Strange, this "timing" lark. I wonder if they struggle to meet the deadline or just let thngs hang around until the public start buying in earnest for Xmas...
Since it supports 2 monitors (prime requirement for me) I might even buy one... be nice to actually enable 3D to more than "minimal" for a change:-)
A "spade" as you so conveniently call it is in fact an earth-inverting horticultural instrument, capable of rapid, multi-faceted deployment within the agricultural domain.
Calling it a "spade" is to denigrate the essential oneness of being that this delicate but powerful tool brings to the entire gardening experience.
I would point out that with an earth-inverting horticultural instrument, one need not beat around the bush, indeed one may transplant the bush.
It's a big step forward for OS when large agencies (goverments , companies, even departments) collectively switch - it focuses the attention. Microsoft's attitude speaks volumes here as well - lets hope they continue their PR nightmare:-)
Er, I think you missed the not-so-subtle point... I have a G500, and I use it because I'm a developer. Would I like to have the latest and greatest video card, you bet! But I have no business reason to.
The big fast 3D-accelerated cards tend to come with a lot of RAM on-board. This could be used by a tech-savvy developer to justify a new graphics card to a not-so-savvy manager, and incidentally a new monitor too, a digital flatscreen one, to plug into the new graphics card, so I can still have 2 screens... And it wouldn't suck dead bunnies through thin straws when playing an FPS along with everyone else...
It's about greed, lust for the latest toy, and justification or lack thereof. It's not about what is sufficient, what will do, or the quality of the graphics output... You're obviously very pure of spirit... (this is not an insult! Thought I'd point that out since we seem to operate on different wavelengths!)
Simon.
Re:Nicest use of XML I've seen
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 1
How much easier it is to create ascii for the transport when you're coding in PHP,Java and C++ for the same project across a range of OS's.
How much easier it is to debug and produce test cases on all those platforms when it's an ascii file...
If you're concerned about size or security, then use gzip and ssl. No problem.
Not sure I'd do it if I wanted the absolute last percentage point of performance from the system, but overall, in any application I've coded, it's a major win.
Keith Packard: "One thing I have noticed is a sudden interest in video cards with *lots* of memory. GL uses video memory mostly for simple things like textures for which it is feasible to use AGP memory. However, Composite is busy drawing to those off-screen areas, and it really won't work well to try and move those objects into AGP space"
Finally an excuse for even the most die-hard "oh no, I don't play games" programmer to go and get a decent graphics card, and not to use a Matrox G500 because it does 2 screens best:-)... "but boss, I *need* it for the new application"...
I thought the dominant paradigm was the block synchronous parallel approach ? (Where the nodes run asynch. on their data but synch up on a regular basis). Later variations had "groups" of nodes which could synch up their group and get on rather than wait for the entire node-set to synch. You write the code to be opportunistic, and when sufficent nodes are available for a work unit, that unit is despatched to the group.
With this paradigm, I don't see why you'd want to restrict the memory per node. The single shared-resource is the interconnect fabric, and if you have larger blocks of data, you get longer delays in-between synch-up for all the nodes within a given group, so freeing the interconnect for other groups.
The corollary is that the synch-up times mean length grows, of course, but with the node count ballooning as it is, I would have thought the remaining shared resources (interconnect, data-sources, etc.) would be those to be conserved rather than node capacity.
It *is* possible to run a single image across more than one processor (see the latest SGI Linux supercomputer). This one has the advantage of size, though from the photo's it looks more like a cluster architecture than a single-image machine.
A more feasible route might be to run round-robin DNS to the various nodes in some fashion, to distribute the load. Instant high-availability for even heavily loaded sites.
Yes, I'd expect a damn sight more RAM per node than 64M. Why on earth put only 64M on a node - they're hardly the costly part of the equation at the moment - 25 for 256Mb at 1-off prices, in the UK. You could probably halve that buying in bulk, and put 512 per node at least.
So, how long will it be before these become commoditised for sme's ?
Something that fits into the space of a 30" TV set (how about dimensions, guys ?) is presumably about half to 1/3 a standard rack in a co-lo. 2 Teraflops of processing power ought to be able to comfortably shift the bottleneck to the bandwidth, even for database-orientated sites...
I think people's cost expectations are going to be significantly impacted by the size of this - if it's small, it must be cheap, right ? (wrong, but try telling them...)
Fantastic acheivement, btw, kudos to the man in blue:-)
All crackers view themselves as Neo, these days... Apart from the female ones, who view themselves as Trinity. All the male crackers of course assume that all the female crackers are male too...
... for their next election, which seems to be the best option to me. Voter gets a piece of paper (anonymous) which records his/her vote. The slip has to be left at the polling station in a sealed container, and in the event of "it screwed up", the slips get counted...
This is the first-ever Debian I'm going to download and try out. I figure I ought to be able to get to know it as well as I know RH before the RHN support is switched off next year.
It's not that I've decided to ditch RH - I may just cough up for the new RH packages, but I'd like to know what my options are:-)
Simon
Re:Space not speed, and price issues
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
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· Score: 1
I was buying DVD-RW's because the HD is rewriteable, and a lot of people recycle backups.
Regardless of price, I still think the storage aspects of HD's vs DVD's makes a telling point. a 250GB drive is 1.5" tall, even allowing for the caddy... 55 DVD's are a far bigger pain to store and manage. Just my opinion, and if your data requirements aren't too large, I'm sure DVD's are fine...
One of my colleagues takes a flight down here to London every week (city-hops are quite cheap, often the airport tax is more than the fare) and works here 2 or 3 days a week, then commutes back to Scotland for the rest of the week. Online via ADSL and Bob's your Auntie's live-in lover....
The scots do have something of a history of technical excellence, so it's a shame that Silicon Glen is running into trouble, imho.
Simon.
Yeah. Doesn't surprise me :-(
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
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· Score: 1
Possibly a bit of both. Over here in the UK we're used to paying the same figure in pounds as you pay in dollars:-( That's a factor of ~1.5
I was using branded DVD-RW not unbranded DVD-R (which are cheaper). If you're going to use them for backup, you're going to want them to be pretty reliable. The RW was because people tend to cycle backups...
And I wasn't shopping around to get the lowest price. I was using dabs.com, but they're usually pretty good (at least in our terms) for all but the media (couldn't find them on dabs)
Hm. I'm pretty sure we couldn't in '99 (well, I was told I couldn't, when I tried to move from Orange to Vodaphone).
I remember one of the claimed benefits of the standardisation of numbers in the UK was easy portability between networks. and I do understand the meaning of the word....
All mobile numbers are obliged to start 07, for the sake of portability and also to let people know they're calling a mobile phone (so it'll be more expensive).
Having said that, I changed my number last time - because the new one was much easier to remember:-)
The more they hype it, the more the buying public (increasingly younger teenagers, I wait for the day they get to "pocket-money" kids who simply can't afford it - the industry will implode) will cough up....
Simon the cynic.
Re:Space not speed, and price issues
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
·
· Score: 1
Typically it's the caddy that takes the brunt of any plugging/unplugging - the caddy receptacle mounts in the PC case, and the caddy plugs into that. The disk plugs into the caddy.
At least, in all the ones I used to use at the MoD.
Simon.
Re:Space not speed, and price issues
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
·
· Score: 1
All the prices save the media were from DABS online. The media was the best prices single-page ad I saw in the back of computer shopper.
I did *say* you could get them cheaper...
I was using RW rather than R to level the playing field. The HD can rewrite, and some people rotate their backups in cycles...
Slashdot Mirror
Strange, this "timing" lark. I wonder if they struggle to meet the deadline or just let thngs hang around until the public start buying in earnest for Xmas...
:-)
Since it supports 2 monitors (prime requirement for me) I might even buy one... be nice to actually enable 3D to more than "minimal" for a change
Simon.
A "spade" as you so conveniently call it is in fact an earth-inverting horticultural instrument, capable of rapid, multi-faceted deployment within the agricultural domain.
Calling it a "spade" is to denigrate the essential oneness of being that this delicate but powerful tool brings to the entire gardening experience.
I would point out that with an earth-inverting horticultural instrument, one need not beat around the bush, indeed one may transplant the bush.
Simon
... mighty oaks do grow.
:-)
It's a big step forward for OS when large agencies (goverments , companies, even departments) collectively switch - it focuses the attention. Microsoft's attitude speaks volumes here as well - lets hope they continue their PR nightmare
Simon
That was a gauntlet to the face and no mistake. AMD have just announced a new Fab in Dresden, remember, at 90nm....
Simon.
Er, I think you missed the not-so-subtle point... I have a G500, and I use it because I'm a developer. Would I like to have the latest and greatest video card, you bet! But I have no business reason to.
The big fast 3D-accelerated cards tend to come with a lot of RAM on-board. This could be used by a tech-savvy developer to justify a new graphics card to a not-so-savvy manager, and incidentally a new monitor too, a digital flatscreen one, to plug into the new graphics card, so I can still have 2 screens... And it wouldn't suck dead bunnies through thin straws when playing an FPS along with everyone else...
It's about greed, lust for the latest toy, and justification or lack thereof. It's not about what is sufficient, what will do, or the quality of the graphics output... You're obviously very pure of spirit... (this is not an insult! Thought I'd point that out since we seem to operate on different wavelengths!)
Simon.
How much easier it is to create ascii for the transport when you're coding in PHP,Java and C++ for the same project across a range of OS's.
How much easier it is to debug and produce test cases on all those platforms when it's an ascii file...
If you're concerned about size or security, then use gzip and ssl. No problem.
Not sure I'd do it if I wanted the absolute last percentage point of performance from the system, but overall, in any application I've coded, it's a major win.
Simon.
That's that, then.
Simon.
... is XML-RPC. A sort of lightweight SOAP. Very very useful for API's when you're doing cross-platform coding...
:-)
The site has loads of implementations of both server and client code, some in *very* obscure languages
Simon.
Finally an excuse for even the most die-hard "oh no, I don't play games" programmer to go and get a decent graphics card, and not to use a Matrox G500 because it does 2 screens best
Simon
I thought the dominant paradigm was the block synchronous parallel approach ? (Where the nodes run asynch. on their data but synch up on a regular basis). Later variations had "groups" of nodes which could synch up their group and get on rather than wait for the entire node-set to synch. You write the code to be opportunistic, and when sufficent nodes are available for a work unit, that unit is despatched to the group.
With this paradigm, I don't see why you'd want to restrict the memory per node. The single shared-resource is the interconnect fabric, and if you have larger blocks of data, you get longer delays in-between synch-up for all the nodes within a given group, so freeing the interconnect for other groups.
The corollary is that the synch-up times mean length grows, of course, but with the node count ballooning as it is, I would have thought the remaining shared resources (interconnect, data-sources, etc.) would be those to be conserved rather than node capacity.
Simon
It *is* possible to run a single image across more than one processor (see the latest SGI Linux supercomputer). This one has the advantage of size, though from the photo's it looks more like a cluster architecture than a single-image machine.
A more feasible route might be to run round-robin DNS to the various nodes in some fashion, to distribute the load. Instant high-availability for even heavily loaded sites.
Yes, I'd expect a damn sight more RAM per node than 64M. Why on earth put only 64M on a node - they're hardly the costly part of the equation at the moment - 25 for 256Mb at 1-off prices, in the UK. You could probably halve that buying in bulk, and put 512 per node at least.
Simon.
So, how long will it be before these become commoditised for sme's ?
...
:-)
Something that fits into the space of a 30" TV set (how about dimensions, guys ?) is presumably about half to 1/3 a standard rack in a co-lo. 2 Teraflops of processing power ought to be able to comfortably shift the bottleneck to the bandwidth, even for database-orientated sites
I think people's cost expectations are going to be significantly impacted by the size of this - if it's small, it must be cheap, right ? (wrong, but try telling them...)
Fantastic acheivement, btw, kudos to the man in blue
Simon
All crackers view themselves as Neo, these days ... Apart from the female ones, who view themselves as Trinity. All the male crackers of course assume that all the female crackers are male too...
Simon
Yes, that's what they intend to do.
:-)
I guess you don't get out unless you give them the slip (pun intended
Simon.
... for their next election, which seems to be the best option to me. Voter gets a piece of paper (anonymous) which records his/her vote. The slip has to be left at the polling station in a sealed container, and in the event of "it screwed up", the slips get counted...
Simon.
Way to go guys :-)
:-)
This is the first-ever Debian I'm going to download and try out. I figure I ought to be able to get to know it as well as I know RH before the RHN support is switched off next year.
It's not that I've decided to ditch RH - I may just cough up for the new RH packages, but I'd like to know what my options are
Simon
I was buying DVD-RW's because the HD is rewriteable, and a lot of people recycle backups.
Regardless of price, I still think the storage aspects of HD's vs DVD's makes a telling point. a 250GB drive is 1.5" tall, even allowing for the caddy... 55 DVD's are a far bigger pain to store and manage. Just my opinion, and if your data requirements aren't too large, I'm sure DVD's are fine...
Simon.
One of my colleagues takes a flight down here to London every week (city-hops are quite cheap, often the airport tax is more than the fare) and works here 2 or 3 days a week, then commutes back to Scotland for the rest of the week. Online via ADSL and Bob's your Auntie's live-in lover....
The scots do have something of a history of technical excellence, so it's a shame that Silicon Glen is running into trouble, imho.
Simon.
Possibly a bit of both. Over here in the UK we're used to paying the same figure in pounds as you pay in dollars :-( That's a factor of ~1.5
I was using branded DVD-RW not unbranded DVD-R (which are cheaper). If you're going to use them for backup, you're going to want them to be pretty reliable. The RW was because people tend to cycle backups...
And I wasn't shopping around to get the lowest price. I was using dabs.com, but they're usually pretty good (at least in our terms) for all but the media (couldn't find them on dabs)
Simon.
Hm. I'm pretty sure we couldn't in '99 (well, I was told I couldn't, when I tried to move from Orange to Vodaphone).
....
I remember one of the claimed benefits of the standardisation of numbers in the UK was easy portability between networks. and I do understand the meaning of the word
Simon.
All mobile numbers are obliged to start 07, for the sake of portability and also to let people know they're calling a mobile phone (so it'll be more expensive).
:-)
Having said that, I changed my number last time - because the new one was much easier to remember
Simon.
I wonder what the TCO figures look like :-) I'd love to see a comparison done with a Windows administration system for 10,000 printers :-)
Simon.
Popularity = k . MarketingBudget
The more they hype it, the more the buying public (increasingly younger teenagers, I wait for the day they get to "pocket-money" kids who simply can't afford it - the industry will implode) will cough up....
Simon the cynic.
Typically it's the caddy that takes the brunt of any plugging/unplugging - the caddy receptacle mounts in the PC case, and the caddy plugs into that. The disk plugs into the caddy.
At least, in all the ones I used to use at the MoD.
Simon.
All the prices save the media were from DABS online. The media was the best prices single-page ad I saw in the back of computer shopper.
I did *say* you could get them cheaper...
I was using RW rather than R to level the playing field. The HD can rewrite, and some people rotate their backups in cycles...
Simon