But Im sorry that Alpha has been erased from the map.
As am I. I've always thought Alphas were some of the cooler architectures out there. And it's rather amusing to think that Microsoft had NT ported to a 64bit processor a long time prior to the introduction of the Opteron. Granted, there are alot of architectural differences between the Opteron and Alpha, but that's why the HAL existed. Too bad that Microsoft did away with a lot of the HAL to gain video speed. I bet they're regretting that now.
Anyway. Back to the Alpha, with a bit of searching you can pick up a fairly decent Alpha machine on the cheap. Look at the Personal Workstations (PWS - codenamed Miata) for some good performing Alphas. They run from 433mhz to 600mhz and will take PCI cards. More importantly, they're well supported by linux and have builtin sound, NIC, IDE and SCSI. You'll probably have to get a new graphics card for them though, as the TGA2 card that they came with isn't supported. A PCI Voodoo3 works nicely as a replacement (that's what I have in mine).
And the coolest thing about having one is that you know you'll have one of the earliest (and best) 64bit workstations around.
Girls will love you. Other geeks will fear you. You will be (appologies in advance for this) the Alpha geek.
The world has changed. Move On. Stop trying to recoup the costs of creation and promotion by building it into the cost of creation. Find some other way to profit from the works of others, for the method you are using now is nearing the end of its usefulness. You can sue every single person that copies a movie or song over the net, but how can you sue those that do not use the net as their means of transport? As large hardisks become more plentiful, your battle becomes harder. And this is a battle you will ultimately lose - the more you fight, the more costly it will become. For the people you are fighting are your reason for exisiting. If you put them in jail, take all of their savings, or alienate them, you might as well disappear - for they will never purchase your products again.
How useful is a car in rocky terrain? Or in a dense forest? Or on sandy soil?
For that matter, how useful are wheels on any terrain other than fairly wide, even surfaces? Cheetahs don't have wheels because going 60mph over rough, uneven terrain is impractical. And we won't even talk about the agility of a cheetah compared to the agility of a car.
Building robots to mimic biology is a way of making robots more robust, better able to deal with unexpected or uneven terrain, and just all round more useful. The concept isn't that hard.
10-50 years is probably a realistic estimate. Spend a bit of time in the AI/AL world and you'll get a picture of how much we still need to learn.
Evolving things in a computer simulation is fine, but once you step out into the real world, you see a whole new set of problems. In fact, evolving anything is hard. Your simulation has to be perfect otherwise you end up with a solution which has evolved to take advantage of flaws in the simulation and not perform the task.
Back in the early days of Genetic Algorithms, there were experiments which tried to evolve robots in simulation to go to the end of a corridor and turn in a specified direction. However, once the robots were evolved and "built" in the real world, they often failed. The reasons for the failure were numerous, from not having the same dimensions for the corridor to different motor sensitivities in the robot itself.
They've gotten around this somewhat by feeding randomness into the simulation (see Nick Jacobi's Minimal Simulations). However, for any complex real world type problems, there just remains too many variables to vary and evolution doesn't work as efficiently.
The nuances of the game far exceed those of chess. Simple rules, but beauty galore. It's even said that no two Go games have ever been the same - which is saying alot since the game is 3000 years old.
On one hand you have a company essentially putting other companies out of business because of consumer demand, even though the government has told them to stop doing such things.
On the other, you have the government propping up businesses with outdated models of distribution, even though consumers are demanding change.
Do you not see the inherent contradiction in these two things?
Yeah. And I'm *really* peeved about the record companies going out of business because of filesharing.
Obviously these companies aren't responding to what consumers want - free music. Their business should wither and die, rather than being propped up by government copyright gangsters.
I'm considering a move to Chile for personal reasons. What is the IT industry like there? Is it hard to find jobs or are there many companies looking for qualified workers?
Sorry I had to post this on the thread, but no other way to get in touch with you.
They do have a stable, modern distribution. It's called "testing". The not-so modern "stable" distribution is a dream tho.. You could drive a 15 ton tank through it and it'd still stay up. I've been running it on server (in the wild) for more than 2 years now with nary a problem. It's easy to maintain and has everything I need no more than an apt-get away. No recompilation, no searching for dependencies.. unlike some other distributions I've used.
It's a neverend cycle of new product names for what boils down to the same thing. The API doesn't really change, but how to access it does. Every 3 years MS comes out with another name and suddenly everyone and their dog has a book out showing how to use the new, enhanced, earth shattering name.
The name saves the universe, makes programing easier and more fun, and enhances your PC in so many ways.
Which drivers are you using? The stock 4.2 or the Gatos experimental drivers? Does the XVidio extension work for you?
The reasons for these questions is that a client of mine has an ATI Radeon 8500 that he wants to use Xinerama with. He plays alot of movies on his computer, and would like to be able to watch them and work at the same time. The problem I found is that the Radeon drivers that ship with XFree 4.2 don't support the XVideo extensions cleanly (a black box hanging about in the middle of the primary display while the Xine window is in the other) and the Gatos drivers segfault whenever X11 is started (works fine on either monitor singularly).
(b) If you can't convince me, convince somebody else. Maybe that somebody else is somebody I trust, and that somebody else feels that I was wrong and since _he_ believes in the project he will try to convince me about it.
And trust me, the people I trust don't revere me and think I'm always right. These people call me "pinhead" and tell me when I'm full of shit. If these people don't believe in your project, don't blame me and think it's because I "poisoned their minds".
He's admitting he's as failable as the next guy - the gist of what he's saying is that popping out of the woodwork and saying "hey, check this neat feature" isn't going to get your patch accepted into his kernel tree.
I highly doubt that any of the BSD maintainers would accept a patch either. It goes back to whether the trust is there, and evidently these guys don't hold Linus's trust.
SOLDIER #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound linux distribution.
Back in the 1600's Milton (of Paradise Lost fame) pubished an article denouncing censorship by the church. He backed this stance with quotes from the bible and holy scripture. One of the relevent points he made was this:
Man cannot be declared good without knowing temptation.
This is an interestesting philosophic question. If there was no devil, no evil, no darkside, could we really call ourselves "good"? Milton argues that in the absence of temptation we have not willfully chosen to be good, therefore we cannot claim to have triumphed over evil.
In my mind, this is weakness of the biblical moralist's argument. How that relates to the moralists of today is another question entirely. Perhaps by allowing our imaginations to run free and explore the violent urges within us, we become better integrated members of society. I don't really know... all I know is that I know feel the urge to go play some GTA3 and I'm glad I have that freedom.
Interestingly enough, one of my former roommates went to college with David Smith, when he was at UNC. She said he was a quiet, but rather odd man. She was very adamant about her impression that he wasn't really a bad guy.
On a related note, how many people actually picked apart one of their copies of Melissa? The really nasty bit of code was only maybe 10 lines long. Doesn't seem like he had to go through all that much trouble to write the thing. For years I've been thinking that Microsoft should really be held accountable for building that capability into Outlook in the first place. Then just a couple weeks ago someone said that is like holding gun makers accountable for murders. Now I'm not so sure that MS is to blame - they had their reasons for building it in, dubious as they may be, and I'm sure people besides the virus writers have made use of this feature. Would calling for Microsoft to remove it be the same as calling for file sharing networks to be torn down just because people use them illegally?
It's funny that I didn't notice how much of a hypocrite I was until it was pointed out to me.
I found it interesting during my MSc, and the field shows some promise if they can get over the factor discussed of "how do you trust something you can't explain?"
I've never understood that argument. If you hold to it, you'd have to say "I can't explain how a pliot's brain operates, yet I trust him to fly the plane in which I'm sitting."
Maybe what they really mean to say is "how do you trust something which you can't empathize with?"
Computers are completely alien to most of the populous. You can't form an emotional bond with a silcon chip (well, unless you're a hardcore geek), and you don't know what could motivate it, nor can you guess it's intentions. With a human, we are assured of sharing at least a few common experiences, desires, and motivations. This gives us more of a sense of trust about that person, leading to the (maybe) false impression that we really understand them.
Slashdot Mirror
I swear I've seen this before.
Maybe here?
FYI: The Miata has the A21164A processor (EV56), as opposed to the PC processor (PC56).
Not quite as nice as the A21264. The non IEEE-floating point operations on the pre EV6 processors rather hurt performance.
But Im sorry that Alpha has been erased from the map.
As am I. I've always thought Alphas were some of the cooler architectures out there. And it's rather amusing to think that Microsoft had NT ported to a 64bit processor a long time prior to the introduction of the Opteron. Granted, there are alot of architectural differences between the Opteron and Alpha, but that's why the HAL existed. Too bad that Microsoft did away with a lot of the HAL to gain video speed. I bet they're regretting that now.
Anyway. Back to the Alpha, with a bit of searching you can pick up a fairly decent Alpha machine on the cheap. Look at the Personal Workstations (PWS - codenamed Miata) for some good performing Alphas. They run from 433mhz to 600mhz and will take PCI cards. More importantly, they're well supported by linux and have builtin sound, NIC, IDE and SCSI. You'll probably have to get a new graphics card for them though, as the TGA2 card that they came with isn't supported. A PCI Voodoo3 works nicely as a replacement (that's what I have in mine).
And the coolest thing about having one is that you know you'll have one of the earliest (and best) 64bit workstations around.
Girls will love you. Other geeks will fear you.
You will be (appologies in advance for this) the Alpha geek.
Dear RIAA, MPAA
The world has changed. Move On. Stop trying to recoup the costs of creation and promotion by building it into the cost of creation. Find some other way to profit from the works of others, for the method you are using now is nearing the end of its usefulness. You can sue every single person that copies a movie or song over the net, but how can you sue those that do not use the net as their means of transport? As large hardisks become more plentiful, your battle becomes harder. And this is a battle you will ultimately lose - the more you fight, the more costly it will become. For the people you are fighting are your reason for exisiting. If you put them in jail, take all of their savings, or alienate them, you might as well disappear - for they will never purchase your products again.
Welcome to the new world.
How useful is a car in rocky terrain? Or in a dense forest? Or on sandy soil?
For that matter, how useful are wheels on any terrain other than fairly wide, even surfaces? Cheetahs don't have wheels because going 60mph over rough, uneven terrain is impractical. And we won't even talk about the agility of a cheetah compared to the agility of a car.
Building robots to mimic biology is a way of making robots more robust, better able to deal with unexpected or uneven terrain, and just all round more useful. The concept isn't that hard.
My father works in the Aerospace industry. He is required to leave his iPAQ at the front door every day.
Is this overkill? Perhaps. But sometimes such heavyhanded policies make sense, especially when it comes to making war.
10-50 years is probably a realistic estimate. Spend a bit of time in the AI/AL world and you'll get a picture of how much we still need to learn. Evolving things in a computer simulation is fine, but once you step out into the real world, you see a whole new set of problems. In fact, evolving anything is hard. Your simulation has to be perfect otherwise you end up with a solution which has evolved to take advantage of flaws in the simulation and not perform the task.
Back in the early days of Genetic Algorithms, there were experiments which tried to evolve robots in simulation to go to the end of a corridor and turn in a specified direction. However, once the robots were evolved and "built" in the real world, they often failed. The reasons for the failure were numerous, from not having the same dimensions for the corridor to different motor sensitivities in the robot itself.
They've gotten around this somewhat by feeding randomness into the simulation (see Nick Jacobi's Minimal Simulations). However, for any complex real world type problems, there just remains too many variables to vary and evolution doesn't work as efficiently.
It's only boring if don't know how to play it!
The nuances of the game far exceed those of chess. Simple rules, but beauty galore. It's even said that no two Go games have ever been the same - which is saying alot since the game is 3000 years old.
How could it be boring?
Yes. That was sarcasm.
On one hand you have a company essentially putting other companies out of business because of consumer demand, even though the government has told them to stop doing such things.
On the other, you have the government propping up businesses with outdated models of distribution, even though consumers are demanding change.
Do you not see the inherent contradiction in these two things?
Yeah. And I'm *really* peeved about the record companies going out of business because of filesharing.
Obviously these companies aren't responding to what consumers want - free music. Their business should wither and die, rather than being propped up by government copyright gangsters.
I'm considering a move to Chile for personal reasons. What is the IT industry like there? Is it hard to find jobs or are there many companies looking for qualified workers?
Sorry I had to post this on the thread, but no other way to get in touch with you.
Try 'apt-cache search g++ dev'
It tells you the names of all the packages relating to the keywords ('g++' and 'dev' in the above example).
Speaking as a debian user for many years:
They do have a stable, modern distribution. It's called "testing". The not-so modern "stable" distribution is a dream tho.. You could drive a 15 ton tank through it and it'd still stay up. I've been running it on server (in the wild) for more than 2 years now with nary a problem. It's easy to maintain and has everything I need no more than an apt-get away. No recompilation, no searching for dependencies.. unlike some other distributions I've used.
I wish everything was that easy.
SD is not supported. MMC is, though I've found support flakey (at least with my 3870... it's flakey within WinCE as well)
COM, DCOM, ActiveX, .NET, FX...
It's a neverend cycle of new product names for what boils down to the same thing. The API doesn't really change, but how to access it does. Every 3 years MS comes out with another name and suddenly everyone and their dog has a book out showing how to use the new, enhanced, earth shattering name.
The name saves the universe, makes programing easier and more fun, and enhances your PC in so many ways.
Why do Americans chill their beer?
So they can tell it apart from horse piss.
No. He means toeing
See this link for more information.
Am I the only one that misread that title?
I could have sworn it said Sim-Dude. Maybe I've seen too many Dell adverts - "Dude! You're getting a Sim!"
I can see the advert campaign now. Annoying Teenage-Sim comes with every Dell purchased! Get yours now!
eh...
Which drivers are you using? The stock 4.2 or the Gatos experimental drivers? Does the XVidio extension work for you?
The reasons for these questions is that a client of mine has an ATI Radeon 8500 that he wants to use Xinerama with. He plays alot of movies on his computer, and would like to be able to watch them and work at the same time. The problem I found is that the Radeon drivers that ship with XFree 4.2 don't support the XVideo extensions cleanly (a black box hanging about in the middle of the primary display while the Xine window is in the other) and the Gatos drivers segfault whenever X11 is started (works fine on either monitor singularly).
Anyone have any clues on how to fix this?
He's admitting he's as failable as the next guy - the gist of what he's saying is that popping out of the woodwork and saying "hey, check this neat feature" isn't going to get your patch accepted into his kernel tree.
I highly doubt that any of the BSD maintainers would accept a patch either. It goes back to whether the trust is there, and evidently these guys don't hold Linus's trust.
Not much controversial here.
SOLDIER #1: Are you suggesting linux migrates?
ARTHUR: Not at all. It could be carried.
SOLDIER #1: What? A swallow carrying linux?
ARTHUR: It could grip it by the shrink wrap!
SOLDIER #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound linux distribution.
Back in the 1600's Milton (of Paradise Lost fame) pubished an article denouncing censorship by the church. He backed this stance with quotes from the bible and holy scripture. One of the relevent points he made was this:
Man cannot be declared good without knowing temptation.
This is an interestesting philosophic question. If there was no devil, no evil, no darkside, could we really call ourselves "good"? Milton argues that in the absence of temptation we have not willfully chosen to be good, therefore we cannot claim to have triumphed over evil.
In my mind, this is weakness of the biblical moralist's argument. How that relates to the moralists of today is another question entirely. Perhaps by allowing our imaginations to run free and explore the violent urges within us, we become better integrated members of society. I don't really know... all I know is that I know feel the urge to go play some GTA3 and I'm glad I have that freedom.
Interestingly enough, one of my former roommates went to college with David Smith, when he was at UNC. She said he was a quiet, but rather odd man. She was very adamant about her impression that he wasn't really a bad guy.
On a related note, how many people actually picked apart one of their copies of Melissa? The really nasty bit of code was only maybe 10 lines long. Doesn't seem like he had to go through all that much trouble to write the thing. For years I've been thinking that Microsoft should really be held accountable for building that capability into Outlook in the first place. Then just a couple weeks ago someone said that is like holding gun makers accountable for murders. Now I'm not so sure that MS is to blame - they had their reasons for building it in, dubious as they may be, and I'm sure people besides the virus writers have made use of this feature. Would calling for Microsoft to remove it be the same as calling for file sharing networks to be torn down just because people use them illegally?
It's funny that I didn't notice how much of a hypocrite I was until it was pointed out to me.
See the following link for your answer: Evolution of Robustness in an Electronics Design
I found it interesting during my MSc, and the field shows some promise if they can get over the factor discussed of "how do you trust something you can't explain?"
I've never understood that argument. If you hold to it, you'd have to say "I can't explain how a pliot's brain operates, yet I trust him to fly the plane in which I'm sitting."
Maybe what they really mean to say is "how do you trust something which you can't empathize with?"
Computers are completely alien to most of the populous. You can't form an emotional bond with a silcon chip (well, unless you're a hardcore geek), and you don't know what could motivate it, nor can you guess it's intentions. With a human, we are assured of sharing at least a few common experiences, desires, and motivations. This gives us more of a sense of trust about that person, leading to the (maybe) false impression that we really understand them.
At least that's my take on it.