Can't really trust AMD and their "core" counts any more. Used to buy AMD CPUs almost exclusively in the past. Then got a top of the line, supposedly 8-core, FX-8350 (two of them in fact). When tried running 8 processes in parallel, got about 40% performance drop. After reading the fine print, turns out it has only 4 independent units, and pairs of "cores" sharing resources, effectively making it a 4-core CPU in reality. Fuck you, AMD!
Holy Batman, what a mess of a summary! It must be linked to yet another debilitating but apparently not so rare condition in which Slashdot editors are born with abnormally small heads.
I understand why Netflix is doing this. I don't understand the logic of the companies that license content to Netflix and force them to do that. Someone who's tech savvy enough to use a VPN service, and who gets cut off, what do you think they are going to do? Go buy a DVD in their local store or go torrent what they want? What's more likely? I know what I would do. So the goal of the studios, who could be getting some money from Netflix, to get zilch point bupkis dollars for their content? What's the logic here?!
I can kill someone, in fact, a lot of someones, with a car. I cannot kill anyone over the Internet. Same reason every gun has a unique serial number, but no pens, nor books require one.
Thunderbird has so many bugs, and yet when I tried to find a replacement, there isn't anything good out there... - Global search never worked right. On many occasions I would search for a specific word(s), it would find nothing, and I would go scroll through emails and sure enough what I was looking for is right there. Sometimes it would find an email, I would click on it in the "found" list, and it would open an empty pane, and no way to get to the actual email; - It often corrupts the inbox, and sometimes other folders, and you would have to use "Repair folder" to get it back, and then re-configure the columns because it reset it to default (why?!); I always wondered if I lost actual emails because of this? - Filters never worked right; I have a pretty extensive set of rules (~30), and often the incoming email would still be sitting in the inbox, and I would have to manually run the filters for it to be moved to the right folder; if more than one filter applies to the incoming email, it would sometimes choose one or the other filter at random; - The font setting for messages is stupid; Why is there no one global setting to use a particular font/size for all encodings (and possibly individual exceptions for specific encodings if needed)? I like a particular font/size, and they keep messing up the settings, and the way it is rendered every few versions, and I'm so tired trying to get everything back the way it looked before, to the point I stopped updating Thunderbird now because I'm afraid they fucked up the fonts again; it's probably because I have a large monitor (who doesn't these days?) so I have to scale up Windows fonts in the system settings, and every few versions they seem to keep changing the way they handle that;
In case it matters, it's Windows 7 and IMAP with several local folders for archiving old emails.
Please, oh, please, tell me there is something better out there?
And then let's say the motherboard in your NAS dies. Let's say it happens in 10 years (I'm being generous here), and there is no Synology/QNAP around any more, or even if they still exist, they don't make compatible products any more. Can you pull HDDs out of your NAS and read data from them somehow, in a convenient non-spend-a-week-copying-individual-files-by-hand way?
That's why a generic Linux install on a commodity PC hardware will beat any NAS for longevity.
When are they going to fix their sound encoding?! I often have to switch to plain stereo from the default 5.1, because the higher-frequency is distorted which makes speech/dialog sound especially "tinny". Don't know if it's due to higher compression for 5.1 sound, or something else, but it annoys the hell out of me. I'm no audiophile either, so it is pretty apparent. Using PS3 hooked to a receiver, so it could be the PS3 client. Tried reporting this issue to Netflix, but there is no way to do it except by calling them.
I can express myself by writing a comment, or I can run down the middle of my town naked with peanut butter smeared all over me while shouting gibberish.
The point is that the universe is (d-1)D, but looks (d)D because of the way information is encoded. Or something. A genuine physicist can probably explain it more accurately (I'm 100% sure I've made at least two errors above) and clearly than I can though
Source code must be a hologram too: since every bug you find is second-to-last.
Now, I'm all for banning big guns, but small caliber pocket pistols that preferably take forever to reload, that's a different story. Can't go on a mass shooting rampage with one, won't be lethal when goes through a wall or a desk, but enough to stop a bad guy when needed. Not guaranteed of course, but better than trying to bum-rush an AKM empty-handed.
You can get Samsung Evo 850 1T (pretty much the best SSD you can get atm) for less than $350 right now, and it was $325 at one point: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Sam...
I've seen several Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales where you can get Samsung Evo 850 500Gb for around $140 (so $280 for 1Tb): http://slickdeals.net/f/833308...
I don't give a tiny rat's ass either way, I still have an old flip-phone, but it sure seems Apple is turning more and more into a follower every day. I saw an ad on TV the other day: a large tablet being clicked into a very thin looking keyboard, with the person proceeding seamlessly from tablet mode to typing on the said keyboard. I thought, oh no, not another Surface Pro ad. And before I could skip it, the text on the screen (or voice over?) says "Our largest iPad for professionals". Or something to that effect. First time I confused an Apple product with something else, and not the other way around.
Is it really 10 cores / 20 threads for real? Or will it reduce the core frequency even further by like 50% if you try to use all of them at once for more than a second, to say within TDP envelope and not to melt?
Want you own Black Friday any time of year? Find the thing you want to buy on Amazon, go to CamelCamelCamel.com, set the price you want to pay, and then wait until you get an alert that your price was reached..... Profit?
So, one thing I don't understand about quantum entanglement. In the simplest terms, you can have 2 photons generated from a specific process, and if you measure the spin (polarization?) of one of the photons, the other one will always have the opposite spin. And that's what they call quantum entanglement, right? But to me it simply means that the said specific process always generates a pair of photons with opposite spin. Where is the magic of entanglement here? Please help me understand. It's kind of like if we take an apple and slice it in two, and then measure one of the halves, the other will always be facing the other way. Well, yeah, we just sliced an apple in two halves, so no surprise there, they'll always be facing each other. What am I missing?
> As others have noted, hyperthreading via Intel can have exactly the same impact: the threads share various components, including the FPU.
Well, then AMD should advertise its CPUs the same way Intel does: 4 cores, 8 threads. When I needed a CPU that can run 8 processes in parallel at full speed, I looked at Intel offerings and AMD. Compared the number of cores ( thought they were real cores in case of AMD), and the prices, and concluded that AMD was better, because it offered better "number of cores" * "frequency" / price. So I bought the AMD processor. And now I feel I was mislead, or lied to by AMD. And I liked them up until this point. No, I didn't look at "diagrams of the parts", or consult floating point benchmarks, since my particular need wasn't heavy on the floating point calculations (but it uses them somewhat). It just didn't occur to me, I thought I could trust AMD. I thought when it said "8 cores" on the box, it was a processor capable of running 8 processes in parallel at full speed. Was it so wrong of me?!
Really?! I thought the definition of a "core" was a unit that can run a process independently. Not "integer only" process. Then AMD should advertise it's CPUs as "8 integer cores, but only 4 floating point cores". You know, so that when you buy a CPU expecting 8 fully independent cores, as I did, because it says "8 cores" on the box, you won't be unpleasantly surprised that it can't actually run 8 processes in parallel. I liked AMD up until now, but I think it's going to be my last AMD processor. Sad.:(
Why did *I* buy based on the number of cores?! Because I needed a CPU that can run as many processes in parallel as possible. Why else would you need multiple cores? No, it's not a web server, and not for bitcoin mining. 8 cores means I should be able run 8 processes in parallel, for 8 times speed-up over 1 core.
Yes, doing a testing would've been ideal, but you can't return a CPU, as far as I know. Plus, I thought I can trust AMD to sell an 8-core processor when, you know, it says "8 cores" right on the box. Turned out (after I bought the CPU) I can run 8 processes in parallel, but they were about 30% slower each compared to running just 1. Actually, running 4 processes was still fast, but once you went over 4, it started to slow down. For a while I wondered why, thinking it's probably scaling down the CPU frequency because of threat of overheating (max TDP), but now it all makes sense. My program doesn't use floating point values a lot, but it is used throughout the computations here and there.
I liked AMD over Intel up until now, but I think this is going to be my last AMD processor. Yes, Intel is more expensive, but they don't play shenanigans with redefining what a "core" is.
For crying out loud, why is it *abuse*?! If you are offering something "unlimited" without blinking an eye, why are you so surprised when people try to treat it as such? Unless you are selling a lie and then shocked to discover that people try to stick it to you? Every time I see any offer of something "unlimited", I'm soooo tempted to accept the challenge.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't really trust AMD and their "core" counts any more. Used to buy AMD CPUs almost exclusively in the past. Then got a top of the line, supposedly 8-core, FX-8350 (two of them in fact). When tried running 8 processes in parallel, got about 40% performance drop. After reading the fine print, turns out it has only 4 independent units, and pairs of "cores" sharing resources, effectively making it a 4-core CPU in reality. Fuck you, AMD!
Holy Batman, what a mess of a summary! It must be linked to yet another debilitating but apparently not so rare condition in which Slashdot editors are born with abnormally small heads.
I understand why Netflix is doing this. I don't understand the logic of the companies that license content to Netflix and force them to do that. Someone who's tech savvy enough to use a VPN service, and who gets cut off, what do you think they are going to do? Go buy a DVD in their local store or go torrent what they want? What's more likely? I know what I would do. So the goal of the studios, who could be getting some money from Netflix, to get zilch point bupkis dollars for their content? What's the logic here?!
If you think 10-ton hydraulic ram is impressive, it costs less than $100 and weighs about 20 pounds.
So that means all new Volvo's will come equipped standard with a hover mode? In case the car hits a patch of ice and skids off a cliff?
I can kill someone, in fact, a lot of someones, with a car. I cannot kill anyone over the Internet. Same reason every gun has a unique serial number, but no pens, nor books require one.
Switching to a GPU to do the calculation proved four orders of magnitude efficiency over CPUs to reach about 200,000 samples a day.
4 orders of magnitude?! Was he processing 20 samples a day before? What kind of CPU was he using? 8088?
But Turing's genius might very well have counted for naught had it not been for the actions of Lieutenant-Commander David Balme, Royal Navy.
Jebus Christ, really?!
Thunderbird has so many bugs, and yet when I tried to find a replacement, there isn't anything good out there...
- Global search never worked right. On many occasions I would search for a specific word(s), it would find nothing, and I would go scroll through emails and sure enough what I was looking for is right there. Sometimes it would find an email, I would click on it in the "found" list, and it would open an empty pane, and no way to get to the actual email;
- It often corrupts the inbox, and sometimes other folders, and you would have to use "Repair folder" to get it back, and then re-configure the columns because it reset it to default (why?!); I always wondered if I lost actual emails because of this?
- Filters never worked right; I have a pretty extensive set of rules (~30), and often the incoming email would still be sitting in the inbox, and I would have to manually run the filters for it to be moved to the right folder; if more than one filter applies to the incoming email, it would sometimes choose one or the other filter at random;
- The font setting for messages is stupid; Why is there no one global setting to use a particular font/size for all encodings (and possibly individual exceptions for specific encodings if needed)? I like a particular font/size, and they keep messing up the settings, and the way it is rendered every few versions, and I'm so tired trying to get everything back the way it looked before, to the point I stopped updating Thunderbird now because I'm afraid they fucked up the fonts again; it's probably because I have a large monitor (who doesn't these days?) so I have to scale up Windows fonts in the system settings, and every few versions they seem to keep changing the way they handle that;
In case it matters, it's Windows 7 and IMAP with several local folders for archiving old emails.
Please, oh, please, tell me there is something better out there?
And then let's say the motherboard in your NAS dies. Let's say it happens in 10 years (I'm being generous here), and there is no Synology/QNAP around any more, or even if they still exist, they don't make compatible products any more. Can you pull HDDs out of your NAS and read data from them somehow, in a convenient non-spend-a-week-copying-individual-files-by-hand way?
That's why a generic Linux install on a commodity PC hardware will beat any NAS for longevity.
Can we get "do not track" bill that applies to NSA/CIA/etc. first, please?
When are they going to fix their sound encoding?! I often have to switch to plain stereo from the default 5.1, because the higher-frequency is distorted which makes speech/dialog sound especially "tinny". Don't know if it's due to higher compression for 5.1 sound, or something else, but it annoys the hell out of me. I'm no audiophile either, so it is pretty apparent. Using PS3 hooked to a receiver, so it could be the PS3 client. Tried reporting this issue to Netflix, but there is no way to do it except by calling them.
I can express myself by writing a comment, or I can run down the middle of my town naked with peanut butter smeared all over me while shouting gibberish.
Hi, neighbor, you missed a spot.
Uh, correction...
The point is that the universe is (d-1)D, but looks (d)D because of the way information is encoded. Or something. A genuine physicist can probably explain it more accurately (I'm 100% sure I've made at least two errors above) and clearly than I can though
Source code must be a hologram too: since every bug you find is second-to-last.
Really? How about good guys with no guns vs. a bad guy with AKM + 9 mags + a handgun + a knife:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Now, I'm all for banning big guns, but small caliber pocket pistols that preferably take forever to reload, that's a different story. Can't go on a mass shooting rampage with one, won't be lethal when goes through a wall or a desk, but enough to stop a bad guy when needed. Not guaranteed of course, but better than trying to bum-rush an AKM empty-handed.
No, not really indeed...
You can get Samsung Evo 850 1T (pretty much the best SSD you can get atm) for less than $350 right now, and it was $325 at one point:
http://camelcamelcamel.com/Sam...
I've seen several Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales where you can get Samsung Evo 850 500Gb for around $140 (so $280 for 1Tb):
http://slickdeals.net/f/833308...
You can get SanDisk (which is WD now) 960Gb for $260 right now, and it was $200 at one point:
http://camelcamelcamel.com/San...
I don't give a tiny rat's ass either way, I still have an old flip-phone, but it sure seems Apple is turning more and more into a follower every day. I saw an ad on TV the other day: a large tablet being clicked into a very thin looking keyboard, with the person proceeding seamlessly from tablet mode to typing on the said keyboard. I thought, oh no, not another Surface Pro ad. And before I could skip it, the text on the screen (or voice over?) says "Our largest iPad for professionals". Or something to that effect. First time I confused an Apple product with something else, and not the other way around.
A parsec is a measure of distance, not time. Yes, I'm a metric nazi. :)
Is it really 10 cores / 20 threads for real? Or will it reduce the core frequency even further by like 50% if you try to use all of them at once for more than a second, to say within TDP envelope and not to melt?
Want you own Black Friday any time of year? Find the thing you want to buy on Amazon, go to CamelCamelCamel.com, set the price you want to pay, and then wait until you get an alert that your price was reached. ....
Profit?
So, one thing I don't understand about quantum entanglement. In the simplest terms, you can have 2 photons generated from a specific process, and if you measure the spin (polarization?) of one of the photons, the other one will always have the opposite spin. And that's what they call quantum entanglement, right? But to me it simply means that the said specific process always generates a pair of photons with opposite spin. Where is the magic of entanglement here? Please help me understand. It's kind of like if we take an apple and slice it in two, and then measure one of the halves, the other will always be facing the other way. Well, yeah, we just sliced an apple in two halves, so no surprise there, they'll always be facing each other. What am I missing?
> As others have noted, hyperthreading via Intel can have exactly the same impact: the threads share various components, including the FPU.
Well, then AMD should advertise its CPUs the same way Intel does: 4 cores, 8 threads. When I needed a CPU that can run 8 processes in parallel at full speed, I looked at Intel offerings and AMD. Compared the number of cores ( thought they were real cores in case of AMD), and the prices, and concluded that AMD was better, because it offered better "number of cores" * "frequency" / price. So I bought the AMD processor. And now I feel I was mislead, or lied to by AMD. And I liked them up until this point. No, I didn't look at "diagrams of the parts", or consult floating point benchmarks, since my particular need wasn't heavy on the floating point calculations (but it uses them somewhat). It just didn't occur to me, I thought I could trust AMD. I thought when it said "8 cores" on the box, it was a processor capable of running 8 processes in parallel at full speed. Was it so wrong of me?!
Really?! I thought the definition of a "core" was a unit that can run a process independently. Not "integer only" process. Then AMD should advertise it's CPUs as "8 integer cores, but only 4 floating point cores". You know, so that when you buy a CPU expecting 8 fully independent cores, as I did, because it says "8 cores" on the box, you won't be unpleasantly surprised that it can't actually run 8 processes in parallel. I liked AMD up until now, but I think it's going to be my last AMD processor. Sad. :(
Why did *I* buy based on the number of cores?! Because I needed a CPU that can run as many processes in parallel as possible. Why else would you need multiple cores? No, it's not a web server, and not for bitcoin mining. 8 cores means I should be able run 8 processes in parallel, for 8 times speed-up over 1 core.
Yes, doing a testing would've been ideal, but you can't return a CPU, as far as I know. Plus, I thought I can trust AMD to sell an 8-core processor when, you know, it says "8 cores" right on the box. Turned out (after I bought the CPU) I can run 8 processes in parallel, but they were about 30% slower each compared to running just 1. Actually, running 4 processes was still fast, but once you went over 4, it started to slow down. For a while I wondered why, thinking it's probably scaling down the CPU frequency because of threat of overheating (max TDP), but now it all makes sense. My program doesn't use floating point values a lot, but it is used throughout the computations here and there.
I liked AMD over Intel up until now, but I think this is going to be my last AMD processor. Yes, Intel is more expensive, but they don't play shenanigans with redefining what a "core" is.
For crying out loud, why is it *abuse*?! If you are offering something "unlimited" without blinking an eye, why are you so surprised when people try to treat it as such? Unless you are selling a lie and then shocked to discover that people try to stick it to you? Every time I see any offer of something "unlimited", I'm soooo tempted to accept the challenge.