Slashback: Benchmarks, Sobig, Blob

Slashback is back, with more this time around on NASA's G5 benchmarks, an in-depth look at the Sobig.E virus, an update on the Internet Book List (growing rapidly), the fate of both the Microsoft-purchased Virtual PC and one very unlucky sperm whale, and more. Read on for the details.

A good excuse to file purchase orders, too. Eug writes "Writing in this Ars thread, Craig Hunter of NASA gives details about his much-quoted dual-G5 Power Mac benchmarks listed here. This should answer some of the questions posed around the net about the methodology and potentially the validity of his benchmarks."

The lines between viruses and spam is thin enough already. Joe Stewart writes "There have been a lot of news stories lately about how Sobig and spam are tied together. I actually revealed this in a paper two months ago. Now with the widespread Sobig.e, it seems to have become a topic again. However, the major antivirus companies have once again left out the whole story - most of them currently rate Sobig.e as 'low damage.' This is because they haven't fully understood how the real payload of Sobig.e is delivered. I've written a followup paper describing the entire mechanism that Sobig.e uses to facilitate spam, identity theft and bank fraud. Sobig has evolved, and it is much harder to stop than before."

Is this the beginning of a long goodbye? inertia@yahoo.com writes "Microsoft has updated their Mactopia Web Site to include a section on Virtual PC. It's taken them since February 2003 to do this. On the site, they mention, 'In August 2003, Virtual PC for Mac will be available through standard Microsoft channels of distribution.' So it looks like they aren't killing it after all."

Simplicity itself is a nice ideal. webword writes "Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark is now available online. As you might recall, Joe was interviewed on Slashdot back in December. Good stuff if you care about accessibility."

Not yet billions and billions served, but getting there. nzilla writes "The Internet Book List, which announced its creation earlier this year on /. has now reached 10,000+ entries and is still going strong. The Internet Book List (IBList) strives to be the IMDb of books. IBList is maintained exclusively by volunteers around the world."

Girlfriends drive strange endeavors. ceejayoz writes "This interesting article on MSNBC.com details the Degree Confluence Project - a project to gather a photographic record of the points on Earth where latitude and longitude lines meet. The article has links to some of the more interesting points. The project's website also has an interesting map showing all the completed confluence points."

We mentioned this project quite some time ago, and it's progressed quite a bit since then.

Uh, sir, you have some blubber on your collar there. Scoria writes "Chilean scientists have determined that a 12-meter mass of flesh discovered recently on a Pacific beach is actually a sperm whale, not an obscure 'giant octopus' as many researchers speculated. Scientists performing research at the Museum of Natural History in Santiago were the first to develop this conclusion after observing the presence of dermal glands unique to the species."

Code that pays tribute to the money in television. mondainx writes "Following(?) in the footsteps of Linksys, Tivo has made their source available for versions 2.0 through 4.0. Get the GPL source here. Sweet!"

Comments

Don't logitude and latitude meet everywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the major ones of course, but tiny ones.

Re:Don't logitude and latitude meet everywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everywhere except the void which is your brain.

Re:Don't logitude and latitude meet everywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm pretty sure they meet there, too.

Re:Don't logitude and latitude meet everywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not on the moon they don't.

Re:Don't logitude and latitude meet everywhere?

[TheIzzy]

What about the North and South Poles? Technically there couldn't be any latitude lines there and only longitude.

Poor Sperm Whales

[Mshift2x]

First they get hosed when scientist were handing out animal names....now this!

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Xeger]

Actually, I've heard it was sailors who first gave the sperm whale its interesting name.

The sperm whale has a huge reservoir of liquid in its head, with an oily sheen and a translucent, pale white color. The liquid solidifies under pressure (when the whale dives); current scientific thinking has it that the change in the liquid's density helps the whale adjust its buoyancy.

When early whaling crews first killed one of the beasties and slit it open, they encountered the oily stuff in its head but didn't know what it was....being sex-starved sailors, they jumped to conclusions, called the substance spermaceti, and named the whale after his unique feature: gallons and gallons of sperm in its head!

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[bad_fx]

Hey, at least they didn't blow it up.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

In which case, shouldn't it be called semen... uhhh, ok, I guess why given these men were seamen after all....

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd of licked it up like a cat and a bit of milk.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[marko123]

The Japanese call them Bukake Whales.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

".being sex-starved sailors, they jumped to conclusions, called the substance spermaceti"

I find it highly unlikely that sailors would use the term "spermaceti", a combination of two latin words (sperma = seed, cetus = whale).

With sperm not being discovered until 1676, I don't think too many sailors were fluent in Latin at the time.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Xeger]

Actually, I'm sure it was natural philosophers who coined the actual term "spermaceti"; the sailors called it jizz or cum or whatever one called the male ejaculate, circa 1600.

From Thomas Beale's "The Natural History of the Sperm Whale," 1840:

"What spermaceti is," (says Sir Thomas Brown, in his work published in 1686, third book, chap. xxv. p.139,) "men might justly doubt, since the learned Hofmannus, in his work of thirty years, saith plainly nescio quid sit, and therefore need not wonder at the variety of opinions, while some conceived it to be flos maries, and many a 'bituminous substance floating upon the sea.' That it was not the spawn of the whale, according to vulger conceit or nominal appellation, philosophers have always doubted, not easily conceiving the seminal humour of animals should be inflammable, or of a floating nature.

So you see, even before sperm were known to people, spermaceti (though probably not known by that name) was considered to be somehow involved with the reproduction of the whale, in much the same way that human semen was known to be involved with the reproduction of humans even though its exact nature was unknown.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Xeger]

I should elucidate -- spermaceti was thought by the commoner to be involved with reproduction of the whale. The scientific types had long since given up on the notion.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[ComaVN]

With sperm not being discovered until 1676,

I find this highly doubtful. Surely they must have noticed the stuff before that.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how the sperm whale got it's name?

Because it looks like your mother.

Re:Poor Sperm Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

Producing sperm is good for you

And in other news...

[Zeddicus_Z]

...a shattered bowl of petunias was found close by the splattered sperm whale. Police are treating the death of the petunias as suspicious.

Re:And in other news...

[JWSmythe]

"Oh no, not again."

{crash}

Re:And in other news...

[Allnighterking]

And the RIAA is attributing the death of the sperm whale to malicious file sharing programs worldwide.

Re:And in other news...

[JoeShmoe950]

And all the white mice die

Re:And in other news...

[computersareevil]

I wonder if it will be my friend...

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. What is this a reference to?

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

And SCO says that part of the blubber genetic code was stolen from UNIX and they're suing.

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

A Douglas Adams book (one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books, but I forget which one).

Basically, a whale was transported into space by some freak accident, and the book described it's thought process as it plummeted to the ground. The whale was reincarnated as a flowerpot and transported into space again, and it's only thought as it headed for the planet was "Oh no, not again".

It's much funnier in the book - my synopsis doesn't do the full joke any justice.

Re:And in other news...

[Jon Abbott]

I don't get it. What is this a reference to?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book series, by Douglas Adams, of course! Do please purchase or borrow copies and read them, won't you? Alternatively you can listen to the BBC radio show version that came out before the books did. When you find yourself sufficiently mesmerised, be sure to visit the BBC's online shrine to the series, the man behind the series, and generally all things pan-galactic in nature.

Re:And in other news...

[DoctorFrog]

Never mind the sperm whale, where the hell did my dolphins disappear to?

Re:And in other news...

[adamy]

They left a message...
We apolpogize for the inconvenience.

Oh no, wait, that was someone else.

Re:And in other news...

[el-spectre]

Actually (not to nitpick, but to give the asker a flavor of Mr. Adams work), our heroes had a ship that moved via improbability. A couple of nasty things were about to do bad things to our heroes, when they flipped the switch and the most unlikely thing happened...

the 2 nasty things turned into a whale and somwe flowers. Unfortunately, neither can fly...

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

"A Douglas Adams book (one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books, but I forget which one)."

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"The whale was reincarnated as a flowerpot and transported into space again,"

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Did you actually read the book? :p

The "Oh no, not again." line is explained (and paid off) in Life, The Universe and Everything. The bowl of petunias is Agrajag, a being who is killed by Arthur Dent every time he re-incarnates regardless of what form he takes when he re-incarnates.

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

So long, and thanks for all the fish

The Dolphins

Re:And in other news...

[GodsMadClown]

An in coincidence, here is the iblist.com entry for the series.

http://www.iblist.com/series.php?id=2

Re:And in other news...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Do please purchase or borrow copies and read them, won't you? Alternatively you can listen [szlaga.net] to the BBC radio show version that came out before the books did.

Just, whatever you do, don't get the DVD of the BBC TV Mini series. Or if you're really determined, buy my set off of me.

The books are great.

Re:And in other news...

[Fjord]

I loved the BBC miniseries. How much do you want for it? Email me: jl-slashdotpub@quickp.ath.cx

Re:And in other news...

[ceejayoz]

Which results in my favorite passage ever.

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah... ! What's happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?

Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of... yawning, tingling sensation in my... my... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of it I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This... let's call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can really thrash it about pretty good can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation...

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn't there?

And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh No, Not Again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I could hardly go on and on trying to explain all the subtle twists of humour. Which is why I suggested he read the book - I'll quote here for you (did you actually read my post?):

It's much funnier in the book - my synopsis doesn't do the full joke any justice.

Does that penetrate your pedantic skull? Agrajag was also the whale, so what I said is technically correct, just not a complete explanation.

VPC

[darkov]

'... Virtual PC for Mac will be available through standard Microsoft channels of distribution.' So it looks like they aren't killing it after all.

No, they're just going to mediocre it to death.

Re:VPC

[WatertonMan]

Actually Microsoft plans on bundling VPC with Office as a kind of "high end" version.

One can't help but wonder if it will use some of VPC's functions to help port software.

Doesn't MS-Word actually already run in a semi-interpreted Java-like language they developed back in the early 90's? I seem to recall something like that. Of course I think that Mac Zealot's complaints about MS-Word are vastly overstated. Especially when one compares to to the horrible status of AppleWorks which is a half-hearted carbon port and which still has lots of Sys9 elements to it. Yeah I'd like more OSX interface features like the font choser in Word. But its still vastly superior to any other choices on OSX.

Re:VPC

[madpierre]

If apple had any balls theyd release OSX for x86 and bundle a copy with every PC sold.

hmmmmmm.

Re:VPC

[inertia187]

2. They can limit VPC to use only windows products. This pushes their software over the competitors.

That alone would kill VPC.

Re:VPC

[Mainframes ROCK!]

I agree, they can't pull too many tricks with this as a RealPC is returning. RealPC was as good as Virtual PC up until about release 3 or so of Virtual PC, with a little more work it could be again. This is probably why Microsoft is giving them grief; on the FWB home page they say "FWB has pushed back the release date of its Beta Version of PowerWindows (formerly SoftWindows) later this summer due to issues relating to Microsoft."

Re:VPC

[Squidgee]

Try out OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X; I've got it, and it works really, really well!

Re:VPC

[the argonaut]

Doesn't MS-Word actually already run in a semi-interpreted Java-like language they developed back in the early 90's?

If I recall correctly, the whole MS Office suite of apps (or at least the Word/Excel/Powerpoint portion thereof) do fork off from a set of shared code that was the evil incarnation known as Word 5 (or was it 6?) et al. You know, the version most Mac users still refer to in horror as "Office for Windows for Mac". From what I understand, the codebases for the respective platforms are now pretty much completely seperate, although I would guess that some of that bastard code still lurks...probably what makes it so damn slow and crash all of the time.

Of course, I'm probably just being bitter because no matter how many times I reinstall Office X, I still get freakin' "shared library [insert obscure alpha-numeric code of choice] can not be found" errors upon launching Excel.

Re:VPC

[WatertonMan]

Umm. I've used it too.

No drag and drop between it and Mac applications
No Aqua interface
No cut and paste of graphics between it and non-X11 OSX apps
No Applescript
etc.

Re:VPC

[binarytoaster]

3. They can discontinue products for the mac and make people use VPC for compatability until they are willing to switch over to their platform. Either way, its Microsoft software they are using.
This would be kind of stupid. MS charges more for the Mac versions of its software, and on top of that, who runs a Mac to run PC software? They'd find some other alternative. Office X is just convenience.

Re:VPC

[Anonymous Coward]

Cry me a fucking river. Perhaps you'd like to contribute instead of just bitching.

Or then again, maybe you wouldn't.

Re:VPC

[extra88]

the evil incarnation known as Word 5 (or was it 6?)

It was Word 6 that was evil. Word 5 rocks (Word 98 was the return to sanity after Word 6). I like some features which have appeared over the years but version 5 was the pinacle of "everything you need, nothing your don't."

Re:VPC

[semanticgap]

Doesn't MS-Word actually already run in a semi-interpreted Java-like language they developed back in the early 90's?

You mean Visual Basic?

Re:VPC

[HTH NE1]

Albeit slowly under Apple's X11. Redraws are a dog in the spreadsheet and you really don't want to use the scrollwheel on your mouse to scroll the window. You scroll faster than it can and it buffers them, as well as your overcorrection. I'm hoping Aquafication will address these problems whether they're part of Apple's X11 or OOo.

I'm not about to buy Microsoft Office X, but I may go back to using an older version under Classic until OOo's performance improves. (I wish I had the time to help.)

Re:VPC

[Some Dumbass...]

'... Virtual PC for Mac will be available through standard Microsoft channels of distribution.'

No, they're just going to mediocre it to death.

I don't see the inconsistency here.

Re:VPC

[WatertonMan]

No - the actual development language it was written in. It was some crossplatform code in which a significant number of functions was written in some custom interpreted language.

Re:VPC

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the confusion stems from the fact that MS Office (maybe up until 2000/XP) used only the essential system libraries; it even bypassed the majority of GDI. Rememver when office on 95 looked awefully like 98? It run like a dog too. That was because it would draw all its own UI elements, menus, buttons, drop downs, titlebar, EVERYTHING. It's still done in Visual C++.

MFLOPS/$

[ketamine-bp]

From the article in Ars:

ie, MFLOPS/$ at NASA probably aren't the same as MFLOPS/$ somewhere else

Well, the funniest statement I could about NASA...

IBlist & IMDb

[aeinome]

IMDb really shouldn't be called the Internet Movie Database anymore. They cover TV shows as well. Does this mean the IBList will go beyond books (novels, short stories, etc.) in into "literary works"? (comic books, poems, plays) Just a thought.

Re:IBlist & IMDb

[sofakingl]

IMDb also does video games. How IBList would do something similar (software?), I'm not sure.

Re:IBlist & IMDb

[aeinome]

Interactive fiction, I guess.

Re:IBlist & IMDb

[lommer]

I fail to see why comic books, poems, and plays do not qualify as books. From m-w.com, "book: a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together into a volume".

That to me shows that book does indeed denote the form in which some sort of information is published, and not the nature of the information. Thus, comic books, poems, and plays that are all published in bound dead-tree format qualify, though internet books probably won't.

Re:IBlist & IMDb

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a fucking retard, and why the fuck did you get moderated up?

IMDB covers everything released on film. Motion pictures. Cartoons. Silent movies. IMax movies. Made-for-TV movies. And, yes, even TV shows.

IBList will cover words released in print. If it's got an ISBN and you can read it by flipping pages, it'll be in there. I'm sure it will include magazines, and I'm sure you'll bitch just as much when that happens.

Zealots! All of you!

[Valar]

Hm. I wonder how long until some /. arm-chair technologist declares NASA a facist-Mac-worshipping-zealot organization. Maybe he/she will top it off by saying, "Well, if they really do use macs, I have trouble believing they could have possibly landed on the moon."

Re:Zealots! All of you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they were lucky; there weren't Macs when they went to the moon.

However, since the invention of the Mac, NASA has not gotten any people even 1/100th the way to the Moon. And, 100% of its manned space mission fatalities have been since the invention of the Mac, too.

Re:Zealots! All of you!

[Anonymous Coward]

100% of its manned space mission fatalities have been since the invention of the Mac

Apollo 1, idiot. Apollo 13 was a damn close call, too.

Re:Zealots! All of you!

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Was Apollo 1 the case where there was a fire in the capsule on the launchpad, during a training excercise? If so, it doesn't really count as a 'space mission' as such.

Re:Zealots! All of you!

[72beetle]

yup. I went to a jr. high school in San Antonio named after one of the astronauts that died in that fire, Ed White.

-72

Where is everyone?

[blate]

What I found odd about the confluence points was that almost none of them where in populated areas. It just seems a little strange.

I guess it just goes to show that no matter how overpopulated the world seems, there is still a lot of wide-open space out there.

Re:Where is everyone?

[aeinome]

I guess it just goes to show that no matter how overpopulated the world seems, there is still a lot of wide-open space out there. I agree. I once heard that everyone in the world could fit on Cuba, if they were tightly packed, back-to-back. However, we could all probably comfortably fit on any continent.

Re:Where is everyone?

[senahj]

> I once heard that everyone in the world could fit on Cuba

ob. book: _Stand_On_Zanzibar_ John Brunner

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

bangladesh; eastern china; pakistan

Re:Where is everyone?

[John Hasler]

> I guess it just goes to show that no matter how
> overpopulated the world seems, there is still a
> lot of wide-open space out there.

You have an urbanite's notion of "wide-open space".

Re:Where is everyone?

[blate]

Well, when they do a 360 panorama and I can't see a single building, telephone pole, or road, that qualifies as BFE nowhere to me :)

You're probably right, though. If one lives in cities too long, one begins to thing that everything everywhere looks like a city.

The lack of tarmac density is a good thing though... if means we don't have to drive too far to get away from "civilization".

Re:Where is everyone?

[fatboyslack]

Good Lord!
I'll try to be as normal as possible without being too caustic. At the moment the estimated world population is 6351506980 Is there any way that you think that a single continent could support 6.3bil people? Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks... It boggles the mind that anyone could consider this. *bah* Must get back to work. However, whatever.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?? Here there are, in the middle of the ocean, and it is just full of people swimming around! Just imagine what that the areas with land must be like.

Re:Where is everyone?

[michrech]

The affore mentioned person said that he had heard/read that we could all fit there, not that we could all live there comfortably.

Don't read into what people are saying. Sometimes what they are trying to tell you really is as simple as the words they use.

Re:Where is everyone?

[JWSmythe]

If I remember correctly, the horizon is 15 miles from the viewer at sea level. Living on a farm for all my childhood years, not having anything on the visible horizon isn't that amazing.

Driving across the US, you drive through some rather isolated area, where you think you'll never get out of the desert.

I flew across the Atlantic once. I was staring out the window of the plane at the reflection of the moon on the water, and after a few hours realized how isolated we then were..

I've lived in metro areas for the last 10 years. It was wierd at first to not drive for an hour through wooded areas to get anywhere. Now I kind of expect to see buildings when there are none. I'm definately loosing my navigational sense. I used to be able to point you in a direction within a few degrees, or navigate unknown roads just on the knowlege of the direction of my destination. Maybe it's the LA smog killing that in me.. :)

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's called "ocean"

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, but what percentage of that land is both:
* productive (i.e. useful farmland, natural resource deposits, etc)
AND
* undeveloped

Just because you see a lot of corn fields all over the central united states doesn't mean "gee we could build a manhattan-denisity city accross all that and have a trillion people there" They have nothing to eat.

Even if you live in a studio apartment in some city somewhere there's still many acres of the earth's surface needed to provide you with the resources you consume from the planet.

CNN (actually Reuters) actually had a decent article about this the other day.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the horizon is 15 miles from the viewer at sea level"

I'm vertically, and therefore horizonally, challenged you insensitive clod.

Re:Where is everyone?

[lpret]

Off of some Overpopulation Myth site: In Mary Pride's book The Way Home, she calculated that you could give every person in the world 2,000 square feet (which is larger than most homes) and everyone would fit into the state of Texas.

It's an interesting idea that we could handle a lot of people if we had an uber efficient way of getting food.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Eevee]

In Mary Pride's book The Way Home, she calculated that you could give every person in the world 2,000 square feet (which is larger than most homes) and everyone would fit into the state of Texas.

Yeah, but you'd really, really have to hate everyone in the world to put them all in Texas.

Re:Where is everyone?

[s20451]

Give everyone on Earth one square meter of space. That's about enough space to stand, or even sit comfortably. There are roughly 6.3 billion people on Earth. To give everyone 1m^2 would require 6.3x10^9 m^2. This could be accommodated by a square with sides 79,400m long (around 50 miles).

Cuba's area is 110,860 km^2, or 1.1x10^11 m^2, which is enough to give each person on Earth a luxurious 17.6m^2 of space, or around 158 sq ft -- about the size of a bathroom or small bedroom.

Re:Where is everyone?

[GlenRaphael]

At the moment the estimated world population is 6351506980 Is there any way that you think that a single continent could support 6.3bil people? Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks...

Don't most of the problems you list actually get easier to solve as population density goes up? The expensive and difficult part of building a network to handle needs such as electricity, water, transportation and even waste disposal is getting your network to cover the people way out in the boonies where you have to lay a lot of road, wire or pipe to support relatively few customers. That's why the US government had a taxpayer-supported Rural Electrification Agency but never needed a Metropolitan one.

Here's a book recommendation for you: The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets look at this as a process of elimination. 2/3 of the entire planet is water; not many people living there. Most of the land mass above the 40th Parallel (North) is uninhabited (no way, eh?). In the South there are two whole continents that have almost no people (they would be completely free if one didn't consider Australians to be people. Easily done if you put your mind to it). Thus, it would be surprising if many of the confluence points were in populated areas. I have seen a prediction that there will be a "Starbucks" at each confluence point within 5 years. Global wireless access here we come.

Re:Where is everyone?

[1010011010]

The whole world's population could be moved to Texas and have a population density about that of Tokyo.

So I hear.

Re:Where is everyone?

[deranged unix nut]

If I calculated it right, given 724 square feet each, the current world's population could fit in California.

Let's see, California covers 163707 square miles.
census.gov reports that the world population clock for 7/1/03 is 6302486693

6302486693 / 163707 = 38498.57 people per square mile (of california).
1 mile = 5280 feet
1 square mile = 27878400 square feet.
27878400 / 38498.57 = 724.14 square feet per person.

Although that doesn't give much space for growing food.

The United States covers 3618770 square miles...

That puts us at 1741.6 people per square mile, or give each person a measly 16007 square feet. Anyone think that they could be entirely self-sustaining inside of a box 400 feet by 400 feet? Including food production and sewer? That isn't much larger than the average city block.

Now, this is assuming that the entire world is stuffed into the area of the united states, and all of the area, including Alaska is used, so much of that area is not very habitable.

Saying that everyone can FIT into a place is much different from saying that we have too large a population for the natural resources to sustain. And the sustainability all depends on how we use those resources....do we buy computers that use 9 square meters of raw materials per ounce of silicon wafer (if I remember right), or do we use products that can be produced with minimal environmental impact?

Re:Where is everyone?

[MrResistor]

I had a similar growing up experience, except I was in a mountainous area, so being able to see the horizon actually makes me a little uncomfortable. I've also been losing my directional sense as I've spent more time in urban areas. What I really miss, though, is the time sense I used to have. I used to be able to tell the time within 10 minutes, even at night, and I haven't worn a watch since I was 10.

Re:Where is everyone?

[droopus]

Asimov postulated on such a huge population density with his concept of the planet Trantor. In the Foundation series, Trantor is depicted as the former capital of the First Galactic Empire. Its land surface of 200 million sq. km. was, with the exception of the Imperial Palace, entirely encased in metal. It consisted of an enormous megalopolis that stretched deep underground and was home to a population of 40,000,000,000 (40 billion) human inhabitants.

George Lucas continued the tradition of megaplanets with Coruscant: a huge city covering the entire planet. The Death Star could also be considered derivative of Trantor.

I've often thought of the logistic problems of encasing a planet in metal (tectonic movement? mountains? magnetic effects from a huge metal ball? etc...), but Trantors fate was interesting: after the fall of the Galactic Empire, the native population ripped up the metal both for building material and access to the soil below.

It was also the home of the Second Foundation, but that's another story altogether. B)

Peter! Foundation! PLEASE?????

Re:Where is everyone?

[Idarubicin]

Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks...

Don't most of the problems you list actually get easier to solve as population density goes up?

Food doesn't. Six billion people eat a lot. We can make wonderful efficient use of urban space, pack everyone into the cities until we're all as cozy as the folks in Tokyo--yep, we'd all fit. But growing enough food for all those people given just one continent would be...challenging. If the continent were North America, we'd have to get used to soy products awfully quickly, because cattle are a tremendously inefficient source of calories.

Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel presents (incidentally) a picture of that sort of world. Nearly all food in the novel is based on genetically engineered yeasts--privileged individuals might enjoy a little bit of chicken now and then. Tremendous effort must be expended to maintain infrastructure--if some disaster were to cut off such a city from its outside sources of water, power, fuel, and food, how long could it survive? How long would present-day Tokyo last?

Sure, it's hard to get the modern infrastructure out to the boonies--but a low-density farming community need never starve. You can live without electricity, without telephone service, without--dare I say it?--broadband internet access. You're screwed without food and water.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Idarubicin]

Cuba's area is 110,860 km^2, or 1.1x10^11 m^2, which is enough to give each person on Earth a luxurious 17.6m^2 of space, or around 158 sq ft -- about the size of a bathroom or small bedroom.

We can do better than that. Build to a height of twenty storeys. Even leaving half of the island for open spaces--parks, roadways, terrain that is difficult to build on--there's nearly 1600 square feet (180 square metres) per person. Huge! Granted, from that space you'll need to subtract infrastructure--power, water, commercial space--but there's still probably a good hundred square meters/1000 sq ft to play with. I know couples living in smaller apartments than that already.

Re:Where is everyone?

[ruprechtjones]

But where would my yacht and Hummer(tm) go? Plus, think of the golf courses, man! Plus a couple acres for my dot-com business, and maybe a big open grass field for me to run and wave my arms and be happy that I'm not living in a paper hut on the fifth floor in Hong Kong...

whoops, got on a tangent there...

Re:Where is everyone?

[GlenRaphael]

Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks...

Don't most of the problems you list actually get easier to solve as population density goes up?

Food doesn't. Six billion people eat a lot. We can make wonderful efficient use of urban space, pack everyone into the cities until we're all as cozy as the folks in Tokyo--yep, we'd all fit. But growing enough food for all those people given just one continent would be...challenging.

I said "most" of the problems, thinking food might be an exception. But heck, I'll bite on this one too: Couldn't you just pick a fairly large continent and, using modern farming techniques, farm ten times as much land as before on that continent? Pick Asia or Africa as your continent and cut down forests and drain swamps until you've got enough acreage in a suitable climate, and bring the productivity up to western standards with modern technology. It doesn't seem to me like much of a challenge compared to convincing all those people to move. Sure, it'd be a political challenge, but that's another issue.

There would, of course, be a problem of diminishing returns, because the very best farmland is probably already being farmed. The land that isn't being farmed is going to be significantly less productive without a hefty investment in irrigation, fertilizer, terracing, logging, you name it. But it's not like there's a lack of potentially farmable but currently unfarmed land in the world. If you were willing to do whatever it takes, one continent probably would suffice. So, I'm not sure I see the problem. Maybe it would help if we ran some numbers rather than speaking in generalities like "a lot."

Not that I'm advocating we should depopulate all but one continent and super-develop the remaining one, mind you...

Re:Where is everyone?

[JWSmythe]

Ya, I guess at one nanometer tall, the horizon may be a bit closer than for the average Joe. :)

Sorry, I've been going to sensitivity classes, but for some reason everyone gets mad when I call them whiny bitches. They cry. I laugh. They ask me to leave, and I go to the bar and tell the story of the night yet again..

Re:Where is everyone?

[JWSmythe]

I still doing good with the time thing. When I wake up in the morning, I say "damn, I overslept again" before I look at the clock. :)

Of course, I haven't made it to work on time in like 8 years. They never mind though, I never leave at a reasonable hour either.

Re:Where is everyone?

[fatboyslack]

Don't forget, this is assuming everyone is nuts enough to WANT to live in California.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trantor wasn't underground, but built above the planet (just like Lucas later did with Coruscant). The various sections of the planet covering city would lift off the ground in the case of earthquakes, etc...

Re:Where is everyone?

[sniggly]

It does explain why neo looked so stunned after waking up from the pill and seeing all these thousands of humans in their pods. "wow, efficient!!!!"

Re:Where is everyone?

[fenix down]

I think it's even easier than you say. This UN thingy looks like it's saying the world only uses 133,127 hectares for crops total, and the US (not even North America, just the USA) has 176,950 hectares of unused arable land. It certaintly seems like some random exodus from the rest of the world is possible, you'd just have to abolish golf for the motherfucking waste of space it is.

Re:Where is everyone?

[fenix down]

Just park your Hummer somewhere and live in that thing. The glove box of the motherfucker's bigger than my freshman-year dorm room.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but a low-density farming community need never starve."

Europe in the dark ages was mostly low density farming communities, and they starved every four years or so. 'need never' maby, but not likely.

Re:Where is everyone?

[ComaVN]

the horizon is 15 miles from the viewer at sea level

Actually it's quite a bit less.
For a person L meters tall, and earth radius r meters, it's:
sqrt((r+L)^2 - r^2)
=
sqrt(L^2 + 2rL)
which is, for L=1.8 and r=6376500, is about 4800 meters (or 3 miles for the metrically impaired)

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an urbanite's notion of "wide-open space".

You have a pedant's notion of an insightful comment.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess she must be better at writing than she is at math; 2000 ft^2/person * 6e9 people gives 1.2e13 ft^2. That's 430,440 mi^2. Texas has 268,601 mi^2, so that wouldn't quite work... Alaska has 656,425 mi^2 though, so we could put them all there.

Re:Where is everyone?

[japhmi]

Food doesn't. Six billion people eat a lot. We can make wonderful efficient use of urban space.

Okay, put everyone in one huge city the size of, say, all of Europe. Now, we have N. and S. America, Asia, Africa, and Australia to grow food in. If we also get hyrdoponics up, we'd have food closer in too. You'd have a few smaller cities to house the farmers, etc on the other contentents - and it also insures the survival of the race if something happens to an entire continent.

Re:Where is everyone?

[HTH NE1]

Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks...

Don't most of the problems you list actually get easier to solve as population density goes up?

Food doesn't. Six billion people eat a lot. At world-population-on-Cuba densities? Just reach out and eat someone. Food problem solved.

Overpopulation problem also solved... eventually.

Re:Where is everyone?

[hymie3]

[snip]
6302486693 / 163707 = 38498.57 people per square mile (of california).
[snip]
Although that doesn't give much space for growing food.

Come now, surely you're being purposefuly disingenuous? New York City has a population denisty (based on the 2000 census) of 26,402.9/square mile.

If you threw in Texas along with California, you'd have a much lower population density than New York City. Keep in mind that over 17% of New York City is parks and museums and other non-livable space (well, people still live there, but you know what I mean).

*I* wouldn't want to live in New York City (or the entire world's population compacted to a density matching that of New York City).

At any rate, all of the world's population could comfortably fit (presuming that New York City meets the definition of acceptably comfortable) into two US states; it's no wonder that most of the points of convergence are devoid of human existence.

Re:Where is everyone?

[apetime]

This question was just on a Japanese television show. They calculated the absolute minimum of space necessary for the population of the world. First, they packed as many average sized people as they could into a Japanese telephone booth, and extrapolated from there. It came out at just about 650 square kilometers, or about the size of Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan.

Other useless bits of trivia from the show:
- Lobsters walk in single file on the ocean floor.
- The top of the Tokyo Tower is made from tanks used during the Korean war.

Re:Where is everyone?

[ceejayoz]

Have Texas be covered by a single, 20 story building. Put hydroponic farms (and power stations, commercial spaces, schools, water storage, etc) on 19 of those 20 stories.

Problem solved.

"Welcome to Texas - The World's Largest Building"

Re:Where is everyone?

[ceejayoz]

40 billion inhabitants always seemed like an absurdly low statistic for Trantor to me... we've got six billion on this planet and probably not enough stuff to fill even a single story planet-wide shell, let alone a hundred mile thick one.

Re:Where is everyone?

[JWSmythe]

Thanks for fixing my number. :)

We both make the same point then. Even standing at a point, looking in all directions not seeing anything isn't a big deal. There could be a big city just a few miles away.

Re:Where is everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite confluence.

It's populated, but not verifiably so. I triple-dog dare someone to get a legitimate claim on this one.

Re:Where is everyone?

[gfim]

Those figures should be multiplied by 1000. The table heading says "Land Use Permanent Crops (1000Ha)".

Graham

Wonder no longer!

[Anonymous Coward]

I declare NASA a worshipping-zealot organization. Well, if they really do use macs, I have trouble believing they could have possibly landed on the moon.

Re:Wonder no longer!

[JWSmythe]

I have trouble believing some people make it across town alive on most days.. Lately, some don't.. 10 dead, 60 injured, because an old man doesn't know how to operate his car. He pressed the gas instead of the brakes. The rest is history.

If I was an alien species monitoring and evaluating the Earth, I'd have to say humans would never achieve space travel.

Luckly, I'm human, waiting for NASA to ask for volunteers to be colonists on Mars. :)

Hey, it could happen in my lifetime.

Re:Wonder no longer!

[michrech]

But what if you get there and all the algae simply aren't where they are supposed to be and the pre-built habitat is in ruin?

Not so gung-ho now, are 'ya?!

Re:Wonder no longer!

[JWSmythe]

I make a run for the old Russian probe, sacrifice all my fellow explorers in the process, blow up an insane dog robot, climb into a rock sample container with no air and a one-way ticket, get saved by a hot chick that's been sitting in the safety of her spaceship for a week, and bone her for the whole trip back to Earth.

just like last time...

And they said, "what are the odds of *THAT* happening twice?"

Re:Wonder no longer!

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if you get there and all the algae simply aren't where they are supposed to be..

You declare that you're still looking for the algae, that you have solid intelligence that indicated the presence of algae and that you are positive that algae will be found. Once the Senate and Parliment start investigating your claims of algae, you give a stiring speach that distances yourself from some of the more outlandish algae claims.

Well of course ...

[SuperDuG]

However, the major antivirus companies have once again left out the whole story - most of them currently rate Sobig.e as 'low damage.'

Of course they do, they didn't make this one. It's almost obsurd to think that there isn't some tie between anti-virus and virus creators. It may seem a little far fetched, but what better way to keep yourself in business than to make new business. Just like the mob ... some places would call this extortion, here we call it "Virus Protection"... guess if you call it something more than "Protection" it makes it okay.

The motive behind this virus was simple, spam blocking has actually gotten to be a threat to spammers, so what better way than relaying spam through innocent windows boxes on the internet. Though who knows maybe there's an unmarked envelope of cash sitting waiting for them. Or hell, maybe symantec didn't think they weren't making enough money and decided to take a little something from the spam industry to get a bonus for new sales.

Just because you pretend to not to see things in the world doesn't mean this world isn't the most evil cruel place immagineable.

Re:Well of course ...

[groomed]

If Symantec is anything like any of the companies I've worked for, they are way too busy just attending the regular day-to-day business to invent and distribute new viruses. It's absurd to think that they could be this efficient, releasing new viruses into the wild every couple of months that work this well. Much easier, and probably just as effective, to just throw around some inflated numbers, like claiming billions upon billions in damages and what not.

Re:Well of course ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"If Symantec is anything like any of the companies I've worked for, they are way too busy just attending the regular day-to-day business to invent and distribute new viruses. It's absurd to think that they could be this efficient, releasing new viruses into the wild every couple of months that work this well."

I suppose it's just a lone individual working from his single PC with a DSL account who is that efficient and the large corporations can't afford to hire any programers. Yeah, thats the ticket. Lone programmers with no resources are vastly more efficent then large corporations with billions of dollars and fully equipped test environments.

I'm sure some viruses are the result of individual effort or collaboration with others. I'm not convinced that corporations which depend on the existence of something don't actively promote the existence of that something. To do otherwise would be corporate malfeasance.

Re:Well of course ...

[Miksa]

I don't think it's worth the risk. If it would be publicly known that some company was practising something like that they would be in the world of billions of dollars of lawsuits. And since there has always been abundant supply of viruses there hasn't really been need for that.

Re:Well of course ...

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've read, McAfee, NAI, Symantec et al are more interested in the 'reviews' and 'ratings' done in the mainstream press, rather than in effectiveness against actual viruses ( and, IIRC, all three helped the Chinese Gov't set-up a virus lab, in exchange for access-to-their-market ), and

I believe it was The Really Big Popular Computer Information Mag Conglomerate that rated AV products by manufactured 'fake' viruses:
Any product that caught the fake virus as a Virus, got rated good, and any AV product that didn't, failed.

However...
... actual in-the-wild viruses are used to rate AV products here at VirusBulletin, and the ratings don't necessarily correspond with the popular press's opinions...

If the popular rating-system is NOT based on actual in-the-wild viruses, and sales are based on perceived desirability, then... ... there's Bogosity In The Basis, seemingly

What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[corebreech]

Virtual PC for Windows is indispensible. I do so many great things with it...

• running Linux and BSD
  
• testing code on different Windows versions
  
• having Virtual PC create an entire network of machines on my desktop so I can do network development
  
• sandboxing weird code I might get over the Internet
  
• justifying having lots and lots of RAM
  
• etc.
  

If they kill it, or more likely, make it so I can't run non-MS OS's, I will be severely bummed.

OTOH, if they kill it, I will be tempted to pay the big bucks and go with VMWare and host it using Linux.

And then deal with the fact that I don't get to play as many games. Sigh.

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have a windows port of vmware, so you wouldnt have to host it in linux

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[buysse]

What's wrong with VMware on Windows? I prefer a UNIX system myself, but there's no reason to forget about gaming just to have the equivalent of Virtual PC...

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[LordSah]

If they "kill" it, then just keep using the copy you've got. It'll be awhile (like 6-7 years) before it's not usable on current versions of windows.

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[CAIMLAS]

You apparently haven't tried running VMWare on a windows host machine lately. It's slow and useless.

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[Mainframes ROCK!]

I disagree. For the past while I have been doing tech support using VMWare running Windows 2000 on a Windows 2000 host. On the guest images I run a VPN client, Office, remote control software (Timbuktu or NetMeeting); works very nicely. The important thing is to have a fast host (of course) and lots of RAM on the host; I have 768MB on the host and usually 192-256MB defined for the guest. With this I can run the 2 guests I need at very good speeds. The thing you want to avoid is dual paging, that is, having both the guest and host doing VM paging, that really kills performance.

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[the argonaut]

Or at least until they move to their "Trusted Computing/Untrusted User" platform, after which you probably won't be able to run anything at all in it if you don't update it, as that could compromise their efforts to protect the computer (and MS, the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, etc) from you.

Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows?

[binarytoaster]

Yeah, my uses for VPC for Win include running it on a box at work so I can test out Linux installs for home (as I don't have a connection there yet) and running old games that just won't run even with enabling Win98 compatibility.

And I never played Descent2 with a 3D accelerator before, either. It's like a dream. :)

Wow.. it took MS as long as they said it would!

[jbuilder]

"Microsoft has updated their Mactopia Web Site to include a section on Virtual PC. It's taken them since February 2003 to do this.

From the Connectix Aquisition FAQ:

Q: What is the duration of the transition period after this transaction?
A: The transition period is approximately six months from today (February 20, 2003).

Imagine that. Microsoft said it would take six months and it took *looking at my calendar* six months! So what was there to complain about?

Reading comprehension, gang. It's a good thing! Just think, if JWZ had that ability, he wouldn't have had that nasty little toothbrush problem!!

That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[SlashChick]

Craig does seem to be about as fair as he can be regarding the G5 benchmarks he posted. If you read the whole thread, you will see that he used several different methodologies (compiler options and various compilers, mostly) to optimize both the P4 and G5 code.

Here are Craig's final numbers, as posted on Ars's website:

dual G4-1GHz Xserve (single CPU only): 105
dual G4-1GHz Xserve (both CPUs): 207
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 129
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 256
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 254
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 498
single P4 2GHz: 192
single P4 2.66GHz: 255
single P4 3.2GHz (extrapolated): 307

These numbers seem entirely reasonable to me. A single G5/2GHz G5 is approximately equivalent to a single P4/2.66GHz. This rings true to me -- Intel has never been known to squeeze every last bit of performance out of every chip, instead opting to continually push for higher and higher raw MHz. Thus, on a purely MHz/performance basis, Apple wins (as has been the case for years.)

However, in the dual-processor arena, things get muddier. Intel should have dual 3.4GHz Xeons by the time Apple's G5s are shipping. In raw performance, based on these numbers, the Xeon will have an edge over the G5. Plus, it will be priced lower... I priced a dual Xeon 2.4GHz with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive for a company that is buying a game server from us, and even with a 1U form factor (which is more expensive than a standard desktop case), the price came to $1705... a bit more than half the cost of the dual G5/2.0GHz. There is no question that the dual Xeon will outperform the G5 both in terms of raw performance and cost. The P4, however, doesn't have much edge over the G5 except for the cost.

For most of us, who are probably sitting on machines around 1-2GHz, almost all of the machines above, including the P4/2.66 and a single G5, will be a healthy upgrade. Despite Apple's high price point, I for one am happy to see them get back into the game... and I'm happy to see Intel have some real competition. A big thanks to Craig for doing the benchmarks... I'm sure this is just the first of many arguments about which machine is better!

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[captain_craptacular]

and I'm happy to see Intel have some real competition

Not to be a fanboy. But you're implying that AMD hasn't been real competition?

Seems like for roughly 3 of the last 4 years AMD was stomping Intel on a regular basis. Now they are in a lull between product lines and people completely write them off....

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[Rura Penthe]

Yes, in scalar FP. If you vectorize this same app then the G5 trounces everything by nearly 10x. Of course only scientific applications (and very few of those at that) can really be vectorized in that fashion. :) But if you're doing vector fluid dynamics calculations you can't beat any machine with Altivec!

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[Graymalkin]

Craig also said in his paper that the 20% performance advantage the 3.2GHz P4 enjoyed over the G5 could be made up for with G5 specific optimizations made to the Jet3D code. The code tested was basically the G4 savvy version. It is interesting that even using wholly unoptimized code the G5 trounced the G4 and held up pretty well to the P4. Depending on the application I would bet the G5 could keep up with a 3.2GHz P4 in scalar FP math.

In Vector FP math the G5 is going to mop the floor with just about anything you throw at it. If you were going to use the G5 for scientific number crunching it is entirely likely you'd do your best to vectorize as much of your code as possible. For such applications the G5 enjoys a 10x performance and thus price advantage over the Xeon based workstation you priced. For some people the G5 as a number crunching workhorse is going to be a real winner, for others the Xeon is going to keep the place running. Regardless of who uses it the G5 is pretty damn impressive.

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[be-fan]

Only if your dataset is relatively small. Once you fall out of cache, both are usually going to be memory bandwidth limited.

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[statusbar]

Unfortunately, most scientific number crunching requires more than 32 bit floats, which is all that altivec can give you.

for audio and video and image effects and processing, however, altivec works wonders!

--jeff++

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[groomed]

AMD had a great product with the Athlon a few years ago, but they never managed to shake off the low-cost hobbyist image and never really competed with Intel for the markets where Intel has traditionally been the strongest, i.e. business & industry.

AMDs 64 bit offering is an attempt to finally challenge Intel's dominance in those markets, but its very late, and apart from (again) the hobbyists and perhaps a few scientists who are low on funds, nobody is planning to support it (Microsoft? Yeah, right. Look what happened to Microsoft's support for PPC and Alpha).

You should see it the other way around. Intel has been stomping the entire CPU industry for the past quarter century.

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[Graymalkin]

Is this enough bits for most scientific calculations?

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[statusbar]

Wow! Cool! Thanks for the link! I do altivec stuff and had not seen that!

--jeff++

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[Graymalkin]

I've seen some links like that before regarding 64-bit integer math with AltiVec so I went delving and found that awesome page. The factorX example runs PDQ on my 867MHz G4. There's also the vecLib.framework which you may or may not know about. It's got several methods for multiprescision integer math using AltiVec.

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[WiseWeasel]

... which is where the 2 GHz G5's 1 GHz frontside bus and point-to-point ASIC get a chance to shine. Architecturally, the G5 should be a good performer, even once your code outgrows the paltry 512K L2 cache, something that cannot be said for Apple's current crop of computers, with their 133 - 166 MHz busses.

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[stapedium]

The problem is development libraries and environments. MatLAB, which is probably the most widely used vector processing environment doesn't take advantage of Altivec. In fact, it was jsut re-ported to the mac about a year ago.
Anyone know if MatLAB (or better yet, Octave) will be taking advantage of Altivec any time soon?

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[be-fan]

Both the P4 and G5 have 6.4GB busses (the G5 is 7, but has packet overhead the P4 doesn't). So performance should be similar. Certain algorthms, though, should really shine on the G5, when they don't actually need to stream all that data, but reuses parts of the dataset that are already cached.

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[mduell]

Do you have any benchmarks to back up this incredible 10x statement?

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in that comment, I meant "PC" rather than Intel specifically... but you have to admit that AMD has fallen off the radar recently. Intel chips are now cheaper and run at higher speeds. The Opteron is either going to be AMD's last gasp or the product that punts them back into the running. It should be interesting.

-SlashChick

Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed.

[BWJones]

Craig does seem to be about as fair as he can be regarding the G5 benchmarks he posted.

I've spoken with Craig a number of times in discussion groups and have found him to be a careful scientist whose numbers can be trusted and I don't believe he would unfairly bias or skew the numbers in Apple's favor. Additionally, while he is often an Apple advocate, he has also been critical of Apple when appropriate.

Whales

[rf0]

I have to ask how did the whale get in that shape in the first place? Attacked by humans or something more sinister

Rus

Re:Whales

[The Bungi]

Probably signed up for Earthlink, logged into Slashdot and clicked on a goatse link. Heart attack and the rest is blubber.

Re:Whales

[RollingThunder]

They die, they bloat from rotting, they float for a while (the skin is really tough) until they finally rupture. The fatty chunks that washed up are all that's left by that point.

Re:Whales

[quasi_steller]

I have to ask how did the whale get in that shape in the first place? Attacked by humans or something more sinister

I vote for something more sinister. :) It probably died of old age.

Re:Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

More sinister than humans!?

Is that possible?

Re:Whales

[pc12]

Must be left over from the Infamous Exploding Whale

Re:Whales

[AndroidCat]

Blipverts for whales. The Japanese (ZikZak) were trying to make popcorn sushi.

Re:Whales

[HalfFlat]

Clearly, it wasn't a whale.

I mean, it is now a whale, now that the biotechnology-media complex has declared it to be. But what else could they really do when one of the slaves of the Old Ones turns up dead on the beach?

It is said that the complex and the conspiracy are there to protect humanity from knowledge that is too dangerous, too terrible, to be known. That one can not understand our true place in the world and its history while remaining the least bit sane.

Yet for all the concern ascribed to them, they do seem to make quite large monetary profits from their studies of the biological artifacts of the Earth's ancient and hidden history. These secretive leaders of the world, with their ill-gotten power derived from ancient secrets -- are they our saviours or merely powerful hypocrites, blind perhaps in their self-assuredness and over-confidence?

Besides, do you think it's really fish in those fish fingers? Hmm!

Re:Whales

[Loundry]

They die, they bloat from rotting, they float for a while (the skin is really tough) until they finally rupture. The fatty chunks that washed up are all that's left by that point.

After which they are called "bhandasim", a delicacy throughout much of South East Asia.

sobig and danger ratings

[jeffy124]

AV firms are probably giving that virus a low rating because it lacks damage to the actual computer, meaning it doesnt delete/corrupt data. I think AV companies need to add a "Societal Threat:" field to viruses. In which case sobig is "highly dangerous."

Re:sobig and danger ratings

[ewhac]

It may not damage the computer itself, but it will seriously damage the reputation of the computer's owner, who will be falsely branded a spammer and get cut off the net. This should be of serious concern to computer owners and, as such, the virus should be rated as highly dangerous.

Schwab

Re:sobig and danger ratings

[AndroidCat]

Just think of the damage this could do with a DDoS. Imagine a vast army of machines all mindlessly trying to access a single site at the same time ... Hmmmmm, wait a minute...

Re:sobig and danger ratings

[mvpll]

Maybe I'm missing something, but as sobig.E comes as a zipped file, it won't autorun. It requires the user to click on the attachment and then click on the pif file within the attachment.

The number of people who would do this is has to be smaller then the number of people who will "preview" an email.

I also like the way AV companies don't rate key-logging as that big a danger.

"Hmm, this virus will record the URL and login details for your online banking and send them off for someone to use at their leisure."

"Does it delete any files?"

"Nope."

"Ok, that is a low rating then."

"This virus deletes solitaire.exe."

"Argh! Highly Dangerous! We need to release a definitions update NOW!"

Re:sobig and danger ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that personal reputation would fall under societal threat

oh, and getting any virus (or not doing anything to get rid of one) is enough to damage a reputation of someone. hence all viruses are highly dangerous. wait that doesnt make sense.....

IBList Automation

[heli0]

It seems that for each book they have: Title, Year, Author, Synopsis, Language, ISBN# and Genre. It seems there are already sites out there *cough*Amazon*cough* where a bot could scour this information for millions of titles.

Re:IBList Automation

[aeinome]

Same with IMDb, and look at it.

Re:IBList Automation

[heli0]

I was implying that they could use a bot to gather information for millions of books instead of taking months to manually input 10,000.

Re:IBList Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that IMDb is owned by Amazon, right?

Re:IBList Automation

[Jerf]

It seems there are already sites out there *cough*Amazon*cough* where a bot could scour this information for millions of titles.

That almost certinaly would be illegal. See eBay vs. Bidder's Edge for what is probably the closest thing to precedent in this area. (A Google search turns up all you'd need to know.)

All but the most rabid Slashbot should find this reasonable; compute the cost in bandwidth and processing power to suck down all of Amazon.com's book listings and you'll find it to be decidely non-trivial. There's a big, big, big, big, big difference between using a website and conducting what would have to be a denial-of-service attack to download that much information in a reasonable amount of time.

Re:IBList Automation

[The Cydonian]

Yeah, just that Amazon allows that. Now, I've only skimmed through the licence agreement, have to hit work asap, but seems that it is allowed, except for the following weird conditions:-

1) You must link each of the Amazon.com Properties that is displayed on your website to (a) a product detail page of the Amazon.com Website, or (b) any other page of the Amazon.com Website, including the Amazon.com homepage. You may not display any Amazon.com Properties on your website without any link back to a page of the Amazon.com Website;

2) You may not link any of the Amazon.com Properties presented on your website to (a) any commercial page of a website other than the Amazon.com Website, or (b) direct traffic to any commercial page of a website other than the Amazon.com Website; and

3) You may not utilize the Amazon.com Properties in a way that could divert sales from the Amazon.com Website, including but not limited to, merchandizing products not offered on the Amazon.com Website.

IANAL, and I'm not sure how this would fit with the IBList goals, but technically yes, Amazon allows it.

Re:IBList Automation

[heli0]

"compute the cost in bandwidth and processing power to suck down all of Amazon.com's book listings and you'll find it to be decidely non-trivial"

You only need to download the html for each page and you can get the info you need by looking at the tags. Each page has about 60KB of code, so a standard 1.5Mbit(180KB/s) home DSL or Cable connection could get the info for 3 books/sec, 180 books/minute or 260,000 books/day. A lot better than 10,000 in 6 months.

Not sure how quickly that data could be processed, but it could be quickly gathered.

Re:IBList Automation

[Sanga]

Why would anyone develop alternate OSes (TRON, MINIX etc) when we have one already available *cough* WinDos *cough*

Re:IBList Automation

[Alsee]

Not sure how quickly that data could be processed

Automated processing can be done far faster than the downloading. You can do all of the processing it while you download and play a game at the same time. You'll be done milliseconds after the download completes.

-

VPC/Entourage

[mrpuffypants]

I could care less about VPC for the Mac being updated. What I'm really waiting for is the Entourage update that brings Exchange compatibality.

After that comes out I'd like to EOL OS 9 and Outlook 2001 at my university and move everybody over to OS X (finally). Plus, perhaps I can convince my boss-man to let me use a mac at work instead of a PC! (crosses fingers)

Re:VPC/Entourage

[elphmorgan]

Amen brother, I'm with you.

Re:VPC/Entourage

[Anonymous Coward]

You could care less? That means you care. If you couldn't care less, that would mean you don't care.

So how much less could you care? A lot? That means you care a lot.

Re:VPC/Entourage

[extra88]

We're leaving our Indigo iMacs running OS 9 until they're replaced over the next two years. This summer's Macs will be running OS X and last year's Macs are getting switched to OS X. Unfortunately the arrival of the Entourage update (soon, I hope) doesn't really affect our plans. The Entourage update will only bring compatibility with Exchange 2000 (or newer) and our Uni's Exchange servers can't get upgraded until Active Directory gets deployed which isn't going to happen this calendar year, maybe not even until next summer. It's a bummer.

So, we're going to switch to Entourage anyway and use Exchange as an IMAP server since the faculty never use Outlok for anything but email anyway (for the few staff with Macs, they can use Outlook in Classic). Everyone in our IT dept. has been using Entourage this way for a while now and it works great. Since LDAP is also enabled on the server, Entourage can even access the Global Address List.

Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Nom du Keyboard]

Craig Hunter of NASA gives details about his much-quoted dual-G5 Power Mac benchmarks listed here.

When you read his latest comments he notes that several Fortran compilers gave faulty results, some depending on optimizations selected. THIS IS SCARY, to say the least. Even years ago I knew of C code that broke for no known reason when optimizations were selected.

What does it take to start a /. article about faulty compilers. This ought to be a big deal.

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it take to start a /. article about faulty compilers.

Submitting a story to the editors on a good day, duh.

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[realdpk]

What's the C code that broke for no known reason? Let's get the ball rolling.

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Anonymous Coward]

heh thats a old problem... fortran h on the ibm 370 was infamous for generating crazy code at the highest optimation level

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Nom du Keyboard]

What's the C code that broke for no known reason? Let's get the ball rolling

It was a SCADA system running on DEC MIPS-based superminis and Sun workstations some years ago. I no longer have access to that source code. Performance was a problem and some tests I ran showed that full optimization could improve one of them by 2X and the other by 4X, but when the whole system was compiled with optimization it simply didn't run. Like many software projects, there was no time at the moment to track down the failing modules and later it was possible that some selective optimization was performed after I left the project, but compilers that can't compile have always concerned me because some problems are not easy to verify results on. If you knew the results, you wouldn't have to be running the program to get them.

The author of the G5 test, whom I don't know how to contact, hasn't named the compilers, though I wish he would.

I've had no luck in my past attempts to submit an article to /., however someone else with better results might ask the question of faulty compilers. I'd expect it to get a lot of results.

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Nowadays, as in with current compilers, wrong answers are probably due to broken code more often than broken compilers. Especially with C code, but it can happen with FORTRAN too. Typically the problem is that the code author violates part of the language spec and gets themselves into a situation of relying on undefined behaviour. It just so happens that with their particular compiler at low optimizations levels, the compiler's undefined behaviour happens to produce the answers the author wants, so they don't notice they are doing anything wrong. (When the undefined behaviour produces incorrect results, the author usually notices pretty quick, ends up scratching their head for a bit and then trying something else, sometimes they get it right and end up using valid code, sometimes they get it wrong again but this time the undefined behaviour ends up producing the results they expect).

When you crank up the optimization level, compilers tend to get a lot more strict about expecting standards conformant code and they start making assumptions that are true given strict adherence to the language spec. If the code had been relying on undefined behaviour, now that behaviour is different and the result is wrong answers.

It is common for the person who is trying a new platform/compiler or optimization level to be just as much a non-expert in the language as the original author (they may even be the original author) so they aren't able to debug the conformance issues and instead they turn to the easy scapegoat and say, "the compiler's broken - it used to work fine."

So, when you hear stories of modern compilers producing code that generates wrong answers, you need to take into account both the expertise of the "accuser" in the language itself as well as their experience with the particular piece of code. If they aren't expert in both, take the accusation with a huge grain of salt.

Note, I'm not saying the NASA guy does or doesn't know what he is doing, I haven't read the reference update yet to decide for myself. I'm just speaking about the generic problem of people reporting broken compilers when it is really the code that is broken.

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[raga]

The author of the G5 test, whom I don't know how to contact, hasn't named the compilers, though I wish he would.

Actually he does mention them futher down the thread:

"...
G4/OSX: Absoft, NAG
...
P4/Linux: Portland Group, Lahey, Intel (ifc)
P4/Windows: Compaq Visual Fortran
..."

cheers- raga

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[dvdeug]

What does it take to start a /. article about faulty compilers. This ought to be a big deal.

All programs have bugs. An optimizing compiler is a big, complex program with some very hairy algorithms that has to deal closely with the quirks of assembly. You can't really expect perfection.

Even years ago I knew of C code that broke for no known reason when optimizations were selected.

A lot of times the C code is bad, not the compiler. The naive non-optimized version works, but when the compiler starts taking advantage of the language rules to optimize, then the program breaks.

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Shinobi]

If you had read the thread, you'd have noticed that the Intel Compiler gave faulty output no matter if optimizations were enabled or not, and he's been working on it to and from for over a year...

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[slide-rule]

Since it looks like someone else in a sibling post already started the ball rolling on faulty compilers, I would contribute my own somewhat limited experience from my workplace. We've been mainly sun/solaris workstation boxes on the desktop and are an engineering company. Hence, Fortran. The solaris F77 compiler has been notorious at letting bad code slide through and compile/run without warning, and for some things we don't seem to have compiler switches to control things. Our top local guru is quoted as saying this particular compiler will successfully compile your e-mail. The F90 compiler does seem to be a bit better in some respect (if code is written in f90 fashion at least), but I'm running into problems later compiling the same code where a win2000 compaq visual fortran compiler (yes, we have apparently sold out to Evil ;) is catching and warning or error'ing on. One recent example: the solaris f77/f90 compilers don't seem to have a problem compiling a call to a subroutine with a mismatched argument list length; the code will run like a champ until it hits the call, then its anyone's guess what happens (zero's for the missing args? seg-fault on bad memory access?)

Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5

[Lars T.]

German article (from November 2001) about a bug in Intel's C compiler when using inter procedural optimization (-ipo) with an example from Povray

Re:Sobig

[Dave2 Wickham]

What, refering to your head?

Sorry, I won't do it again, promise!

Cheap Virtual PC?

[tengwar]

I see Connectix don't sell Virtual PC without DOS or Windows. I've got a legal, non-OEM copy of Win2k. If I buy Virtual PC plus DOS, can I install Win2k over it?

Re:Cheap Virtual PC?

[Anonymous Coward]

of course you can

Re:Cheap Virtual PC?

[Anonymous Coward]

The dos version of Virtual PC comes with a non microsoft version of dos, A floppy disk image with PC-DOS if I remember right. Just enought to get you started.

Re:Cheap Virtual PC?

[ePhil_One]

Technically you can, but you really wouldn't want to. Connectix took the time to optimize some pervasive system calls so that rather than running a pure i386 emulator, the also intercept those calls and run PPC versions. This leads to major speed ups. At least according to the Marketing folks they did.

Then again, if the DOS version only emulates a 386, Win2k may not install after all.

The IBlist is kind of poor

[chadamir]

I have a few beefs with the book list that I will air here as I do not see a means to on their site. - No button to submit corrections(I saw tons of mistakes) - Peoples real names were listed as pseduonyms rather than having their fake names as nom de plume and then a separate section for real names. - Books were listed by the year of their most recent printing rather than their original publishing. - The above could have easily been acknowledged but they dont even have a section for this - I saw things miscatogorized as novels that were just individual poems. It's a good endeavor but I don't see how it beats going to amazon and just typing in the authors name.

Re:The IBlist is kind of poor

[Sabalon]

IMDB started off as a database on three computers with an e-mail interface. It's got better.

Hopefully this will.

Actually, the hobbit was listed as 1937. I would think if they were gonna make an IMDB kinda thing, they would have added some more of the cool stuff from the start.

Re:The IBlist is kind of poor

[Some Guy]

My problem with it is that when I submitted several books [example] and took the time to write synopses, they stole the descriptions [and picture I might add] from amazon.

This is uncool.

Am I the only one...

[fatboy]

that thinks Boot List Order Bug when you see blob?
(Anyone who knows Microware's OS-9 knows about the BLOB)

Re:Am I the only one...

[AndroidCat]

Microware's OS-9

Ah yes, I almost built a dual 6809 kit so that I could run that Unixish OS. Instead I built a Heath-Zenith Z150 PC clone. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened down that path of the trousers of time.

Re:Am I the only one...

[The Wicked Priest]

path of the trousers of time

"Leg", surely?

about your cost comparison ($.02 warning)

[pimpinmonk]

The dual Xeon 2.4Ghz you speak of, what are its other features? Firewire? USB2? Serial ATA? What video card? Apple sells a package, so you can't really compare it to that server setup.

They compared it to a Dell Xeon workstation which I agree with; it had the other peripherals and graphics power that someone doing rendering or other apps may need. For server uses and clustering, it would probably make sense for research orgs and renderfarm owners to wait for XServes, which will hopefully cost less than the desktop G5s.

Re:about your cost comparison ($.02 warning)

[virtual_mps]

The dual Xeon 2.4Ghz you speak of, what are its other features? Firewire? USB2? Serial ATA? What video card? Apple sells a package, so you can't really compare it to that server setup.

Sure you can. The problem with "packages" is that the package is only good if it contains exactly the set of features that you need. It might well be that a machine used for computations doesn't need firewire, usb2, serial ata, or a video card. It probably does need networking (and both the apple and many xeons include gigabit, but you'd need to buy an add-in card for either if you wanted quad or fiber gigabit).

why *would* they kill VPC?

[autopr0n]

Virtual PC is just one more reason for too A) buy a windows license (what M$ will probably bundle them, so you can't save money buy using Linux on your VPC) and B) port software to the mac, since people can just use VPC if they want to run it.

Re:why *would* they kill VPC?

[Wyatt Earp]

Virtual PC already had a Windows licence for most versions although there was a Linux version too.

Re:why *would* they kill VPC?

[Juanvaldes]

You *could* (probably still can, I dont' know) get VPC by itself with DOS or FreeDOS or something. It was the cheapest version and then you can slap XP/Linux/BSD/Whatever on it.

Re:why *would* they kill VPC?

[Billly Gates]

Microsoft wants Apple to die and mac users to buy Windows based machines instead.

MS is now making media player an itune clone where they make revunue off every windows desktop. To them your computer is their vending machine. Its best for Microsoft since the whitehouse is in bed with them to kill the mac and raise prices for Windows and Office once all competition is gone.

Re:why *would* they kill VPC?

[demon]

Like there was ever much point in running _Linux_, of all things, in VirtualPC - especially when you can run it natively, and run MacOS on top of it. OSes that weren't available on PowerPC (or not widely available anyway), like Win9x, Windows NT, OS/2, etc., ok, makes sense. Seriously, that's what most people were buying VirtualPC, SoftPC/SoftWindows, and their cousins for - for running stuff that they couldn't get natively on the Mac platform.

Time heals all wounds

[aeinome]

It'll probably get better, given time. It hasn't been open for that long, but if they get enough complaints they'll change something. It just takes time.

ISBN.nu

[autopr0n]

What about isbn.nu? That site's been around for years and does much the same thing as this booklist site.

Re:ISBN.nu

[darkpurpleblob]

Compare the same book on both sites: isbn.nu and Internet Book List.

isbn.nu appears to be targeted at comparing pricing and shipping times for purchasing books from online retailers. On the other hand the Internet Book List is more geared towards discovering new and interesting books.

Sperm whale or...?

[adagioforstrings]

12-meter mass of flesh...obscure 'giant octopus'

Are we sure they didn't mean 'whale sperm'?


Okay, yeah, yeah, that's disgusting. Sorry.

Re:Sperm whale or...?

[stratjakt]

Sounds like a japanese comic.

Those people are fucking sick, I dont care how fast their cablemodems are.

One Word:

[thebagel]

VMWare?

hmmmm

[Vilim]

Hmmm, I recal Douglas Adams saying something about a sperm whale in the middle of nowhere "As they approached the ridge of higher ground they became aware that it seemed to be circular - a crater about a hundred and fifty yards wide. Round the outside of the crater the sloping ground was spattered with black and red lumps. They stopped and looked at a piece. It was wet. It was rubbery. With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat. At the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod. "Look," he said, pointing into the crater. In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot. The silence was only disturbed by the slight involuntary spasms of Trillian's throat. "I suppose there's no point in trying to bury it?" murmured Arthur, and then wished he hadn't. Now, the most logical explanation of this, is that in another dimension Earth was actually Magrathea (sp?) and this sperm whale was dropped out of the sky from the Heart of Gold. It then went through time and dimensions to wind up on earth. See, explains it perfectly :p

Time heals all wounds?

[thebagel]

No, no no. Time wounds all heels. They've shot themselves in their collective feet.

VPC

[madsenj37]

Microsoft will not kill off VPC for many reasons. 1. It can sell a licensed copy of Windows with every product. They are a software company, so this is good for them. 2. They can limit VPC to use only windows products. This pushes their software over the competitors. 3. They can discontinue products for the mac and make people use VPC for compatability until they are willing to switch over to their platform. Either way, its Microsoft software they are using. 4.They have a way for people/companies to run older Microsoft OSes inside the new ones ... such as running NT inside of Server 2003.

How about that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Chilean scientists have determined that a 12-meter mass
of flesh discovered recently on a Pacific beach is actually CmdrTaco.

See
What
I
Mean?

Re:How about that....

[stratjakt]

Sobig, Blob, Blubber

Yeah, sounds like CmdrTaco

Re:fp?

[AvengerXP]

First reply to FP woot

available for a nominal fee

[comnenos]

On the tivo site, to get a copy of the source code by mail, it gives a mailing address (no phone) and says: "You will be charged a nominal fee for reproduction, shipping and handling costs, as allowed by the GPL." Anybody wonder what that nominal fee is? How would that work, you mail them asking for it, they mail you back, say what it costs, then you mail them? And who decides what a nominal fee is, even? Why not just say code available for $5 or whatever? I realize that the GPL may not say you have to tell people what the "nominal fee" is, but wouldn't that just make everyone's life easier?

And how would you enforce that part of the GPL in court? This haziness isn't the fault of Tivo, but rather of the FSF. Maybe as far as the company is concerned it takes several hours of labor at $50 an hour to get you that c.d. of code, so would have to pay $300?

Anyhoo, I think that everyone will just download the code off the website as it's there for free.

Re:available for a nominal fee

[stratjakt]

so what, if someone payed 300 dollars, they could make it available to everyone for free on the interweb.

if they can show the billable hours it costs, and its reasonable, then theres no problem.

Re:available for a nominal fee

[Anonymous Coward]

In the rather largish corporation I work for, we get our software from another department. As we are all the same happy company, we get our version for 'media cost'.

That's several hundred dollars per CD - of course it's funny money going from one departmeent to another - all staying in the corporation, but that's what they've determined the price of making a CD to be.

Re:available for a nominal fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Dedicated burner Machine:

Here is how some departments would break down the costs of making CDs internally:

Overhead:
1 x pc w/ 1-3 DVD/CDR/burners: $3000
1 x personal laser printer/label printer: $600

Consumables:
packs of blank CDs: $30
toner/ink for printer: $100
Labor: $15-$22 / hr to make the cds
Power/office overhead/ etc: ?????

Plus sometimes thats the only way some depts can stay afloat. looks better on the books that there is "cash flow" back and forth

The IBList

[winkydink]

The Internet Book List, which announced its creation earlier this year on /. has now reached 10,000+ entries and is still going strong.

The only problem is that 9,500 of the books are about unicorns or elves.

Re:The IBList

[madpierre]

Of the remaining. 499 are about Unicorns and Elves. 1 is the index.

Yes you are

[Hecatonchires]

BLOB - Binary Large OBject
It is a database type

Well, I think so anyway...

Re:Yes you are

[WebMasterJoe]

BLOB - Binary Large OBject
It is a database type

Yep, that's what I thought of. Specifically, I thought of people running into my office asking why Goldmine is suddenly spitting out BLOB errors.

"Because Goldmine is a steaming piece of crap," I'd say, sometimes in my head, and sometimes aloud. "Guess I'll be drinking again tonight."

TiVo following Linksys?

[proxima]

IIRC, TiVo has provided source for their GPL-based software from the beginning, or very near it. In any case, they did long before Linksys fessed up to all its usage.

Sweet...

[phxhawke]

...more code to play with.

*rummages through the files.*

That's nothing.

[s20451]

How do you think Uranus feels?

(waits for a goatse link)

I shouldn't moan about a rejected story but...

[WIAKywbfatw]

...if this isn't "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that matters" then I don't know what is:

Tarantino's Kill Bill sliced into two movies

BBC News is carrying a story that Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino's forthcoming martial arts movie Kill Bill is to be divided into two films. The film, starring Uma Thurman as a female assassin, is being released as two separate 90-minute movies after the early version weighed in at three hours. Miramax decided to divide the film over fears it would lose ticket sales because of its original length. Aren't we all annually queuing up to watch The Lord Of The Rings movies, running at 178 and 179 minutes? Wasn't in just a few years ago we had Titanic running at 194 minutes? And weren't all those blockbusters of yesteryear - eg, Ben Hur (212-222 minutes) and The Ten Commandments (220 minutes) - all about 3 hours in length?

So Kill Bill doesn't register on Slashdot's radar? Yeah right. Want to bet that we see a review of the movie on the front page as soon as it's released?

Re:I shouldn't moan about a rejected story but...

[mcp33p4n75]

Yeah, I was kind of shocked to hear this story also. But, don't be so naive. The reason it was split up wasn't because of projected ticket losses. Miramax split it up because they can make more than twice as much money this way. If I have to go twice to the theater to see one movie, that's twice as much money. But look just how much hype the Matrix sequels are getting. Some part of that is because they're split up. After you see Reloaded you just have to see Revolutions. With all that hype about what's going to happen, you don't mind paying twice as much. Plus, more people than would normally see the movie will get drawn into the hype and have to see it also. I thought the marketing by the Matrix people was ingenius, but I sure hope it doesn't turn into a fad.

P.S. Yeah, Yeah, I know sequels in trilogies such as BTTF were six months apart. But those movies each had separate scripts. They weren't originally one script and then split down the middle.
P.P.S. I'm really excited to see these movies >:D Even moreso than Revolutions.

Re:I shouldn't moan about a rejected story but...

[istewart]

P.S. Yeah, Yeah, I know sequels in trilogies such as BTTF were six months apart. But those movies each had separate scripts. They weren't originally one script and then split down the middle.

This actually isn't true. Back to the Future parts II and III were originally a single script called Paradox that was to include all the future/1985A/Wild West storylines of the completed films in one 3.5-hour long megasequel. Universal made Zemeckis and Gale split it up into two movies for much the same reasons the parent asserts Kill Bill is being split up.

Re:I shouldn't moan about a rejected story but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats News for Movie Viewers, Stuff that only matters to them You're at least right in that you don't know what "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters" is though. Come to that, neither do the Slashdot editors.

Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[Squidgee]

dual G4-1GHz Xserve (single CPU only): 105
dual G4-1GHz Xserve (both CPUs): 207
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 129
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 256
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 254
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 498 single P4 2GHz: 192 single P4 2.66GHz: 255 single P4 3.2GHz (extrapolated): 307

Not only did the score of the G5 with both CPUs make me say "Holy shit" out loud in front of my comp (seriously!), but it also kicks the piss out of the P4! So, Apple does have one of the fastest machines around!

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[jdhutchins]

Well, you have to think about the data for a second. It's basically saying that 2 G5 @ 2GHz are about the same as two P4's, 2.66GHz. That's not much of a biggie. The parts that you have bolded show that you didn't think about it. You're saying that 2 processors kick the butt of one processor. That's not suprising, that's what should have happened.

Basically, these numbers tell me that for the test run, P4's are roughly equal to a G5. Of course, it's the P4 at 2.66GHz that's equal to the 2GHz G5, but that can kinda be expected, because Intel seems to focus on processor speed (which is what sells the processors), instead of preformance/speed. And if you consider the cost, then the P4 wins hands-down.

I'm sure you can argue that for some things, the G5 is much faster than the P4, but you'd have to show me the tests that indicated that (as well as how you got them). Statistics can say anything you want them to.

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[Billly Gates]

That is a lie. It is only equal to 2.66 ghz if the compilers on the G5 are not optimized. The compiler was only g4 optimized because that was only available while the p4 version of Fortran was fully optimized.

Lets wait for better compilers before we judge.

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[SaDan]

How about, "Lets wait for the G5 based machines to actually be available to the public," before we judge.

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[Billly Gates]

They are.... If your a big Apple customer who wants to test out newer machines such as Nasa.

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[htmlboy]

dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 498 single P4 2GHz: 192 single P4 2.66GHz: 255 single P4 3.2GHz (extrapolated): 307
Not only did the score of the G5 with both CPUs make me say "Holy shit" out loud in front of my comp (seriously!), but it also kicks the piss out of the P4! So, Apple does have one of the fastest machines around!

so two 2.0 GHz cpus are faster than a single 3.2 GHz cpu? i fail to see why this is surprising.

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[10Ghz]

Isn't Intel releasing Prescott (P4 with improved HyperThreading, 1MB of L2, double the L1, new instructions, architechtual tweaks, faster MHz etc. etc.) around the same time G5 becomes widely available? So while G5 might be good when compared to current P4's, will it continue to be when compared to Prescott?

Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks

[SaDan]

I wonder if NASA could get an order for 10,000 G5 machines filled quickly at this point in time?

Fastest G5 SPEC Scores

[heli0]

Have we seen the fastest SPEC scores that the G5 can produce? Any tests done other than with gcc?

Intel has given us SPEC_INT/SPEC_FP of 1261/1267 using ICC for a P4 @ 3.2GHz, can Apple beat it with any compiler?

Re:Fastest G5 SPEC Scores

[Llywelyn]

Considering that I doubt gcc is fully optimized for it (and certainly wasn't at the time of that test), the operating system isn't full optimized for it, and 3rd parties (such as Metrowerks) haven't had a chance to play with building a compiler for it, I think it will be a little while before we see "the best it can do."

Beyond all of that, SPEC is largely irrelevant and has serious design flaws in how it is put together and implemented, but that's irrelevant to the discussion.

In other news...

[Burgundy Advocate]

...the Orbital Space Plane, which was discussed in this article, might not have the problems we thought.

In This Space.com article on Space Shuttle Weather Scrubs, there's a selection of an interview from NASA's deputy administrator:

Gregory also dropped a strong hint in Dayton that the so-called Orbital Space Plane, not targeted for 2008, could be a capsule.

The very name of the program, Gregory cautioned, is not meant to imply that the final design will be a winged vehicle. He also said that the chosen design would stress very mature, well-understood technology.

"You will see things that some will call 'retro'," he said. "But when you delve into its capabilities they will be very sophisticated, utilizing all the latest technologies."

When asked at the end of a presentation here why NASA was preparing to spend $20 billion on a "gold-plated Soyuz," Gregory praised the reliability of the Soyuz, but disavowed the questioner's cost estimate.

"I don't think anyone has settled on a number such as that before," Gregory said.

So yeah. Turns out that NASA seems to understand a winged vehicle might not be the optimal way to go for a quick schedule on existing boosters.

Also, considering that Soyuz is about 7150 Kg, a similar (conceptually) spacecraft could easily be launched on an Atlas IIAS or Atlas III rocket, and considering that these vehicles have a 100% success rate thus far...

Lift numbers:
Atlas IIAS: 8610 Kg to LEO
Atlas IIIA: 8640 Kg to LEO
Atlas IIIB: 10,718 Kg to LEO

If they ended up using an Atlas V or Delta 4 EELV, they could get away with significantly more payload as well... but on a very new launch platform. Delta 4's can carry from 8600 to 24000+ Kg per laucnch. Atlas V's can lift from 10300 to 25000 Kg to LEO.

TiVo a leader, not a follower

[Burdell]

Both my original Series1 TiVo and my newer Series2 have a section in the manual with the GNU GPL and the URL for their kernel and GNU utilities source. They've been legal from the beginning, unlike Linksys.

TiVo has been a leader in releasing the required source and a little more; they also provide the compiler toolchain used to build the kernel (which is not required, but a nice touch, since it allows users to easily build additional binaries with the same toolchain).

What? Microsoft honest?

[twitter]

The transition period is approximately six months from today (February 20, 2003). ... Imagine that. Microsoft said it would take six months and it took *looking at my calendar* six months!

Uhhh, no they did not say they would take six months to update their web site. They said they would take six months to " bringing on board key members of the Connectix team" They also said that Connextix would continue to "sell and support" their stuff for the six months, but the whole page you link too was obviously a Microsoft publication which indicates full control of was assumed immediately. Why that would keep them from updating their own web pages for six months is known only to paraniod inner workings of Bill Gates. Microsoft keeping any promise is different and shocking.

Microsoft also claims they will continue with Virtual PC development, but it should be obvious they don't want ways around their upgrade train and planned obsolescence of their software. Chances are they will use any IP purchased with Connextix to shut down other VMware, the way they have used SCO to threaten IBM and free software. It's just more of their expressed desire that there be only one OS on the planet for everything. That's one promise I expect them to try to keep.

Accessible websites: do as I say...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the charset says ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) like Joe Clark's page does, is it still legit to use Unicode punctation? Like amp-pound-8217;

I would think accessability means, in part, targeting the lowest common denominator:
- Don't use Unicode for something that can be done with Latin-1
- Don't use Latin-1 for something that can be done with ASCII

And yes, I mean those damn "smart quotes"

U.S. grain

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. produces something like 75% of the world's food. Land-use in the U.S. is nothing like representative of worldwide land-use.

Sperm whale...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists performing research at the Museum of Natural History in Santiago were the first to develop this conclusion after observing the presence of dermal glands unique to the species.

OR... whatever it was was big and scary enough to EAT a sperm whale!

replying to your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the -1 troll the FP'ers get?

Hey!

[chriso11]

You forgot to include:
A reading from the holy book, as written by the prophet Adams, you insenstive clod!

Cool Huge Map

[Slime-dogg]

Way cool... Click on the humongo map link at the lat/lon site, and report back how much memory it eats.

Right now, I've got Firebird using 40 MB of RAM, 805 MB of swap.

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

[jfabermit]

From what I can tell, the internet book list didn't have much on Amazon (or powells, or just a simple google search), but I think there is a need they could fill if they tried. Ask amazon to recommend books to you, and they will generally give you a bunch of titles by the same author(s). Thanks, but I know I like this author already. I've seen movie sites which make some pretty good left-field recommendations based on my ratings, but haven't found a good one for books. Is there already one out there, or is this an untapped area?

Re:What? Microsoft honest?

[jbuilder]

I'll bet you hear voices in your head, too, huh? Telling you that Bill really *is* the antichrist... :-/

Look, they finished the transition of VirtualPC into MS, and then put up everything on their website upon completion of that transition. It's as simple as that. Is there some agenda to kill it? Perhaps. Certainly there was when Sony bought Virtual GameStation, since it's long gone now.. Regardless, they've done what they said they were going to do, end of story.

'Decent article'

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever. most of what the article said is only true if you make large assumptions. example:

"He said that if China had the same density of private cars as, for example Germany, it would have to produce 650 million vehicles -- a target that environmentalists say the world's supply of metal and oil would be unable to sustain."

so, maby they will have to make cars out of something other than metal, and run them on something other than oil. (our oil supply can't sustain one car indefinately, this isn't news) BTW, they said 'enviromentalists' I am sure the truth is something else. ( IIRC the biggest iron ore deposit is untouched, in Austrailia, and all at ground level.)

we don't have to 'radically change our consumption' for china to grow, China will just have to develope differently, that is all.

Interesting you use Tokyo

[DrSkwid]

It is in the World psyche that Japan has the people packed in.

The average room size in Tokyo for domestic dwellings is *larger* than the corresponding average for UK room sizes.

Give me Tokyo anytime (providing they bring down the prices!)

that's no problem

[DrSkwid]

I hate most of 'em already

Internet booklist

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wonder.. Why there isn't a good alike booklist about technical documents and books? Like free Java books and more advanced topics?

Sure, there are lists. Thousands of lists. Who has the time to skim them all for good information? Who even knows about all the good ones?

Let Judge Judy decide

[DrSkwid]

Once you took delivery of the goods and saw that $300 was more than nominal you could try and take them to court and claim some of the money back.

If they had the judgement go against them they would probably reduce the fee.

That's how a beaurocracy works. [or doesn't work]

Incidentally, the French invented beaurocracy.

Internet Book List ownership

[unger]

hmmm, i'm a bit hesitant to contribute my time and energy to this database without a stronger guarantee of public ownership.

from the Internet Book List site:

Policy and ownership
IBList is not a commercial venture, nor a real legal entity in any sense. All the data on IBList has been entered by its users. We the creators of IBList, while giving it our best effort, do not guarantee the accuracy nor the quality of the information within the website. We do reserve the right to correct any errors we find within and remove or change any material we find abusive or otherwise unsuitable. We do not claim any ownership over the user-submitted data.

didn't the IMdb start out as a public database? then there was the CDDB fiasco. freedb says everything is GPL'd. i didn't think you could GPL data, can you?

i'd also like to know i'll be able to download the database file prior to contributing.

Natural philosophers

[GlobalEcho]

That it was not the spawn of the whale, according to vulger conceit or nominal appellation, philosophers have always doubted, not easily conceiving the seminal humour of animals should be inflammable, or of a floating nature.

This sentence is not constructed by modern standards, and I believe you have misread the quote. The whole point is that natural philosophers realized such inflammable, floating stuff could not be sperm.

Re:Natural philosophers

[Xeger]

Right; I misspoke. If you jump up a few levels you'll see where I corrected my mistake in the next post.

I imagine that the sailors -- or whichever westerners first cut open a sperm whale -- assumed the viscous white substance in the whale's head was semen. I doubt they were Latin-speaking sailors, so they probably used the word for semen in their own vernacular.

By the time natural philosophers investigated the mystery, the term had stuck (no pun intended) and the natural philosophers translated the term into Latin, which gave them spermaceti -- whale spooge. Thus, whether they actually believed the stuff to be sperm or not, it was the natural philosophers who gave spermaceti its name, and not the sailors.

They had obviously been investigating the properties of semen for some time (those kinky ur-scientists) and were aware of its function even before they knew of its specific composition. This is evident in the passage because the "seminal humour" of an animal is equated to its "spawn."

God, it felt good to use the term "whale spooge" in serious discourse. I hope I get to do that again some day.

Wrong on Tivo

[The Wicked Priest]

As a couple of posters have pointed out, Tivo has always (or for a long time, anyway) released code under the GPL. I'd just like to add that Tivo is actually getting more restrictive about what you can do with their boxen. The Series 2 Tivos are more difficult to hack than Series 1's, and they're making them even moreso with each software revision.

Although they give you the source code for the kernel, that doesn't mean that you can change it -- not and still expect your Tivo to work, anyway. The boot PROM (think "BIOS") in the Series 2 checks that the kernel it's booting is signed with Tivo's key. Then, a program in the initrd checks everything on the root partition to see that it's not modified, either. With the initial software that came out with the Series 2, it was possible to get around this by setting BASH_ENV as a kernel option in the drive's boot page, but they "fixed" that in the next revision.

Now, to hack a Series 2, you have to either stick to old software, play two-card monte with the kernel, or reprogram the PROM -- which requires desoldering it from the motherboard, since it can't be done in software from the Tivo.

I've done the kmonte thing, and it works well -- in that context, the kernel source is actually useful, since you can boot anything you like as the second kernel. But you still have to devote a couple partitions to the old software (after first getting a copy of it) that allows the BASH_ENV hack. Doubtless this will not work once there's a Tivo Series 3. :-(

Oh, and it probably goes without saying, but Tivo's GPL'ed software doesn't include the main applications -- the bits that actually handle TV.

TiVo always GPL compliant

[Gamma]

TiVo has always posted their code compliant with GPL... it's not something they just did. I recall reading about the GPL and the fact they posted their modifications to the web in the manual of my first TiVo back several years ago.

Be more business minded!

[Loundry]

If Symantec is anything like any of the companies I've worked for, they are way too busy just attending the regular day-to-day business to invent and distribute new viruses. It's absurd to think that they could be this efficient, releasing new viruses into the wild every couple of months that work this well.

I disagree. Suppose you're a "virus protection" company. How many people do you have to employ to release one new virus every three months? This becomes a variable in the profitibility equation for your extortion racket, I mean, business model. The more viruses you release, the more valuable your virus protection is, but you don't want too many viruses as then people might abandon the said favority virus-friendly platform for one that is less hospitable for viruses (and you don't want to piss off your friend, Microsoft, who created the virus protection industry).

Much easier, and probably just as effective, to just throw around some inflated numbers, like claiming billions upon billions in damages and what not.

If no one actually gets a virus, then these inflated numbers that you've been throwing around would eventually be revealed as the bullshit they are. There needs to be some kind of damage to ensure your long-term profitability.

MS standard distro channel

[WasteOfAmmo]

'... Virtual PC for Mac will be available through standard Microsoft channels of distribution.'

Is it just me or did anybody else reading this immediately think "but I thought Outlook didn't run on the Mac, how will the payload get insta... oh, those distribution channels."

--
No, I am not trolling, it has become standard stereotyped running joke that MS Outlook is a virus distribution machine. I suspect that is why the above thought popped up first; the resulting smirk caused me to post this. Yes I use MS software, among many other types... if the tool fits, use it.

WHOAH

[Anonymous Coward]

when did macs get a scroll wheel? I thought they still had that lame single button they were always trying to defend long after everyone knew it was stupid.

Re:WHOAH

[Anonymous Coward]

When it became possible to use non-Apple branded mice with a Mac. Did you not know that USB is a cross-platform standard?

nice resource!

[GlenRaphael]

I think it's even easier than you say. This UN thingy looks like it's saying the world only uses 133,127 hectares for crops total, and the US (not even North America, just the USA) has 176,950 hectares of unused arable land.

I stand corrected.

iblist and imdb comparison

[fehlschlag]

There is sadly a long way to go before iblist can even remotely approach something the caliber of imdb.

Several searches such as these would be nice:

• collabarative works
• appearing characters (find which possibly unrelated books a particular character is mentioned)
• various publishers of a particular work over time
• number of editions

In order to get this info, we ought get cracking at fixing those 10000+ records.