If you want to know about REAL non-proprietary hardware, you might want to look into the Open Graphics Project. Right now they're working on a graphics card (video output only), but the topic of video capture is often brought up on their mailing list, and they have an interest in doing that once their graphics cards get going.
If you like this sort of thing, you might consider getting involved with the project.
As evil as Microsoft is, I've never been able to decide whether or not Bill Gates himself is evil. My suspect, even, that Microsoft's evil behavior is an emergent property of their corporate culture. No one individual person in Microsoft (well, actually, I think Balmer is a nutball) is truly evil. It's like how one termite is insignificant, but a colony of them can destroy an entire neighborhood.:)
Still, a lot of corporate culture comes down from the top. Gates' ambition to have "microsoft products on every computer in every home" turns into overly aggressive business behavior. With him and others going, are things going to improve for the rest of us? Or have any of these guys been keeping others in check, and they're about to get worse?
I've used some RAID controllers myself, and I have friends with a lot of experience with them. A key factor in what makes a good RAID controller is not throughput. It's long-term reliability. How long can you hammer your RAID array before you get unrecoverable corruption? A RAID array is supposed to prevent that, but if you have some weird bug in your RAID controller, or it's susceptible to EM interference from surrounding components, you will get data corruption. And I don't mean for reads; I mean that the data gets corrupted on the way from memory to the disk (at least that's our theory), where no RAID controller can protect you.
Of ATA controllers, our experience shows that 3ware controllers are the least unreliable. That is, they generally suck, because they have demonstrated performance problems and other weird failures that 3ware couldn't help us resolve, but they suffer from the least data corruption.
For whatever reason, the on-board controllers are the worst. They seem nice and perform well enough, but they have the highest rate of data corruption.
It may or may not surprise you that software RAID is relatively reliable. With a RAID1, you'd think you're twice as likely to corrupt data on writes, because you have to send the same data twice to two different drives. Sure, having them both bad is unlikely, but at a later time, how do you know which copy of a given sector is correct? But we think that removing an unreliable hardware RAID controller from the data path and just having the relatively simple ATA controller in the way reduces chances of a problem. Just a guess.
If you want truly reliable hardware RAID, you need to spend your life savings on an industrial-strength SCSI RAID controller.
The moral of the story is that there's really no such thing as 100% reliable data storage. If you want speed and don't care about reliability, RAID0 is for you. Other RAID levels add redundancy, which is nice in theory, but add hardware complexity that offsets some of the advantage. For my critical data, I store to CD and DVD ROM. And I make multiple copies of those, because those aren't all that reliable either.
OpenCores isn't the only open hardware group. Check out www.opengraphics.org, particularly the OGD1 section. Real hardware engineers are making real hardware, and they're making it OPEN (and libre).
Seriously, aren't bright reds and oranges supposed to make you a little nuts if you're surrounded by them too much? The orange would make me ill after a while. Are we trying to make the users hyper-active or something?
Everything else is great, but PLEASE TONE DOWN THE COLOR.
This is much too large and heavy to be considered anything remotely portable. It's not. It's a desktop replacement. Considering how much it's got to cost, it had better have really damn fast response time on the LCD (16ms or better) and not have an overly-constrained CPU-to-memory bus. And the graphics chip had better be connected via something faster than PCI (like it apparently is in my HP notebook).
If not, this thing is only worthwhile if all you're trying to do is save desk space. Otherwise, you're better off with a cheap Dell.
See, I know far too little about system administration. If I were to try to run a Linux server without help, it would be down all the time. If _I_ wanted a server, I'd pay someone a service feel to maintain it for me, and it would be up all the time.
So, it seems to me that ON AVERAGE, Linux servers would be down more than others, because so many people would be trying to admin themselves. The lack of documentation would definitely be a problem. (Actually, there's plenty of documentation. FINDING it is the problem. I don't know enough to come up with the right Google search terms! And posting to usenet is hit or miss.)
The question is what the uptime is like for Linux distros where you're paying out the ass for support (like you would for Windows or UNIX anyway). That's got to be such a small portion of Linux servers that it's not dragging the percentages up.
The real metric should be UPTIME / ($$ spent on support).
I started with BASIC, then learned C and Pascal. BASIC and Pascal didn't ruin me. BASIC taught me to think algorithmically. If I'd had to learn a great deal more syntax and structure to start with, I would never have gotten started. BASIC is a good way to get immediate feedback on your initial programming attempts. "10 PRINT "HELLO": GOTO 10" is a common first program that is exciting to an 8-year-old who programs something for the first time. As I developed larger BASIC programs, I ran into the pitfalls of dealing with a spaghetti language. It wasn't a problem, though. BASIC had taught me the basics, and I was ready to move on. Pascal taught me structured programming. Compared to BASIC, it was great for writing larger programs and keeping code organized. But Pascal is too strict, and when I learned what I needed from that, I was ready to move on.
C is a language that's too powerful for a beginner. There are too many ways to hang yourself if you don't know what you're doing. Someone who has never programmed before isn't ready for it. BASIC taught me to develop algorithms, so that when I was learning C, I was struggling with the syntax and semantics separately from the process of learning to write algorithms. Pascal taught me discipline that I used to structure C programs in ways that aren't required by the compiler but necessary to keep one's code organized and managable.
BASIC is a good thing. It's like drinking milk as a baby. Pascal is a good thing. It's like learning to get along with other kids in kindergarden. People aren't ready for C until they've gone through those stages.
From this, we learn the lesson that we don't have to have a single vendor in order to have universal interoperability. This funny thing called "open standards" allows numerous different vendors to interoperate with each other. And then apps live and die by how user friendly they are and how well they support the standards.
Just like Microsoft, Firefox developers have gotten stuck on the feature-creep treadmill. Instead of fixing incessant crashes and debilitating memory leaks, they add more whiz-bang features to compete with the "enemy". Instead of adding features to make their browser more robust and responsive, they add more crap to make it bigger, slower, and buggier.
Firefox is no longer about doing the right thing. It's now all about one-upping Microsoft at their own stupid game, and the users are suffering for it. Open Source developers, apparently, are no more ammune to this competition attitude than the proprietary vendors. There is no longer anything special about Firefox. What's more, they suffer from the syndrome many open source projects suffer from, which is that they prefer to work on the "interesting" bits, rather than spending time adding some polish to make things work WELL.
GPUs don't have to remain 'binary compatible' with their predecessors. When you buy a new graphics card, you get an updated driver that supports the new chip. This is why GPUs evolve more quickly, why they have exceeded Moore's Law by such a significant margin.
This is not a statement in defense of closed-source drivers. The open source model makes "upgrades" of this sort actually EASIER. But you cannot put CPUs and GPUs into the same class of device.
The Open Graphics Project recently released schematics for their first product and are steadily making progress towards completing it for sale (http://kerneltrap.org/node/6262). If Libre graphics drivers are REALLY important to you, you might want to consider looking them up at "www.opengraphics.org". Despite being unfunded since early 2005 (which they could use some help with), they are still managing to make some headway. Those people with technical expertise (graphics drivers, graphics hardware, PCB design, chip design) would do well to pitch in to the effort. And those with money who also complain about the lack of Libre drivers should put their money where their mouths are. Rather than sitting around and complaining about it, the founders of the OGP decided to actually DO something about it; if you want to do more than just complain, they could use your help.
There are two reasons why we have a recent uprising of ID. One is that there are people whose religious beliefs are found in conflict with evolutionary science. The other is that people are simply ignorant of the science, in large part because of lousy science education and hard-to-read science literature.
In response to the ID debate, scientists have been motivated to clean up their acts. First, they have targeted specific areas of research that the ID proponents have harped on. Secondly, they are working harder to improve science education.
Things like ID arise ultimately due to a fault in the science. Well, we know science has faults, so the only result here can be an improvement in the science.
Looks like one of the April fools stories slipped in a bit early.
People leave their DNA and finger prints wherever they go, and the law is clear that whatever you leave behind is up for grabs. Where is the piracy in making an online searchable database of public-domain information?
There are many situations where you want to either complete something totally or not at all. That's why some installers copy a load of packages and then install them. It's also faster to copy things linearly off the CD onto the HD and then work with them. Error recovery is easier when you serialize things. Also, in some cases, the CD and HD will compete for access to a PATA bus, making parallel slower than serial.
My wife and I also have an inordinate number of books. Part of our solution was to choose a wall in the house with a lot of space and build a bookshelf right on it. We ended up choosing a large wall in the living room. It goes from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, except for an archway into the dining room, and integrates into the room with baseboard and crown moulding. It looks like it's part of the shape of the room. This gave us roughly 7 feet vertically and four 3-foot-wide sections. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it, because it looks better than movable bookshelves, although we still have plenty of books on other shelves elsewhere.
I don't know if this is quite far enough removed from open source software, but the Open Graphics Project is applying OSS ideas to all sorts of things. It would seem to apply well to HDL for chips, but they've also released their PCB schematics under a GPL license.
The recording industry finds that their copyrighted material is being pirated, so they implement ways to limit pirating. (No one mentions that most of the piracy is being done in 3rd world countries, costing record producers many times what it costs them in the US, but we'll let discuss that later.)
As far as I'm concerned, LET them. The problem is not the DRM. It's the fact that it's illegal to BREAK the DRM. Wouldn't that defeat the point of having DRM, you ask? For many people, yes. For many people, no. DRM would discourage many people from breaking it simply because it's inconvenient. But being allowed to break it when necessary allows many people to make "fair use" of the recordings in ways that the DRM would otherwise prevent.
It's all about balance. If the DRM people want to use technical means to screw us, we should be allowed to use technical means to unscrew outselves. This is no different from us using SPAM filters to fight spammers. We should be able to use anti-DRM programs to fight the recording industry.
We were more of an importer of people than of products. Every early on, even when gaining US citizenship was still easy, the US instituted tariffs to raise the price of imported goods and bolster the local economy, composed of many foreign immigrants.
In the early 20th centrury, though, before the world wars, we were quite a bit more isolationist. We didn't get involved in world affairs. We had "enough" people. Etc.
You know, the US used to be a lot more isolationist. We tend to see ourselves as superior, which limits our incentive to reach out to other countries. So we have people inside and outside of the US pressuring Americans go "go global." Given the commerce relationships we have with China, I have a feeling that they're one of the major source of that pressure. "Go global! Buy from China!"
And then they turn around and start closing themselves off from the rest of the world.
Doesn't that make you sad? People have to pass up legitimate, useful research just because the buzzword-laden research gets them more attention and funding.
The "memory leak" I complain about isn't a simple matter of Firefox getting excessively large (well, I do complain about that). My MAJOR complaint is that it frequently gets into a runaway memory grab loop where it goes from a "mere" 800 megs to 1.5 gigs in 30 seconds or less, before the oom killer gets to it.
spacetime is NOT a general 4-space
on
No Time Travel, Sorry
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
One thing I think I should point out about how spacetime doesn't fit the general model of a 4-space, and it's simple:
Object do not pop in and out of existence as time progresses.
If time were simply a velocity in a dimension in a 4-space, that could happen. Instead, we see a continuity in 3-space, where an object might move, but there is a relationship between where it "is" and where it "was" and where it "will be".
So, it makes sense to model spacetime as a 4-space, but not as a general one.
And thinking outside of the box is essential to understanding some of the aspects of Physics that deviate from our everyday experiences.
The crux of his argument is that in space-time, everything is fixed and can't move. Well, sure, if you think of the universe as a fixed 4D hyperspace and just consider one point in it. The idea of "movement" comes from observing the motion of objects in 3-space while being in motion along the time axis... which is what we DO.
I think what he's doing is mixing up the practical idea of being IN the universe and having a natural fixed (in your reference frame) rate of motion through time, versus the theoretical notion of being outside of the universe and time and just examining it statically.
He complains about dt/dt being dimensionless. Of course that makes no sense. He's stuck on the idea of dx/dt being a measure of motion. It's not. We think of it as a velocity, but think of it as a indication of how much you move along X for how far you move along T. The fact of the matter is, you can compute dx/dy and get a similiarly meaningful result (assuming you have some reference axis for orientation). It just tells you how far you move in X for how far you move in Y. I don't see the problem, other than that this guy is stuck on the notion of T and X having different units. So what? X and Y have the SAME units, yet the calculus still makes sense!
Slashdot Mirror
If you like this sort of thing, you might consider getting involved with the project.
As evil as Microsoft is, I've never been able to decide whether or not Bill Gates himself is evil. My suspect, even, that Microsoft's evil behavior is an emergent property of their corporate culture. No one individual person in Microsoft (well, actually, I think Balmer is a nutball) is truly evil. It's like how one termite is insignificant, but a colony of them can destroy an entire neighborhood. :)
Still, a lot of corporate culture comes down from the top. Gates' ambition to have "microsoft products on every computer in every home" turns into overly aggressive business behavior. With him and others going, are things going to improve for the rest of us? Or have any of these guys been keeping others in check, and they're about to get worse?
I've used some RAID controllers myself, and I have friends with a lot of experience with them. A key factor in what makes a good RAID controller is not throughput. It's long-term reliability. How long can you hammer your RAID array before you get unrecoverable corruption? A RAID array is supposed to prevent that, but if you have some weird bug in your RAID controller, or it's susceptible to EM interference from surrounding components, you will get data corruption. And I don't mean for reads; I mean that the data gets corrupted on the way from memory to the disk (at least that's our theory), where no RAID controller can protect you.
Of ATA controllers, our experience shows that 3ware controllers are the least unreliable. That is, they generally suck, because they have demonstrated performance problems and other weird failures that 3ware couldn't help us resolve, but they suffer from the least data corruption.
For whatever reason, the on-board controllers are the worst. They seem nice and perform well enough, but they have the highest rate of data corruption.
It may or may not surprise you that software RAID is relatively reliable. With a RAID1, you'd think you're twice as likely to corrupt data on writes, because you have to send the same data twice to two different drives. Sure, having them both bad is unlikely, but at a later time, how do you know which copy of a given sector is correct? But we think that removing an unreliable hardware RAID controller from the data path and just having the relatively simple ATA controller in the way reduces chances of a problem. Just a guess.
If you want truly reliable hardware RAID, you need to spend your life savings on an industrial-strength SCSI RAID controller.
The moral of the story is that there's really no such thing as 100% reliable data storage. If you want speed and don't care about reliability, RAID0 is for you. Other RAID levels add redundancy, which is nice in theory, but add hardware complexity that offsets some of the advantage. For my critical data, I store to CD and DVD ROM. And I make multiple copies of those, because those aren't all that reliable either.
OpenCores isn't the only open hardware group. Check out www.opengraphics.org, particularly the OGD1 section. Real hardware engineers are making real hardware, and they're making it OPEN (and libre).
Seriously, aren't bright reds and oranges supposed to make you a little nuts if you're surrounded by them too much? The orange would make me ill after a while. Are we trying to make the users hyper-active or something?
Everything else is great, but PLEASE TONE DOWN THE COLOR.
This is much too large and heavy to be considered anything remotely portable. It's not. It's a desktop replacement. Considering how much it's got to cost, it had better have really damn fast response time on the LCD (16ms or better) and not have an overly-constrained CPU-to-memory bus. And the graphics chip had better be connected via something faster than PCI (like it apparently is in my HP notebook).
If not, this thing is only worthwhile if all you're trying to do is save desk space. Otherwise, you're better off with a cheap Dell.
See, I know far too little about system administration. If I were to try to run a Linux server without help, it would be down all the time. If _I_ wanted a server, I'd pay someone a service feel to maintain it for me, and it would be up all the time.
So, it seems to me that ON AVERAGE, Linux servers would be down more than others, because so many people would be trying to admin themselves. The lack of documentation would definitely be a problem. (Actually, there's plenty of documentation. FINDING it is the problem. I don't know enough to come up with the right Google search terms! And posting to usenet is hit or miss.)
The question is what the uptime is like for Linux distros where you're paying out the ass for support (like you would for Windows or UNIX anyway). That's got to be such a small portion of Linux servers that it's not dragging the percentages up.
The real metric should be UPTIME / ($$ spent on support).
Be careful about those divides by zero.
I started with BASIC, then learned C and Pascal. BASIC and Pascal didn't ruin me. BASIC taught me to think algorithmically. If I'd had to learn a great deal more syntax and structure to start with, I would never have gotten started. BASIC is a good way to get immediate feedback on your initial programming attempts. "10 PRINT "HELLO": GOTO 10" is a common first program that is exciting to an 8-year-old who programs something for the first time. As I developed larger BASIC programs, I ran into the pitfalls of dealing with a spaghetti language. It wasn't a problem, though. BASIC had taught me the basics, and I was ready to move on. Pascal taught me structured programming. Compared to BASIC, it was great for writing larger programs and keeping code organized. But Pascal is too strict, and when I learned what I needed from that, I was ready to move on.
C is a language that's too powerful for a beginner. There are too many ways to hang yourself if you don't know what you're doing. Someone who has never programmed before isn't ready for it. BASIC taught me to develop algorithms, so that when I was learning C, I was struggling with the syntax and semantics separately from the process of learning to write algorithms. Pascal taught me discipline that I used to structure C programs in ways that aren't required by the compiler but necessary to keep one's code organized and managable.
BASIC is a good thing. It's like drinking milk as a baby. Pascal is a good thing. It's like learning to get along with other kids in kindergarden. People aren't ready for C until they've gone through those stages.
From this, we learn the lesson that we don't have to have a single vendor in order to have universal interoperability. This funny thing called "open standards" allows numerous different vendors to interoperate with each other. And then apps live and die by how user friendly they are and how well they support the standards.
Just like Microsoft, Firefox developers have gotten stuck on the feature-creep treadmill. Instead of fixing incessant crashes and debilitating memory leaks, they add more whiz-bang features to compete with the "enemy". Instead of adding features to make their browser more robust and responsive, they add more crap to make it bigger, slower, and buggier.
Firefox is no longer about doing the right thing. It's now all about one-upping Microsoft at their own stupid game, and the users are suffering for it. Open Source developers, apparently, are no more ammune to this competition attitude than the proprietary vendors. There is no longer anything special about Firefox. What's more, they suffer from the syndrome many open source projects suffer from, which is that they prefer to work on the "interesting" bits, rather than spending time adding some polish to make things work WELL.
Because as long as Phillips has a patent on it, other companies will be less likely to implement anything so stupid.
[quote]Why are GPUs any different?[/quote]
GPUs don't have to remain 'binary compatible' with their predecessors. When you buy a new graphics card, you get an updated driver that supports the new chip. This is why GPUs evolve more quickly, why they have exceeded Moore's Law by such a significant margin.
This is not a statement in defense of closed-source drivers. The open source model makes "upgrades" of this sort actually EASIER. But you cannot put CPUs and GPUs into the same class of device.
The Open Graphics Project recently released schematics for their first product and are steadily making progress towards completing it for sale (http://kerneltrap.org/node/6262). If Libre graphics drivers are REALLY important to you, you might want to consider looking them up at "www.opengraphics.org". Despite being unfunded since early 2005 (which they could use some help with), they are still managing to make some headway. Those people with technical expertise (graphics drivers, graphics hardware, PCB design, chip design) would do well to pitch in to the effort. And those with money who also complain about the lack of Libre drivers should put their money where their mouths are. Rather than sitting around and complaining about it, the founders of the OGP decided to actually DO something about it; if you want to do more than just complain, they could use your help.
There are two reasons why we have a recent uprising of ID. One is that there are people whose religious beliefs are found in conflict with evolutionary science. The other is that people are simply ignorant of the science, in large part because of lousy science education and hard-to-read science literature.
In response to the ID debate, scientists have been motivated to clean up their acts. First, they have targeted specific areas of research that the ID proponents have harped on. Secondly, they are working harder to improve science education.
Things like ID arise ultimately due to a fault in the science. Well, we know science has faults, so the only result here can be an improvement in the science.
Looks like one of the April fools stories slipped in a bit early.
People leave their DNA and finger prints wherever they go, and the law is clear that whatever you leave behind is up for grabs. Where is the piracy in making an online searchable database of public-domain information?
There are many situations where you want to either complete something totally or not at all. That's why some installers copy a load of packages and then install them. It's also faster to copy things linearly off the CD onto the HD and then work with them. Error recovery is easier when you serialize things. Also, in some cases, the CD and HD will compete for access to a PATA bus, making parallel slower than serial.
My wife and I also have an inordinate number of books. Part of our solution was to choose a wall in the house with a lot of space and build a bookshelf right on it. We ended up choosing a large wall in the living room. It goes from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, except for an archway into the dining room, and integrates into the room with baseboard and crown moulding. It looks like it's part of the shape of the room. This gave us roughly 7 feet vertically and four 3-foot-wide sections. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it, because it looks better than movable bookshelves, although we still have plenty of books on other shelves elsewhere.
I don't know if this is quite far enough removed from open source software, but the Open Graphics Project is applying OSS ideas to all sorts of things. It would seem to apply well to HDL for chips, but they've also released their PCB schematics under a GPL license.
The recording industry finds that their copyrighted material is being pirated, so they implement ways to limit pirating. (No one mentions that most of the piracy is being done in 3rd world countries, costing record producers many times what it costs them in the US, but we'll let discuss that later.)
As far as I'm concerned, LET them. The problem is not the DRM. It's the fact that it's illegal to BREAK the DRM. Wouldn't that defeat the point of having DRM, you ask? For many people, yes. For many people, no. DRM would discourage many people from breaking it simply because it's inconvenient. But being allowed to break it when necessary allows many people to make "fair use" of the recordings in ways that the DRM would otherwise prevent.
It's all about balance. If the DRM people want to use technical means to screw us, we should be allowed to use technical means to unscrew outselves. This is no different from us using SPAM filters to fight spammers. We should be able to use anti-DRM programs to fight the recording industry.
We were more of an importer of people than of products. Every early on, even when gaining US citizenship was still easy, the US instituted tariffs to raise the price of imported goods and bolster the local economy, composed of many foreign immigrants.
In the early 20th centrury, though, before the world wars, we were quite a bit more isolationist. We didn't get involved in world affairs. We had "enough" people. Etc.
You know, the US used to be a lot more isolationist. We tend to see ourselves as superior, which limits our incentive to reach out to other countries. So we have people inside and outside of the US pressuring Americans go "go global." Given the commerce relationships we have with China, I have a feeling that they're one of the major source of that pressure. "Go global! Buy from China!"
And then they turn around and start closing themselves off from the rest of the world.
Doesn't that make you sad? People have to pass up legitimate, useful research just because the buzzword-laden research gets them more attention and funding.
The "memory leak" I complain about isn't a simple matter of Firefox getting excessively large (well, I do complain about that). My MAJOR complaint is that it frequently gets into a runaway memory grab loop where it goes from a "mere" 800 megs to 1.5 gigs in 30 seconds or less, before the oom killer gets to it.
One thing I think I should point out about how spacetime doesn't fit the general model of a 4-space, and it's simple:
Object do not pop in and out of existence as time progresses.
If time were simply a velocity in a dimension in a 4-space, that could happen. Instead, we see a continuity in 3-space, where an object might move, but there is a relationship between where it "is" and where it "was" and where it "will be".
So, it makes sense to model spacetime as a 4-space, but not as a general one.
And thinking outside of the box is essential to understanding some of the aspects of Physics that deviate from our everyday experiences.
The crux of his argument is that in space-time, everything is fixed and can't move. Well, sure, if you think of the universe as a fixed 4D hyperspace and just consider one point in it. The idea of "movement" comes from observing the motion of objects in 3-space while being in motion along the time axis... which is what we DO.
I think what he's doing is mixing up the practical idea of being IN the universe and having a natural fixed (in your reference frame) rate of motion through time, versus the theoretical notion of being outside of the universe and time and just examining it statically.
He complains about dt/dt being dimensionless. Of course that makes no sense. He's stuck on the idea of dx/dt being a measure of motion. It's not. We think of it as a velocity, but think of it as a indication of how much you move along X for how far you move along T. The fact of the matter is, you can compute dx/dy and get a similiarly meaningful result (assuming you have some reference axis for orientation). It just tells you how far you move in X for how far you move in Y. I don't see the problem, other than that this guy is stuck on the notion of T and X having different units. So what? X and Y have the SAME units, yet the calculus still makes sense!