You make an assumption that this is a zero sum game. Todd gets the liver and so somebody else is screwed. One question is how many additional people signed up as organ donors as a result of the campaign? Antoher is what would have happened to the liver that Todd was given if not for this campaign? Would it have gone to somebody else, or gone to waste? Todd may have actually helped the other people on the waiting list by increasing awareness of the need for donations.
I would rather have integrated GPS and some useful applications like driving directions built into the phone. Like what you can get with Nextel + Televigation.
Plus the ability for people to write their own location based services. I want to see what the people will do with GPS linked to a two way wireless network. I am sure that there are some good ideas out there.
It all depends on what you mom wants to do, but you could do some interesting financial analysis programs with Awk that might be interesting since they have an obvious real world application. Like write a program which analyzes historical data and shows how risk and return changes depending upon a simple mix of stocks and bonds. This is sort of a dry area, but you both might learn something here.
The book "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger is a classic. Too bad that it's so expensive.
There was a guy teaching AI with Awk at one point. If you search on google you can probably find a reference "Why GAWK for AI?"
As far as I'm concerned Suns are good for running your CVS (or whatever) repository, your FlexLM license manager, and for vendor supplied tools that only run under Solaris for Sparcs.
We do the bulk of our work on x86 boxes, and only resort to Sun's for compute intensive jobs when absolutely required due to some tool that basically hasn't been maintained.
At least Sun is going to be selling Opteron boxes, so there is a chance of future EDA business.
I'm pretty sure that the Max IIFX cost about $10,000 when it first came out. (And to compare with today's prices you need to factor in inflation.)
Pretty much all typical computer configurations these days seem very cheap for what you get to me. For me Mac versus PC versus whatever isn't a matter of price. It's a matter of deciding what you want.
OK so maybe they won't spring for one of the newer GPS chips, but it's possible. It still won't work anywhere, but it shouldn't have any problems working in a typical single family home.
This one is not a hoax. If you go to the Computer Chess Club via www.talkchess.com then you can find some discussion of it's performance.
One question that you could ask is does this really improve the performance of Chrilly's Nimzo engine or is it a gimmick? It's hard to get any worthwhile data. Supposedly Chrilly is working on a parallel processing version of Brutus, but that's a non-trivial problem so we'll see how well it scales. The goal is probably to win this year's world champs in Graz to generate some interest in a chess PCI card. If he doesn't win, then not many people will be willing to pay the huge expense to get a PCI chess board. (And even if he does win, it's a pretty small market.)
If you want to see how you could do move generation in an FPGA then check out Marc Boule's thesis at http://www.macs.ece.mcgill.ca/~mboul/ there you will find documentation and VHDL code.
If you want to know how eval in hardware might work then you can search for information on Ken Thompson's Belle, and Hsu's Deep Thought. Probably the best source is Hsu's phd thesis, plus Hsu's article in IEEE Micro, and finally Hsu's article in AI. (Some have coauthors but I'm too lazy to look them up.)
I have personally coded a hardware move generator in Verilog and know that it fits in a "small" Virtex 2 part.
Remember just a few weeks ago when Woz's lasest press release was a Slashdot story? Here's a brief summary (nah I don't work there):
"The wOz Platform(TM) system includes an innovative wireless network, a system reference design, and an online service that serve as the foundation for a range of location, status, control, and communications solutions for consumers and businesses. The heart of the wOz Platform is the wOzNet(TM) network, a unique local wireless network that provides long range and long battery life at a low cost."
Anyways when we tried to figure out how this could be used one of the few obvious places was to track people in themeparks. I couldn't really figure out why Woz didn't put a GPS unit in every tracker, but I guess that they figured out a way to make it cheaper but only having a certain number of unit with GPS (maybe think of those as pseudo satellites) and then other units that are able to find their location based on the GPS units.
My basic question was how to you guarantee a suitable number of GPS equipped units in close proximity, and a theme park not only answers that question, but it helps to explain what exactly you would want to track. Kids are always getting separated from parents in theme parks.
I'm a hardware engineer, and I was given this book by somebody (Thanks Jimi) who bought multiple copies to support "bunnie."
I basically skipped to the end because that's where he discusses some of the more interesting hardware hacking. I think that it's very well written and he offers some really useful advice. He even mentions details like why you don't necessarily want to use a heat gun to remove a part that has absorbed moisture.
I could offer a few little suggestions here and there (minor things like recommending Metcal soldering irons) but all-in-all he did a really good job.
Anyways I think that it's a good read for people that want to learn how to modify modern electronics equipment. Even if you're a EE major you'll probably learn some practical information by reading this book. If you're a software engineer that doesn't want to touch a soldering iron, then some parts may seem a bit baffling.
BTW: The Slashdot overview of this book is totally bizarre.
Last time I checked (late last year) Adobe Premiere didn't run on the latest version of OS X. I actually returned a copy of Premiere as a result of this.
One thing that I can never figure out, is given the violent reaction to unique CPU IDs why nobody ever complains about the unique hostid built into every Sun box.
A lot of high-end EDA software depends upon the hostid to handle license management. I'm not sure how FlexLM works on x86 Linux boxes, but if it depends on the MAC address as a unique identifier then it's got a very weak link in its chain... ---
I'm not sure what your point is about Feynman taking time out to play in a band - Knuth takes time out to play the organ if that makes a difference to you.
Given the contents of his books, don't you think that Knuth expresses a significant amount of respect for his readers? Name another author who gives cash rewards for reporting problems with books, or even for offering suggestions for improvements. You might think that this is ego driven since the majority of the checks aren't cashed, but this is a choice made by his audience and not by Knuth himself.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I think that the first people do to something about it are all rich now. Look at what qualcomm paid for snaptrak.
Just search for "indoor gps" on google. This is a hot area right now.
Search for "Indoor GPS" on google
Global Locate, SiRF, Qualcomm (snaptrak),...
You make an assumption that this is a zero sum game. Todd gets the liver and so somebody else is screwed. One question is how many additional people signed up as organ donors as a result of the campaign? Antoher is what would have happened to the liver that Todd was given if not for this campaign? Would it have gone to somebody else, or gone to waste? Todd may have actually helped the other people on the waiting list by increasing awareness of the need for donations.
I would rather have integrated GPS and some useful applications like driving directions built into the phone. Like what you can get with Nextel + Televigation.
Plus the ability for people to write their own location based services. I want to see what the people will do with GPS linked to a two way wireless network. I am sure that there are some good ideas out there.
Given that people _did_ have a problem with it, I never understood why people never bitched at Sun about their hostid. Did I just miss it?
It all depends on what you mom wants to do, but you could do some interesting financial analysis programs with Awk that might be interesting since they have an obvious real world application. Like write a program which analyzes historical data and shows how risk and return changes depending upon a simple mix of stocks and bonds. This is sort of a dry area, but you both might learn something here.
The book "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger is a classic. Too bad that it's so expensive.
There was a guy teaching AI with Awk at one point. If you search on google you can probably find a reference "Why GAWK for AI?"
-K
Actually IndoorGPS is a trademark - see Global Locate
They do have chips in production which work in difficult indoor environments.
As far as I'm concerned Suns are good for running your CVS (or whatever) repository, your FlexLM license manager, and for vendor supplied tools that only run under Solaris for Sparcs.
We do the bulk of our work on x86 boxes, and only resort to Sun's for compute intensive jobs when absolutely required due to some tool that basically hasn't been maintained.
At least Sun is going to be selling Opteron boxes, so there is a chance of future EDA business.
And if you're doing chip design and want to run a Verilog RTL simulation of your chip, then what's faster:
(1) a single CPU Opteron box (about $5k)
(2) A Sun 15K with the above resources
If you answered #1 you're correct.
So much for Sun's EDA market. Just take a look at NVidia's server room over time to see the trend.
>Nee boo gai kai nee duh hwang chiang.
...
Too bad they didn't use pinyin.
Ni bu
I'm pretty sure that the Max IIFX cost about $10,000 when it first came out. (And to compare with today's prices you need to factor in inflation.)
Pretty much all typical computer configurations these days seem very cheap for what you get to me. For me Mac versus PC versus whatever isn't a matter of price. It's a matter of deciding what you want.
Search for "indoor gps" on google.
OK so maybe they won't spring for one of the newer GPS chips, but it's possible. It still won't work anywhere, but it shouldn't have any problems working in a typical single family home.
Hey BKR!
This one is not a hoax. If you go to the Computer Chess Club via www.talkchess.com then you can find some discussion of it's performance.
One question that you could ask is does this really improve the performance of Chrilly's Nimzo engine or is it a gimmick? It's hard to get any worthwhile data. Supposedly Chrilly is working on a parallel processing version of Brutus, but that's a non-trivial problem so we'll see how well it scales. The goal is probably to win this year's world champs in Graz to generate some interest in a chess PCI card. If he doesn't win, then not many people will be willing to pay the huge expense to get a PCI chess board. (And even if he does win, it's a pretty small market.)
If you want to see how you could do move generation in an FPGA then check out Marc Boule's thesis at http://www.macs.ece.mcgill.ca/~mboul/ there you will find documentation and VHDL code.
If you want to know how eval in hardware might work then you can search for information on Ken Thompson's Belle, and Hsu's Deep Thought. Probably the best source is Hsu's phd thesis, plus Hsu's article in IEEE Micro, and finally Hsu's article in AI. (Some have coauthors but I'm too lazy to look them up.)
I have personally coded a hardware move generator in Verilog and know that it fits in a "small" Virtex 2 part.
All I can say is that I hope that you're just using your RealDoll to drive solo in the carpool lane...
Remember just a few weeks ago when Woz's lasest press release was a Slashdot story? Here's a brief summary (nah I don't work there):
"The wOz Platform(TM) system includes an innovative wireless network, a system reference design, and an online service that serve as the foundation for a range of location, status, control, and communications solutions for consumers and businesses. The heart of the wOz Platform is the wOzNet(TM) network, a unique local wireless network that provides long range and long battery life at a low cost."
Anyways when we tried to figure out how this could be used one of the few obvious places was to track people in themeparks. I couldn't really figure out why Woz didn't put a GPS unit in every tracker, but I guess that they figured out a way to make it cheaper but only having a certain number of unit with GPS (maybe think of those as pseudo satellites) and then other units that are able to find their location based on the GPS units.
My basic question was how to you guarantee a suitable number of GPS equipped units in close proximity, and a theme park not only answers that question, but it helps to explain what exactly you would want to track. Kids are always getting separated from parents in theme parks.
I'm a hardware engineer, and I was given this book by somebody (Thanks Jimi) who bought multiple copies to support "bunnie."
I basically skipped to the end because that's where he discusses some of the more interesting hardware hacking. I think that it's very well written and he offers some really useful advice. He even mentions details like why you don't necessarily want to use a heat gun to remove a part that has absorbed moisture.
I could offer a few little suggestions here and there (minor things like recommending Metcal soldering irons) but all-in-all he did a really good job.
Anyways I think that it's a good read for people that want to learn how to modify modern electronics equipment. Even if you're a EE major you'll probably learn some practical information by reading this book. If you're a software engineer that doesn't want to touch a soldering iron, then some parts may seem a bit baffling.
BTW: The Slashdot overview of this book is totally bizarre.
Last time I checked (late last year) Adobe Premiere didn't run on the latest version of OS X. I actually returned a copy of Premiere as a result of this.
The people who actually created these computers didn't have exposure to them in kindergarten. Yet they somehow managed to invent them. Weird huh?
One thing that I can never figure out, is given the violent reaction to unique CPU IDs why nobody ever complains about the unique hostid built into every Sun box.
A lot of high-end EDA software depends upon the hostid to handle license management. I'm not sure how FlexLM works on x86 Linux boxes, but if it depends on the MAC address as a unique identifier then it's got a very weak link in its chain...
---
I think that you just don't like his style.
I'm not sure what your point is about Feynman taking time out to play in a band - Knuth takes time out to play the organ if that makes a difference to you.
Given the contents of his books, don't you think that Knuth expresses a significant amount of respect for his readers? Name another author who gives cash rewards for reporting problems with books, or even for offering suggestions for improvements. You might think that this is ego driven since the majority of the checks aren't cashed, but this is a choice made by his audience and not by Knuth himself.
---
Call up Feng-hsiung Hsu and see if he got a publisher for his book on Deep Blue yet.
And don't forget tools for test/testbench generation and formal verification which you'll want if you ever start designing ASICs.
Regarding the Verilog versus VHDL war - I work in Silicon Valley and we tend to be very biased towards Verilog out here.
"Does the military signal have some sort of antijam feature?"
It's an encrypted spread spectrum signal. Does that answer your question?
What makes you think that the USA wouldn't or couldn't turn off Galileo?
How will Galileo will prevent jamming? Even if they use encryption the keys are bound to leak out.