There are some good ideas here, but they seem to disregard the problem of latency. The speed of light, unfortunately, isn't likely to be overcome any time soon, and people notice when there is a 50ms delay every time they press a key, move their mouse, etc.
Some applications can be distributed, sure, but there will always be a need for interactive applications to run locally, on local data.
As/. demonstrates so aptly, news media are not always accurate. Sadly, even "quotes" are often either taken out of context or simply plain wrong. I myself have been quoted as saying numerous things which I have not said, and never would say.
I expect the earlier poster did, in fact, read the article, but was knowledgeable enough to realize that the article got details wrong.
A number of posters are confusing climate modelling with weather prediction. Weather prediction -- working out if it will rain tomorrow -- is very difficult because weather systems are chaotic. Climate prediction, however -- working out how large an effect increased CO2 emmisions will have on global warming -- is easy by comparison... at least in theory.
The problem with climate modelling is that the models right now incorporate large numbers of "fudge factors", and by setting those appropriately you can get whatever outcome you want from your modelling. Of course, without those fudge factors the Earth would be somewhere around -40C most of the time, so you can't just throw them out.
In short, good models exist for weather, but weather is chaotic so you can't predict much anyway. Bad models exist for climate, but at least it isn't chaotic (as far as we know).
But I'm still stuck on it. Why is/. running a per-Apache-process cache? Doesn't that mean that it would be keeping 50 copies of the same data in memory on each machine? I would have thought that having a single-process cache at the front-end (something like SQUID) which holds on to a much larger cache and then passes requests to non-caching Apache processes would have done much better.
From what I've heard, Osama Bin Laden doesn't use cryptography so much as he avoids using electronic communications at all. He has even (gasp) been reported to meet with his underlings *physically*, as in "lets all go into the same room and talk face-to-face".
Cryptography wouldn't really help terrorists much anyway, because electronic surveillance can still pick up who is talking to whom; the real problem is when people avoid electronic communications, because then you can't do anything without spies on the ground.
Several people have posted complaining that these gamers are trading "real money" for "flipping a few bits inside a machine".
Wake up guys, MONEY IS NO MORE REAL THAN THESE GAME ITEMS.
What is the value of a $20 bill? The paper and ink (and metal threads, and whatever else they throw in these days) aren't worth very much. The value of a $20 bill is *whatever people will give you for it*.
I think the people who are trading hundreds of dollars for these game items are paying far too much, but there is no inherent reason why such transactions are wrong.
"These systems can use 50 to 70 milliwatts of power," says Adrian Jennings, technologist with Time Domain in Huntsville, Ala., one of the pioneer vendors in UWB. "That is one ten-thousandth the power of a cell phone."
50 to 70 milliwatts is one ten-thousandth the power of a cell phone? That would place an average cell phone at somewhere around 600W.
Strange, I don't remember seeing huge heatsinks and 12" fans on any cell phones lately.
But I'm still surprised the previous poster would lay a blanket statement like "distributed computing isn't going to be commercially profitable any time soon".
This is rather off topic, but it elucidates somewhat the problem with flocking VCs. Distributed Computing -- as exmplified by d.net, SETI@Home, GIMPS, and my own project (PiHex) -- has so far been dedicated entirely to attacking embarassingly parallel problems: All the problems so far have been trivially decomposable into cpu-sized chunks. This makes it really easy to create s distributed computing project... working on a meaningless problem.
It is almost a theorem that "interesting problems aren't embarassingly parallel"; in fact, certain results can be proved along those lines. "Interesting" problems are always problems which don't decompose trivially: In fact, the standard supercomputing benchmark (linpack) in its normal form requires networks with latencies of a few microseconds. In general, the problems which are commercially interesting all require large amounts of bandwidth and reasonably low latencies.
Now I'm not claiming that these problems can't be overcome; the issue of latencies can generally be solved by switching to different algorithms, and the bandwidth requirements will be met over time (bandwidth is growing must faster than computing power). Thus my comments "... any time soon".
However, none of the VCs even considered such issues. They saw "distributed computing", and knew that "distributed computing" was hot... without even checking that the distributed computing being done bore much resemblance to the distributed computing they wanted to do. It's as if someone decided that they wanted to start a company to transport people between New York and London, so they invested in a company which had been carrying people from New York to San Francisco... simply because the company was "transporting people thousands of miles".
I think the VCs have gotten so overwhelmed with using buzzwords to sell their companies upon IPO that they start to listen to the same buzzwords when people come to them looking for initial funding; unfortunately most (all?) VCs lack the technical expertise to actually evaluate companies' modus operandi, so all they can do is fall back on the buzzwords.
Are the xray machines used by airports the same as medical imaging xray units?
The security xray machines vary from locale to locale, but generally they are more powerful than their medical counterparts; the reason being, of course, that there are strict health + safety regulations concerning xray dosages given to humans, while no such regulations exist for luggage. (Another good reason why you shouldn't try to smuggle illegal immigrants inside your luggage!)
One of the comments made in the article is that VCs are like sheep -- they flock about, and if one invests in electronic basket weavers the rest will.
I can attest to this from personal experience: I am one of a small group of people to have received the (questionable) pleasure of being cold-called by a VC firm. It didn't matter to them that I was still finishing my BSc in mathematics; all that was important to the VC was that 1. Distributed Computing was hot, and 2. I was responsible for a recent distributed computing project.
My name is [censored], and I'm with [censored], a traditional VC firm. I saw a press release regarding your recent accomplishment... What particularly interested me was your use of a distributed computing system. This is an area that has been of interest to us at [censored] and we would like to speak with you... We are currently investing a $1 Billion fund and our typical investment size is $5 to $15 million.
Of course, calculating Pi isn't likely to be commercially profitable any time soon; for that matter, distributed computing isn't either. So I wrote back explaining that I had no intention of helping them waste their investor's money on ventures doomed to failure.
Ever since then I've refered to that day as "the day I refused five million dollars".
The drop from 15 to 1 -- by the way, that one wasn't even part of the initial 15 -- is a result of the "tech slump". Companies which once had employees assigned to working on FreeBSD, seeing a need to "tighten their belts", redirected those people to other more directly profitable tasks. Hopefully this delay will spur developers into joining the SMPng project.
Jokes aside, secure hardware is useless when combined with insecure software -- and so far it seems that the software part has been a much bigger problem.
Since you seem to want to bring Free Software into the discussion, consider the following "method for breaking the GPL":
Step 1: Find some GPL'd software you want to exploit commercially.
Step 2: Write your proprietary extensions.
Step 3: Distribute your extensions as a patch to (a BSD-licensed version of) tar which, upon finding files with given names inside a.tar, applies your proprietary patches.
By the argument you are using -- that companies have the right to distribute software which users have the right to use -- this would circumvent the GPL, while staying within the bounds of copyright law.
If this was indeed an issue of user agents serving users, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, it isn't: I highly doubt that any of the hundreds of thousands of people who installed the software knew that they were agreeing to have advertising thrown at them.
USERS have the right to change how websites are displayed on their computers. Other companies don't.
It's a shame that this is necessary, but adding this to your websites should give you grounds for at least a lawsuit:
This page is Copyright 2001 by Anonymous Coward. Permission to distribute this page unmodified and interpret it in a web browser is granted. Permission to modify this web site in any manner is expressly not granted.
The authors of this scumware are misleading people by claiming that "the user" is responsible for the changes being made to the web pagesbefore presentation: The essence of the problem is that, in fact, it is *their software*, not the user, which is modifying the pages. (The distinction being that the user is unaware of the nature of changes being made.)
Permission to read and distribute != Permission to distribute modified versions.
Who needs *broadband* internet access anyway? Go to university and get yourself an ethernet drop. 100Mbps ethernet is much better than a puny 128kbps-uplink-capped connection from a company on the brink of bankruptcy.
(While the term has been wildly abused, "broadband" refers to a method of encoding data onto a physical medium; ethernet uses "baseband" encoding, while cable modems use "broadband" encoding. The difference is largely one of simplicity of encoding vs resistance to noise.)
What's so great about 2.2GHz? Intel is selling 1.8GHz processors right now, will be launching 2.0GHz processors within the next two weeks, and there are Pentium 4 processors -- both within Intel and outside in the hands of overclockers -- running at 2.2GHz or higher already. (And note that the ALU is double-clocked, ie running at 4.4GHz).
If this story was two years old, it might be significant... but it is far from revolutionary right now.
Slashdot Mirror
There are some good ideas here, but they seem to disregard the problem of latency. The speed of light, unfortunately, isn't likely to be overcome any time soon, and people notice when there is a 50ms delay every time they press a key, move their mouse, etc.
Some applications can be distributed, sure, but there will always be a need for interactive applications to run locally, on local data.
Please READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE COMMENTING!
/. demonstrates so aptly, news media are not always accurate. Sadly, even "quotes" are often either taken out of context or simply plain wrong. I myself have been quoted as saying numerous things which I have not said, and never would say.
As
I expect the earlier poster did, in fact, read the article, but was knowledgeable enough to realize that the article got details wrong.
A number of posters are confusing climate modelling with weather prediction. Weather prediction -- working out if it will rain tomorrow -- is very difficult because weather systems are chaotic. Climate prediction, however -- working out how large an effect increased CO2 emmisions will have on global warming -- is easy by comparison... at least in theory.
The problem with climate modelling is that the models right now incorporate large numbers of "fudge factors", and by setting those appropriately you can get whatever outcome you want from your modelling. Of course, without those fudge factors the Earth would be somewhere around -40C most of the time, so you can't just throw them out.
In short, good models exist for weather, but weather is chaotic so you can't predict much anyway. Bad models exist for climate, but at least it isn't chaotic (as far as we know).
Imagine if it was Microsoft which had the buggy Token Ring drivers. We would have
1. Posts complaining that micro$oft can't do anything right because it is closed source, and if it was open source they wouldn't have these problems.
2. Posts arguing that Microsoft deliberately sabotaged the drivers because they want to force people to stop using Token Ring.
3. Posts asking why anyone is still using Windows since it is obviously inferior to Linux.
Slashdot... Open Source, Closed Minds indeed.
But I'm still stuck on it. Why is /. running a per-Apache-process cache? Doesn't that mean that it would be keeping 50 copies of the same data in memory on each machine? I would have thought that having a single-process cache at the front-end (something like SQUID) which holds on to a much larger cache and then passes requests to non-caching Apache processes would have done much better.
From what I've heard, Osama Bin Laden doesn't use cryptography so much as he avoids using electronic communications at all. He has even (gasp) been reported to meet with his underlings *physically*, as in "lets all go into the same room and talk face-to-face".
Cryptography wouldn't really help terrorists much anyway, because electronic surveillance can still pick up who is talking to whom; the real problem is when people avoid electronic communications, because then you can't do anything without spies on the ground.
Several people have posted complaining that these gamers are trading "real money" for "flipping a few bits inside a machine".
Wake up guys, MONEY IS NO MORE REAL THAN THESE GAME ITEMS.
What is the value of a $20 bill? The paper and ink (and metal threads, and whatever else they throw in these days) aren't worth very much. The value of a $20 bill is *whatever people will give you for it*.
I think the people who are trading hundreds of dollars for these game items are paying far too much, but there is no inherent reason why such transactions are wrong.
I'm just waiting for the first linux worms which install a trojaned copy of gcc (see "trusting trust").
"These systems can use 50 to 70 milliwatts of power," says Adrian Jennings, technologist with Time Domain in Huntsville, Ala., one of the pioneer vendors in UWB. "That is one ten-thousandth the power of a cell phone."
50 to 70 milliwatts is one ten-thousandth the power of a cell phone? That would place an average cell phone at somewhere around 600W.
Strange, I don't remember seeing huge heatsinks and 12" fans on any cell phones lately.
Ok, so it's almost a month out of date, but this at least lets you know what it looks like.
But I'm still surprised the previous poster would lay a blanket statement like "distributed computing isn't going to be commercially profitable any time soon".
This is rather off topic, but it elucidates somewhat the problem with flocking VCs. Distributed Computing -- as exmplified by d.net, SETI@Home, GIMPS, and my own project (PiHex) -- has so far been dedicated entirely to attacking embarassingly parallel problems: All the problems so far have been trivially decomposable into cpu-sized chunks. This makes it really easy to create s distributed computing project... working on a meaningless problem.
It is almost a theorem that "interesting problems aren't embarassingly parallel"; in fact, certain results can be proved along those lines. "Interesting" problems are always problems which don't decompose trivially: In fact, the standard supercomputing benchmark (linpack) in its normal form requires networks with latencies of a few microseconds. In general, the problems which are commercially interesting all require large amounts of bandwidth and reasonably low latencies.
Now I'm not claiming that these problems can't be overcome; the issue of latencies can generally be solved by switching to different algorithms, and the bandwidth requirements will be met over time (bandwidth is growing must faster than computing power). Thus my comments "... any time soon".
However, none of the VCs even considered such issues. They saw "distributed computing", and knew that "distributed computing" was hot... without even checking that the distributed computing being done bore much resemblance to the distributed computing they wanted to do. It's as if someone decided that they wanted to start a company to transport people between New York and London, so they invested in a company which had been carrying people from New York to San Francisco... simply because the company was "transporting people thousands of miles".
I think the VCs have gotten so overwhelmed with using buzzwords to sell their companies upon IPO that they start to listen to the same buzzwords when people come to them looking for initial funding; unfortunately most (all?) VCs lack the technical expertise to actually evaluate companies' modus operandi, so all they can do is fall back on the buzzwords.
Are the xray machines used by airports the same as medical imaging xray units?
The security xray machines vary from locale to locale, but generally they are more powerful than their medical counterparts; the reason being, of course, that there are strict health + safety regulations concerning xray dosages given to humans, while no such regulations exist for luggage. (Another good reason why you shouldn't try to smuggle illegal immigrants inside your luggage!)
I can attest to this from personal experience: I am one of a small group of people to have received the (questionable) pleasure of being cold-called by a VC firm. It didn't matter to them that I was still finishing my BSc in mathematics; all that was important to the VC was that 1. Distributed Computing was hot, and 2. I was responsible for a recent distributed computing project.
Of course, calculating Pi isn't likely to be commercially profitable any time soon; for that matter, distributed computing isn't either. So I wrote back explaining that I had no intention of helping them waste their investor's money on ventures doomed to failure.
Ever since then I've refered to that day as "the day I refused five million dollars".
Progeny may have terminated their NOW project, but Progeny was not the first, and will not be the last to build NOW clusters.
Please, when refering to this, call it the Progeny NOW project, to distinguish it from the NOW project.
The drop from 15 to 1 -- by the way, that one wasn't even part of the initial 15 -- is a result of the "tech slump". Companies which once had employees assigned to working on FreeBSD, seeing a need to "tighten their belts", redirected those people to other more directly profitable tasks. Hopefully this delay will spur developers into joining the SMPng project.
I sure hope that this isn't running RedHat 6.2.
Jokes aside, secure hardware is useless when combined with insecure software -- and so far it seems that the software part has been a much bigger problem.
Here.
Basic conclusion: 2.0GHz P4 == 1.4GHz K7, but when the 2.2GHz P4.1 comes out in November it will take a clear lead.
Since you seem to want to bring Free Software into the discussion, consider the following "method for breaking the GPL":
.tar, applies your proprietary patches.
Step 1: Find some GPL'd software you want to exploit commercially.
Step 2: Write your proprietary extensions.
Step 3: Distribute your extensions as a patch to (a BSD-licensed version of) tar which, upon finding files with given names inside a
By the argument you are using -- that companies have the right to distribute software which users have the right to use -- this would circumvent the GPL, while staying within the bounds of copyright law.
If this was indeed an issue of user agents serving users, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, it isn't: I highly doubt that any of the hundreds of thousands of people who installed the software knew that they were agreeing to have advertising thrown at them.
USERS have the right to change how websites are displayed on their computers. Other companies don't.
The authors of this scumware are misleading people by claiming that "the user" is responsible for the changes being made to the web pagesbefore presentation: The essence of the problem is that, in fact, it is *their software*, not the user, which is modifying the pages. (The distinction being that the user is unaware of the nature of changes being made.)
Permission to read and distribute != Permission to distribute modified versions.
Who needs *broadband* internet access anyway? Go to university and get yourself an ethernet drop. 100Mbps ethernet is much better than a puny 128kbps-uplink-capped connection from a company on the brink of bankruptcy.
(While the term has been wildly abused, "broadband" refers to a method of encoding data onto a physical medium; ethernet uses "baseband" encoding, while cable modems use "broadband" encoding. The difference is largely one of simplicity of encoding vs resistance to noise.)
... but also make sure you refer to Microsoft BSD/Windows.
Giving credit where credit is due is one thing, but trying to give everyone credit in the name is just going to lead to horribly long names.
I count six buzzwords in there out of a total of only 12 words.
What's so great about 2.2GHz? Intel is selling 1.8GHz processors right now, will be launching 2.0GHz processors within the next two weeks, and there are Pentium 4 processors -- both within Intel and outside in the hands of overclockers -- running at 2.2GHz or higher already. (And note that the ALU is double-clocked, ie running at 4.4GHz).
If this story was two years old, it might be significant... but it is far from revolutionary right now.
but my site's routers or switches or something were down for like two days and I couldn't get my e-mail or anything. It really sucked.
You know, when you troll like that you're supposed to sign the posts... something like "CmdrTaco", "Hemos", or perhaps "Anne Tomlinson".