look into clustering. especially if you are a programmer and like/want to tinker with a few of the options. either Beowulf, which some may argue is becoming dated or at least not as useful in comparison to the other being Mosix (or rather OpenMosix for most of us).
You certainly won't get the fast memory pipeline access that the on board SMP systems will give you, but the cost of physically separate systems is lower. Video and/or 3d rendering lends itself well to distributed tasks because you can effectively outsource each frame to a different processor and then put them back together later (AFAIK there are even systems that do this on the pixel level - but I know less about that than the fram based level).
IMO OpenMosix requires far less time in setup, and it seems to be more forgiving to different system makeups (some faster, some more ram, etc).
I use it for financial analysis and on a single system it would take me a few days to go through all of my data. each time I add a node to the system, it nearly halves the amount of time (Due to network bandwidth issues and different speeds of nodes it isn't ever as straightforward as just halving the speed each time a node is added). I can put together a single node for under $400 (Athlon 2.1G and 256MB Ram - I don't need much ram for what I do) - so for a quad system, it would be $1600 in computers and about $100-200 in networking. You could then double that for the same cost of less (save when buying in bulk). That is $3600 for an 8 processor system - I don't think you will ever see that in an on board configuration and the speed difference isn't enough that you would care (if something finishes 10 mins earlier, but costs $5K more, is it worth it? for video, probably not)?
The large issue with clusters is that as they grow in number, their physical space that they take up increases, as does power consumption, heat dissapation, and noise.
$159K over 4 years or so doesn't sound like all that much money to me.
obviously nice on top of a regular salary, but in terms of a scam - I would think you would stive for more cash and in less time. do it fast and then it is over with and you have your cash to live off and be done with.
over the counter stocks (penny stocks) are pretty much all scams of some sort - to "invest" in them ever is just kind of retarded - it is more the realm of day traders since it is easy to see large percentage moves daily.
I was equally popular/unpopular growing up. I got beat up a lot, but also got invited to the cool kids' birthday parties. But then, I was also a track and XC person (not that they are exactly worshipped).
I would think that in a diverse pool the socioeconomic background plays a larger role than the intelligence level and/or grades. Where I grew up, the cliques were based on family income and how one expressed it, and the grades made no difference.
From what I saw, the only way to escape income bias was to excel at sports - excelling at grades didn't seem to matter one way or the other - but help the school win a football game, or go to states in track and people respected that.
1) The Great Escape. Martin Lawrence's portrayal was amazing. He wanted revenge, but he is thwarted by a bird - fortunately he is helped by a cat and befriends a funny horse that is lost. No wonder it won so many awards.
2) Cop and a Half. I'm not sure any one character took the show - as a whole it was just total perfection. It will go down in history as the greatest film ever made for sure.
I've written jsp, asp, php, cold fusion, perl, vb, and even the slightly less used shtml and of all of them, I much prefer php.
I love perl for many things, but in terms of web page development, I can't stand it - I'd much rather have it running in the background updating files or databases and then have a frontend script like one of the **Ps come in and get the data and make it all purdy.
JSP is retarded slow until the first time it has been loaded - which is all fine on a live system that precompiles at bootup (that always is blazing fast... right) - but for development, it could be a major pain in the ass - esp if you had anything remotely complicated in there. It is excellent to write in and I like that part, I just don't feel that the performance and ease of use are high enough over the others to merit me using it on any of the most recent projects that I've been doing.
ASP is nice and relatively fast. It *can* run on a *nix system, but really, who are we kidding - it should be under IIS. I have very few complaints about it, but again, if given the choice - I'd rather use PHP.
PHP is free, fast as hell, and has the best documentation - their site is fast, easy to use, and there is a discussion on the site at the end of each function description that allows you to post up different ways to use the code. It is enough like perl that I can flip flop between the two and not get too loopy trying to remember syntax, and yet it allows the easy tag manipulation that the server side scripting languages **Ps are good for. Did I mention it was free and retard fast?
thank god for Old Glory Insurace - they insure us against the robots. no longer do we have to live in fear of them attacking the elderly in search of their medicine. granted, robot attacks are the leading cause of death in america, but with old glory insurance on our side, we can feel safe and sleep better at night.
At the top of the article is an image of a laptop open, and the desktop image is a huge head of a woman on the desktop of the laptop. Were I a serial killer that decapitated my victims and then froze the heads for later perusal and admirement (is that even a word) - then I'd totally have that picture as my desktop background.
as a whole, the article raises some good points, but there were also parts that I disagreed with on many points - hell, the broad sweeping mention that the airline industry on the web was doomed from the start and then listing the reason as no face to face contact? fuck that, I disagree.
but this post isn't about my disagreement, it is about the scary blue head.
I have no proof - but I personally think that the AC posts drunk. His/her posts vary so much in content and subject matter that I figure them to be either raging alcoholics, or mentall ill.
Hmm, from the sounds of it, I suppose that means the AC is my grandma. That would explain those late night emails where she keeps telling me I'm "owned"
I've never used their boxed software and for 3 or 4 years now have used their web software. it works great, remembers my details, and has a ton of useful features - and I think it is only $8-12.
I know that if I get e-mail from Half.com or Ebay.com or a few others, there is a thing that shows up in the scores that says something about it being a registered sender and therefore gets through.
also, if you are subscribed to a mailing list and don't have it on your whitelist... well, then dhuuuuuuur
I used to listen to Launch so much that when I listen to songs now, I have this reflex to rate them, and then am always diappointed when I can't.
I run Winamp 3 at work and have the NonStop skin on it, so I'm not sure if this will work with it or not since it says Winamp 2 there. I'd go and read the article, but it appears dead, I assume a slashdotting.
we had a ton of random broken things around my house growing up. all the lights in each room were on motion detectors, we had like 18 TVs, 2 microwaves, and like 15 remote controlled cars. We had I think 10 assorted 8088 or 286s in our place at one point, and one whole room of the house was literally full from floor to ceiling with boxes of Nalgene bottles.
He would get a lot of stuff donated to him that nobody else wanted, and then he would eventually try to figure out what to do with it.
The main issue was that nothing really looked all that "done" - it would work most of the time, but not always, and it tended to have lots of wires hanging out of it. Our microwave door wasn't always aligned right, so when you used it, you had to hold a detector to know how close/far away to stand from it.
I don't answer my phone either. The only reason I've had a home phone at all in the past few years was to let people in via the security system, or for my fiancee to call home (she is from Bermuda and long distance on a cell phone to there is not pretty).
If a number doesn't show up as a known # on my cell phone, then I ignore it. Hell, I tend to leave my phone off most of the time anyways - I *HATE* the phone. I don't know if it is to the level of a phobia or a compulsion, but I will do anything to get out of using the phone.
Everyone that knows me knows that email is the way that they can reach me all throughout the day.
Occasionally I pick up the phone in case it is my dad (he is on the road right now and therefore doesn't have a constant phone number). But that is usually rewarded by a telemarketer, whom I tell that I am on a cell phone, never call me again, and take me off of their list and then immediately hang up (if I can get all that done in under a minute - which should be easy - then I don't have to pay for the incoming minute).
The only time that backfired on me was when it really was my credit card company calling about something. They ended up calling back and leaving a relatively unpleasant message on my voice mail.
Lately I've been getting a *lot* of recruiters calling me and leaving voice mail messages. I never call them back... perhaps that is a sign that the economy is starting to pick up again?
They had the whole semester and was team based. The teams could be as big or as small as they wanted them, just had to be of people from that class (not just that time-slot, just that class).
The grade wasn't based on successful completion, but about how they approached the problem - I don't think he expected anyone to actually finish it - but what disappointed him was that nobody even tried. For that project, just to show them it *could* be done with what he gave them, he did one by himeself about halfway through the semester and walked them through it showing them the thinking process (this was an advanced class, not a 101). Even after all of that, many didn't even bother with an attempt at it. His version used infrared sensors, a webcam, a few servos, kitchen tongs, and the remote controlled car - with the 286 motherboard connected to that back. It was setup to run a loop (in forth) that would scan the sensors, figure out what was around, move the steering servos accordingly, and then move forward or backward by running the motors for a fixed amount of time. Then it would check the sensors again and repeat. IMO it was and is a shitty school and he deserved to be somewhere better.
He had a few students that liked him and worked well with him and they went on towards their PhDs at CalTech, Princeton, and MIT. The rest just complained to the deans that he didn't do cookbook labs (he was an analytical chem professor). He worked with Bob Ballard and designed his own JASON project on site (via the web - which was just getting big (1995) he setup a remote controlled car that drove over a plexiglass platform which had holes in it (and the car had a webcam mounted on it, pointing down throught he plexi). Under that plexiglass, about 5 inches down, were common household objects spread out on a table - and then that entire deal (under the plexiglass) was covered in sand. From the web page, you could log in and gain control of the vehicle for a time limit (I think 1 min) and then you could move it around - press the right button, the page would submit and you would move a unit right. You would see on screen what the car "saw" through its camera. Then you could press the "blow" button (forget what it was called) and it activated a compressed air hose on the vehicle that would blow the sand away that was under the car/plexi. The desired result was that you could go in and uncover part of the buried scene - much in the way that Ballard works when he goes on his dives (Bob Ballard is the man that discovered the wreck of the Titanic). This project brought much attention to the college and allowed many elementary schools to compete against each other and chat via the web page - there was additional content that allowed them more to learn about the process. My dad also worked for NASA in the summers and represented the school...
But, because of all that he did and the fact that his students felt he didn't do enough cookbook labs, he didn't get tenure. He left, they shut down the JASON project that was there, and he stopped working with NASA.
Then he moved to Biotech and made 5x his previous salary the first year.
After 5 or so years with that, he got laid off and he travelled Canada living out of his car and writing two books for a year.
Not sure what he is up to now - last I talked to him he was at a conference in LA that discusses biotech automation and he was talking with a friend out there about a job.
I have a lot of respect for him, but then, I'm biased:)
As far as I know the Brit chick that was the host on Junkyard Wars is now on a new show and her co-host is Henry Rollins. I have never actually seen the show, but it too is on TLC or the Discovery Channel (they are both owned by the same company anyway I think). I *think* the shows premise is similar, except that there are more teams and they build the stuff at home with presumably better stuff or something... but like I said, I've never seen the show, so I could be way off.
I don't even know the name of the show - just know that they are hosts... "Monster Madness" or something like that.
I agree. when I hear people mentioning that they need to diversify something - especially something like this which is esentially an acedemic area - it makes me want to smack someone.
there are occasions (okay... every day really) where I wish certain books could be handed out to everyone in the world and they would then have to read them. Usually the book that comes to mind is Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" - but in the case I think I would have to go with Pinker's "Blank Slate"
I hope he applies for it - this is the sort of thing he would love.
when he was a professor, his students hated him because he made them think (imagine that) and he frequently gave them assignments that were much like this show (the one I recall best was they were given a remote control car, assorted kitchen appliances, tin foil, wood, tennis balls, a 286, and some other stuff and were supposed to make a robot that would roam about a gym and retrieve various objects that were placed there. nobody completed the assignment and most didn't even try)
I told him about this show once and he was quite excited - had never seen it - I don't think he watches tv. he wanted me to tape it for him, which to me is like asking me to carve it out of stone for him - I don't even own a VCR. Now I see that they sell VHS tapes of the show, so I guess now I know a present for him.
I agree with another poster on here that my fav part of the show was the cute brit host girl that is now on that show with Henry Rollins.
Slashdot Mirror
look into clustering. especially if you are a programmer and like/want to tinker with a few of the options.
either Beowulf, which some may argue is becoming dated or at least not as useful in comparison to the other being Mosix (or rather OpenMosix for most of us).
You certainly won't get the fast memory pipeline access that the on board SMP systems will give you, but the cost of physically separate systems is lower.
Video and/or 3d rendering lends itself well to distributed tasks because you can effectively outsource each frame to a different processor and then put them back together later (AFAIK there are even systems that do this on the pixel level - but I know less about that than the fram based level).
IMO OpenMosix requires far less time in setup, and it seems to be more forgiving to different system makeups (some faster, some more ram, etc).
I use it for financial analysis and on a single system it would take me a few days to go through all of my data. each time I add a node to the system, it nearly halves the amount of time (Due to network bandwidth issues and different speeds of nodes it isn't ever as straightforward as just halving the speed each time a node is added).
I can put together a single node for under $400 (Athlon 2.1G and 256MB Ram - I don't need much ram for what I do) - so for a quad system, it would be $1600 in computers and about $100-200 in networking. You could then double that for the same cost of less (save when buying in bulk).
That is $3600 for an 8 processor system - I don't think you will ever see that in an on board configuration and the speed difference isn't enough that you would care (if something finishes 10 mins earlier, but costs $5K more, is it worth it? for video, probably not)?
The large issue with clusters is that as they grow in number, their physical space that they take up increases, as does power consumption, heat dissapation, and noise.
$159K over 4 years or so doesn't sound like all that much money to me.
obviously nice on top of a regular salary, but in terms of a scam - I would think you would stive for more cash and in less time. do it fast and then it is over with and you have your cash to live off and be done with.
over the counter stocks (penny stocks) are pretty much all scams of some sort - to "invest" in them ever is just kind of retarded - it is more the realm of day traders since it is easy to see large percentage moves daily.
I was equally popular/unpopular growing up. I got beat up a lot, but also got invited to the cool kids' birthday parties.
But then, I was also a track and XC person (not that they are exactly worshipped).
I would think that in a diverse pool the socioeconomic background plays a larger role than the intelligence level and/or grades.
Where I grew up, the cliques were based on family income and how one expressed it, and the grades made no difference.
From what I saw, the only way to escape income bias was to excel at sports - excelling at grades didn't seem to matter one way or the other - but help the school win a football game, or go to states in track and people respected that.
1) The Great Escape.
Martin Lawrence's portrayal was amazing. He wanted revenge, but he is thwarted by a bird - fortunately he is helped by a cat and befriends a funny horse that is lost.
No wonder it won so many awards.
2) Cop and a Half.
I'm not sure any one character took the show - as a whole it was just total perfection. It will go down in history as the greatest film ever made for sure.
I tried it out and was really impressed with it. I started using it for Java stuff, but now I really like it for Perl as well.
http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/
... if one of their key engineers used to work for pets.com
that place was just a disaster.
oh sure, like I read the article or something ;)
I've written jsp, asp, php, cold fusion, perl, vb, and even the slightly less used shtml and of all of them, I much prefer php.
I love perl for many things, but in terms of web page development, I can't stand it - I'd much rather have it running in the background updating files or databases and then have a frontend script like one of the **Ps come in and get the data and make it all purdy.
JSP is retarded slow until the first time it has been loaded - which is all fine on a live system that precompiles at bootup (that always is blazing fast... right) - but for development, it could be a major pain in the ass - esp if you had anything remotely complicated in there.
It is excellent to write in and I like that part, I just don't feel that the performance and ease of use are high enough over the others to merit me using it on any of the most recent projects that I've been doing.
ASP is nice and relatively fast. It *can* run on a *nix system, but really, who are we kidding - it should be under IIS. I have very few complaints about it, but again, if given the choice - I'd rather use PHP.
PHP is free, fast as hell, and has the best documentation - their site is fast, easy to use, and there is a discussion on the site at the end of each function description that allows you to post up different ways to use the code.
It is enough like perl that I can flip flop between the two and not get too loopy trying to remember syntax, and yet it allows the easy tag manipulation that the server side scripting languages **Ps are good for.
Did I mention it was free and retard fast?
hot damn.
thank god for Old Glory Insurace - they insure us against the robots. no longer do we have to live in fear of them attacking the elderly in search of their medicine.
granted, robot attacks are the leading cause of death in america, but with old glory insurance on our side, we can feel safe and sleep better at night.
At the top of the article is an image of a laptop open, and the desktop image is a huge head of a woman on the desktop of the laptop.
Were I a serial killer that decapitated my victims and then froze the heads for later perusal and admirement (is that even a word) - then I'd totally have that picture as my desktop background.
as a whole, the article raises some good points, but there were also parts that I disagreed with on many points - hell, the broad sweeping mention that the airline industry on the web was doomed from the start and then listing the reason as no face to face contact? fuck that, I disagree.
but this post isn't about my disagreement, it is about the scary blue head.
fear the head.
I have no proof - but I personally think that the AC posts drunk.
His/her posts vary so much in content and subject matter that I figure them to be either raging alcoholics, or mentall ill.
Hmm, from the sounds of it, I suppose that means the AC is my grandma. That would explain those late night emails where she keeps telling me I'm "owned"
sometimes I get really excited about these articles... I suppose the end result are happy accidents. in my pants.
go to ubid.com and find a refurbished one - some come without OS, or just write over whatever is on it.
you get the most bang for the buck that way.
the vaios are thin, quiet, light, have firewire, and are excellent quality.
I've never used their boxed software and for 3 or 4 years now have used their web software. it works great, remembers my details, and has a ton of useful features - and I think it is only $8-12.
I know that if I get e-mail from Half.com or Ebay.com or a few others, there is a thing that shows up in the scores that says something about it being a registered sender and therefore gets through.
also, if you are subscribed to a mailing list and don't have it on your whitelist... well, then dhuuuuuuur
I used to listen to Launch so much that when I listen to songs now, I have this reflex to rate them, and then am always diappointed when I can't.
I run Winamp 3 at work and have the NonStop skin on it, so I'm not sure if this will work with it or not since it says Winamp 2 there. I'd go and read the article, but it appears dead, I assume a slashdotting.
mom?
exactly - doesn't this just scream "Nash"?
maybe that is me... maybe I'm sitting here screaming it.
someone told me this one and I felt it apropos given my username on here.
l: assword
p: password
LMAO :)
probably
we had a ton of random broken things around my house growing up. all the lights in each room were on motion detectors, we had like 18 TVs, 2 microwaves, and like 15 remote controlled cars. We had I think 10 assorted 8088 or 286s in our place at one point, and one whole room of the house was literally full from floor to ceiling with boxes of Nalgene bottles.
He would get a lot of stuff donated to him that nobody else wanted, and then he would eventually try to figure out what to do with it.
The main issue was that nothing really looked all that "done" - it would work most of the time, but not always, and it tended to have lots of wires hanging out of it.
Our microwave door wasn't always aligned right, so when you used it, you had to hold a detector to know how close/far away to stand from it.
I don't answer my phone either. The only reason I've had a home phone at all in the past few years was to let people in via the security system, or for my fiancee to call home (she is from Bermuda and long distance on a cell phone to there is not pretty).
If a number doesn't show up as a known # on my cell phone, then I ignore it. Hell, I tend to leave my phone off most of the time anyways - I *HATE* the phone.
I don't know if it is to the level of a phobia or a compulsion, but I will do anything to get out of using the phone.
Everyone that knows me knows that email is the way that they can reach me all throughout the day.
Occasionally I pick up the phone in case it is my dad (he is on the road right now and therefore doesn't have a constant phone number). But that is usually rewarded by a telemarketer, whom I tell that I am on a cell phone, never call me again, and take me off of their list and then immediately hang up (if I can get all that done in under a minute - which should be easy - then I don't have to pay for the incoming minute).
The only time that backfired on me was when it really was my credit card company calling about something. They ended up calling back and leaving a relatively unpleasant message on my voice mail.
Lately I've been getting a *lot* of recruiters calling me and leaving voice mail messages. I never call them back... perhaps that is a sign that the economy is starting to pick up again?
They had the whole semester and was team based. The teams could be as big or as small as they wanted them, just had to be of people from that class (not just that time-slot, just that class).
:)
The grade wasn't based on successful completion, but about how they approached the problem - I don't think he expected anyone to actually finish it - but what disappointed him was that nobody even tried.
For that project, just to show them it *could* be done with what he gave them, he did one by himeself about halfway through the semester and walked them through it showing them the thinking process (this was an advanced class, not a 101).
Even after all of that, many didn't even bother with an attempt at it.
His version used infrared sensors, a webcam, a few servos, kitchen tongs, and the remote controlled car - with the 286 motherboard connected to that back. It was setup to run a loop (in forth) that would scan the sensors, figure out what was around, move the steering servos accordingly, and then move forward or backward by running the motors for a fixed amount of time. Then it would check the sensors again and repeat.
IMO it was and is a shitty school and he deserved to be somewhere better.
He had a few students that liked him and worked well with him and they went on towards their PhDs at CalTech, Princeton, and MIT. The rest just complained to the deans that he didn't do cookbook labs (he was an analytical chem professor).
He worked with Bob Ballard and designed his own JASON project on site (via the web - which was just getting big (1995) he setup a remote controlled car that drove over a plexiglass platform which had holes in it (and the car had a webcam mounted on it, pointing down throught he plexi). Under that plexiglass, about 5 inches down, were common household objects spread out on a table - and then that entire deal (under the plexiglass) was covered in sand.
From the web page, you could log in and gain control of the vehicle for a time limit (I think 1 min) and then you could move it around - press the right button, the page would submit and you would move a unit right. You would see on screen what the car "saw" through its camera. Then you could press the "blow" button (forget what it was called) and it activated a compressed air hose on the vehicle that would blow the sand away that was under the car/plexi.
The desired result was that you could go in and uncover part of the buried scene - much in the way that Ballard works when he goes on his dives (Bob Ballard is the man that discovered the wreck of the Titanic).
This project brought much attention to the college and allowed many elementary schools to compete against each other and chat via the web page - there was additional content that allowed them more to learn about the process.
My dad also worked for NASA in the summers and represented the school...
But, because of all that he did and the fact that his students felt he didn't do enough cookbook labs, he didn't get tenure.
He left, they shut down the JASON project that was there, and he stopped working with NASA.
Then he moved to Biotech and made 5x his previous salary the first year.
After 5 or so years with that, he got laid off and he travelled Canada living out of his car and writing two books for a year.
Not sure what he is up to now - last I talked to him he was at a conference in LA that discusses biotech automation and he was talking with a friend out there about a job.
I have a lot of respect for him, but then, I'm biased
As far as I know the Brit chick that was the host on Junkyard Wars is now on a new show and her co-host is Henry Rollins.
I have never actually seen the show, but it too is on TLC or the Discovery Channel (they are both owned by the same company anyway I think).
I *think* the shows premise is similar, except that there are more teams and they build the stuff at home with presumably better stuff or something... but like I said, I've never seen the show, so I could be way off.
I don't even know the name of the show - just know that they are hosts... "Monster Madness" or something like that.
I agree. when I hear people mentioning that they need to diversify something - especially something like this which is esentially an acedemic area - it makes me want to smack someone.
;)
there are occasions (okay... every day really) where I wish certain books could be handed out to everyone in the world and they would then have to read them.
Usually the book that comes to mind is Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" - but in the case I think I would have to go with Pinker's "Blank Slate"
I wish more people thought like me
I hope he applies for it - this is the sort of thing he would love.
when he was a professor, his students hated him because he made them think (imagine that) and he frequently gave them assignments that were much like this show (the one I recall best was they were given a remote control car, assorted kitchen appliances, tin foil, wood, tennis balls, a 286, and some other stuff and were supposed to make a robot that would roam about a gym and retrieve various objects that were placed there. nobody completed the assignment and most didn't even try)
I told him about this show once and he was quite excited - had never seen it - I don't think he watches tv. he wanted me to tape it for him, which to me is like asking me to carve it out of stone for him - I don't even own a VCR.
Now I see that they sell VHS tapes of the show, so I guess now I know a present for him.
I agree with another poster on here that my fav part of the show was the cute brit host girl that is now on that show with Henry Rollins.