I find some old DOS games (emulated) unplayable because some key combinations won't register at all. For example, pressing one arrow key might not work, if another arrow key is already down. This seems to depend on both the keyboard and the motherboard though...
One parsec means a parallax of 1 arc second, so presumably 19 parsecs means a parallax of 19 arc seconds? No? OTOH, to me, last year was a heavy year, so in comparison, this year feels like a light year.
As a completely meaningless anecdote, I noticed that Core 2 Duo T7200 at 2.0 GHz is 70% faster than Core i5 M520 at 2.4 GHz, when benchmarking the Lucas-Lehmer test for Mersenne primes. I understand that this does not reflect the full, practical performance of either CPU model, and certainly says nothing about energy efficiency. (Both are 'mobile' processors though, and they run very cool and quiet, especially after undervolting.)
In other words, newer does not mean absolutely faster or otherwise better. One particular factor in hardware development is latency, which tends to stay quite same despite throughput improvements. For example, with DDR -> DDR2 -> DDR3 etc. the latency in clock cycles tends to increase in proportion with frequency, IOW the actual timed latency stays about the same.
"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never
understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only
becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher
throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" -
notice how the real issue was again about _latency_)." -- Linus Torvalds
IIRC, Playstation 2/3 had the ability to install another OS for tax reasons. In Europe, pure gaming machines had higher import duties than computers that could be used for "real work". This is a distinction I'd like to keep in some form, even if there are no tax reasons; the ability to install your own OS and software is a big deal for personal freedom.
First of all, I have used Gentoo since 2003 on all my machines.
"Os" is best for laptops as it includes most of the O2 performance features while sticking with a smaller footprint
I use -Os on my Buffalo NAS. The first one had 128 MB of RAM, and the current one has 256 MB, so they're not even considered embedded systems, but I still find them a little memory starved for some uses. But laptops? They are not exactly memory starved these days, and the binary size has little to do with overall footprint anyway.
(Seriously, people, I've wondered since about 1997 why you consider mechanically smaller machines somehow inferior. I do most of my so-called work on a laptop, and I have a nice Thinkpad with 8 GB of memory, which is more than any other of my machines. It also has the strongest CPU; the other machines have 'mobile' CPUs on 'desktop' motherboards, because I don't want to waste power just because it's plugged in.)
and use flags allow you to decide what features get compiled into the apps. Simply put, why install Gnome/KDE if you don't need them? This doesn't mean various apps can't be installed. For example, I've got a mix of GTK/QT apps - Firefox, Libre Office, QTWriter (notetab plus clone) along with Filezilla (GTK based) and all of them use Fluxbox as the WM (there are many choices).
This is a good point, but nothing specific to laptops or Gentoo. I use Fluxbox without a panel, because I want to see the application I use and nothing more. Virtual desktops are essential for this -- you focus on one thing at a time.
(Continuing on the more general rant, I think the whole point of computers is that they can deal with much more information than what can be immediately perceived. The so-called user-friendly interfaces try to show all possible choices at once, but it will look messy no matter how you put it. At the moment, I have a few machines compiling stuff and running various other processes -- I don't need a constant reminder of that, they can run fine on their own. Logically, the same goes for other processes on this machine.)
And who created the bitcoin software? We don't know but I'm sure they are having fun selling off coins they got for free to suckers who just finished eating their tulip bulbs.
And I'm sure you are having fun using tulip bulbs to send money across the globe. Bitcoins are a means of payment, not some silly collectables.
I've seen some situations where these shut-ins make money with online stuff. Usually it is low income, as you would expect, but some of them are actually accomplished traders or online gamblers. One or two are actually worth millions.
Would one of these millionaires, perchance, be Nakamoto Satoshi?
I just started doing some GPU programming and the change in thinking that it requires even for very simple things can be hard for programmers.
Except for Python/NumPy and Matlab programmers (and perhaps Fortran, idk, never used it).
Fortran had parallelizing compilers way, way before this "omg, dual core, we need to rethink everything about programming". I believe it was helped by the language's native matrix/array syntax. This is F90 and later though, earlier standards were horrible, and it's those that give Fortran a bad name even today.
Bitcoin mining is basically brute forcing SHA2 to find partial matches. If there are serious flaws with SHA2, finding them will likely have a lot to do with Bitcoin, but I can't see any consequences beyound that.
Of course, serious investors have already been hedging their bets with other cryptocurrencies that use different algorithms:D
My thoughts exactly. My first web server in 1998 was a laptop, and ever since I have wondered why 'desktop' components waste so much power compared to 'mobile' counterparts. Since 2003 my 'desktop' machines have been built with 'mobile' CPUs (Mini-ITX et al) and I keep asking this: why should a machine waste power willy-nilly just because it is plugged in? I also like the quiet of passively cooled CPUs (of course, other components like PSUs can be passively cooled).
Slashdot Mirror
Does he use "violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse" to get his wife and kids to do something?
I'm guessing he does not.
Well that's probably just because his wife is a karate champion.
I find some old DOS games (emulated) unplayable because some key combinations won't register at all. For example, pressing one arrow key might not work, if another arrow key is already down. This seems to depend on both the keyboard and the motherboard though...
It's interesting, because while you obviously need good technical skills, you also need some level of blind obedience.
Now excuse me while I go and bash some followers of the cult of Vi with my Model M.
That's great, considering there are only about 11 million BTC in existence.
I saw.
One parsec means a parallax of 1 arc second, so presumably 19 parsecs means a parallax of 19 arc seconds? No? OTOH, to me, last year was a heavy year, so in comparison, this year feels like a light year.
What if I have blue balls?
Skilled in intelligence platforms such as: ... HEX, SEX, LEXX, PECS.
I also listen to Hux Flux and read Henry Miller when I'm not driving my Lexus.
As a completely meaningless anecdote, I noticed that Core 2 Duo T7200 at 2.0 GHz is 70% faster than Core i5 M520 at 2.4 GHz, when benchmarking the Lucas-Lehmer test for Mersenne primes. I understand that this does not reflect the full, practical performance of either CPU model, and certainly says nothing about energy efficiency. (Both are 'mobile' processors though, and they run very cool and quiet, especially after undervolting.)
In other words, newer does not mean absolutely faster or otherwise better. One particular factor in hardware development is latency, which tends to stay quite same despite throughput improvements. For example, with DDR -> DDR2 -> DDR3 etc. the latency in clock cycles tends to increase in proportion with frequency, IOW the actual timed latency stays about the same.
"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" - notice how the real issue was again about _latency_)." -- Linus Torvalds
IIRC, Playstation 2/3 had the ability to install another OS for tax reasons. In Europe, pure gaming machines had higher import duties than computers that could be used for "real work". This is a distinction I'd like to keep in some form, even if there are no tax reasons; the ability to install your own OS and software is a big deal for personal freedom.
Hammer time.
Nice pun. I'm just wondering how the average Slashdotter will parse a correctly placed apostrophe...
"Os" is best for laptops as it includes most of the O2 performance features while sticking with a smaller footprint
I use -Os on my Buffalo NAS. The first one had 128 MB of RAM, and the current one has 256 MB, so they're not even considered embedded systems, but I still find them a little memory starved for some uses. But laptops? They are not exactly memory starved these days, and the binary size has little to do with overall footprint anyway.
(Seriously, people, I've wondered since about 1997 why you consider mechanically smaller machines somehow inferior. I do most of my so-called work on a laptop, and I have a nice Thinkpad with 8 GB of memory, which is more than any other of my machines. It also has the strongest CPU; the other machines have 'mobile' CPUs on 'desktop' motherboards, because I don't want to waste power just because it's plugged in.)
and use flags allow you to decide what features get compiled into the apps. Simply put, why install Gnome/KDE if you don't need them? This doesn't mean various apps can't be installed. For example, I've got a mix of GTK/QT apps - Firefox, Libre Office, QTWriter (notetab plus clone) along with Filezilla (GTK based) and all of them use Fluxbox as the WM (there are many choices).
This is a good point, but nothing specific to laptops or Gentoo. I use Fluxbox without a panel, because I want to see the application I use and nothing more. Virtual desktops are essential for this -- you focus on one thing at a time.
(Continuing on the more general rant, I think the whole point of computers is that they can deal with much more information than what can be immediately perceived. The so-called user-friendly interfaces try to show all possible choices at once, but it will look messy no matter how you put it. At the moment, I have a few machines compiling stuff and running various other processes -- I don't need a constant reminder of that, they can run fine on their own. Logically, the same goes for other processes on this machine.)
As an engineer, let me say, "I'll make my own laptop! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the laptop."
FTFY.
In _real_ languages like Ada and Verilog you can use the underscore as an optional thousand unit separator.
And who created the bitcoin software? We don't know but I'm sure they are having fun selling off coins they got for free to suckers who just finished eating their tulip bulbs.
And I'm sure you are having fun using tulip bulbs to send money across the globe. Bitcoins are a means of payment, not some silly collectables.
2) South Korea and Japan seem to have bee hotspots for years of bizarre, anti-social behavior. When they're not committing suicide.
Sounds a lot like Finland, with notably high suicide rate and all this tech like Linux, Nokia, MySQL, IRC, Angry Birds etc.
I've seen some situations where these shut-ins make money with online stuff. Usually it is low income, as you would expect, but some of them are actually accomplished traders or online gamblers. One or two are actually worth millions.
Would one of these millionaires, perchance, be Nakamoto Satoshi?
I just started doing some GPU programming and the change in thinking that it requires even for very simple things can be hard for programmers.
Except for Python/NumPy and Matlab programmers (and perhaps Fortran, idk, never used it).
Fortran had parallelizing compilers way, way before this "omg, dual core, we need to rethink everything about programming". I believe it was helped by the language's native matrix/array syntax. This is F90 and later though, earlier standards were horrible, and it's those that give Fortran a bad name even today.
See my homepage for a better version of "Th".
electric cars are not green
But I've painted my EV bright green, you insensitive clod!
In fact, I recently washed the car with some nice bright green detergent.
After all, as post-modernists tell us, there really is no "truth" anyway, it's whatever you choose to believe anyway.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
File not found. The cake is a lie.
Bitcoin mining is basically brute forcing SHA2 to find partial matches. If there are serious flaws with SHA2, finding them will likely have a lot to do with Bitcoin, but I can't see any consequences beyound that.
Of course, serious investors have already been hedging their bets with other cryptocurrencies that use different algorithms :D
My thoughts exactly. My first web server in 1998 was a laptop, and ever since I have wondered why 'desktop' components waste so much power compared to 'mobile' counterparts. Since 2003 my 'desktop' machines have been built with 'mobile' CPUs (Mini-ITX et al) and I keep asking this: why should a machine waste power willy-nilly just because it is plugged in? I also like the quiet of passively cooled CPUs (of course, other components like PSUs can be passively cooled).