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So you don't use syntax highlighting/validation?

You can also redirect all the compiler errors to /dev/null, because you should just be able to spot them by looking at the code.

Hell you don't even need a compiler. It should be obvious what machine code should be generated from a high level language. Just transcribe the machine code directly.

That's *real* programming.

To be fair I think CS programs should require that students should use rmcc. It seems to me that a lot of new programs tend to just change the code until it compiles without realizing what it does.
Trying to access an object trough a reference shouldn't end up in code that creates a copy of the object referenced, ever. Sure, the code works, but the programmer has obviously just changed to code until it compiles and works, without understanding the syntax.
By not giving the students advice on what line to edit or what the error is they need to understand what they actually are doing.
Also, memory protection leads to lazy programmers.

...then truly comprehend how small, short-lived, and insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things. That kind of realization will humble anyone, no matter how smart they are.

Except me. And Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Sounds like you are close to a Total Perspective Vortex.

http://fscked.org/writings/TotalPerspectiveVortex/

Yeah well despite the sibling post's comments about murder, Mike's actions will not likely cause the election of a lunatic and the deaths of almost a hundred thousand innocent people either, so I'm guessing he will sleep quite a bit more soundly than Nader should. That is not to say Nader was in the wrong either, though. Sometimes the world just needs an antihero.

Anyhow, you can see Mike's reasons for full disclosure on his blog.

Mike Perry's site might (or might not) be a better source than some random blog post that doesn't even link to it.

Scyld has released the Scyld Beowulf Scalable Computing Software:
http://linuxcentral.com/catalog/index.php3?prod_code=L000-089

I also recommend looking at these URLs for additional help:
http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/beowulf/tutorial/building.html
http://fscked.org/writings/clusters/cluster.html

Well, imo? Not really - how does "pervasive message passing" function as a COMPLETE OPPOSITE, in terms of design

It doesn't. I will give this one more try...

"Pervasive message passing" is a feature of language, or the framework. It's like object-orientedness, or garbage collection. It's a property of the tool.

"Coarse multithreading", as you've explained it, is a methodology. So is "fine-grained multithreading". These are like, oh, model-view-controller. You can implement model-view-controller with an object-oriented language, or, if you really want, you can implement it in a purely-functional language (like Haskell), or in a language without even a concept of a subroutine (BASIC with GOTOs), etc... you can do it in a language with garbage collection or without...

What's more, "coarse" and "fine-grained" are relative and a matter of opinion. How do you define a "task"? And keep in mind that while having thousands of threads sounds like "fine-grained", they are not sharing data, except by passing messages back and forth...

This is all & again: IF NO CHANGES ARE MADE? This NEVER happens, period.

Exactly.

Threads additionally (again), are much "lighter" to instance, than an entire process (as forking does, vs. spawning extra threads).

Sigh...

Apparently, you still don't get it, even though you just tried to explain copy-on-write to me. fork() on Linux is implemented as copy-on-write, and has very little overhead. Linux sees threads and processes as essentially the same thing.

The overhead of using processes instead of threads is pretty much irrelevant, especially if you were going to use message-passing in the threads, even moreso if you're intentionally doing "coarse multithreading". Of course, you could also use shared memory between processes.

And yes, all of this is Linux-specific. Forking a process on Windows is much slower.

A few - but, the point is NOT so much about them

No, the point is that, originally, I said that I would not see any real improvement if I had a quad-core system instead of dual-core.

it's more about what happens when you have a "CPU Hog" of an app...

You seem to be operating in a fantasy world where:

1. I have more than one app that wants to saturate a core
2. I do not have the ability to set the priority of these apps lower
3. I absolutely need my one app to run at 100% of that one core, rather than 90% of it. (Especially ludicrous as you keep bringing up Amarok -- if Amarok is using 100% CPU because of a bug, forcing it to use 90% isn't going to cause problems.)
4. I was saying that dual-core is actually useless to me -- it's not. It just means I don't have to do item #2, above.

I never said or implied that multicore would never be usable, or that it was useless to everyone. I was merely speculating that most people are probably in the same situation I am.

Furthermore, most of the points you bring up, I knew, but didn't think they were relevant to the discussion. Had you been paying attention, you might have noticed that I was specifically making a statement about how completely irrelevant the deep technical details are to the point of whether dual-core is useful to the general population -- most people I know would never notice a machine they were using was dual-core until you pointed it out to them.

Smartear might do what you want (haven't tried it but from the description it sounds like it's what you're looking for).

of the total perspective vortex

Though the wormhole route is explored most engagingly in Greg Egan's Diaspora, I prefer the Total Perspective Vortex in H2G2.

He should have used rmcc. Real Man's Compiler Collection won't give you any annoying error messages (even when compiling windows source code).

Our development team switched to rmcc from gcc when the first version was released back a week ago and the change in productivity was unbelievable.

I read sci.crypt regularly, even if I don't post there. Granted, Tom comes forward as someone who has certain attitude problems (yes, I'm willing to go on record saying this) but the library is still a marvelous piece of work. It's not like we haven't seen controversial personalities in this field before. Also, LTC is nothing but a simple building block, and you can actually verify its functionality and integrity by running the algorithms against any known and verifiable test vector sets. (Locating these is left as an exercise for those interested.) Memory checkers such as valgrind and NJAMD can be used to ascertain that the library routines themselves work without memory flaws. (Especially dangerous when working with crypto, we wouldn't want to overwrite wrong data...)

The API is consistent, even if at times the need to return error codes means that the amount of bytes processed is written to a passed argument. And indeed, as another poster said, LTC is damn pretty and easy-to-use crypto library. Most of all, it's trivial to use only the parts you need and embed those to any program you're writing.

If you run GNU Linux and want to get off the grid, this might be your solution. NWFW. Ok, it's a little SFW, but it might be embarassing if your boss walks up.

Pretty cool picture though; It'll look real nice alongside the Unix Family Tree on the wall. If only there was a landscape version... time for some PostScript hacking I guess.

You are of course referring to the Total Perspective Vortex, which all extremists of any sort should be forced into.

Which reminds of my favorite sig: "Death to all extremists!" :)

He made no mention of Apple or anyone else as competitors, but specifically mentioned Linux and Open Source numerous times.. A position my friend said was consistent with a number of internal emails circulating about that named Linux as their biggest threat.

I'm sure I'll get tarred and feathered by the geek community for this, but I actually think the time-sensitive shading idea is pretty cool. Not sure how good it would be in practice, but I'm always up for some good eye candy. Especially my own (shameless unrelated plug). What's a little wasted CPU time if you can have your desktop reflect the time of day it is? Sounds a lot like xplanet, but cooler.

Once again, life imitates humorous SciFi - the TIA project sounds amazingly like the Total Perspective Vortex.

Ah, place and perspective.

These animations remind of the total perspective vortex. (quote)

Pictures of Mike Pery