These are big, but not even close to the largest crystals ever found. Charles Panache (American Mineralogist, v. 17, p. 362, 1932) compiled some then-largest known crystals, including a spodumene 42 feet long. More recent articles have extended the maximum size.
By the way, someone mentioned pegmatites; it would be very unlikely to get selenite crystals in a pegmatite.
Actually, which one wins depends on the problem. AppleSeed at UCLA Physics has performance comparisons. If the task can be separated into discrete subproblems, then the G4s do a pretty good job. The main difference is in the inter-CPU communication speed (much slower on the G4 cluster).
Unfortunately, it's not like there's a good base list out there that could be used as a seed.
Let me suggest (hopefully without getting flamed) Apple'siReview. They supposedly have teams of people working on listing decent sites. Of course, a list of "bad" sites would still have to be compiled somehow, but the iReview list is a start...
AppleSeed is cheaper, easier to set up and run, and potentially faster (on Mac OS 8 & 9 due to cooperative multitasking) than Beowulf. There is no reason it should not translate over to Mac OS X, as all the underpinnings will be there in OS X. Note that the preemptive multitasking will result in poorer performance on OS X than on Mac OS 9, given the same hardware.
It seems to me that we can't so "something legal" about UCITA until it gets into the courts and that means breaking contracts that rely on UCITA until somebody can be a test case, get ACLU support, and kill the damn thing in court.
Duke Nukem(r) is the most putrid, pestilential piece of fecal matter that was ever spewed forth from that pus-filled boil of a software developer, Apogee(r).
I risk a great deal, I realize, by posting without complete knowledge of the subject, but here goes:
My understanding is that Linux is preemptively-multitasked, so that one process cannot monopolize the processor. This, to my mind, does not lend itself well to a problem where you want the CPU spending all of it's time calculating the answer to some question (e.g. global climate change), rather than listening to the network, etc.
One advantage of the AppleSeed project running on MacOS 9.x is that with cooperative multitasking, the program can monopolize the CPU if it wants to.
Doesn't this make MacOS9 better than linux for this type of clustered-CPU-supercomputer? (Of course, differences in hardware may compensate for the differences in multitasking models)
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By the way, someone mentioned pegmatites; it would be very unlikely to get selenite crystals in a pegmatite.
-Dave Hirsch, UT Austin, Ph.D. Geology
-Dave
Unfortunately, it's not like there's a good base list out there that could be used as a seed.
Let me suggest (hopefully without getting flamed) Apple's iReview. They supposedly have teams of people working on listing decent sites. Of course, a list of "bad" sites would still have to be compiled somehow, but the iReview list is a start...
is here. A set of screen captures is also included, which although easily fakeable, argue against this being a "mole hunt" as others have suggested.
AppleSeed is cheaper, easier to set up and run, and potentially faster (on Mac OS 8 & 9 due to cooperative multitasking) than Beowulf. There is no reason it should not translate over to Mac OS X, as all the underpinnings will be there in OS X. Note that the preemptive multitasking will result in poorer performance on OS X than on Mac OS 9, given the same hardware.
It seems to me that we can't so "something legal" about UCITA until it gets into the courts and that means breaking contracts that rely on UCITA until somebody can be a test case, get ACLU support, and kill the damn thing in court.
Okay, lawyers, Come get some(r).
Previewed, but missed the subject typo. Dammit!
My understanding is that Linux is preemptively-multitasked, so that one process cannot monopolize the processor. This, to my mind, does not lend itself well to a problem where you want the CPU spending all of it's time calculating the answer to some question (e.g. global climate change), rather than listening to the network, etc.
One advantage of the AppleSeed project running on MacOS 9.x is that with cooperative multitasking, the program can monopolize the CPU if it wants to.
Doesn't this make MacOS9 better than linux for this type of clustered-CPU-supercomputer? (Of course, differences in hardware may compensate for the differences in multitasking models)