutions to some, but most have not yet been solved:

• Process control. How much process migration is a Good Thing? How do you decide what machine to use to start a process, and when do you decide to migrate it to another?
• Communication and synchronization. What facilities does a distributed application need? How do we make those easy to use?
• Reliability. How do we deal with the inevitable machine failures?
• Replication. What processes and data should be duplicated on different systems? Are you doing the replication for performance, for reliability, or both? How do you manage updates to replicated data? How do you keep replicated process synchronized?
• Lack of global knowledge. How do you make decisions based on partial information?
• Naming. What names to things have. Do you have a shared global namespace, or a private one? How do you resolve names? What do you do when people and objects move?
• Scalability. How does the system behave when the number of computers/users/programs jumps by a factor of 10 or 100? (This is a place where Napster doesn't do real well.)
• Compatibility. How do you support existing software? Do you run on only one kind of hardware, or many?
• Security. Who gets to run on what machine?

Finally, I should note that the list of projects at U of Arizona might appear to be complete, but it omits a lot of important projects. Four that jump to my mind are Locus and Ficus from UCLA (though the latter is more of a distributed filesystem than an OS), Coda from CMU (again a DFS, rather well-known to Linux folks), and of course the extremely important Network of Workstations work out of UC Berkeley, which led to Inktomi and Hotbot.

Here are some OS's that I think are interesting. I'm not sure if these are the official sites or not...but they should be interesting to read about (actually, most of them are REALLY cool)

Interesting FAQ: comp.os.research FAQ
Chorus Distributed OS paper
The Amoeba Distributed OS (check out the papers... I think many of the links are broken
Microsofts Rialto OS

• Mach was the "granddaddy" of distributed OS work, with most of the recent efforts going into GNU Hurd.
• There's Mosix that builds a NOW atop Linux
• The MIT Parallel and Distributed OS Group should be mentioned; efforts include the Exokernel
• Plan 9 has an interesting model for splitting work across "compute servers" and "file servers" and "display servers."
• Distributed Operating Systems lists lots of them...
• Sun's Spring was the basis for much of what is in CORBA;
• Sprite provided a Unix-like distributed OS that provided much of what is being used now to build journalling filesystems
• Amoeba was Tanembaum's successor to Minix; note that Python was one of the side-effects of the Amoeba project...

Each has some somewhat different insights to bring to the table; there is no unambiguous way of saying "this is all vastly superior."

You might want to check out "Distributed Operating Systems: Concepts and Design" by Pradeep Sinha.

It talks about Amoeba, the V-System (I couldn't find a good web page), and Chorus.

It's a textbook so it also has a lot of theory about general distributed OS's.

PayPal.com and other solutions are not as well-suited for such distributed systems for a number of reasons. First of all, it places some dependence on a centralized, commercial service, requiring people to upload credit card information and such.

I spoke with Jim McCay for a while at the recent Berkeley conference on Anonymity and Unobservability, most of our discussion centered around the anonymity aspects of MojoNation. The micropayment scheme utilized is based on Chaumian ecash, which has the nice properties of being fairly small and straightforward.

User anonymity is ensured by the cryptographic blinding of ecash tokens during the withdrawal (issuing) stage of the protcol. Therefore, the issuing authority (MojoNation until some different infrastructure is set up) is not able to link payments received by "merchants" and the customers that used these tokens. The downside of Chaumian cash (as opposed to that of Stefan Brands) is that all verification to prevent double spending needs to occur on-line. This requires some central MojoNation issuing authority (or some distributed subset of varying authorities) that needs to be contacted for the verfication.

One main aspect of MojoNation that still lacks anonymity is actual peer-to-peer operations. Currently, these just have IP-layer connectivity for usability reasons...but this is hardly anonymous.

Jim pointed out that nothing prevents the eventual "plug-and-play" functionality of some anonymous channel - such as a mixnet (ZKS Freedom, Onion-Routing, etc.) - to be used between peer connections. While speed might be affected, the anonymous micropayments scheme fits right into a future addition of anonymous links.

It's going to be interesting to see MojoNation and other such systems develop.

Here's a cube computer that predates NeXT. The Thinking Machines CM2 is from 1986. Want to see a picture?

Go have a look at the SETI@Home Downloads page. Tell me there are no processors in there that might have vector-optimised maths units.

Go have a look at the Crusoe Technology page, or the VMWare site. Tell me that it's impossible to use hardware or software to emulate or translate from one instruction set to another. Besides, what's stopping the KrosnoConv "surplus military" stock being military-spec MIPS or SPARC clones? I didn't read the "about the company" bit, so I expected this was just an American company picking up after the excesses of the United States war machine.

Heck, check any Pentium III and tell me that it's impossible to execute another device's instruction set (8088) natively.

The only points that concerned me about the KrosnoConv boards were the Linux-in-Flash claim, and 32Mb of RAM per processor for less than $US200 (either very slow memory, or only 32Mbit perhaps, co-packaged RAM from the old 8086 days). There are projects out there to put Linux in a PC BIOS, or even an LS120. You can get CompactFlash cards, which behave like very small hard drives (either Flash memory pretending to be an IDE drives, or IBM microdrives really being IDE drives). But they're not cheap.

x86 is not the only architecture that SETI@Home supports. Why shouldn't someone produce an add-in card that uses your existing infrastructure? I would still be interested in getting a (cheap!) board full of heavy-maths processors to do hardware encryption for Virtual Private Networks, or even just a heavy duty key server.

I've already got the expensive bits like hard drives, network cards, monitors, cases and memory. I'd actually love to have a "parasitic" processor running its own OS, where I can download software to it, and have it process data that I store for it in my real RAM. Kinda like a multi-processor machine, where one or more processors are especially suited to encryption math.

Don't just spout "that's not how things work". Because with the introduction of technology like that used in the Crusoe, or even older technology like that used in VMWare, or any C64 emulator, you know this is how things work now.

Oh, then there's the problem of language. How exactly are we going to be able to tell when something is trying to communicate with us if we don't know the language. Imagine getting a burst of static out of your speakers from your PC instead of a picture. Would you be able to decode it? Maybe they're using a different encoding scheme. Something unintelligible like Word 7 .doc maybe.

First you try to find the communication, then you attempt to decode it. Any type of communication by ETs is going to look different from normal background radiation, since if their intent is to communicate, they're going to try to make it be distinguishable from background noise.

But that's just theoretical. What SETI@Home does is:

• Look for a signal that's in a single frequency. Anyone communicating would likely do this because it enables them to get the most power in their signal.
• Look for a singal that changes over time. You can't really communicate much by sending out a signal that never changes.
• Any object in the sky that the radio telescode is observing will only be in its window of observation for 12 second. When it first enters, it will be weak, it will get stronger towards the middle, and then weaken. Anything that doesn't follow this pattern is probably a signal local to the solar system.
• Look for doppler shift, as the signal source is likely to be in motion relative to the Earth.

The this info is from the SETI@Home page which explains these things.

• The problem I have with this personally is that this solution may not abide to the licensing agreement for the SETI@Home project. Especially this portion: "Distribution of this software is prohibited". The company's FAQ sort of diverts this issue saying that this wasn't a patch and only uses an unmodified version of the client, but unless the company has an agreement with the SETI@Home team, they would be distributing the clients against the restrictions mentioned in the licensing agreement. As of this point I don't know if they do have permission to do this. I do not think that they do though. I cannot see the SETI@Home guys (who have a hard time raising fundage for their project) allowing a company to make a profit out of their work. Only time will tell to see how all of this plays out...legal proceedings may be a problem since the company is based in the Ukraine. I'll keep ya posted what I find out

Okay, here's the breakdown of the last 24 hours and the historical numbers as well. This board doesn't make it worth the money -- it's a little faster than the historical average, and a little slower than the last-24 hour average.

On a 604e processor @300MHz, I'm averaging a block every 22 hr 58 min 22.2 sec. Can't wait to upgrade to dual G4's and OS X.

Also readable via recyclable electrons here.
--

This is a hoax. This shows that they have completed NO work units... A geek loveing seti and his money are soon parted.

It doesn't surprise me that /. readers embrace the seti@home program, as you have so readily confirmed with your comment: I'd happily drop up to A$1,000 on it now, and another A$500 every couple of months. What surprises me is the fact that slashdot can't even organize itself well enough to notice its got two teams competing in the overall competition: Team Slashdot and Slashdot ... wouldn't it be brilliant if someone actually suggested combining the two?


================================================ =
If ignorance is bliss, wipe the smile off my face

It doesn't surprise me that /. readers embrace the seti@home program, as you have so readily confirmed with your comment: I'd happily drop up to A$1,000 on it now, and another A$500 every couple of months. What surprises me is the fact that slashdot can't even organize itself well enough to notice its got two teams competing in the overall competition: Team Slashdot and Slashdot ... wouldn't it be brilliant if someone actually suggested combining the two?


================================================ =
If ignorance is bliss, wipe the smile off my face

"SETI@home is, after all, a scientific research project. While we will eventually screen out bogus results by reprocessing the interesting work units ourselves, this form of hacking hurts our project in many ways.

In addition, some persons have altered the SETI@home client software to use faster math routines. While their intentions may be honourable (faster computing means more data processed), the scientific integrity of this project requires that the same processing be applied to all data uniformly. Since we can not verify that the results of these altered versions match those of the originals, they are a cause for significant concern.

As you can see, SETI is not requiring that the @home clients to be run on the same platforms as illustrated by it's already massive list of hardware and software platforms supported; they are only requiring that the clients process data using the same procedures for scientific control and validity.

Others may be considering about what type of person would consider purchasing the $US89 and or $129 cards. Well take a look at the results of the official SETI@home survery which states that 59.09%of those running it are doing so for the reason of "finding ET for the good of humanity." As one AC has already pointed out, this type of valuable work is by "many people taken quite seriously." I suspect that many of those willing to buy will this card will consider it as a indirect donation to the SETI@home project by providing more processed data with a side possibility of fame for their efforts. Others, like myself take pride in helping humanity answer one of it's most serious questions, and don't seek gratification or fame. I don't care if I personally find anything - it's the effort that counts.

I'm also just wondering how long before someone starts over clocking these suckers to the extreme to make them even faster. Silicon Graphics (World Rank:1) has babies that can do one work unit in 2.5 hours!

PS: On another side note, I've had this signature for a month now, because I'd like to see Team Slashdot beat Microsoft (7) and MacAddict (8)!

"SETI@home is, after all, a scientific research project. While we will eventually screen out bogus results by reprocessing the interesting work units ourselves, this form of hacking hurts our project in many ways.

In addition, some persons have altered the SETI@home client software to use faster math routines. While their intentions may be honourable (faster computing means more data processed), the scientific integrity of this project requires that the same processing be applied to all data uniformly. Since we can not verify that the results of these altered versions match those of the originals, they are a cause for significant concern.

As you can see, SETI is not requiring that the @home clients to be run on the same platforms as illustrated by it's already massive list of hardware and software platforms supported; they are only requiring that the clients process data using the same procedures for scientific control and validity.

Others may be considering about what type of person would consider purchasing the $US89 and or $129 cards. Well take a look at the results of the official SETI@home survery which states that 59.09%of those running it are doing so for the reason of "finding ET for the good of humanity." As one AC has already pointed out, this type of valuable work is by "many people taken quite seriously." I suspect that many of those willing to buy will this card will consider it as a indirect donation to the SETI@home project by providing more processed data with a side possibility of fame for their efforts. Others, like myself take pride in helping humanity answer one of it's most serious questions, and don't seek gratification or fame. I don't care if I personally find anything - it's the effort that counts.

I'm also just wondering how long before someone starts over clocking these suckers to the extreme to make them even faster. Silicon Graphics (World Rank:1) has babies that can do one work unit in 2.5 hours!

PS: On another side note, I've had this signature for a month now, because I'd like to see Team Slashdot beat Microsoft (7) and MacAddict (8)!

In other words, AI was completely based on explicit semantics, without ontology. It sort of flopped.

About 15 years ago, the emphases shifted to things like neural networks, which are excellent at pattern matching. That is what BAIR is supposed to do: without having any idea what pornography is (i.e., the semantics of pornography) it is supposed to find patterns that probabilistically predict that a photo is a nudey photo. That the system have no idea what pornography or nudity is, isn't considered relevant by BAIR.

The problem is that porn is semantics. This isn't like trying to distinguih the sonar patterns of submarines from those of rocks - something nn's have been really good at.

Trying to generate nn's that can do real semantics is a huge challenge. Check out the Neural Theory of Language project for some interesting work in that endeavour.

Advanced Micro Devices
Microstar K7T Pro motherboard 1.0GHz
#cpus 1
Spec2000 fp Base 290
Spec2000 fp Peak 302
(just showed up recently on spec.org... still doesn't do any good without G4 results, that's true... why doesn't Motorola publish spec info on the spec website anymore? even if it is just for evaluation boards, it'd be fun to see...)

anyway, spec95 results are available for Athlon 1000 and G4 450... Athlon base FP = 29.4, G4 FP = 20.4 (not sure if it's base or peak... got the info from the CPU Info Center)

as usual, take the results for what they're worth...

SETI@home is also looking for radar. Radar is very analog (generally pings at one frequency). Read More...

Moreover, the write once run anywhere myth has been debunked in many places. JIT's in general cannot achieve what a good optimizing compiler can do (PC's generally do not have good optimizing compilers, though they are starting to appear on Linux platforms). A very good way to tell if your C++ compiler is poorly optimizing, is if your Java and your C++ application (identical ones, doing identical work) run at the same speed.

All that said, Java, should it ever become standardized, could be an interesting platform to work on such applications. It is not a computational powerhouse like Fortran, or a string processing powerhouse like Perl, but it has its uses. Once it is standardized, many of the design flaws (numerical, etc) can be fixed properly. After that it might start to get interesting as a distributed computational tool (more of a controlling tool than the tool for calculation).

While the local effects of cities on area weather patterns is interesting, especiaaly to it's residents, we should all be thinking about the global weather and what are collective cities are doing to change the way the planet functions. On that note I would like to put a plug in for The Casino-21 experiment they are hoping to use spare cycles; like Seti@Home or distributed.net to do global climate simulations. They are still in the preliminary stages, however it is a very noble goal. Last I knew they were looking for help coding some of the tools and applications neccessary; and I know that many of the /. readers are well versed in writing code, and many are kind enough to donate their services to projects like this.

Of course, people actually downloading the whole human genome probable wouldn't worry about this, but couldn't they use a better compression format than .zip? I bet using bzip2 or rar would shave a couple of hundred MBs off of that 753MB file. Also, the differences in compression techniques would be interesting to see on a large group of files mainly consisting of G, A, C, and T. -- demiurge You find a file that appears important and obliterate it from memory!!! Score one for the downtrodden hacker!

• G -- 00
• A -- 01
• T -- 10
• C -- 11

This would only work for the .fa files, but .fa files can contain "N"s also. If you just want to browse the Genome, look through the pieces directory. .

They're working on it! In UC Berkeley they have a BATmobile (Bayesian Automated Taxi) project. No hardware though. And for an off-topic note I'd say that slashdot is too hardware centric anyway.

--

Ummm...
Ultra II 360MHz SPECint95: 16.1 SPECfp95: 23.5
Athlon 700MHz SPECint95: 31.7 SPECfp95: 24.0
PIII 700MHz SPECint95: 33.0 SPECfp95: 30.4

My numbers are from this doc at the CPU Info Center

Ummm...
Ultra II 360MHz SPECint95: 16.1 SPECfp95: 23.5
Athlon 700MHz SPECint95: 31.7 SPECfp95: 24.0
PIII 700MHz SPECint95: 33.0 SPECfp95: 30.4

My numbers are from this doc at the CPU Info Center

to get an idea of the scale of this, the whole SETI@Home project is generating about 8 TeraFLOPS. This thing tops that by about 50%. So it could process about 500000 SETI units per day. or just under six *per second*.

Keywords: Quake 3, Kernel compilation, Beowulf, Toy Story 3 in realtime? :)

Fross

You could tear the ass off some RC5 cracking with this beast and the PPC client.

Also, SETI@Home offers a PPC client that would benefit from this.

I may have to get me a couple of these.

--

• The Harvard Journal of Law and Technology,
  The Journal of Online Law,
  The Virginia Journal of Law and Technology,
  The Berkeley Journal of Law and Technology,
  The Stanford Technology Law Review, and
  The Berkman Center for Internet & Technology

-Alex

• VQF.com
• MPEG home site
• MPEG source
• Additional audio s/w
• Sharp VN-EZ1 camera
• MPEG-4 (audio) development tools

Video, I'm not sure. Again, MPEG-4's video layer is said to be very good, but I'd have to see some videos in that format to be convinced. QT4 is OK, but there are no (en|de)coders for it for Linux, which limits it a bit.

A more scientific version of this was reported a while back - Margaret Fleck and David Forsyth did work at Berkeley and Iowa in about 1996 that finds naked people or horses using descriptions of shapes of bodies. Wired Article.
This slashdot story doesn't appear to be related to it.

A more scientific version of this was reported a while back - Margaret Fleck and David Forsyth did work at Berkeley and Iowa in about 1996 that finds naked people or horses using descriptions of shapes of bodies. Wired Article.
This slashdot story doesn't appear to be related to it.

A more scientific version of this was reported a while back - Margaret Fleck and David Forsyth did work at Berkeley and Iowa in about 1996 that finds naked people or horses using descriptions of shapes of bodies. Wired Article.
This slashdot story doesn't appear to be related to it.

He also suggests that information tech has the following unmeasured effects on things that economists find interesting:

• Companies can keep better track of their inventory; this improves economic efficiency in general (since goods are spending less time "in the pipeline" between manufacture and sale) and may moderate the boom-and-bust cycle.
• Perhaps unemployment is so low because the wage increases that employees expect are equal to their growth in productivity -- and therefore, employers don't need a higher unemployment rate to keep workers' aspirations in check.
• If historical macroeconomic patterns don't apply, then this creates trouble for national banks (such as the US Federal Reserve), because they can't depend on comparisons with past business cycles to decide whether to raise or lower interest rates.
• If deposits at commercial banks become less significant as a means of payment, then central banks might not be able to affect interest rates (since right now, they operate by selling and buying bonds at those banks).

Now, it is not protected primarily for SETI. Submm is an extremely important branch of astronomy, and gaining. The page of the largest submm telescope in the world the JCMT is a good place to start if you want to find out more about submm astronomy.

As for SETI funding, there are not huge amounts of resources going into it. There are small amounts of resources. IMHO, that is the way it should be, but piggyback projects should be conducted. Computing is best done through distributed projects, like the SETI@Home project. I have stopped running the client, though, I think they're not managing the project right.

The Indrema console has the same COTS-design related problems that also affect the X-Box (you can see this for my mildly paranoid discussion and speculation on the X-Box for more details on the X-Box's design problems).

The basic problem is the COTS (commercial, off the shelf) design ends up costing an extra $50-100 (in the extra memory, the hard drive, and the slightly higher cost for the CPU) more to produce then the Playstation 2 or whatever Nintendo is going to come out with, without providing significantly more capability as a game console. This is a huge handicap in the console market, where things are already sold at a loss to begin with.

Additionally, the proposal to make the GPU upgradeable defeats much of the purpose of a console: To provide a standard platform. The beauty of developing for a console is that all instances are identical, you don't need to worry about somebody having a less or more powerful machine.

However, unlike the X-Box, Indrema can't take the major economic losses Microsoft can on selling the console, in an attempt to get the platform established (and then gain revenue from the games and applications). Although annoying, Microsoft could tolerate an initial $100 loss on each console, if it allows the X-Box to become a viable platform. Indrema can not.

I suspect one of two scenarios: a) This is a company trying to get as much mileage out of the current Linux hype as possible, to get money from investors and (hopefully) an IPO, or b) these people actually believe in the snake oil they are selling, in which case someone should go to their headquarters, sit down with a calculator, and shoot down their financial projections before they cost their investors a lot of money.


Nicholas C Weaver
nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu

doh, you're correct, i mislabeled it. i should have provided the link when i filled it out.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Because!
--

Whilst we wait for the /. effect to ebb, this press release might amuse you. It's from a year ago... released by both UC Berkeley and U of Chicago Both the articles are pretty much the same... you needn't hit them both.

Aparently they're both part of the same program, along with Rochester. Some interesting details, despite being a year old. Talks about forming an artificial star with a laser, too. :-)

"Trade secrets do not lose protection if they are stolen or otherwise illegally obtained."

Once a trade secret is leaked, it's no longer a trade secret. If someone steals a trade secret, and it's later reclaimed, it's still a trade secret. But the moment they tell the secret to someone who didn't play a part in the theft, the info is no longer a trade secret, and the thief is liable for the damages. tbo's comment is correct if you replace "if they" with "when they".

In this scenario, the trade secret was leaked when Joe Beta Tester gave the details to MacNN, not later when MacNN posted them to the world.

And of course, once a trade secret is leaked, it's no longer a trade secret, not having the protections of copyright or patent law.

The recource of the injured party is to sue the person who leaked the trade secret, the beta tester. Even if MacNN was certain that it was a trade secret, it was no longer a trade secret when it was in their hands.

True, IANAL, but this info is straight from Pamela Samuelson's course on intellectual property law at UC Berkeley.

Of course, the situation is entirely different if Adobe can prove that MacNN stole the secrets themselves, i.e. that they swiped a copy from a beta tester without their consent.

Kevin Fox

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

Things people should be trying out include:

• VSTa
• Hurd
• MIT Exokernel
• SpinOS
• OSKit
• EROS
• Some variation on Wirth's Oberon systems

Even if you look at these, and go back to a UNIX-like system, there is benefit to seeing the extra abstractions they offer.

Perhaps anything that requires liquid cooling
and comes bundled with two onsite engineers
should be called a "supercomputer"

(the Jobs 'reality distortion field' G4 ads notwithstanding)

or perhaps anything that can crunch thru a
SETI data block in 10 minutes!

MAB

java's floating point arithmetic is blighted by five gratuitous mistakes

And they give several examples where java will produce incorrect results in numerically intensive applications.

My question is, is this analysis and the observations still valid now?

He wasn't completely forgotten. Speaking of scientists working to advance the frontiers of Gamma Ray Research, you forgot to mention another fine pioneer, David Banner.

And, yo, moderators, where ya' gettin' yo $3 crack from?

There are patches and instructions for patching lynx to support SSL here. This patch uses the SSLeay library, and supports up to 168 bit encryption. There is another patch available here that does much the same thing, but uses OpenSSL instead of SSLeay. Once you have lynx compiled with SSL, you can go here to test the strength of the encryption that you can use.

Gene, InfraSearch Founder

• Did this bloke read Dune? I'm fairly sure that stillsuits were described as being slick. That is anything but slick.
• There is no sign of anything that can tighten across the chest.
• Those boots are not desert boots that can be "fitted slip-fashion at the ankles".
• The thing is too loosely fitting. I don't remember exactly but it seems to me that something that collects and filters expended moisture should be like a second skin. It shouldn't be so loose, especially at the wrists and collar where moisture could escape.
• Shouldn't stillsuits have some kind of integrated hood? I seem to remember Liet-Kynes or Paul adjusting a strap across the forehead "tightly, so as to prevent chafing". http://www.scifi.com/dune/gallery/d46.jpg shows a pic of Stilgar but WTF is that thing on his head? It's not what Herbert describes. IIRC he describes stillsuits as having a flap that can be fastened across the mouth, and nose-plugs. Chani is described as having a callous alongside(?) her nose from the tube from the nose-plugs. Nothing is mentioned about that thing on his head that covers his mouth and nose. His clothing is wrong too. Wasn't fremen desert garb described as flowing robes?

This, and lots of other sorts of spamming, admit only one really good solution: collaborative filtering. You can find out more about this from Berkeley's link farm.
--

From http://cedr.lbl.gov/CEDRStaff.html:

Allan M. Konrad
email: konrad@sims.berkeley.edu
phone: (510) 486-5458
mail: Mailstop 50B-3238
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley, CA 94720

From http://www.lbl.gov:

amkonrad@lbl.gov
tel. (510) 486 5458
fax (510) 486 4004

From Yahoo! People Search:

konrad@cmsa.berkeley.edu

Finally, there's also the CEDR admin contact, cedr@lbl.gov, which on the CEDR website lists as directed to Mr Konrad.

A call to AC (510) Directory Assistance yielded no listing for an Allan M Konrad, Allan Konrad, nor for A M Konrad. Maybe others will have better luck.

Later.

From http://cedr.lbl.gov/CEDRStaff.html:

Allan M. Konrad
email: konrad@sims.berkeley.edu
phone: (510) 486-5458
mail: Mailstop 50B-3238
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley, CA 94720

From http://www.lbl.gov:

amkonrad@lbl.gov
tel. (510) 486 5458
fax (510) 486 4004

From Yahoo! People Search:

konrad@cmsa.berkeley.edu

Finally, there's also the CEDR admin contact, cedr@lbl.gov, which on the CEDR website lists as directed to Mr Konrad.

A call to AC (510) Directory Assistance yielded no listing for an Allan M Konrad, Allan Konrad, nor for A M Konrad. Maybe others will have better luck.

Later.