Domain: ibm.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ibm.com.
Comments · 7,595
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Re:price FUD
Consider this awesome aspect of the PS3 and watch the
/. sony haters heads splode. Cheapest Cell you can get your grubby fingers on. -
Enterprise scale deployment
We have a project inside IBM called the Global Storage Architecture that provides enterprise file system service. There are currently over 95K users on GSA with over 143TB of used space, spread across 39 installations on 5 continents.
There are several different ways to connect to GSA File depending on the platform and application, but Samba is used for connecting the Windows clients, of which there are tens of thousands. In addition to general office productivity, many of these clients are doing hardware design and software development.
You can read an account of GSA File in appendix B of the Implementing NFSv4 in the Enterprise: Planning and Migration Strategies Redbook. The appendix is oriented toward the NFS aspects of the service, but you can still get a good idea of what is going on.
http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246657 .html -
lets hope they don't get Lonovoed ..
Last summer, Lenovo agreed to preload Novell Inc.'s SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) on its ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation.
Then, Lenovo started retreating, and hemming that they really didn't mean that they would offer it pre-installed
Lenovo recommends Windows Vista(TM) Business for business computing. -
one button recovery ..
'they will need to setup call-centers prepared to handle Linux problems. They'll need to create tons of help-files for the call-centers to use', Grinin
There's only one thing more futile than phoning a call center, that is working in one. What's needed is a hidden recovery partition that can be activated with a single click.
'Rescue and Recovery is a one button recovery and restore solution that includes a set of self recovery tools to help users diagnose, get help and recover from a virus or other system crashes'
was Re:still some bumps... -
WTF? Tallking to Dell about Thin Clients?From TFA interview with FAA chief information officer David Bowen
Bowen cited several reasons why he finds Google Apps attractive. "It's a different sort of computing strategy," he said. "It takes the desktop out of the way so you're running a very thin client. From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages."
....
Bowen said he's in talks with the aviation safety agency's main hardware supplier, Dell Computer, to determine if it could deliver Linux-based computers capable of accessing Google Apps through a non-Microsoft browser once the FAA's XP-based computers pass their shelf life. "We have discussions going on with Dell," Bowen said. "We're trying to figure out what our roadmap will be after we're no longer able to acquire Windows XP."
I'm sorry, but do you really think Dell is going to enthusiastically push thin clients? AFAIK, Dell isn't even in the thin client business, they are in the PC business. Dell has an interest in dooming this from the start in order to protect their PC business. This CIO Bowen has no idea of where to go with this, so somebody needs to whisper in his ear. He needs to talk with Sun, since they have considerable experience with Sunray thin clients. Maybe even Neoware thin clients from IBM/Lenovo. -
Re:Misguided or simply lazy
whoops... sorry, cut off the last "l"
corrected URL:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-roadmap.html -
Re:Misguided or simply lazy
sort of like a translation of M$-speak to LINUX-speak.
You can start here, with the "Windows-to-Linux roadmap":
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-roadmap.htm
There comes a point where it's not a word-per-word translation, mind you. -
Re:I've been wondering...
I hate to feed the trolls, but you are seriously on-topic for this article: Look at the picture: Peter Seebach: male? female? I don't know.
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Re:die PHP diejava memory allocation is as fast as if not faster then malloc.
enjoy
i cant see how that statement can be true. the JRE might be able to allocate at that speed, since it is machine level, but the application cannot, since it has to be interpreted and then the allocation can occur.
thats not my point though. the point is that String s = "abc"; is not as fast as strcpy( s, "abc" ); for obvious reasons.
this could fork off onto a thread all of it's own, but somethings can occur in java faster than in php, as php does not have beans. beans provide a means of loading something common just once, and then it's available for future instances. this could avoid a lot of db calls that php scripts might require. -
Re:die PHP die
java memory allocation is as fast as if not faster then malloc.
enjoy -
Re:Well duh..
So, is this just a hallucination?
HP has 3 (4?) flavors of UNIX:
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/serve rs.html
HP-UX, Linux, Tru64
They also have UnixWare, though I'm not sure if that's UNIX or an application suite for UNIX, or something that is "kinda like but not really" UNIX.
VMS is not UNIX, so I won't count that.
Given that these are "for sale", I don't think "dead" is quite the appropriate term.
You can drop out Linux since it's not a IBM creation, reducing their number of Unix OSes by 1, but that's still a positive number.
We use all of the above (except UnixWare) and many more where I work, in various places (LARGE organization).
As for IBM, AIX and Linux. I5 might be a Unix OS also, but I'm not familiar with it.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/os/
Also for sale. And AIX is also still used (they have AIX server in various places in the organization where I work also) -
So...
So, you're saying it's a Domino server?
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Wrong.
IBM is currently involved in hundreds of open source projects, ranging from small stuff all the way up to stuff like Xen, Eclipse, and a huge amount of code for the Linux kernel. Claiming that IBM contributes nothing of value to open source is an outright lie.
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My battery was affected...
You give Lenovo your ThinkPad product and serial number, battery serial number, shipping address and they'll ship you a new battery in 4-6 weeks. Go to it if you have a battery of model 92P1131.
You can use `cat
/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info | grep model` to find your battery model without removing it. -
92P1131
The details of the recall are here. Essentially, if you have a battery of model type 92P1131, then you need to be concerned.
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Re:The first rule of teraflop club...LOL- you're complaining about wattage for 1 TF when they did it on a pair of friggin' video cards?? That's gotta be what, 500 watts total for whole PC?
We've run several PC clusters and IBM mainframes that didn't have a 1TF of capacity. You don't want know much power went into them. Yes, our modern blade-based clusters are more condensed, but they're still power hogs for dual and quad core systems.Blue gene is considered to be a power efficient cluster and the fastest, but it still draws 7kw per rack of 1024 cpus. At 4.71 TF per rack, even Blue Gene pulls 1.5kw per teraflop.
Yes, it's a pair of video cards, and not a general purpose cpu, but your average user doesn't have ability to program and use a Blue Gene style solution either. They just might get some real use out of this with a game Physics Engine that taps into this computing power.
This is cool.
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Re:NYSE: Microsoft (R) powered (R)
Actually, SQL Server 2005 is used by NASDAQ, not the NYSE - they are two completely different trading systems. The Dow Jones is an index of select stock listed on the NYSE.
The machines that calculate the Dow Jones Industrial Average are IBM hardware running Unix.
SQL Server running NASDAQ: http://www.windowsfs.com/eNews/tabid/112/articleTy pe/ArticleView/articleId/933/Securities-NASDAQ-Mig rates-to-SQL-Server-2005.aspx
IBM Unix Machines running NYSE and calculating the Dow Jones, as pointed out by another poster: http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/financialservices /doc/content/news/pressrelease/1567015103.html -
Re:NYSE: Microsoft (R) powered (R)
Actually, the problem was with Dow Jones computers, which are IBM pSeries UNIX machines.
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Re:IBM backend w/ Linux Workstations used here?
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Re:Ok...
Oops did you say IBM? http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19
4 05.wss -
Re:Switch to backup system... because of load!?
Windows?? Are you sure? http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19
4 05.wss -
Re:Simply don't use IBM
DB2 v9 *is* certified on Ubuntu. http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/linux/va
l idate/ -
Who modded this insightful?http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/windows/
Tada! DB2, IBM's database product, certified for Windows.
If you can read you will also note that they list the versions of 2003 that are certified.
So your entire argument is null and void. Specific windows distro/version's get certified or not to work with software by the companies supporting said software. You will not that windows XP for instance is NOT certified to work with DB2.
Doesn't mean you cannot run DB2 on Windows XP (or other versions) just that if you do, you are on your own. Exactly the same as with linux distro's or even IBM's un-certified AIX versions.
Certification is nothing more the saying, we tested our product with that product and if there are problems we will help you (for an ungodly amount of money) and if you choose to run our product on another product we won't help you, unless you pay an even large sum of money.
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Re:Can't even get stable basic security cam softwa
http://www.research.ibm.com/peoplevision/
Commercial Availability: The S3-R1 system is currently available to end customers on a pilot basis. Business partners can also license the technology for product development.
Check out the demos under "Research Areas" (bottom of page)--incredible! -
IBM's Smart Surveillance System (S3)
(Previous PeopleVision Project)
Check out the incredible demos under the heading "Research Areas" (bottom of page) at http://www.research.ibm.com/peoplevision/ -
A better Win32/Linux thread article
It sounds like the developer from Intel needs to ask IBM:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-ipc2lin1.html
Enjoy, -
Re:Business softwareTo reply to your missive, I'm currently using gnucash to run my small business, connecting to my CentOS server using OpenSuSE 10.2 on a WiFi enabled T30 IBM Thinkpad. If I want something commercial, I can always use an ORACLE or IBM-based (for example) product which is completely cross-platform. To be honest, it has taken until just recently for Linux to mature to the point where there is little difference between it and the commercial products. To boot, the improvements in Linux are coming at such a rapid rate that I am quite confident in my decision.
Therefore, take your time, revisit your decision and, in the end, you'll end up with a lot lower software and maintenance costs, running on older equipment with only a few viruses and malware knocking at your door.
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Baen Books has always gotten this:http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library
/ us-cranky19.htmlJim Baen kindly responded to my email asking him why they'd selected open standards and formats: "Because not only are our readers, in the main, not thieves, but because there is nothing there that is stealable." His point is an interesting one: there's not much point in stealing paperback books -- they are pretty cheap -- and you couldn't print out the text for less than it would cost to buy the book. The only people who could possibly be "stealing" are the ones who, for whatever reason, end up not wanting the books and they wouldn't have bought the books anyway.
Jim Baen died last summer, but Baen Books still gives away a huge number of books in completely unencrypted, un-DRM'd formats. I think I have bought well over $100 of their buyable e-books, because I can read them on anything I want, any time I want. -
Where's P2P?
Except for the fact that P2P file-sharing predates Bram even though it wasn't called that.
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Re:Ironic
She is the real deal alright.
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Re:What about visiting Bible sites or /.?Almost anything taken to an extreme can become illogical. The issue here is about IBM's rules for computer use.
Let's not speculate about what could be done: Read the actual rules. We sign a contract every year that we will follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines. If you're curious, the short section on information and communication systems.
I think the rules are very reasonable. Does anything in there strike you as unreasonable?
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Re:What about visiting Bible sites or /.?Almost anything taken to an extreme can become illogical. The issue here is about IBM's rules for computer use.
Let's not speculate about what could be done: Read the actual rules. We sign a contract every year that we will follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines. If you're curious, the short section on information and communication systems.
I think the rules are very reasonable. Does anything in there strike you as unreasonable?
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Structural analysis for Java
I really thought that IBM was headed somewhere when they cooked up Structural analysis for Java
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/sa4j back in the 04's.
Yes, heuristics can catch probable mistakes in developed code, but the above sort of thing, if sophisticated enough, could warn you about serious architectural mistakes as you are making them. -
Re: Shared-Nothing Architecture
Gee, I don't know anyone who's been succuessfully doing this for years... or getting crazy performance with partitioned databases, or anything...
/Caveat, I work for the folks who make this product... but nobody pays me for PR or anything -
Re:stealth marketing
Not so fast! Apple's systems have been booting from network images and supporting network installation, if memory serves, before such tricks were even possible on the Windows PC due in part to their use of Open Firmware way back when (they use EFI now-a-days). Network boot and install was difficult and unreliable on the Windows PC until quite recently. I was told by various vendors including Dell as recently as two years ago (some of their models worked and some of them didn't) that limitations of the firmware in most PCs were to blame. In private conversations the engineers working on these products admitted that they were basically waiting for the hardware to catch up and that certain models which my client had just purchased (by the many thousands) would probably never work reliably for network booting and network install due to these issues. On the PC platform there were various remote management hacks, uh, initiatives, like WOL and PXE designed to help get around the hurdle of broken-by-design PC firmware. Finally a modern (e.g. extensible and thus as capable as the decades-old Open Firmware platform) firmware for the PC was designed by Intel, the EFI - Extensible Firmware Interface.
On the Macintosh, by contrast, remote booting and remote installation "just worked". For years. Even before the Intel based Macintosh. Yes. It did. No kinda sorta about it. When Windows LAN administrators were wasting bazillions of dollars in the systems integration labs of Fortune 500 and government agencies all over the world, this "just worked" on the Macintosh.
Various products, including some from IBM, are available to assist with remote management of the Macintosh, not to mention the nice built-in stuff like OpenDirectory.
NetBoot and Network Install
NetOctopus
IBM TIvoli Storage Manager
IBM, by the way, makes multiple overlapping (and sometimes competing) software distribution and imaging products. You have, I think, seen one of their other products, the name of which keeps changing to escape it's reputation as being utterly craptastic, but which usually has something like "Remote" in the name. What you (most likely) saw was called (if memory serves) RIM (Remote Installation Manager) and is presently marketed as IBM Remote Deployment Manager part of a product suite called IBM Director. This product doesn't support the Macintosh but that doesn't imply that the Macintosh isn't ready for the enterprise. It might, in fact, imply the opposite -- that Windows isn't really ready for enterprise scale deployment.
There are litterally tens of billions of dollars per year worth of enterprise systems management products on the market which are totally irrelevant to managing an enterprise network of Macintosh computers not because they don't support the Macintosh (which I freely admit most of them do not) but because the Macintosh doesn't need them to be deployed and managed at a large scale. These products largely exist to fix things which are broken in Windows, things which are problems only when you need to deploy and manage lots of machines, things which are not broken in Mac OS X. (I know this because I am an enterprise systems and network architecture consultant, and I help fix scalability problems related to enterprise systems management for Fortune 500 and government clients.)
I wish that I could do a case study comparing two interesting organizations with which I am intimately familiar, but unfortunately I learned this stuff off the record and cannot reveal the organization names. -
Re:stealth marketing
Not so fast! Apple's systems have been booting from network images and supporting network installation, if memory serves, before such tricks were even possible on the Windows PC due in part to their use of Open Firmware way back when (they use EFI now-a-days). Network boot and install was difficult and unreliable on the Windows PC until quite recently. I was told by various vendors including Dell as recently as two years ago (some of their models worked and some of them didn't) that limitations of the firmware in most PCs were to blame. In private conversations the engineers working on these products admitted that they were basically waiting for the hardware to catch up and that certain models which my client had just purchased (by the many thousands) would probably never work reliably for network booting and network install due to these issues. On the PC platform there were various remote management hacks, uh, initiatives, like WOL and PXE designed to help get around the hurdle of broken-by-design PC firmware. Finally a modern (e.g. extensible and thus as capable as the decades-old Open Firmware platform) firmware for the PC was designed by Intel, the EFI - Extensible Firmware Interface.
On the Macintosh, by contrast, remote booting and remote installation "just worked". For years. Even before the Intel based Macintosh. Yes. It did. No kinda sorta about it. When Windows LAN administrators were wasting bazillions of dollars in the systems integration labs of Fortune 500 and government agencies all over the world, this "just worked" on the Macintosh.
Various products, including some from IBM, are available to assist with remote management of the Macintosh, not to mention the nice built-in stuff like OpenDirectory.
NetBoot and Network Install
NetOctopus
IBM TIvoli Storage Manager
IBM, by the way, makes multiple overlapping (and sometimes competing) software distribution and imaging products. You have, I think, seen one of their other products, the name of which keeps changing to escape it's reputation as being utterly craptastic, but which usually has something like "Remote" in the name. What you (most likely) saw was called (if memory serves) RIM (Remote Installation Manager) and is presently marketed as IBM Remote Deployment Manager part of a product suite called IBM Director. This product doesn't support the Macintosh but that doesn't imply that the Macintosh isn't ready for the enterprise. It might, in fact, imply the opposite -- that Windows isn't really ready for enterprise scale deployment.
There are litterally tens of billions of dollars per year worth of enterprise systems management products on the market which are totally irrelevant to managing an enterprise network of Macintosh computers not because they don't support the Macintosh (which I freely admit most of them do not) but because the Macintosh doesn't need them to be deployed and managed at a large scale. These products largely exist to fix things which are broken in Windows, things which are problems only when you need to deploy and manage lots of machines, things which are not broken in Mac OS X. (I know this because I am an enterprise systems and network architecture consultant, and I help fix scalability problems related to enterprise systems management for Fortune 500 and government clients.)
I wish that I could do a case study comparing two interesting organizations with which I am intimately familiar, but unfortunately I learned this stuff off the record and cannot reveal the organization names. -
Re:stealth marketing
Not so fast! Apple's systems have been booting from network images and supporting network installation, if memory serves, before such tricks were even possible on the Windows PC due in part to their use of Open Firmware way back when (they use EFI now-a-days). Network boot and install was difficult and unreliable on the Windows PC until quite recently. I was told by various vendors including Dell as recently as two years ago (some of their models worked and some of them didn't) that limitations of the firmware in most PCs were to blame. In private conversations the engineers working on these products admitted that they were basically waiting for the hardware to catch up and that certain models which my client had just purchased (by the many thousands) would probably never work reliably for network booting and network install due to these issues. On the PC platform there were various remote management hacks, uh, initiatives, like WOL and PXE designed to help get around the hurdle of broken-by-design PC firmware. Finally a modern (e.g. extensible and thus as capable as the decades-old Open Firmware platform) firmware for the PC was designed by Intel, the EFI - Extensible Firmware Interface.
On the Macintosh, by contrast, remote booting and remote installation "just worked". For years. Even before the Intel based Macintosh. Yes. It did. No kinda sorta about it. When Windows LAN administrators were wasting bazillions of dollars in the systems integration labs of Fortune 500 and government agencies all over the world, this "just worked" on the Macintosh.
Various products, including some from IBM, are available to assist with remote management of the Macintosh, not to mention the nice built-in stuff like OpenDirectory.
NetBoot and Network Install
NetOctopus
IBM TIvoli Storage Manager
IBM, by the way, makes multiple overlapping (and sometimes competing) software distribution and imaging products. You have, I think, seen one of their other products, the name of which keeps changing to escape it's reputation as being utterly craptastic, but which usually has something like "Remote" in the name. What you (most likely) saw was called (if memory serves) RIM (Remote Installation Manager) and is presently marketed as IBM Remote Deployment Manager part of a product suite called IBM Director. This product doesn't support the Macintosh but that doesn't imply that the Macintosh isn't ready for the enterprise. It might, in fact, imply the opposite -- that Windows isn't really ready for enterprise scale deployment.
There are litterally tens of billions of dollars per year worth of enterprise systems management products on the market which are totally irrelevant to managing an enterprise network of Macintosh computers not because they don't support the Macintosh (which I freely admit most of them do not) but because the Macintosh doesn't need them to be deployed and managed at a large scale. These products largely exist to fix things which are broken in Windows, things which are problems only when you need to deploy and manage lots of machines, things which are not broken in Mac OS X. (I know this because I am an enterprise systems and network architecture consultant, and I help fix scalability problems related to enterprise systems management for Fortune 500 and government clients.)
I wish that I could do a case study comparing two interesting organizations with which I am intimately familiar, but unfortunately I learned this stuff off the record and cannot reveal the organization names. -
Re:What a great idea.
They're planning on calling it "Java"
This is more insightful than funny; I wish I had mod points.
IBM already makes cross-platform IT management products (or rather frequently, it buys them and incorporates them into their own high-priced products). The overall term for the many products in this family is IBM Tivoli. Interestingly, much of it runs on Java. It's a very mature line of products used by lots of high-profile companies worldwide, and it makes IBM many millions of dollars. -
Direct Link
Details from the Horse's Mouth (so to speak).
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Direct Link
Details from the Horse's Mouth (so to speak).
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Re:Using what technology?I feel sorry for you.
A quick search on IBM sites shows that the Open Client Solution integrates cross-plateform products, including Lotus Expeditor which is Eclipse 3.2 based. So there you have it - everything you hate - Java and Lotus product brand.As for the horrible UI, massive overheads, and disgustingly slow. , you must be living in the previous century to still think Java is slow and ugly.
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Re:Using what technology?I feel sorry for you.
A quick search on IBM sites shows that the Open Client Solution integrates cross-plateform products, including Lotus Expeditor which is Eclipse 3.2 based. So there you have it - everything you hate - Java and Lotus product brand.As for the horrible UI, massive overheads, and disgustingly slow. , you must be living in the previous century to still think Java is slow and ugly.
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Of course there is
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Sanity Check -Re:Why use something the creators...
Most IBMers (like me) live with their thinkpads joined to their hips. Do you want to try migrating 320K employees from Windows to Linux in one go? Think about organizational impact. Think about your customer base. Give some thought to the migration challenges that are illustrated in this book (of which I was the project leader)...
Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2
IBM is a solutions company. A lot of us need to live (compute) within the same environments as our clients do. As more companies consider Linux on the desktop, more of our business will head that way, and consequently more IBMers will to.
So you should look at this announcement in context. This offering is a yet another clear indication that Desktop Linux is gaining market momentum, and IBM sees a need (and is making a big investment in internal transformation as well as product offerings) to be able to meet the needs of clients that are increasingly demanding more diversity in client computing solutions. -
Re:Well....
---That sounds very interesting. Would you mind providing a link to the literature that discusses that ? I have some trouble figuring out the thermodynamics of this. Perpetum mobile and such, you know....
Of course. It, at first, sounds too good, but here you go.
Rolf Landauer showed in 1961 that reversible logic operations could be performed by neither using energy or taking heat out. The same could not be said for irreversible logic operations.
"Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process" IBM Journal of Research Development 17 (1973): 525-32, IBM PDF
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In 1973, Charles Bennett proved that any computation could be derived from purely reversible computing.
Charles H. Bennett "Logical Reversibility of Computation" IBM PDF
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Later on, Fredkin and Toffoli presented a review of the ideas of reversible computing. The essential idea is that you can save all intermediary states between an algorithm to get the answer, and then reverse the process so that no energy is used, and generated no heat. Fredkin also indicates that if we switched from irreversible to reversible computing, we would expect to lose no more than 1% efficiency.
International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21 (1982):219-53 PDF
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And as an unsubstantiated claim, I remember hearing that due to heat/radiation sources, that volatile memory gains errors of 1 bit per billion with a time from 1 minute to 1 day ( I forget the exact time). To correct this would only require the entropy of deleting that incorrect bit. In other words, 10^8 or so magnitude heat shrinkage. But trust the stuff above.
(Many of these ideas were taken from "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil from page 130) -
Re:Well....
---That sounds very interesting. Would you mind providing a link to the literature that discusses that ? I have some trouble figuring out the thermodynamics of this. Perpetum mobile and such, you know....
Of course. It, at first, sounds too good, but here you go.
Rolf Landauer showed in 1961 that reversible logic operations could be performed by neither using energy or taking heat out. The same could not be said for irreversible logic operations.
"Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process" IBM Journal of Research Development 17 (1973): 525-32, IBM PDF
___
In 1973, Charles Bennett proved that any computation could be derived from purely reversible computing.
Charles H. Bennett "Logical Reversibility of Computation" IBM PDF
___
Later on, Fredkin and Toffoli presented a review of the ideas of reversible computing. The essential idea is that you can save all intermediary states between an algorithm to get the answer, and then reverse the process so that no energy is used, and generated no heat. Fredkin also indicates that if we switched from irreversible to reversible computing, we would expect to lose no more than 1% efficiency.
International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21 (1982):219-53 PDF
___
And as an unsubstantiated claim, I remember hearing that due to heat/radiation sources, that volatile memory gains errors of 1 bit per billion with a time from 1 minute to 1 day ( I forget the exact time). To correct this would only require the entropy of deleting that incorrect bit. In other words, 10^8 or so magnitude heat shrinkage. But trust the stuff above.
(Many of these ideas were taken from "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil from page 130) -
Re:Missed the Boat on Missing the BoatTo add a few more specific rebuttals to my post:
A common response to the "applets are dead" statement is "No they're not. I still use them." Applets aren't useless; people still create very impressive things with them. The Java Posse highlights one or more applets each week. The statement should instead read, "Applets are dead for Web RIAs." The installation process for the JRE and for any particular applet is not reliable enough for anyone to depend on them for a general-purpose website.
That's basically a fancy way of saying they're dead while simultaneously arguing the opposite. People still write software for the Colecovision, but you don't see anyone talking about the "missed opportunity" to compete with the Playstation, do you?Desktop applications have also suffered, and left bad marks on Java in general, further sullying applets by association. I had an experience with a Java product called Memorex exPressit. The UI was terrible and buggy.
Poor UIs have been a hallmark of Java Applications. While much of the blame does lie heavily on inexperienced programmers doing GUI work, there's also the matter of Microsoft's interference with the platform. One of the reasons for Java's early popularity in applications was because Microsoft provided an excellent AWT implementation that integrated with their platform. Which was exactly how Sun wanted it. The most experienced company with a platform (i.e. the vendor) would handle the specific implementation of the JVM. The Sun JVM was just a reference implementation, and was not intended for deployment.
Then Microsoft went about their usual backstabbing and Sun didn't have a good feel for how to replace their expertise. The rest is history.Consider Corel's attempt to create a word processor using Java (I don't remember whether they were trying to port WordPerfect or write something from scratch). It was obviously too early to try it, since all they had was the AWT.
Well, that and the fact that they were trying to write it as an Applet. I mean, you don't just take a full up office suite and cram it into a tiny portion of a Web Browser window! That's not exactly a recipe for a good interface. The Corel concept was good on paper, but the implementation was outright horrid. Unfortuantely, it was probably caused by the misconception that Java == Applets. Something that we programmers still struggle with today.OpenOffice is not written in Java, but in C++. I don't believe it was because the programmers wanted to struggle with the cross-platform issues presented by C++. It was speed, and perhaps the need to more directly control the underlying platform.
Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that OpenOffice was based on StarOffice? You know, the Office Suite that was developed back in 1986? However, there are a number of modern OOo components that are written in Java. Database Access in particular is a lot better if you can rely on Java's APIs.The show-stopper was Java's lack of support for MP3s and multimedia in general. As Dick Wall of the Java Posse has pointed out numerous times, the Java Media Framework (JMF) has been virtually ignored for many years.
Um... what? JMF is ignored because it's unnecessary. Java has Sound and MIDI APIs integrated into its core. MP3 support can be found in APIs like JavaLayer. Video has always been a problem, and not just Java. While there have always been solutions for standardized formats, the majority of video encoding/decoding takes advantage of proprietary codecs. Something that is not easy (or legal) to replicate. Linux makes use of a number of legal loopholes to bring us software like MPlayer and VLC. But these were never viable solutions for a straight-laced company like Sun. And the idea of better OS integration was something of an antithesis to Java technology. So Java focused on its strengths, not its weaknesses. -
Re:Lots of folks making the switch
It's damn hard to find a windows laptop for $1099 that matches the performance, features, and robustness of a macbook. Believe me, I tried.
The Lenovo Z series seems pretty comparable (including the price), although I'd prefer the MacBook anyway. Of course, sometimes you have no choice but to get a non-Apple, such as when you want a tablet.
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Similar to QEDWiki
The concept sounds very similar to QEDWiki demo video (demo video requires Flash).
QEDWiki is an IBM product based on the Zend Framework. You can create mash-ups and other things much like by drag and drop of components, all in your browser. -
Re:Good Science/Art websites?