Slashback: Hilbert's, Transgenic, Silicon

Slashback tonight with another round of updates and corrections to recent stories, including transgenic fish, Hilbert's 16th problem, Microsoft's FAT patent plans, Utah's hyped public fiber network, and more. Read on for the details.

Still an acorn at this point. Jose Nazario writes with a correction to my recent post claiming that OpenBSD had gained a "fuzzy" user-profiling IDS. Jose writes: "It is NOT in tree. it is a privately developed research project. It is not an official project."

And Yes, the Apple I schematics were available, too. In response to the recent article about the freely available chip design from opencores.org implemented by Flextronics, Henry Keultjes offers a reminder that this is not the first time chip whose internals have been open for inspection:

"Happened quite some time ago with PowerPC. That's the essence of Microsoft's deal with IBM because without that Open Architecture Microsoft would have had to buy a lot more than it did. This for example is used in a roughly $150 French set-top box that has USB and, according to a friend in the UK who has tried that, runs just fine as a PC with the attached USB HDD, KB and rodent."

Could Wayne Inouye sell you an eMachine? After reading many pointed comments in the story about eMachine's Athlon offerings, arrasmith writes "To add to the topic of AMD64 eMachines and the launch of "I hate eMachine" posts I'll throw out why you should buy one.

eMachines are the number-3 seller of computers, only behind Dell and HP. If you are wondering about how that happened, you need to read about the new CEO.

Wayne Inouye has had some articles published about him in Business Week and Forbes. Great articles on how you can sell good computers at reasonable prices. And if you are wondering why eMachines is selling an AMD64 system read the Business Week article."

OK, as long as you buy it from us. Alien54 writes "As reported in the most recent Spyware Info Newsletter, Dell seems to have listened to the criticism handed to them last week, after their decision to forbid tech support persons from providing assistance to spyware-infected customers became public knowledge. They have partnered with PestPatrol, Inc. to sell Pest Patrol's spyware removal software to Dell customers. It is interesting to note that Dell does not recommend any freeware or shareware product because 'we cannot test these open source utilities reliably.' Which is simply silly, of course."

Utah may not be Utopia after all. brysnot writes "The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utopia project, which plans to run fiber to every home in Utah, has miscalculated its 2003 budget and now needs each member cities to come up with an additional $250,000. Also reported is that 'Its largest member, Salt Lake City, is uncertain whether to provide financial backing to guarantee payment of the principal and interest on the bonds the project needs -- a development that could force the project to be scaled back.'"

Writes Lighthop "The best way to overcome Qwest's vast resources and well orchestrated opposition is for citizens and business owners to speak out and let their city council members know we support them in approving UTOPIA's funding. We have to be visible and give them some political cover.

The 18 UTOPIA member cities are Brigham City, Cedar City, Cedar Hills, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Perry, Riverton, Roy, Salt Lake City, South Jordan, Taylorsville, Tremonton and West Valley."

Hilbert's 16th is still a problem. commodoresloat writes "The work of Elin Oxenhielm, the 22-year old Swedish student who apparently solved part of the 16th Hilbert problem, is coming under heavy fire from some prominent mathematicians, including her own adviser, who said the work contained "serious mistakes, which I think any educated mathematician can easily see." Here's an article in English. Oxenhielm responded to the criticism by saying that the journal that accepted her work, which now owns the copyright, is responsible for any errors. More information on this weblog."

Periscope is up, showdown commences. McSpew writes "The Register states that Microsoft's patents on the FAT filesystem may be subject to new scrutiny, thanks to their announced plan to collect royalties from media and CE manufacturers. The Public Patent Foundation is behind the effort to get the USPTO to start from scratch with Microsoft's FAT patents."

FDA gives GM fish sales the eerie green light. fishfishfish writes "The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Tuesday released a statement saying that it will not be stopping the sale of transgenic Zebra danios in the USA. The move could allow fish retailers in any U.S. state to sell the fish. Apart from California, where Arnie has banned them..."

Comments

From her own adviser

[Adam_Trask]

including her own adviser, who said the work contained "serious mistakes, which I think any educated mathematician can easily see."...
We know geniuses tend to be social geeks, but getting that from your own adviser while you are still doing you PhD...wow! Good luck with that PhD!!

AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[Space cowboy]

So, assuming I get hold of one of these AMD 64-bit boxes, how hard/easy is it to get Linux compiled for 64-bit. What are the pitfalls with gcc (is an int 64 bit in 64-bit mode ?)

The only reviews I've seen are on Windows OS's running in 32 bit mode (why, for crying out loud, if linux runs on them cleanly...) I think I saw that RH and Suse have 64-bit offerings, but RH is expensive... never tried Suse ....

Just curious. Pointers to informative articles would be welcome :-)

Simon

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[timeOday]

An int *should* be 64 bits with a 64 bit processor. If not, somebody goofed up!

I sure don't feel that way. Having 'long int' and 'int' mean the same thing seems pointles, and should 'short' mean 16 or 32 bits? Why not just do it like Sparc:

char 1
short 2
int 4
long 8
long long 8
void * 8
float 4
double 8
long double 16

I can't imagine there are modern general-purpose 64 bit platforms which don't handle 32 bit values efficiently.

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[ron_ivi]

No, they'll think we're stupid why we don't use the Standard C

"int_64t" where we require 64 bits, and

"int_32t" where we require 32 bits, and

"int" where we require a native size >= 16 bits.

More trivia, Some cool processors (like some TI DSPs) have 40-bit "long" datatypes, so sizeof(long)==5. Pretty cool?

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[renoX]

>I still think that int should be the easiest size for the machine to deal with.

Correct, but any 64-bit CPU that I know about about instructions for manipulating 32bit variables easily too.
These "64bit" CPU manipulate 32bit value as easily as 64bit values, which means K&R rules that the int should be the "natural" int of the CPU doesn't tell you anything about wether an int should be 32 or 64 bit..

So I'm for the int=32bit and long=64bit rule..

the FDA?

[Mad_Rain]

So how come the Food and Drug Administration is the organization approving the sale of transgenic fish?

Isn't there a more appropriate group to be handling this? Sure, let the FDA approve them if you plan on eating the fish, but I figured they were for display only. ;)

"we can not test"...

[dbc]

Well, they don't mention *why* they can not test. In a past life, I have managed both hardware and software validation laboratories. It is an expensive proposition to do it well. Windows is the worst.. Between 95, 95osr1, 95osr2, 98, 98se, 98me, variants of 2000... and the fact that every application install is an OS upgrade because of DLL-Hell... and then add in a zillion flavors of language support (OK, I was running 98me with the left-to-right Hebrew keyboard, the German version of Visual Studio, and Oriental character file name support...) ... oh, now cross all these with hardware variation, chipset, cpu, what-have-you.

So, personally, I can well believe that *if* they looked at the cost of validating some particular build of some particular OSS software for download from their web site, that they would conclude that it cost too much. So "We can't because it costs too much" is a reasonable response. Chicken, yes, and maybe doesn't server the customer the best possible way, but reasonable.

Of course, every time I've dealt with Dell in the past they've been idiots, so that might be a reason, too.

Whether she's right or wrong...

[dysprosia]

If she developed some new techniques in solving the problem or made some advance into solving the problem, then that's important enough. Math is a collaborative science, too, in any case...if she's not right, someone could build on her work and improve it.

Re:Drawing the Hardware/Software line

[timeOday]

I disagree that Dell is particularly a hardware company in the first place. They don't make hardware any more than they make software, what they do is put together the hardware, software, and support in a convenient package for the end-user. As for the morons, well, they pay the bills. Apparently Dell thinks pleasing the customer plus their cut of the Pest Patrol proceeds will boost their profit, so where is the problem again?

eMachines T6000 is now in my hands

[fo0bar]

I am now the first owner of an eMachines T6000 in Reno (which isn't too suprising considering this town...)

After reading the original story, I tracked down the bestbuy.com page for it, and it said that they had pickup service for this specific item at the local best buy. I called them up and spent about a half hour on the phone while they tracked them down. Turns out they didn't even have them on the floor yet.

I hopped in the car and drove down. Turns out they had 5 in, and I was buying the first one. Nifty. I literally just got back about 10 minutes ago and have just plugged it in, so I don't have much of a review yet, except for this: the 32-bit Windows XP Home that was preloaded took a little under 4 seconds to go from the end of the computer's POST to a start menu.

20:58 <@xi> that is pretty fast
20:59 <@xi> now imagine how fast a *real* OS will boot

I am currently downloading the gentoo amd64 livecd.

Re:Why is there no law.....

[GreatBallsOfFire]

Hey, did Microsoft screw up?

They did offer up a FAT32 standard for EFI, used in IA64 boot partitions. The did this, guaranteeing your safety through a mutual "no sue" clause. In effect, they actively misrepresented their intentions by luring people to use the standard, then turn around and use strong arm tactics on the semiconductor folks.

Go to their page at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/hardware/fatge n.mspx and read the agreement. It specifically says you can use their file system in any operating system that will make use of EFI, the IA64 booting standard.

What this means is:

1. That operating systems such as linux can incorporate FAT32 as long as it runs on an Itanium platform.
2. Only the semiconductor folks are screwed due to 1(b) of the agreement, because it is possible to show that a flash device is a microprocessor circuit and excluded from "Necessary Claims."

I am not a lawyer, but this is what I think I read in the agreement.