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The amount of power that is needed to create a realistic outdoor scene with multiple actors is simply astounding. King Kong will most likely be candy for the eyes when it is done. Halo, the next Peter Jackson movie, will probably just as amazing.

An interesting article on building a digital animation studio (IBM) is here:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-a nimstudio1/

Yeah you ahead, compare to slack and debian because they are the best representatives of the distros business, first time people etc. are directed to.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it:

http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.mandriva.com/
http://fedora.redhat.com/
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/

Let's not forget the first article in the series...

Overall, it's not a bad primer on the field of robotics. The entire series is a refreshing read for beginners.

Also, let us not forget that java has memory leaks too and in my opinion they are much less obvious than C++ memory leaks.

(Dislaimer - I'm a wikipedia administrator, arbitrator, and the "featured article director" -- I choose the featured articles you see on the main page every day)

Last week I was a guest speaker for a group of education graduate students about Wikipedia (the course was on technology use in education; wikipedia was part of the curriculum). Before the lecture, sent them a few items I thought they should read - objective studies of Wikipedia's accuracy done by impartial, outside organization. Here's what I sent them:

----------
1) "A group of students in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois has published a paper entitled "Information Quality Discussions in Wikipedia" (PDF format). The focus of the paper was on assessing the IQ of Wikipedia featured articles -- in this case, IQ stands for "information quality" -- when compared to other samples from the project, including featured article removal candidates, pages marked as NPOV disputes, and a selection of random pages. According to the paper, the study showed how seriously the Wikipedia project views issues of article quality. The authors concluded that as a quality standard, the featured article process "is not ideal, but it does seem relatively rigorous." They also noted that the process is not as resource-intensive as other possibilities, such as blind judging." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2005-08-01/Featured_content
PDF of research paper can be found at: http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~stvilia/papers/qualWiki. pdf

2) An article comparing the WP to Brockhaus and Encarta has appeared in issue 21/04 of C't, a major German computer engineering magazine. It is titled /Lexika: Wikipedia gegen Brockhaus und Encarta/, starting on p. 132 - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_vs_Brockh aus_and_Encarta
Full survey results can be found at: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/20 04-October/035339.html

3) "As publicly editable sites, Wikis are vulnerable to vandalism. We've examined many pages on Wikipedia that treat controversial topics, and have discovered that most have, in fact, been vandalized at some point in their history. But we've also found that vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so quickly that most users will never see its effects." - IBM study of Wikipedia - http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/results. htm

4) Computer Science professor (and minor geek rockstar) Ed Felton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Felten) posted in his blog about a
small-scale survey he did of Wikipedia: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=674
-----------------

As far as my personal interactions - as featured article director, I can say first-hand that we've been hitting really hard on the need to have inline cited sources in the article text. It's been an explicit requirement for featured articles for some time now (9-12 months or so). In many ways, this makes our content much more trustworhty than most other information sources.

Furthermore, purely from personal experience, I can say there's something to be said for the expert-hobbyist. For example, the "best" writer on wikipedia (in terms of number of featured articles written) is a 17 year old from New Jersey who writes long, thorough, well referenced, accurate articles on, erm, British and the Bri

Weightless threads in Python:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-py thrd.html

They are cooperative but far more efficient than Python's own threading model. You can easily create hundreds of thousands of concurrent threads.

I don't know about PPC but suse has certainly released suse 9 for power5 IBM platforms..http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/o ffers/lp/demos/summary/l-pow-installsles.html

IBM's not doing so bad, and Microsoft will almost certaily thrive even if the supposed shift happens. http://www.ibm.com/investor/

How can a major player on the international market who oppenly wants "fair use" support in the "new" DVD-hardware be a bad thing?

Because of the quotes you needed to put around "fair use".

Fair Use is not something that they can just make up and negotiate. Fair Use is a legal term with a legal definition. Fair Use is a legal doctrin established on afirmative Constitutional Rights grounds.

Intel is NOT supporting fair use. Intel is supporting DRM that PROHIBITS Fair Use, Intel is supporting a position and expectation that people engaging in Fair Use be IMPRISONED.

Do you want to be able to make further installs beyond what you are allowed to by DRM (that's only one install)

What I want is for INNOCENT people not to FACE PRISON for staying within the bounds of what is noninfringing under copyright law.

Or do you think a 12 year old girl should go to prison for including a small clip from something in some class project? Intel's position certainly doesn't allow her to do that. Intel's position is that she is expected to go to prison for up to five years if she does that. Oh, and just in case it wasn't obvious already, a student including a small clip of something in a class project *is* *not* *copyright infringment*. It is Fair Use.

You don't get to make up what is and is not included in Fair Use. The courts decide what is Fair use, and Intel wants to prohibit Fair Use.

don't you like that a huge firm actually tries to do some good instead of what M$ wants (total DRM control of every machine)?

You haven't been paying attention. Microsoft and Intel want the exact same thing. They both want Trusted Computing and total control of every machine. They both want every machine having a Trust chip with an ID number to track you, a chip to spy on you and your software and send those spy reports to other people over the internet, a chip with embedded crypto keys to deny you control of your computer and prevent you from reading or altering your own files, a chip boobytrapped to self destruct if you attempt to extract your keys. If you watch that video carefully you'll see IBM actually advertizing the self destruct nature of the chips. Chips designed to be secure *against* the owner of the computer. A chips for *your* computer explicitly designed to be secure against *you*.

-

Open source DRM is nonsensical except in refference to Trusted Computing, except in refference to new CPUs with ID numbers to track you and with embedded secret keys and you are forbidden to know your own keys, and those chips are boobytrapped to self destruct if you attempt to extract your key, chips designed to spy on you and all your hardware and software and send certified spy reports to other people with you denied the ability to control or alter the contents of these spy reports, and to deny you control of your own computer and or read or alter your own files except as permitted by the Trust chip.

Because that is exactly the chip Intel is producing and that is the only way "open source DRM" would be any different or more effective than DRM-free Open Source. Without Trusted Computing you could simply recomplie the source to ignore/remove the DRM.

In case you weren't aware of all that, it's all documented. The ID number I mentioned is kapped the PubEK. Your master keys that you are forbidden to know are called the PrivEK and the RootStorageKey, and all of your other keys get locked awayfrom you under these keys. The spy report I mentioned is called Remote Attestation. The inability to read or alter your own files is called Sealed Storage. Oh, and that part about the chips being boobytrapped to self destruct... well if you don't beleive me you can watch this IBM Thinkpad TV commercial where they actually ADVERTIZE the boobytrapped selfdestruct aspect.

Oh, and by the way.... Trusted Computing defeats the GPL and other Open Sourse licenses. The Trust chip prohibits you from reading files if you alter even a single line of the source, and the Trust chip testifies on the internet that you are running an unknown and unacceptable software. So the GPL is defeated, you have the source code, but it's pretty damn useless. It won't work anymore if you try to alter it.

Do you think Trusted Computing is a Good Thing?? Do you really accept the idea of open source DRM and the Trusted Computing it would require?

-

Biometrics are even better if all the communications are encrypted (which some do). With effort they can be as good as very long very random passords. But the real rub is standard biometrics cannot be revoked if it is ever compromised or someone in the company sells the data (like ChoicePoint sold financial data). While many slash-dot postings focus on lifting latent prints, the bigger long term risk is probably hacking into databases and someone that has never even been in the same city as you starts using your prints. Traditional biometrics are perment, so a database of them starts looking like a high-value

There are technologies that make then even better such as the revocable technologies being developed by http://www.securics.com/ or the distorted biometrics by IBM http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/403/ratha.h tml) allow your biometric to be different for each application and can cancel one if compromised.

The IBM Systems Journal is a hard copy publication and can be purchased for $135 a year, currently. I also used to read this, and had my own subscription, back before the web really existed.

Look here.

Also, IBM has a Journal of Research and Development which can be yours for the paultry sum of $299 a year.

Both were sometimes boring, but at other times had many really great papers in them.

The IBM Systems Journal is a hard copy publication and can be purchased for $135 a year, currently. I also used to read this, and had my own subscription, back before the web really existed.

Look here.

Also, IBM has a Journal of Research and Development which can be yours for the paultry sum of $299 a year.

Both were sometimes boring, but at other times had many really great papers in them.

All the current suggestions from other posters I would agree with, Dr. Dobbs, ACM, IEEE, CUJ. But probably, like regular media, the smaller players are picking up the slack, even if they are web only. ServerSide, JavaLobby, IBM Systems Journal, Software Development, Artima Developer, JavaWorld, and DeveloperWorks are a few of the excellent ones I regularly read.

All the current suggestions from other posters I would agree with, Dr. Dobbs, ACM, IEEE, CUJ. But probably, like regular media, the smaller players are picking up the slack, even if they are web only. ServerSide, JavaLobby, IBM Systems Journal, Software Development, Artima Developer, JavaWorld, and DeveloperWorks are a few of the excellent ones I regularly read.

IBM in Asia did some interesting research in 2004 - indoors, using WiFi...

Wireless LAN-based indoor positioning technology

MSCS is now quite a decent HA solution

You mean HA as in "HAHA"? Okay, I give you that.
But if you're in for "high availability" (which, afaik, means at least four nines after the dot) you're most certainly not even considering MS products.

What good is your availability when the application fails randomly?

I remember reading a MS-paper about the IIS ""HA""-solution (read again: "HAHA").
It involved a cluster of at least 4 nodes (IIRC) so that there's always a node left to pick up service when one of the others failed. It was recommended (seriously) to reboot each node daily and there were detailed instructions about how to deal with "hung" nodes - which apparently was expected to happen.

And, well, I have yet to see a piece of serious hardware that would even run the joke from redmond...

You work for MicroSoft throwing FUD? See the glibc README - its LGPL not GPL. LGPL allows linking with proprietary software to build proprietary applications. This has been discussed many times, many years ago. IBM believes that you can build proprietary apps with gcc, and their lawyers are better than yours.

Not anymore. See the Integrated Virtualization Manager redbook:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/RE DP4061.html?Open

bigredradio,

I thought you would be very interested in this. IBM just announced the IVM. It allows you to partition a single server without the need of an HMC. That functionallity has been moved internal to the system. Check out the latest announcement.

Or look at some of the articles in the latest issue of the IBM Journal of Research and Development for some more techincal detail.

Or look at some of the articles in the latest issue of the IBM Journal of Research and Development for some more techincal detail.

Ho hum.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library /j-jtp09275.html

Malloc is slow. Per studies, 20-30% of CPU time wasted on memory management.

I haven't seen that level of retardation in JVM's since... oh... 1996?

But yeah, keep thinking you can do it better. Whatever. In the meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on.

There are patches available at http://www.trl.ibm.com/projects/security/ssp/ for 3.4.4 and 2.95.3

This document just touches on the capabilities. If you want to see a little bit more detail regarding running linux LPAR's on a POWER 5 system, I suggest heading here.

This is a good technology, and if there are people wanting to get LPAR capabilities without having to purchase all that extra IBM OS's (AIX, i5/OS), you might look into the OpenPower line. 2 way or 4 way POWER 5 systems that run only linux and can create upto 40 LPAR's on one system. That's bascially like having 40 different Linux servers all running at the same time on 4 total processors.

I agree this technology has some limitations as of right now, but it may not be a bad idea to look at it. And remember, this is PPC Linux, not your standard Intel Linux. While your boss won't know the difference, you should.

Simultaneous Multi Threading is an even cooler feature of the POWER 5 chip!

Here's a pdf.

You can share network and scsi adapters
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/libr ary/es-susevio/

Or, with something like a Remote Supervisor Adapter, you can control a server (or POS terminal) remotely, even when it is powered off. Now, this is designed for servers, and is probably *not* what they have in a cash register, but it would fit the bill, as well.

Of course I could be totally wrong about this, but from everyone I talked to while working there, I gathered that this was pretty much the norm.

Uh... IBM's revenues for 2004 were in the $96B range, with profits in the $8.4B range. http://www.ibm.com/investor/1q05/1q05earnings.phtm l Pooooor IBM, Pooooor MS...

Don't forget about the IBM DB2 Content Management portfolio. It provides a lot of features from access restriction, peer approval, and a nice easy to program interface (document manager). And with all the government regulations popping up, a company may need to make certain documents a part of the company records, which can then not be altered.

There are several comparable products that are less expensive as well, like FileNet that can do similar type of functions.

Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy disk.

How did this get modded interesting? It is REDUNDANT.

A moronic question (the answer is in the fucking article) that wasted other reader's time and created nothing but glut (since the answer is at the URL given in the story - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-cluster1/).

> lynx -source http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-cluster1/ | grep -c Beowulf
0

For groupware functionality, IBM does release an OSX version of Lotus Notes.

It works OK in our mostly-PC environment.

Many companies (Oracle, IBM and others) distribute modified versions of Apache without providing source code. Those versions of Apache are privative software, they are not Free Software anymore. That would never happened if Apache were under the GPL.

The adoption problem ...

The original "bondi blue" iMac was the first computer to offer USB ports without offering "legacy" ports. That's right -- no serial ports, no ADB. This changes the network effects. Before the iMac showed up, there were many millions of PC users who had no USB ports and perhaps a couple of million who had a USB port and also legacy ports. The biggest market in 1998 was in serial and parallel ports (or joystick ports, PS/2 ports, and so on) -- there was no reason to target the USB market. That would just restrict your audience.

The iMac presented a ready-made market of users who chose the Mac line for its graphics capability. In turn, the iMac offered a captive audience of users who would buy a USB peripheral but would not buy any other kind of peripheral. These users provided a market for USB peripherals that wasn't facing competition from other port choices. The result was a flood of USB devices in white-and-blue plastic. This was a crucial turning point that created a reason (tied to a proven system choice) to prefer USB to non-USB ports.

Dont get me wrong, I'm a massive fan of "the network is the computer" and all that jib-jab. But if web services is the great extent of it, count me out. Web services is fine for checking your email, but theres a world of real work which needs to be done at a near-OS level to create a distributed computing environment. Plan9, IBM's SoulPad, Synergy, these are the few and the brave willing to go out and fsck around with the traditional concept of a computer, to unweave the ideas of one computer, one monitor, one mouse, one system. To reduce network is the computer to WS-* is just a wretchingly awful idea.

The human-computer-I/O needs to be made network capable. I'll get back to you on it.

Myren

What you're speaking of is the waterfall methodology, that's how it was done for many years, and as far as mainframe COBOL programming, that's how it was done. Analysis->Design->Construction, and no turning back. Works great as long as you got the requirements correct and you didn't uncover new requirements as you designed, etc. But it's a rather rigid style, inflexible. Rational and the '3 Amigos' (Booch, Rumbaugh, Jacobson) and others are some of the folks behind RUP (rational unified process) and iterative programming. Also, Robert C. Martin is an excellent speaker and has many papers and talks on Agile Programming. But yeah, the "extreme programming" practices of folks like Torvalds, Alan Cox, Ingo Molnar, and the rest of the gang behind Linux is one of the reasons Microsoft has to work a little harder these days, and adopt more "agile" programming. And oh yeah, has nothing to do with language, C programming or VB programming or Python..

I still have on issue with that, though. It seems to me that once you move away from the generic (on Unix, but also on many other systems) concept of files, you get into a programming language specific realm. In that case, building a language specific tool for building purposes seems the most sensible solution. Is that what the Ant project is doing?

Ant is specific to java as much as make is specific to C. Make works well for languages like Fortran, Pascal and C but doesn't work well for strongly object oriented languages. Most large C++ shops use some other build system for this reason. C assumes Unix like, Java is much more cross platform in its orientation and thus ant is more cross platform than make.

There are good books for mainframe programmers who want to write unix code but very few people go in the other direction. Chapter 7 and 8 of Introduction to mainframes would get you started. The key thing is to look for differences in attitude, the book itself doesn't contain a lot of the deeper "whys" so assume if they do something differently there is a good reason this book just isn't telling you what that reason is. Anyway its a first book on the topic. From there you could read other redbooks pretty easily.

HP/UX, AIX, & Sun OS, and USS(MainFrame Unix) are probably still the top four for large companies in terms of dollar spend. Large companies are slowly migrating to linux, but I would argue that one of the big reasons isn't that Linux is that much cheaper. In reality the OS is one of the smallest components of IT cost.

Reasons

1) x86 hardware is getting more reliable and scalable
I was at an IBM presentation yesterday and had a look at their x460
Scalable up to 32-way with 500 GB RAM. Hot swap everything except for CPU. Amazing I/O. Amazing machine and is catching up to Unix systems. Similarly blades scale out well - something Unix based systems don't do.

2) Momentum and software support
The idea that you can write your software for redhat or suse and then port it to another platform without extensive changes is very attractive PowerPC/zSeries etc. Vendors are pushing it partially in fear of Microsoft dominance (Oracle/SAP/IBM etc)

3) In the long run open solutions win.

So IBM's AIX and HP-UX don't count? I make that four (not sure if SCO are even in business).

Also interesting on the IBM site is a comparison between the use of J2EE and Ruby on Rails, another great way of achieving Ajax functionality.

I understand that Lenovo wants to distance itself from IBM by making this kind of decisions, but it sure is an confusing name choice for the new series of Thinkpads. IBM has been using the zSeries name for its (thriving) line of s390 mainframes for years

My perception is that the ThinkPad brand worths 70% of the IBM PC business, the other 30% (maybe less) is corporate support.

That leave 0% for its desktop products.

ThinkPad Legends

IBM

Quite. Here's the best picture I could find:
http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/

That's probably a fairly ephemeral link; this might hang around longer, but it's only a thumbnail:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/images/rt_titani umback_78.jpg

From this page:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/zseries/index.ht ml

I'm sure someone can do better than that.

Quite. Here's the best picture I could find:
http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/

That's probably a fairly ephemeral link; this might hang around longer, but it's only a thumbnail:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/images/rt_titani umback_78.jpg

From this page:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/zseries/index.ht ml

I'm sure someone can do better than that.

The only picture I could find...Do not go blind looking at it. http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/zseries/index.ht ml#titanium

I own a copy of, for example, the 1990 Honda CRX service manual, published by Honda. I use this book anywhere from one to ten times a year.

If this were available online, I would not need to own it, since when I need to change my timing belt, I could just lookup the procedure online, and print out the relevant pages.

If this book were available at my local library, I'd still own it. I refer to it often enough that there's no point in repeatedly borrowing it from the library.

I can think of several similar examples. The IBM Power PC Programming Environments is another good one (which is available online, and which I don't own a dead-tree version of).