Well.. they were stupid. I didn't ask for them to die, and I seriously doubt many of them were dying to defend freedoms- probably most of them died because they were forced to by the draft. I don't know what was up with the revolutionary war militia, but I certainly don't owe anything to them. Have you ever seen Full Metal Jacket? I like the scene where mother laughs in the reporter's face and asks incredulously "You think we're dying for freedom?"
Remember, there are those who fought in real wars so that nitwits like you could make such asinine statements. I'm not talking about "movie wars", but the real ones where people actually die and get injured (both mentally and physically). I have been fortunate not to have been in a real war and I have met quite a few people who have. They were not drafted, they stepped up to serve their country in a time of need. The US was not a super-power in the 1940's and if things had turned out differently, this conversation might be not be possible today. But, facts, history, even character, these are things that I assume are alien to you.
No need for violence. The solution is simple. Once one of these
things distracts someone enough to walk in front of a bus, the
lawyers will be all over the company and the advertisers. The difference
between this and a car horn (and other such noises) is the company beaming
the distraction is intentionally trying to get your attention (plus they
will have deeper pockets than a car/cab driver)
In my area (eastern PA) there is discussion in some counties about banning
the new LED type billboards as they believe they will distract motorists.
I have a Eee PC. It is a nice little system. Once customized
a bit is very usable for the hardcore Linux users. The 24 second
boot time is nice.
About the GPL. The manual has a printed version of the GPL,
so I don't really think Asus is trying to hide anything. What is more
likely, and more like most big companies, the Eee was under a
deadline to launch before the Xmas season. The last thing to get done
is probably posting source code. Has anyone asked the source code?
(perhaps someone has)
Their lawyers will make sure that it gets posted as they ship a license
with every product that says it will be available. i.e. They could be
in a boat load of legal trouble if they don't, not to mention
class-action lawsuits, copyright violations etc.
Any finally, here is company that has come out with a full Linux sub-notebook (just 25 days ago).
Instead of floating the latest conspiracy theory, how about giving them
the benefit of the doubt. But, then allowing/helping a company to do the
right thing, does not make for interesting blog headlines. It is all about
the page views.
I'm not talking about spare cycles. I'm talking about the naive notion that
gets repeated in the press "the combined power of all these computers equals
one of the fastest supercomputers in the world" For trivial parallel applications
this might be true, but just once I would like to see these "supercomputers"
run a simple parallel benchmark like High Performance Linpack (used for the Top500 list).
My guess is the number of real FLOPS would be much less than expected -- if
it even finished. Don't get me wrong, using computers like this is great idea, it is
not one of the most power computers in the world, however.
Every time these "connect desktops to become the fastest computer in the world" articles
come up, I have to dust off my
Cluster Urban Legends article to clear up the mis-conceptions that abound. I also
did a piece on the Linux Magazine site as well that debunks much of the spam-bot supercomputer legend (need to register for that one)
Well I have not solved the problem just yet either, but I thought about it quite a bit. I looked at it mostly
from a HPC cluster standpoint, but problem is still the same -- software!
There is a simple solution to this kind of thing. You take the SSN, bank account and
CC numbers of the person in charge (the General, Congressman, CEO etc.) and you put
them in every container, laptop, tape, HDD, USB stick, etc. that has private information
on it.
Blue Gene is a specialized design
that is based on using large amounts of low power CPUs. This approach is also the one
taken by SiCortex. One of the big problems with
heroic computers (computers that are pushing the envelop in terms of performance)
is heat and power. Just stacking Intel and AMD servers gets expensive at the high end.
Imagine taking your CPU and breaking it into sub-units
and then having the user reconnect them with
other hardware. Sounds like a programming nightmare.
That is exactly the state of parallel computing with
clusters and with multi-core (Intel, AMD, and IBM, Sun
multi-core are different enough to make a single
programming approach "hard")
The problem "depends" on what you are trying to do.
Parallel rendering -- simple. Proteins in water - hard
(but much of this work has been done fortunately).
Parallel programming is faced with the problem
that there is no guarantee that a parallel program
will be BOTH
portable and efficient for a given
architecture. (largely due to what I mention above)
Over my 15+ years of working with parallel programming
I have had some
ideas. I think the expectation levels need to be lowered
i.e. 3 weeks with a functional language equals 2.7 speedup,
2 months with threads or OpenMP or MPI equals 3.5 speedup
on 4 cores. Of course the functional language is not quite ready yet!
Basic truth about supercomputers - the commercial market is zilch. You have to go down to #60 on the list of the top 500 supercomputer before you find the first real commercial customer.
You may want to adjust your truth as your measure of the market is wrong. The Top500 is not a marketing survey and
just because you have HPC hardware does mean you run out and try an get it on the
Top500. Many companies are
using (HPC) parallel cluster computers, but they choose to be quiet about it for competitive reasons.
The 2005 HPC market was well over 9 Billion and IDC predicts a 9% AGR bringing the market
to over $14 Billion in 2010. Can you tell me what other markets are offering such growth rates these days?
Supercomputer guys fuss endlessly over elaborate interconnection schemes, but none of them are worth the trouble.
If as most companies have stated that they cannot compete without using HPC, R&D at the high end is indeed, worthwhile. The endless fussing eventually makes it to commodity markets, open you computer case and look around.
Those of us that use HPC clusters (i.e. Beowulf) have been thinking about these issues as well. For those interested, I wrote a series of articles on how one might program 10,000 cores (based on my frustrations as programmer and user of parallel computers). Things will change,
there is no doubt.
This announcement is great news because the parallel programming problem
is quite difficult and is becoming more important as multi-core systems emerge. One important distinction that is often not made, is the difference between
concurrency and parallel execution. (although the article does touch on it)
Basically, determining whether a program or algorithm is concurrent
(parts can computed independently) is possible but can be
difficult in some cases. Many people think that is the essence of parallel
computing. It is not.
Once you have the concurrent parts, the questions becomes "whether
they should be executed in parallel". The answer depends upon the
ratio of computation to communication (parallel overhead). All
parallel computers (and clusters) have different ratios and
therefore, something that runs well in parallel on one machine,
may run poorly on another.
Having a language where concurrency can be expressed and controlled, allows
researchers to investigate the second issue (parallel scheduling).
If you want to read more about this kind of thing (and some
other parallel programing ideas) take a look at some of the
Cluster Programming
articles on ClusterMonkey.
I think you have it backwards. You are the Dad, be the Father. Relationships and parenting take
work (playing house lasts a few months at best). You can be a victim and
blame something/anything for your misery OR you could be hero and do the right things for you and child (and I don't mean going back with your wife).
You kid does not care if you are in IT, he/she cares for you as a person.
I would invite you to write something else than a victims thesis on "Dads who work in the computer industry, divorce and custody". How about "Why I can not be me in IT?" (here is a hint: it is not about the IT industry)
If you want to wake up, be man, a father, a spouse, get initiated, then write your thesis, I bet it will
take on a whole new meaning.
And in some cases the Pentium D performs quite
well
We have been using dual processor systems for a while. No one
really complained that they were not "dual core" and got quite a lot
of work out of them. Gluing two cores
together was quicker and easier than a true dual core, and if it is the
same price as a single core, I'll take it.
Sure. I was being kind of silly, but my point was that if the value
of "what's inside" often dictates the measures taken to protect it.
I think votes are valuable, but it seems companies like Diebold
do not really put any value on what is inside.
Money access machines have things of value in them, and they do
a remarkable job of keeping track of *every transaction* both
electronically and with a paper trail. If these voting machines
were MAC machines, they would never see the light of day.
If the SSN, home address, home phone, etc. of all the legislators
who voted for the machines were placed on the memory card
(and the officers of the companies that made them),
then you can be damn sure the machines would be tamper
proof and there would be a well documented
chain of custody of each machine as well.
Better, yet put all their pension money in an Swiss bank
escrow account and place the number in the memory card.
Then things get serious.
Good security is possible. My guess is that the Diebold
machines, rather than being some diabolical plot,
are just a sloppy product designed for the
government feeding trough. The whole e-voting thing
is a windfall for these companies. It is mandated
business.
Yet another under construction web page and half baked idea. I pity the investors. And remember what Feynman said (which is still true today):
"No one understands quantum mechanics"
Which does not keep us from using the results of a a highly successful
theory, but just keep in mind, wave function computing is not going
to be easy, but I believe it is possible. And I should know, I'm made of
atoms.
The military people will probably laugh at this (should they even encounter it).
First, there are very few
High Performance Computing applications that can use this type of computer
(For those that need some background please see Linux Cluster Urban Legends pay attention to the latency part -- there is a shower scene)
Second, if the military had some use for this type of computing, they would either build their own
software, hire someone to write it for them, or just buy a cluster. The administration and security headaches of a "open network
p2p computer" certainly outweigh any advantages they would gain from this software.
For the life of me, this is one of those patents that
is so obvious and has so much prior art that is makes you
think the patent office is a rubber stamp for industry.
Oh wait.
Having been to Bell Labs (Murry Hill NJ) and worked with some of the people
when it was in its prime, I think the article fails to appreciate some history.
First, AT&T is gone. And when it was recently brought by SBC it was
a fraction of what it was.
Back in the day, there was AT&T which owned Bell Labs in Murry Hill NJ.
This facility was the envy of every major company in the world. They did research
in both hardware (physics, chemistry, integrated circuits, etc) and software (UNIX, C etc.)
Of course they had their "feet on the desk noble prize winners" but the majority
of the researches had goals that served the corporate interest. They did understand that
fundamental science can pay off in the longer term, but today's short-sighted next quarter stock
price mentality prevents this type of strategic thinking. For instance, AT&T developed in-house
hardware and software because they needed a way to track (and bill)
phone calls. They needed to understand fundamental physics and chemistry because
deep sea cables and communication satellites are things that are not easily repaired.
Now what many people forgot, or don't know is that AT&T broke in two parts many years ago:
AT&T Communications (took software R&D) and Lucent (took hardware R&D). Lucent took over
Murry Hill as its HQ and AT&T Research moved to Florham Park, NJ. Lucent has since also spun
off Agrere. AT&T sold their wireless business to Cingular, and what was left at
that point went to SBC. So saying AT&T of today (a renamed SBC) is has a powerful
research arm is like saying
Micky Heart is the Grateful Dead. They do good stuff, but the magic is gone.
Red Hat does not offer a competing product, so what is the problem? There are
many "cluster distributions" out there, but neither Red Hat, Suse, or any other
major vendor have a well integrated cluster version of Linux.
There are things like Rocks,
Oscar,
Warewulf, and
companies like Scalable Informatics,
or Basement Supercomputing are there if
you need help.
Nice idea if you can get past the contracts, but in the case of the Allman Brothers
Duane Allman and Berry Oakly are dead. I have heard the band since, they
are not same, still good, but no one really played like Duane Allman (for those who
don't know who he is, he actually did the much of guitar work on the famous
"Laya" by Eric Clapton.
Slashdot Mirror
The HPC Cluster people have thought about this stuff for a while. One approach that I have thought about is described in the article:Cluster Programming: You Can't Always Get What You Want There are two follow-on articles as well Cluster Programming: The Ignorance is Bliss Approach" and Cluster Programming: Explicit Implications of Cluster Computing.
Of course if you really want to know how I feel about this: How The GPL Can Save Your Ass
enjoy
"The minimum spec is 640 quantum cores."
Actually, it reads 640 universes. You are guaranteed to get the right answer in one of these.
Well.. they were stupid. I didn't ask for them to die, and I seriously doubt many of them were dying to defend freedoms- probably most of them died because they were forced to by the draft. I don't know what was up with the revolutionary war militia, but I certainly don't owe anything to them. Have you ever seen Full Metal Jacket? I like the scene where mother laughs in the reporter's face and asks incredulously "You think we're dying for freedom?"
Remember, there are those who fought in real wars so that nitwits like you could make such asinine statements. I'm not talking about "movie wars", but the real ones where people actually die and get injured (both mentally and physically). I have been fortunate not to have been in a real war and I have met quite a few people who have. They were not drafted, they stepped up to serve their country in a time of need. The US was not a super-power in the 1940's and if things had turned out differently, this conversation might be not be possible today. But, facts, history, even character, these are things that I assume are alien to you.
No need for violence. The solution is simple. Once one of these things distracts someone enough to walk in front of a bus, the lawyers will be all over the company and the advertisers. The difference between this and a car horn (and other such noises) is the company beaming the distraction is intentionally trying to get your attention (plus they will have deeper pockets than a car/cab driver)
In my area (eastern PA) there is discussion in some counties about banning the new LED type billboards as they believe they will distract motorists.
I have a Eee PC. It is a nice little system. Once customized a bit is very usable for the hardcore Linux users. The 24 second boot time is nice.
About the GPL. The manual has a printed version of the GPL, so I don't really think Asus is trying to hide anything. What is more likely, and more like most big companies, the Eee was under a deadline to launch before the Xmas season. The last thing to get done is probably posting source code. Has anyone asked the source code? (perhaps someone has)
Their lawyers will make sure that it gets posted as they ship a license with every product that says it will be available. i.e. They could be in a boat load of legal trouble if they don't, not to mention class-action lawsuits, copyright violations etc.
Any finally, here is company that has come out with a full Linux sub-notebook (just 25 days ago). Instead of floating the latest conspiracy theory, how about giving them the benefit of the doubt. But, then allowing/helping a company to do the right thing, does not make for interesting blog headlines. It is all about the page views.
I'm not talking about spare cycles. I'm talking about the naive notion that gets repeated in the press "the combined power of all these computers equals one of the fastest supercomputers in the world" For trivial parallel applications this might be true, but just once I would like to see these "supercomputers" run a simple parallel benchmark like High Performance Linpack (used for the Top500 list). My guess is the number of real FLOPS would be much less than expected -- if it even finished. Don't get me wrong, using computers like this is great idea, it is not one of the most power computers in the world, however.
Every time these "connect desktops to become the fastest computer in the world" articles come up, I have to dust off my Cluster Urban Legends article to clear up the mis-conceptions that abound. I also did a piece on the Linux Magazine site as well that debunks much of the spam-bot supercomputer legend (need to register for that one)
online accessible but highly secure service
When given such statement it is important to remember that you can pick one and only one option. Everything else is wishful thinking.
Well I have not solved the problem just yet either, but I thought about it quite a bit. I looked at it mostly from a HPC cluster standpoint, but problem is still the same -- software!
There is a simple solution to this kind of thing. You take the SSN, bank account and CC numbers of the person in charge (the General, Congressman, CEO etc.) and you put them in every container, laptop, tape, HDD, USB stick, etc. that has private information on it.
Problem solved.
Blue Gene is a specialized design that is based on using large amounts of low power CPUs. This approach is also the one taken by SiCortex. One of the big problems with heroic computers (computers that are pushing the envelop in terms of performance) is heat and power. Just stacking Intel and AMD servers gets expensive at the high end.
Imagine taking your CPU and breaking it into sub-units and then having the user reconnect them with other hardware. Sounds like a programming nightmare. That is exactly the state of parallel computing with clusters and with multi-core (Intel, AMD, and IBM, Sun multi-core are different enough to make a single programming approach "hard")
The problem "depends" on what you are trying to do. Parallel rendering -- simple. Proteins in water - hard (but much of this work has been done fortunately).
Parallel programming is faced with the problem that there is no guarantee that a parallel program will be BOTH portable and efficient for a given architecture. (largely due to what I mention above)
Over my 15+ years of working with parallel programming I have had some ideas. I think the expectation levels need to be lowered i.e. 3 weeks with a functional language equals 2.7 speedup, 2 months with threads or OpenMP or MPI equals 3.5 speedup on 4 cores. Of course the functional language is not quite ready yet!
Basic truth about supercomputers - the commercial market is zilch. You have to go down to #60 on the list of the top 500 supercomputer before you find the first real commercial customer.
You may want to adjust your truth as your measure of the market is wrong. The Top500 is not a marketing survey and just because you have HPC hardware does mean you run out and try an get it on the Top500. Many companies are using (HPC) parallel cluster computers, but they choose to be quiet about it for competitive reasons. The 2005 HPC market was well over 9 Billion and IDC predicts a 9% AGR bringing the market to over $14 Billion in 2010. Can you tell me what other markets are offering such growth rates these days?
Supercomputer guys fuss endlessly over elaborate interconnection schemes, but none of them are worth the trouble.
If as most companies have stated that they cannot compete without using HPC, R&D at the high end is indeed, worthwhile. The endless fussing eventually makes it to commodity markets, open you computer case and look around.
Those of us that use HPC clusters (i.e. Beowulf) have been thinking about these issues as well. For those interested, I wrote a series of articles on how one might program 10,000 cores (based on my frustrations as programmer and user of parallel computers). Things will change, there is no doubt.
The first in the series is called Cluster Programming: You Can't Always Get What You Want The next two are Cluster Programming: The Ignorance is Bliss Approach, and Cluster Programming: Explicit Implications of Cluster Computing.
Comments welcome.
This announcement is great news because the parallel programming problem is quite difficult and is becoming more important as multi-core systems emerge. One important distinction that is often not made, is the difference between concurrency and parallel execution. (although the article does touch on it)
Basically, determining whether a program or algorithm is concurrent (parts can computed independently) is possible but can be difficult in some cases. Many people think that is the essence of parallel computing. It is not.
Once you have the concurrent parts, the questions becomes "whether they should be executed in parallel". The answer depends upon the ratio of computation to communication (parallel overhead). All parallel computers (and clusters) have different ratios and therefore, something that runs well in parallel on one machine, may run poorly on another.
Having a language where concurrency can be expressed and controlled, allows researchers to investigate the second issue (parallel scheduling).
If you want to read more about this kind of thing (and some other parallel programing ideas) take a look at some of the Cluster Programming articles on ClusterMonkey.
I think you have it backwards. You are the Dad, be the Father. Relationships and parenting take work (playing house lasts a few months at best). You can be a victim and blame something/anything for your misery OR you could be hero and do the right things for you and child (and I don't mean going back with your wife). You kid does not care if you are in IT, he/she cares for you as a person.
I would invite you to write something else than a victims thesis on "Dads who work in the computer industry, divorce and custody". How about "Why I can not be me in IT?" (here is a hint: it is not about the IT industry)
If you want to wake up, be man, a father, a spouse, get initiated, then write your thesis, I bet it will take on a whole new meaning.
And yes, I did have walked the walk.
And in some cases the Pentium D performs quite well
We have been using dual processor systems for a while. No one really complained that they were not "dual core" and got quite a lot of work out of them. Gluing two cores together was quicker and easier than a true dual core, and if it is the same price as a single core, I'll take it.
Sure. I was being kind of silly, but my point was that if the value of "what's inside" often dictates the measures taken to protect it.
I think votes are valuable, but it seems companies like Diebold do not really put any value on what is inside. Money access machines have things of value in them, and they do a remarkable job of keeping track of *every transaction* both electronically and with a paper trail. If these voting machines were MAC machines, they would never see the light of day.
If the SSN, home address, home phone, etc. of all the legislators who voted for the machines were placed on the memory card (and the officers of the companies that made them), then you can be damn sure the machines would be tamper proof and there would be a well documented chain of custody of each machine as well.
Better, yet put all their pension money in an Swiss bank escrow account and place the number in the memory card. Then things get serious.
Good security is possible. My guess is that the Diebold machines, rather than being some diabolical plot, are just a sloppy product designed for the government feeding trough. The whole e-voting thing is a windfall for these companies. It is mandated business.
I paraphrase:
"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
Yet another under construction web page and half baked idea. I pity the investors. And remember what Feynman said (which is still true today):
"No one understands quantum mechanics"
Which does not keep us from using the results of a a highly successful theory, but just keep in mind, wave function computing is not going to be easy, but I believe it is possible. And I should know, I'm made of atoms.
The military people will probably laugh at this (should they even encounter it). First, there are very few High Performance Computing applications that can use this type of computer (For those that need some background please see Linux Cluster Urban Legends pay attention to the latency part -- there is a shower scene)
Second, if the military had some use for this type of computing, they would either build their own software, hire someone to write it for them, or just buy a cluster. The administration and security headaches of a "open network p2p computer" certainly outweigh any advantages they would gain from this software.
But, your software - your license.
For the life of me, this is one of those patents that is so obvious and has so much prior art that is makes you think the patent office is a rubber stamp for industry. Oh wait.
TO: USPTO
FROM: Clue Stick
RE: Blackboard patent
Read this:
Online Learning Timeline
Having been to Bell Labs (Murry Hill NJ) and worked with some of the people when it was in its prime, I think the article fails to appreciate some history. First, AT&T is gone. And when it was recently brought by SBC it was a fraction of what it was.
Back in the day, there was AT&T which owned Bell Labs in Murry Hill NJ. This facility was the envy of every major company in the world. They did research in both hardware (physics, chemistry, integrated circuits, etc) and software (UNIX, C etc.) Of course they had their "feet on the desk noble prize winners" but the majority of the researches had goals that served the corporate interest. They did understand that fundamental science can pay off in the longer term, but today's short-sighted next quarter stock price mentality prevents this type of strategic thinking. For instance, AT&T developed in-house hardware and software because they needed a way to track (and bill) phone calls. They needed to understand fundamental physics and chemistry because deep sea cables and communication satellites are things that are not easily repaired.
Now what many people forgot, or don't know is that AT&T broke in two parts many years ago: AT&T Communications (took software R&D) and Lucent (took hardware R&D). Lucent took over Murry Hill as its HQ and AT&T Research moved to Florham Park, NJ. Lucent has since also spun off Agrere. AT&T sold their wireless business to Cingular, and what was left at that point went to SBC. So saying AT&T of today (a renamed SBC) is has a powerful research arm is like saying Micky Heart is the Grateful Dead. They do good stuff, but the magic is gone.
As for Verizon. Their only claim to fame is the biggest tax bamboozle ever pulled off by a company.
Red Hat does not offer a competing product, so what is the problem? There are many "cluster distributions" out there, but neither Red Hat, Suse, or any other major vendor have a well integrated cluster version of Linux. There are things like Rocks, Oscar, Warewulf, and companies like Scalable Informatics, or Basement Supercomputing are there if you need help.
Nice idea if you can get past the contracts, but in the case of the Allman Brothers Duane Allman and Berry Oakly are dead. I have heard the band since, they are not same, still good, but no one really played like Duane Allman (for those who don't know who he is, he actually did the much of guitar work on the famous "Laya" by Eric Clapton.