I do seem to recall that I originally had signed up as a "dynamic" IP, and they discontinued my domain since it hadn't changed in a month or so, maybe that's what happened to you?
I use DynDNS with DHCP addresses, but they are practically static. Nevertheless, there is no problem, as long as the update script (ddclient) is running periodically. When a host record hasn't been updated in 30 days or so, there is a warning email, and after some time that hostname is dropped. Thus occasionally I have had to re-register a hostname, but that is not a huge problem.
The upshot then is not that you get the right value for G at the end but that you get Newton's inverse square law (up to a scalar) which by itself would be really impressive even if one can't a priori get the value of G.
The inverse square relation comes easily from the fact of 3 spatial dimensions. The gravitational flux from a mass is spread out over a surface of a sphere, whose area is proportional to the square of the radius. It is a perfect analogy of electric fields.
It is possible to derive the same form in many different ways. It is a nice exercise to play with alternative theories of gravity, and see how they are similar or different. However, general relativity has a crucial deviation from the inverse square law, which results in the anomalous orbit of Mercury, for example. This does not mean GR is the final correct answer, of course.
so the constant of proportionality is determined solely by the signal/noise ratio. What you're saying is that the signal/noise ratio is tending towards a constant. This may be true for a certain type of communications channel, under the same line conditions, but I don't see how this can be true more generally. For one thing, it doesn't matter how clever the modem is, if the line is particularly noisy.
Today we tend to saturate the capacity of our channels so "bandwidth" and "data rate" are usually reasonably proportional, if not actually equal.
I'm afraid you have really missed the point, not just my earlier post but the overall discussion. An example modem can use a bandwidth of 2400 Hz, which also means 2400 baud, while delivering 9600 bits per second. The reason is that a single transition in the signal can contain multiple bits of information, in this case 4.
Perhaps this is one reason why people today say "bandwidth" when they mean data rate (aka channel capacity). It's easy to confuse "baud" with bits per second if you're not technically oriented. Baud rate corresponds to bandwidth, you need 2400 Hz of bandwidth for 2400 transitions per second. Higher bandwidth means a potentially higher data rate, so again this is probably easy to confuse. Then we also have "broadband", which again has nothing directly to do with data rates.
I also have a small tangental question. I always hear about huge performance gains that can come from properly writing code to take advantage of SSE2,3,4,etc instruction sets. I also hear that almost no one does write code to take advantage of these instruction sets. If Intel really wants to push their hardware, why not write such optimizations for the Linux kernel?
The kernel doesn't do much CPU-bound processing. It is math and media libraries where these vector instructions would be actually useful. You can already have some of their advantages using a decent compiler. Basically, that means different binaries for processors with different capabilities, so your average binary distro is not going to have any fancy instructions. I suggest trying Gentoo if you actually want to use your modern CPU.
RTFA: "The graphics core is a basic DX9 instantiation that is a kin to Intel's GMA500 graphics core in the previous generation Intel 945G chipset"
I have a 945GM system whose graphics part is called GMA950. It uses the common opensource Intel drivers. On the contrary, GMA500 aka Poulsbo is the problematic one with closed drivers.
IMHO, "joo" more accurately means "yeah", being quite an informal version of "yes". Doubling it up does not mean more affirmative, in my experience; "Joo joo" is often used in the sarcastic sense "Yeah, right" though it does depend on the context and intonation.
A computer that is truly idling consumes, for example, 100 watts without doing anything useful. The same computer running a distributed project, consumes for example 150 watts, while contributing to scientific research. Therefore, in many cases a distributed project has a much better bang/buck ratio.
Of course, scientific research is being done in any case. If there are no volunteer computers, then it is the research institutes that spend money on computers and electricity. In either case you could argue that money is being wasted, if you think science has no value.
Separate ink cartridges and print heads have the advantage of easy refilling. Monolithic cartridges are also fairly easy to refill if you know the drill (pun intended).
I am mostly interested in black and white printing, so I just refill with ordinary fountain pen ink, using a pipette or a syringe.
It's time for the ext-based filesystems to die. They are a technology that was obsolete a decade ago.
ReiserFS was set to kill them off, but unfortunately found another victim first... JFS and XFS only work well in certain high-end niches.
In my experience, JFS offers most of the benefits of ReiserFS, while being lighter on CPU. So it is definitely not just for the high end. It has also turned out more stable than Reiser, though in the recent years this has evened out.
On some of my machines there have been consistent problems with using JFS on the root partition, but this may be due to the init scripts. No data has been lost, though, and on non-root partitions JFS has consistently been rock solid for me. This includes a number of x86, PowerPC and ARM machines.
Put it this way. Let's say someone on his own initiative runs program on ALL of Exxon Mobils workstations. If the program accomplishes nothing, the guy might wind up getting fired. But... if the program finds a cure for cancer, you can certainly bet that Exxon Mobil would be running ads about how they cured cancer and how great they are, and the guy would at least get a trial promotion for being successful.
Case in point: A record Mersenne prime was found by running a distributed project at the UCLA math department, and now the department has been awarded half of the EFF prize of $100,000.
Way to go with your god:: alien comparison. Seti@Home is a scientific endeavour, and the current software does traditional astronomical research besides the alien stuff. Personally, I think finding ETI is pretty unlikely in practice, but at least it is possible to verify for a scientific fact if it ever happens.
Take Quake 3, for example. Using my old 64MB GeForce 4, I can pretty much nail the 999FPS barrier.
Now, take the onboard GeForce 6150, with 256MB of RAM. It can't pop more than 140FPS.
It has consistently been like this for at least a decade.
I believe your numbers, but my point is that there is a market for non-gaming systems. For lots of people including me, integrated graphics DO NOT SUCK.
The earlier point was also that integrated graphics "suck" by implementation, not any inherent qualities due to being integrated. It just happens that many people are happy with less graphics power (and the subsequent total silence and low power consumption), so it makes more sense to leave the gaming monsters as optional.
Integrated graphics aren't bad by design, just implementation.
Quite true.
This or better could be integrated, but instead what ends up as integrated graphics is the most bottom barrel POS that is barely capable of displaying a desktop wallpaper.
Actually, integrated Intel graphics are perfectly capable of nice 3D and video, just not the latest games. The older of my two Intel systems has a 855GME from around 2004, and it plays 720p H.264 and Tuxracer just fine. These days I mostly use the 3D capabilities for molecular visualization. I have also tested all the fancy desktop effects, though I do not like using them in practice.
Most importantly though, I like to use open source drivers without any extra hacks, meaning mainline Linux and Xorg. So I'm not really sure what I'm doing in a discussion about DX10;)
Slashdot Mirror
Hu cares about penis size anyway?
I do seem to recall that I originally had signed up as a "dynamic" IP, and they discontinued my domain since it hadn't changed in a month or so, maybe that's what happened to you?
I use DynDNS with DHCP addresses, but they are practically static. Nevertheless, there is no problem, as long as the update script (ddclient) is running periodically. When a host record hasn't been updated in 30 days or so, there is a warning email, and after some time that hostname is dropped. Thus occasionally I have had to re-register a hostname, but that is not a huge problem.
The upshot then is not that you get the right value for G at the end but that you get Newton's inverse square law (up to a scalar) which by itself would be really impressive even if one can't a priori get the value of G.
The inverse square relation comes easily from the fact of 3 spatial dimensions. The gravitational flux from a mass is spread out over a surface of a sphere, whose area is proportional to the square of the radius. It is a perfect analogy of electric fields.
It is possible to derive the same form in many different ways. It is a nice exercise to play with alternative theories of gravity, and see how they are similar or different. However, general relativity has a crucial deviation from the inverse square law, which results in the anomalous orbit of Mercury, for example. This does not mean GR is the final correct answer, of course.
IIRC, distributed.net uses Postgres, but their statistics server is down at the moment, so I cannot confirm it...
Magnifico!
Y2K10 would be 200010. Silly contractions...
Then again, in electronics 2K10 would be parsed as 2.10 thousand, or 2100.
OK, but I'm still confused. Mathematically,
data rate = bandwidth * log(1 + S/N)
so the constant of proportionality is determined solely by the signal/noise ratio. What you're saying is that the signal/noise ratio is tending towards a constant. This may be true for a certain type of communications channel, under the same line conditions, but I don't see how this can be true more generally. For one thing, it doesn't matter how clever the modem is, if the line is particularly noisy.
Today we tend to saturate the capacity of our channels so "bandwidth" and "data rate" are usually reasonably proportional, if not actually equal.
I'm afraid you have really missed the point, not just my earlier post but the overall discussion. An example modem can use a bandwidth of 2400 Hz, which also means 2400 baud, while delivering 9600 bits per second. The reason is that a single transition in the signal can contain multiple bits of information, in this case 4.
For more mathematical details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon-Hartley_theorem
Perhaps this is one reason why people today say "bandwidth" when they mean data rate (aka channel capacity). It's easy to confuse "baud" with bits per second if you're not technically oriented. Baud rate corresponds to bandwidth, you need 2400 Hz of bandwidth for 2400 transitions per second. Higher bandwidth means a potentially higher data rate, so again this is probably easy to confuse. Then we also have "broadband", which again has nothing directly to do with data rates.
That's a good one.
No, wait, that's a bedouin.
I also have a small tangental question. I always hear about huge performance gains that can come from properly writing code to take advantage of SSE2,3,4,etc instruction sets. I also hear that almost no one does write code to take advantage of these instruction sets. If Intel really wants to push their hardware, why not write such optimizations for the Linux kernel?
The kernel doesn't do much CPU-bound processing. It is math and media libraries where these vector instructions would be actually useful. You can already have some of their advantages using a decent compiler. Basically, that means different binaries for processors with different capabilities, so your average binary distro is not going to have any fancy instructions. I suggest trying Gentoo if you actually want to use your modern CPU.
RTFA: "The graphics core is a basic DX9 instantiation that is a kin to Intel's GMA500 graphics core in the previous generation Intel 945G chipset"
I have a 945GM system whose graphics part is called GMA950. It uses the common opensource Intel drivers. On the contrary, GMA500 aka Poulsbo is the problematic one with closed drivers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA
IMHO, "joo" more accurately means "yeah", being quite an informal version of "yes". Doubling it up does not mean more affirmative, in my experience; "Joo joo" is often used in the sarcastic sense "Yeah, right" though it does depend on the context and intonation.
A computer that is truly idling consumes, for example, 100 watts without doing anything useful. The same computer running a distributed project, consumes for example 150 watts, while contributing to scientific research. Therefore, in many cases a distributed project has a much better bang/buck ratio.
Of course, scientific research is being done in any case. If there are no volunteer computers, then it is the research institutes that spend money on computers and electricity. In either case you could argue that money is being wasted, if you think science has no value.
Separate ink cartridges and print heads have the advantage of easy refilling. Monolithic cartridges are also fairly easy to refill if you know the drill (pun intended).
I am mostly interested in black and white printing, so I just refill with ordinary fountain pen ink, using a pipette or a syringe.
It's time for the ext-based filesystems to die. They are a technology that was obsolete a decade ago.
ReiserFS was set to kill them off, but unfortunately found another victim first... JFS and XFS only work well in certain high-end niches.
In my experience, JFS offers most of the benefits of ReiserFS, while being lighter on CPU. So it is definitely not just for the high end. It has also turned out more stable than Reiser, though in the recent years this has evened out.
On some of my machines there have been consistent problems with using JFS on the root partition, but this may be due to the init scripts. No data has been lost, though, and on non-root partitions JFS has consistently been rock solid for me. This includes a number of x86, PowerPC and ARM machines.
Put it this way. Let's say someone on his own initiative runs program on ALL of Exxon Mobils workstations. If the program accomplishes nothing, the guy might wind up getting fired. But... if the program finds a cure for cancer, you can certainly bet that Exxon Mobil would be running ads about how they cured cancer and how great they are, and the guy would at least get a trial promotion for being successful.
Case in point: A record Mersenne prime was found by running a distributed project at the UCLA math department, and now the department has been awarded half of the EFF prize of $100,000.
Way to go with your god :: alien comparison. Seti@Home is a scientific endeavour, and the current software does traditional astronomical research besides the alien stuff. Personally, I think finding ETI is pretty unlikely in practice, but at least it is possible to verify for a scientific fact if it ever happens.
Imagine living in the 18th Century. You don't believe in electricity, and you don't understand the interest about scientific research.
Quote: "fire a payload of golf balls"
Do you yell "fire" or "four" before you trigger this weapon?
Fore.
And that's why my hovercraft is full of eels. I've had it with these motherfucking eels on this motherfucking hovercraft!
Or anyone who uses acronyms in conversation, particularly if they actually spell them out..."I mean, I was like, O-M-G! And she was all like, T-M-I!"
Neither of those is an acronym, they are just plain old abbreviations. You don't pronounce them as words like "omg" or "tmi".
Integrated Graphics SUCK.
Take Quake 3, for example. Using my old 64MB GeForce 4, I can pretty much nail the 999FPS barrier.
Now, take the onboard GeForce 6150, with 256MB of RAM. It can't pop more than 140FPS.
It has consistently been like this for at least a decade.
I believe your numbers, but my point is that there is a market for non-gaming systems. For lots of people including me, integrated graphics DO NOT SUCK.
The earlier point was also that integrated graphics "suck" by implementation, not any inherent qualities due to being integrated. It just happens that many people are happy with less graphics power (and the subsequent total silence and low power consumption), so it makes more sense to leave the gaming monsters as optional.
Integrated graphics aren't bad by design, just implementation.
Quite true.
This or better could be integrated, but instead what ends up as integrated graphics is the most bottom barrel POS that is barely capable of displaying a desktop wallpaper.
Actually, integrated Intel graphics are perfectly capable of nice 3D and video, just not the latest games. The older of my two Intel systems has a 855GME from around 2004, and it plays 720p H.264 and Tuxracer just fine. These days I mostly use the 3D capabilities for molecular visualization. I have also tested all the fancy desktop effects, though I do not like using them in practice.
Most importantly though, I like to use open source drivers without any extra hacks, meaning mainline Linux and Xorg. So I'm not really sure what I'm doing in a discussion about DX10 ;)
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