Linus does rate high recognition, but it should be a better award than the "Peace" prize. Considering some of the previous winners -- Yassar Arafat, Barak "No Accomplishments" Obama and Al "No Controlling Legal Authority" Gore -- Linus deserves a better award than one given by extreme-left Norwegian politicians.
As it has happened in the past, someone is plotting a rising demand curve against a presumed insufficient supply, and screams "we're doomed!". This kind of thinking ignores new oil finds, and new recovery techniques which extract more oil from existing finds.
Also ignored are two known Saudi Arabia-sized oil sources -- the tar sands of Alberta and oil shale in the US. At current prices, using these sources isn't economically feasible, but if the price of oil moves up and stays up, we'll see these sources come on line.
Can you name one thing the world has run out of? New technologies, close substitution, and ingenuity driven by economic need have always bolstered and increased the supply of a needed commodity.
Remember that this 1.1TF is single-precision; double-precision is around 240GF. Let's hope they fix this in the next version.
Also, there is 240 cores per C1060, for 720 cores total of Tesla power. The additional 240 cores come from the Quadro in the system; those cores may occasionally be busy with graphics work and unavailable for computation.
... and we have shut down several scams. One of the companies we closed owes you money. Please send your name, address, SSN, and banking account information to me.
The EU regulators are dragging their feet -- any idiot can look around and note the significant market share of IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL Server and come to the simple conclusion that competition does exist in the database market.
Doesn't make it any safer, the problem is the conversation with someone you can't see.
A grand, unfounded assertion. When flying a small aircraft under Instrument Flight Rules, I routinely speak with someone I can't see (the controller), listen to other conversations to visualize the traffic around me; and at the same time fly on course, on speed, and on altitude; and navigate and anticipate what coming down the road.
Communication with "someone you can't see" can be done, and done well -- even in the face of high traffic, turbulence, and a difficult approach. Compared to hard IFR flying, driving is a joke. Those who can't drive and talk at the same time probably shouldn't have a license.
Opera is made by a Norwegian company and Norway is not an EU member (and unlikely to become one either, since in the previous referendum on the issue, Norwegians voted quite clearly against membership).
True enough, and I apologize -- I was mislead by this release from the Free Software Foundation Europe that called Opera "a European Company" (http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2009q1/000231.html).
Oh, and as far as Airbus vs. Boeing is concerned, I'd like to present you with an example of American protectionism: The FAA required Airbus to install thrust reversers on the A380 citing safety reasons even though the FAA also requires aircraft to be able to under all circumstances have the same runway length requirements without thrust reversers since thrust reversers are so unreliable. The only real reason for having thrust reversers in the first place has been that it has let pilots reduce brake wear and tear and despite the costs incurred with thrust reversers, the savings in brake maintenance made the total lower. However, with the original A380 design, Airbus reached the lowest maintenance and operating costs by having more powerful brakes and no thrust reversers but then the FAA decided to negate that advantage.
Um, no. According to several postings on airliners.net, several companies have thrust reversers on their Minimum Equipment List for icy runways (e.g. Fedex and UPS going through Anchorage, Alaska, both possible customers for the A380F). Additionally, it seems that the JAA (the European equivalent of the FAA) had the same concerns.
Opera (a purveyor of second-tier browsers) managed to get what it couldn't earn in the market.
I think you may be being a bit deliberately thick here. That's the whole point of the EU ruling. Opera complained that it couldn't get a toe hold in the market because with Microsoft's overwhelming dominance, there wasn't a level playing field.
Firefox's ~30% market share shows that there is a competitive market in browsers. Opera's miniscule 2% share shows it is Opera (or, more correctly, Opera's management) that can't compete, but it sure can get politicians to interfere for its own purposes.
The EU has played this game in the past, favoring EU companies by penalizing US companies
Your attempt to provoke nationalist sentiments to rally Americans against the EU and their ruling against Microsoft is very transparent, and has been attempted on several other occasions here on Slashdot. It won't work. In the case of Microsoft, these actions, rather than being thinly-veiled protectionism, are an essential attempt to balance a market that has been in a stranglehold by the dominate player Microsoft for over a decade. The other complaints you have about the EU are irrelevant to this discussion.
Irrelevant? Each instance I quoted had an EU company that benefited from the obstruction of the EU Government and the penalties imposed on the US company. This is classic rent-seeking by EU companies.
Perhaps you believe that politicians are altruistic saints, making judgments worthy of Solomon. I'm not that naive.
Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_for_Competition states that the Commissioner is appointed by the EU Parliament. Politicians tend to make sure that their appointees share their views, which makes it a rather political position.
A change in government will not affect the EU antitrust commission.
Until, of course, the next EU Parliament is seated.
EU forced Microsoft to distribute browsers built by their competitors, regardless of merit or customer desire.
Cry me a river. Look, MS started the game, by forcing its users to accept their own browser, regardless of merit or customer desire.
Forced? Did Microsoft "force" their TCP/IP stack on customers? Does Microsoft preclude other browsers from being installed? The 30% of the market held by Firefox shows that there is good competition in the browser market, and further demonstrates that Opera, with its minuscule percentage of the market, sucks badly on the desktop.
I'm no fan of Microsoft (100% Mac and iPhone at home), but is it really harmful for MS to add features to the O/S (e.g., browsers, IP stacks, mouse drivers) over time?
Amazon (free shipping declared illegal at the behest of French bookstores)
Check your facts. Was this really the EU? Because I just put a few orders on Amazon, and not all for books, and they all included free shipping. And Germany is certainly part of the EU.
My bad -- this was the French government, not the EU.
And, of course, the EU has no problems with huge Airbus subsidies, now declared illegal by the WTO. I hope that the US Government will find its gonads and slap EADS with huge tariffs and penalties. Then, maybe, the EU will be a little less eager to meddle with US companies.
Yeah, because nothing like that has ever happened the other way around. Please.
Really. Name one merger of EU companies that has been blocked by the US Department of Justice. Name one time that the US Government loaned billions to Boeing to build a new passenger aircraft that didn't have to be repaid if the aircraft wasn't successful.
The EU antitrust body is a beast, but I'd hesitate to put it on a white horse. It is, first and foremost, a political body, and as such responds to EU companies that seek rents for their advantage. In the browser case, Opera (a purveyor of second-tier browsers) managed to get what it couldn't earn in the market. In essence, the EU forced Microsoft to distribute browsers built by their competitors, regardless of merit or customer desire.
The EU has played this game in the past, favoring EU companies by penalizing US companies -- Boeing (during the merger with McDonnell Douglas, favoring Airbus), GE/Honeywell (merger blocked), and Amazon (free shipping declared illegal at the behest of French bookstores) are just a few. These actions are nothing more than thinly-veiled protectionism.
And, of course, the EU has no problems with huge Airbus subsidies, now declared illegal by the WTO. I hope that the US Government will find its gonads and slap EADS with huge tariffs and penalties. Then, maybe, the EU will be a little less eager to meddle with US companies.
Well, SGI's business didn't get magically better just because they were acquired for a song. Rackable really doesn't understand HPC, so I think it will be a difficult integration. I'd further expect some gyrations on their future direction, as Rackable management figures out how to play the game.
In any case, we're all in interesting times.
Simple -- the Teraflop number for the Tesla is single precision. Tesla using double precision is only good for ~100GF.
Given SGI's horrid financial history and ongoing issues, I'd go with another machine -- the Cray CX-1, or an IBM BladeCenter.
You're right, but I would hesitate to use McGovern (or Mondale) in the same paragraph as "traditional market-based sources". Most politicians are spineless cowards, and seek a transient warm fuzzy for the next election. That's not the "right stuff" for long-term vision and great achievement.
I submit it is because of the cozy duopoly initially set up by the FCC (the A and B provider) which has morphed into the two biggies (AT&T and Verizon) and the bit players (TMobile, Sprint). Sure, TMobile is cheaper, but the coverage sucks here, so its not worth it for most people. My company just made the painful switch from TMobile to AT&T for the coverage reason.
AT&T and Verizon have learned how to lobby the regulators, make sure that cellphone regulations protect the regulated, and bend most of us over on a regular basis.
The same situation exists in broadband, where we get the "choice" between the single cable provider and the single dsl provider.
Ignoring the odd European attitude that success is somehow evil and must be punished -- Opera does fine as a mobile browser, but sucks (and has sucked for the better part of a decade) as a desktop browser, while others (e.g., Firefox) have managed to gain significant market share in the face of Microsoft's alleged misbehavior. That Opera's management couldn't succeed in the desktop marketplace, and instead co-opted some politicians to extort Microsoft into helping distribute their product is rent seeking of the highest order. It's rather like if I create a bad tasting drink in my bathtub, then get the government to force Coke and Pepsi to include one bottle of my drink in every six pack they sell.
So, browser market share can be had in the current situation, but Opera's management is ineffective and/or clueless. So, like many companies who fail in the market, they seeks rents and privilege from the politicians.
If your boss insists on paying $300 for $20 worth of cable just to satisfy his own misguided notions of quality, you as the highered help just have to accept his decision and go cry into your beer.
If your boss is really like this, he's one to buy into Monster Cable's "marketing". Use that to your advantage -- make the cable yourself, put it in fancy packaging with dubious claims, present a $300 bill to said boss, and Profit!
On my old boat (John Marshall, SSN-611) the torpedo guidance "computer" had gears. Mechanical gears. The ones requiring a master machinist to come on board to clean and calibrate on a quarterly basis.
It's not Ad Hominem to note that Al Gore doesn't walk his talk. While he prophesies doom, he flys on private G5s, drives in a herd of Suburbans, and his house consumes more electricity in a month than most do in a year. Same with Hansen, who jets around the planet screaming "we all gonna die!".
"Carbon limits for thee, but not for me" isn't inspiring.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus does rate high recognition, but it should be a better award than the "Peace" prize. Considering some of the previous winners -- Yassar Arafat, Barak "No Accomplishments" Obama and Al "No Controlling Legal Authority" Gore -- Linus deserves a better award than one given by extreme-left Norwegian politicians.
It's a pity that Apple's notorious approval process didn't kill this propaganda.
As it has happened in the past, someone is plotting a rising demand curve against a presumed insufficient supply, and screams "we're doomed!". This kind of thinking ignores new oil finds, and new recovery techniques which extract more oil from existing finds.
Also ignored are two known Saudi Arabia-sized oil sources -- the tar sands of Alberta and oil shale in the US. At current prices, using these sources isn't economically feasible, but if the price of oil moves up and stays up, we'll see these sources come on line.
Can you name one thing the world has run out of? New technologies, close substitution, and ingenuity driven by economic need have always bolstered and increased the supply of a needed commodity.
Remember that this 1.1TF is single-precision; double-precision is around 240GF. Let's hope they fix this in the next version.
Also, there is 240 cores per C1060, for 720 cores total of Tesla power. The additional 240 cores come from the Quadro in the system; those cores may occasionally be busy with graphics work and unavailable for computation.
... and we have shut down several scams. One of the companies we closed owes you money. Please send your name, address, SSN, and banking account information to me.
The EU regulators are dragging their feet -- any idiot can look around and note the significant market share of IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL Server and come to the simple conclusion that competition does exist in the database market.
Doesn't make it any safer, the problem is the conversation with someone you can't see.
A grand, unfounded assertion. When flying a small aircraft under Instrument Flight Rules, I routinely speak with someone I can't see (the controller), listen to other conversations to visualize the traffic around me; and at the same time fly on course, on speed, and on altitude; and navigate and anticipate what coming down the road.
Communication with "someone you can't see" can be done, and done well -- even in the face of high traffic, turbulence, and a difficult approach. Compared to hard IFR flying, driving is a joke. Those who can't drive and talk at the same time probably shouldn't have a license.
Opera is made by a Norwegian company and Norway is not an EU member (and unlikely to become one either, since in the previous referendum on the issue, Norwegians voted quite clearly against membership).
True enough, and I apologize -- I was mislead by this release from the Free Software Foundation Europe that called Opera "a European Company" (http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2009q1/000231.html).
Oh, and as far as Airbus vs. Boeing is concerned, I'd like to present you with an example of American protectionism: The FAA required Airbus to install thrust reversers on the A380 citing safety reasons even though the FAA also requires aircraft to be able to under all circumstances have the same runway length requirements without thrust reversers since thrust reversers are so unreliable. The only real reason for having thrust reversers in the first place has been that it has let pilots reduce brake wear and tear and despite the costs incurred with thrust reversers, the savings in brake maintenance made the total lower. However, with the original A380 design, Airbus reached the lowest maintenance and operating costs by having more powerful brakes and no thrust reversers but then the FAA decided to negate that advantage.
Um, no. According to several postings on airliners.net, several companies have thrust reversers on their Minimum Equipment List for icy runways (e.g. Fedex and UPS going through Anchorage, Alaska, both possible customers for the A380F). Additionally, it seems that the JAA (the European equivalent of the FAA) had the same concerns.
I think you may be being a bit deliberately thick here. That's the whole point of the EU ruling. Opera complained that it couldn't get a toe hold in the market because with Microsoft's overwhelming dominance, there wasn't a level playing field.
Firefox's ~30% market share shows that there is a competitive market in browsers. Opera's miniscule 2% share shows it is Opera (or, more correctly, Opera's management) that can't compete, but it sure can get politicians to interfere for its own purposes.
Your attempt to provoke nationalist sentiments to rally Americans against the EU and their ruling against Microsoft is very transparent, and has been attempted on several other occasions here on Slashdot. It won't work. In the case of Microsoft, these actions, rather than being thinly-veiled protectionism, are an essential attempt to balance a market that has been in a stranglehold by the dominate player Microsoft for over a decade. The other complaints you have about the EU are irrelevant to this discussion.
Irrelevant? Each instance I quoted had an EU company that benefited from the obstruction of the EU Government and the penalties imposed on the US company. This is classic rent-seeking by EU companies.
Perhaps you believe that politicians are altruistic saints, making judgments worthy of Solomon. I'm not that naive.
It is, first and foremost, a political body,
No, it is not. It is an administrative body.
Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_for_Competition states that the Commissioner is appointed by the EU Parliament. Politicians tend to make sure that their appointees share their views, which makes it a rather political position.
A change in government will not affect the EU antitrust commission.
Until, of course, the next EU Parliament is seated.
EU forced Microsoft to distribute browsers built by their competitors, regardless of merit or customer desire.
Cry me a river. Look, MS started the game, by forcing its users to accept their own browser, regardless of merit or customer desire.
Forced? Did Microsoft "force" their TCP/IP stack on customers? Does Microsoft preclude other browsers from being installed? The 30% of the market held by Firefox shows that there is good competition in the browser market, and further demonstrates that Opera, with its minuscule percentage of the market, sucks badly on the desktop.
I'm no fan of Microsoft (100% Mac and iPhone at home), but is it really harmful for MS to add features to the O/S (e.g., browsers, IP stacks, mouse drivers) over time?
Amazon (free shipping declared illegal at the behest of French bookstores)
Check your facts. Was this really the EU? Because I just put a few orders on Amazon, and not all for books, and they all included free shipping. And Germany is certainly part of the EU.
My bad -- this was the French government, not the EU.
And, of course, the EU has no problems with huge Airbus subsidies, now declared illegal by the WTO. I hope that the US Government will find its gonads and slap EADS with huge tariffs and penalties. Then, maybe, the EU will be a little less eager to meddle with US companies.
Yeah, because nothing like that has ever happened the other way around. Please.
Really. Name one merger of EU companies that has been blocked by the US Department of Justice. Name one time that the US Government loaned billions to Boeing to build a new passenger aircraft that didn't have to be repaid if the aircraft wasn't successful.
The EU has played this game in the past, favoring EU companies by penalizing US companies -- Boeing (during the merger with McDonnell Douglas, favoring Airbus), GE/Honeywell (merger blocked), and Amazon (free shipping declared illegal at the behest of French bookstores) are just a few. These actions are nothing more than thinly-veiled protectionism.
And, of course, the EU has no problems with huge Airbus subsidies, now declared illegal by the WTO. I hope that the US Government will find its gonads and slap EADS with huge tariffs and penalties. Then, maybe, the EU will be a little less eager to meddle with US companies.
I won't hold my breath.
This isn't the old SGI anymore, it's Rackable.
Well, SGI's business didn't get magically better just because they were acquired for a song. Rackable really doesn't understand HPC, so I think it will be a difficult integration. I'd further expect some gyrations on their future direction, as Rackable management figures out how to play the game. In any case, we're all in interesting times.
Simple -- the Teraflop number for the Tesla is single precision. Tesla using double precision is only good for ~100GF. Given SGI's horrid financial history and ongoing issues, I'd go with another machine -- the Cray CX-1, or an IBM BladeCenter.
You're right, but I would hesitate to use McGovern (or Mondale) in the same paragraph as "traditional market-based sources". Most politicians are spineless cowards, and seek a transient warm fuzzy for the next election. That's not the "right stuff" for long-term vision and great achievement.
I submit it is because of the cozy duopoly initially set up by the FCC (the A and B provider) which has morphed into the two biggies (AT&T and Verizon) and the bit players (TMobile, Sprint). Sure, TMobile is cheaper, but the coverage sucks here, so its not worth it for most people. My company just made the painful switch from TMobile to AT&T for the coverage reason.
AT&T and Verizon have learned how to lobby the regulators, make sure that cellphone regulations protect the regulated, and bend most of us over on a regular basis. The same situation exists in broadband, where we get the "choice" between the single cable provider and the single dsl provider.
Ignoring the odd European attitude that success is somehow evil and must be punished -- Opera does fine as a mobile browser, but sucks (and has sucked for the better part of a decade) as a desktop browser, while others (e.g., Firefox) have managed to gain significant market share in the face of Microsoft's alleged misbehavior. That Opera's management couldn't succeed in the desktop marketplace, and instead co-opted some politicians to extort Microsoft into helping distribute their product is rent seeking of the highest order. It's rather like if I create a bad tasting drink in my bathtub, then get the government to force Coke and Pepsi to include one bottle of my drink in every six pack they sell.
Lame, truly lame.
From http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 (which appears to measure clients hitting a link), Firefox has ~22% of the market, while Opera has ~2%.
So, browser market share can be had in the current situation, but Opera's management is ineffective and/or clueless. So, like many companies who fail in the market, they seeks rents and privilege from the politicians.
A pox on their house.
Perhaps Microsoft's lawyers found a weakness in the GPL, or they want to litigate the FSF into the ground.
"Beware of G[r]eeks bearing gifts".
"Biinnngg!" (with apologies to M. Python).
Or, Bing ... o! It is certainly true that your search results are a gamble when you use Microsoft search.
When will Ballmer and company stop throwing billions down this rathole and acknowledge that Google has soundly kicked their ass?
... about the French if they'll send Tom Cruise to Devil's Island permanently as part of this action. He can work on his OT LXI level there.
If your boss insists on paying $300 for $20 worth of cable just to satisfy his own misguided notions of quality, you as the highered help just have to accept his decision and go cry into your beer.
If your boss is really like this, he's one to buy into Monster Cable's "marketing". Use that to your advantage -- make the cable yourself, put it in fancy packaging with dubious claims, present a $300 bill to said boss, and Profit!
can you really sustain a job with this as your only skill?
Sure -- Assistant Fry Chef goes great with this skill.
On my old boat (John Marshall, SSN-611) the torpedo guidance "computer" had gears. Mechanical gears. The ones requiring a master machinist to come on board to clean and calibrate on a quarterly basis.
Stone knives and vacuum tubes, indeed.
... and rack the shotgun.
It's not Ad Hominem to note that Al Gore doesn't walk his talk. While he prophesies doom, he flys on private G5s, drives in a herd of Suburbans, and his house consumes more electricity in a month than most do in a year. Same with Hansen, who jets around the planet screaming "we all gonna die!".
"Carbon limits for thee, but not for me" isn't inspiring.