Know anything about deaf-blind tech? Please let me know [slashdot.org].
Hmm, for some reason,/. tells me "This discussion has been archived" when I try and reply in your journal.
Anway, try talking to these people. Nice folks. If they don't have anything that could help, I'm pretty sure that they will be able to point you in the right direction.
I'm serious, btw, not trolling. I keep seeing these debates about "who did what" and every online resource tells a different story. Some are (selectively) incomplete, some are just plain wrong. Anyone who can add to / correct / clarify this list (with references), please do.
They're around somewhere, can't remember where right now - check the archives of the debian-kde list, the sources.list line was posted there relatively recently.
Yup, that's exactly what I'm doing. I've been feeling the same way as the article submitter for a while now, and finally got off my ass and did something about it. Just applied for a mathematics course at my local community college.
The nice thing is that it lets me get a second degree at my own pace whilst still working. Either I can just take the courses at the CC, "cash in" the credits and come out with an AA degree, or can transfer the credits over and finish up at a "full" university to get a BA, still part-time.
Think of it as a massive SIMD array coupled to a Turing-complete CPU, and you'll have the right idea.
Sorta true. Though definitely not like a massive SIMD array, the control structure is far more complex and loosely-coupled than that.
Because the CPU is not in the datapath you get a few problems that you don't get with a plain general purpose CPU:
- Limited precision of intermediate results -> restricted space of implementable algorithms
- Very restricted data addressing modes -> you need to build lookup-tables at run-time which can eat into your performance for certain algorithms
- Difficult to implement conditional tests
So, yes, because you start with a Turing-Complete CPU in the system, the system stays Turing-Complete, that's trivially obvious. However, not all algorithms can be implemented on the devices mentioned in the article, which was the point I was trying to make.
Future hardware is a different matter - both precision and programmability are increasing in leaps and bounds. This is pretty traditional for graphics hardware, and has been so since the start of the field - machines get more and more programmable until they start to become fully programmable, then the lowest levels get replaced by faster, fixed-function hardware, then the cycle repeats itself for those levels. Newman was talking about it in the mid-70s, and it's been pretty much the case from then on.
We are getting to the point now where we will be able to put enough flexibility and functionality on a chip to run Renderman pretty much natively on the graphics chip, but not with the stuff the article was talking about. I'd give it 18 months to two years.
The current generation of "GPUs" (ick, I hate that term) are neither powerful enough nor flexible enough to handle something as complex as a Rendeman shader. Go pick up a good Renderman book and look at what the spec requires from the implementation.
Stuff like DX8/9, which the gfx chip companies design to, is a very very small subset of what Renderman specifies. I suppose in theory you could build a tool that split shader work between the main CPU and the gfx card, but, I really don't think it would be worth the effort.
That's not to say that future hardware won't be able to do this kind of thing, but I'm not going to violate any NDAs on Slashdot;-)
Come back and ask the question again in 18 months or so.
And, while you're at it, fix up your bloody immigration form you fill out on the plane to take a short trip to the States.
LOL
The one that always got me on the visa waiver form was the one that went "Are you here to commit an act of terrorism ? [ ] Yes [ ] No"
(For the US citizens amongst you, yes, I am serious, there was/is a form that all foreigners entering the country without a visa had to fill in that contained the above multiple-choice question)
get a big block V8 and do it the old fashioned way.
With you there 100%. Cars and computers shouldn't mix, other than maybe the mp3 player...:) I work on the car to get dirt under my nails and tinker with something non-abstract once in a while. (Currently building a 4.2L MGB... gonna be one scary go-kart... )
Newegg. Not the cheapest, but good and have never had a problem.
Axion Technologies Never had a problem, lots of interesting stuff in their surplus section - always worth a browse.
Computer Surplus Outlet Good for very cheap systems that you can tweak with a few extra bits, especially old P2-grade machines at ridiculously low prices and occasional weird stuff. Component prices aren't all that good, but they often have specials (I got a heap of P2 Xeon 400s from them, with heatsink, for $9.99 each.)
They marked a delivery "no signature required" without telling me. When the package never arrived they just said "not our fault" and stopped replying to my emails.
Another piece of advice: if you're ordering from out-of-state to avoid sales tax, remember that it's going to be a lot harder - probably not worth your while - to take them to small claims court...
I've nothing against Sheffield, I used to got boozing at the Fat Cat and a Rock Club Roxies(?) pretty regularly.
IIRC, Roxies was a big-as-a-barn meat market mainstream club that had a rock night once a month. Rebels was the tacky rock club near Castle Market where you had to scratch shapes in your Newcastle Brown label to distinguish your bottle from the thousand others lined up by the walls next to it.
I know at least one university that had a "3 compiles" policy. You got to run your code through the compiler only 3 times, and whatever you had after that was what you were evaluated on.
It's kinda scary, but I suspect it teaches people to think and design carefully, rather than just "beat it with a stick until it works" - which seems to be the way a lot of software is built.
Slashdot Mirror
Who uses goto statements? I'd count that as a feature.
Anyone who wants to efficiently implement a state machine.
Know anything about deaf-blind tech? Please let me know [slashdot.org].
/. tells me "This discussion has been archived" when I try and reply in your journal.
Hmm, for some reason,
Anway, try talking to these people. Nice folks. If they don't have anything that could help, I'm pretty sure that they will be able to point you in the right direction.
It's possible to spot the mistake without knowing the semantics of gets()- knowing the rules of the base language is enough.
... ;-)
Hmm, I see you work for Sendmail
I only ask one "tech" question when interviewing prospective programmers:
void echo(void)
{
char *s;
gets(s);
puts(s);
}
What is wrong with this code ?
The scary thing is, over 50% of the people I ask can't answer it.
During this interview he told me that virtually every technology in the computing industry had it roots in the UK.
m machines
:P
> The Russians would make the same claim.
> And the Spanish, and the French, and probably even the Czechs.
Hmm, please extend my knowledge of computing history. This is what I know so far:
UK
==
floating point arithmetic hardware
virtual memory
mechanical computers
transistorised computers
commercial production of computers
pipelining
programming
stored-progra
tlbs
raster-scan displays
public key encryption
assemblers
temporary registers
branch prediction
packet-switched networks
http://
caches
Russia
======
superscalar machines
USA
===
fixed-function / hard-programmed valve machines
modern RISC
Windows
TCP/IP
microprocessors
compilers
I'm serious, btw, not trolling. I keep seeing these debates about "who did what" and every online resource tells a different story. Some are (selectively) incomplete, some are just plain wrong. Anyone who can add to / correct / clarify this list (with references), please do.
I was aware that write support is extremely dubious, but I thought that read support was pretty safe - am I wrong ?
Dear Grammar Nazi
"grammar nazi" is being used as a proper noun in the above context, and, as such, should be capitalised.
They have been able to for ages. Looks like the default RH kernel isn't built with this enabled.
They're around somewhere, can't remember where right now - check the archives of the debian-kde list, the sources.list line was posted there relatively recently.
Periods go inside quotes.
As usual with this sort of thing, it depends on which side of the Atlantic you're on. In English English, the full stop goes outside in certain situations.
So what do you do with your new selfcompiled but unsigned binary?
Couldn't you just sign it yourself and set your box to accept stuff that you've signed ?
One option is community college
Yup, that's exactly what I'm doing. I've been feeling the same way as the article submitter for a while now, and finally got off my ass and did something about it. Just applied for a mathematics course at my local community college.
The nice thing is that it lets me get a second degree at my own pace whilst still working. Either I can just take the courses at the CC, "cash in" the credits and come out with an AA degree, or can transfer the credits over and finish up at a "full" university to get a BA, still part-time.
Good luck, whatever you choose.
Think of it as a massive SIMD array coupled to a Turing-complete CPU, and you'll have the right idea.
Sorta true. Though definitely not like a massive SIMD array, the control structure is far more complex and loosely-coupled than that.
Because the CPU is not in the datapath you get a few problems that you don't get with a plain general purpose CPU:
- Limited precision of intermediate results -> restricted space of implementable algorithms
- Very restricted data addressing modes -> you need to build lookup-tables at run-time which can eat into your performance for certain algorithms
- Difficult to implement conditional tests
So, yes, because you start with a Turing-Complete CPU in the system, the system stays Turing-Complete, that's trivially obvious. However, not all algorithms can be implemented on the devices mentioned in the article, which was the point I was trying to make.
Future hardware is a different matter - both precision and programmability are increasing in leaps and bounds. This is pretty traditional for graphics hardware, and has been so since the start of the field - machines get more and more programmable until they start to become fully programmable, then the lowest levels get replaced by faster, fixed-function hardware, then the cycle repeats itself for those levels. Newman was talking about it in the mid-70s, and it's been pretty much the case from then on.
We are getting to the point now where we will be able to put enough flexibility and functionality on a chip to run Renderman pretty much natively on the graphics chip, but not with the stuff the article was talking about. I'd give it 18 months to two years.
You're ignoring the fact that you're free to choose not to use any Microsoft products at all if you want.
And you're ignoring the fact that this is talking about stuff that people have already paid for.Yeah, but then I'll have to pirate VMWare. :P
VMWare 30 day evaluation version, email address required.
Yahoo free email sign-up.
I'd love to get off of MS software
Pure windows -> Windows under VMWare -> Wine -> pure (Gnu)/Linux -> Freedom !
Easy ! And with less steps than your average 12 step plan :)
Have you heard of "programmable hardware shaders"?
Have you heard of the term "Turing Completeness" ? - as in, "programmable hardware shaders are not Turing Complete" ?
The current generation of "GPUs" (ick, I hate that term) are neither powerful enough nor flexible enough to handle something as complex as a Rendeman shader. Go pick up a good Renderman book and look at what the spec requires from the implementation.
;-)
Stuff like DX8/9, which the gfx chip companies design to, is a very very small subset of what Renderman specifies. I suppose in theory you could build a tool that split shader work between the main CPU and the gfx card, but, I really don't think it would be worth the effort.
That's not to say that future hardware won't be able to do this kind of thing, but I'm not going to violate any NDAs on Slashdot
Come back and ask the question again in 18 months or so.
And, while you're at it, fix up your bloody immigration form you fill out on the plane to take a short trip to the States.
LOL
The one that always got me on the visa waiver form was the one that went "Are you here to commit an act of terrorism ? [ ] Yes [ ] No"
(For the US citizens amongst you, yes, I am serious, there was/is a form that all foreigners entering the country without a visa had to fill in that contained the above multiple-choice question)
even England no longer uses it
We only use it for the important stuff. Beer is still served in (20floz) pints.
get a big block V8 and do it the old fashioned way.
With you there 100%. Cars and computers shouldn't mix, other than maybe the mp3 player... :) I work on the car to get dirt under my nails and tinker with something non-abstract once in a while. (Currently building a 4.2L MGB ... gonna be one scary go-kart ... )
Best:
Newegg. Not the cheapest, but good and have never had a problem.
Axion Technologies Never had a problem, lots of interesting stuff in their surplus section - always worth a browse.
Computer Surplus Outlet Good for very cheap systems that you can tweak with a few extra bits, especially old P2-grade machines at ridiculously low prices and occasional weird stuff. Component prices aren't all that good, but they often have specials (I got a heap of P2 Xeon 400s from them, with heatsink, for $9.99 each.)
Worst:
CNet PC
They marked a delivery "no signature required" without telling me. When the package never arrived they just said "not our fault" and stopped replying to my emails.
Another piece of advice: if you're ordering from out-of-state to avoid sales tax, remember that it's going to be a lot harder - probably not worth your while - to take them to small claims court...
I've nothing against Sheffield, I used to got boozing at the Fat Cat and a Rock Club Roxies(?) pretty regularly.
IIRC, Roxies was a big-as-a-barn meat market mainstream club that had a rock night once a month. Rebels was the tacky rock club near Castle Market where you had to scratch shapes in your Newcastle Brown label to distinguish your bottle from the thousand others lined up by the walls next to it.
For boozing, you should try The Frog and Parrot, famous for brewing the strongest beer in the world on the premises.
I know at least one university that had a "3 compiles" policy. You got to run your code through the compiler only 3 times, and whatever you had after that was what you were evaluated on.
It's kinda scary, but I suspect it teaches people to think and design carefully, rather than just "beat it with a stick until it works" - which seems to be the way a lot of software is built.
Either that, or he has a burner :)