If kids actually had parents these days (instead of being parented by a combination of TV, video games, flashy toys, edutainment-ware, and Net-Nanny), maybe we wouldn't have to rape the constitution to "protect the children".
Here's a thought, keep track of what little Johnie does on the computer etc. and when he does something you don't approve of, admonish him. Wow, shocking, who would have thought of such a revolutionary idea.
Here's another though, maybe you should kick Johnie out of the house and force him to play in the yard every now and then. If you're under 12 and you don't spend a lot of time outdoors messing around in the dirt, there's something wrong with you (IMO).
At first I was a bit befuzzled at this move. After all, the standard practice used to be to simply let the domain lapse and then make it available again (so that someone else could register it).
Now, why would NSI not want to do this? The reason is that if they let it lapse then they give up control over the registration of that domain. In other words, under the old system, if someone didn't pay their NSI bills, then when the domain lapsed, someone else (or the same person) could easily pick up the domain and register it at another registrar, such as register.com etc. By auctioning off the domains they retain total control over them and thus simultaneously snag potential business away from their competitors and gain a little extra cash (and publicity) in the process.
It's quite devious really, just the kind of thing I'd expect from NSI / VeriSign.
Sorry, I was a bit unclear there. What I meant was that an understanding of how to obtain a solution to the problem was not known. There are lot's of problems like that. For example, speech recognition / generation, many types of design optimization, etc. Problems where you know how to measure the quality of a solution, and where you maybe know roughly what one should look like, but you don't know how to specifically (and algorithmically) generate the optimal solution are prime targets for genetic algorithms.
A citizen's guide to the federal budget (pdf), in there you will find a break down of US government spending: 15% National Defense, 17% non-defense discretionary (this is stuff like the NASA budget, spending on dams, national parks, federally funded cancer research, etc., basically everything that's not an entitlement or national defense), 27% social security, 11% interest on the national debt, 11% medicare, 6% medicaid, 6% "other mandatory" (federal retirement and insurance, unemployment, farmer subsidies, etc.), 6% "other means-tested entitlements" (stuff like foodstamps, children's lunch programs, etc.), 6% reserve spending social security reform. Total spending, about 1.7 Trillion dollars.
In the last link you will also find: General science, space, and technology: 19 billion dollars ... National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 14 billion dollars.
Note that the US spends 10 times more on Medicare alone than it does on NASA.
Also, note that this doesn't take into account spending of any individual states, which includes a substantial amount of spending on various "helping humans stuff".
Now, what's really cool about this finding (and several others) is not that there's stuff that's identical to what we have on Earth in comets etc., but all this adds up to much higher chances for life coming into existence other places in the universe.
The three most important recent and/or semi-recent discoveries in this area are (IMO) the discovery that simple sugars exist in the interstellar medium, the discovery that asteroids contain salts, and the discovery (this is older) that comets contain amino acids. Put these things together and you get some INCREDIBLY interesting chemistry. Sugars and a phosphate salt form the backbone of nucleic acids (like DNA), sugars are a great source of energy as well as a great way to store it, simple strings of amino acids can do amazing things, when amino acid strings get long and complicated enough we call them proteins.
These discoveries show that the fundamental elements of the goo that is required for life to emerge is present throughout the universe and in fairly high abundance. This means that provided a good place to "stew" for a while (which may be rare, we do not fully know yet) the chances for life coming about are very high indeed.
Less than 50 years ago we had only a vague understanding of the factors that went into determing how rare / plentiful life and intelligent beings other than our own were in our universe. Now, we have narrowed down the ranges and gotten a good handle on most of these factors. A lot of this information has come in the last 5 to 10 years! There are now many more planets known to exist outside our good ol' Solar System than inside it, we now know of 2 other places inside our Solar System that have a good chance of being suitable places for life to exist, we know that almost any place that is suitable for life to exist on will most likely be deluged (relatively speaking) with the raw essence of the basics of life. This is truly an amazing time to be alive.
I hate the "let's settle everything here on Earth." line. It's lame. First off we never will settle everything here on Earth, nor should that be our main concern. If we concentrate solely on survival, making sure every human on planet Earth is well-fed, clothed, and safe from danger. What have we become? What would we give up for this? Our art? Our exploration of the unknown? Our soul? That which makes us human and not animal? Second, far more money is spent on wellfare, social security, medicare, medicaid, unemployment, and other social services than are spent on space exploration. In fact, the amount of money spent by the US government every year on "helping humans on planet Earth" is probably far more than has EVER been spent on space exploration, including the Apollo program.
Currently there is a little robotic spaceraft orbiting Mars. This spacecraft is called the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). It cost about as much to build, send to Mars, and operate as 1 or 2 top of the line fighter jets. It's entire cost is less than one dollor for every person in the United States (this is not on a yearly basis, this is a fixed one time cost that pays for the entire multi-year mission of MGS). Personally I think this is a very small investment for something that gives us so much information about the majesty and diversity of even our little corner of the universe, what the chances for life are in the rest of the universe, and even what it means to be human.
If you won't give your dollar entrance fee to this great exploration (actually it's more like half a dollar), then I'll gladly take up your share.
Additionally, I would like to point out that we do not need a moon base, a space station, warp drive, flux capacitors, or what-all to get to Mars. There are very good designs that can allow us to send humans to Mars for well under 40 billion dollars (US). This seems like a lot of money, but keep in mind that this is the whole cost (including adjustments for expected cost overruns, etc., worked out over over the length of such a program, this comes to less than 4 billion dollars per year) and it pays for over a decade of exploration (and many person-years of people actually living on and exploring Mars!). The US spends somewhere near 300 billion dollars every year on defense, and over 1 trillion dollars every year on social security etc.
I think this is an important point and I haven't seen anybody make it yet.
Games for consoles rarely (if ever) come in big boxes and are often just a cd in a jewel case with a booklet. Even cartridge based games have very small packaging. A lot of console games are expensive (anywhere from 30 bucks to 80 bucks for a new high quality game), yet people don't seem to be put off by their small packaging.
If only there were SOME way to do solve this problem. Perhaps an all-star research team / think tank with a blank check could come up with some sort of workable solution within the next decade.
Or.....it occurs to me that software is distributed mostly in CD format. Maybe (and I'm just reaching into blue sky here) they could use the magnetic anti-theft strips they use for CD's and DVD's for software too. I dunno, it's wacky and untested and all kinds of crazy but it just...might...work.
-Security (A server with important information located off-site can be exactly the kind of thing that keeps you up at night. Make sure the ISP has good security, and develop your own security procedures and systems as well.)
-Access (Make sure that you can visit your server(s) whenever you choose, not just during some restricted "visiting hours").
-Reliability (Do they have good power? Do you have a big enough UPS there? Do they have more than one connection to the net? How often are they "down" from the net? Are their routers high quality? Even 1% packet loss can be annoying (and bad for your business or interest) as hell.
-Service (If you call them up and tell them to reboot your server will they do it? Will they call you if your server goes down? If they have a problem with their internal network will they be responsive in fixing it quickly?)
You really need to get a good hold on all of your concerns, needs, as well as an understanding of important eventualities (i.e. how do you detect the server going down? what is the plan when that happens? etc.). Once you have all that down, organize it, group it, prioritize it, and then pick the ISP that gives you what you need.
I think we pretty much knew that a lot of nations (notably China) don't allow much online freedom. It's still better than Myanmar though, where the unlicensed ownership of a modem usually results in a several year stay in prison.
This may be useful in a niche way, but I don't see it really making inroads on the big boys. Jpeg, jpeg2000, and flash/shockwave are going to be all the multimedia necessary for websites in the present and in the foreseable future. Animated gifs are soo old school that they are almost embarassing, typically are vastly overused and tend to detract from the aesthetics and usability of a site. I have seen very few sites that use animated gifs in a useful or even artistic / cool way, whereas I have seen many that use flash and javascript and standard html in very cool ways that enhance usability (though, of course, the use of flash and other elements of "chrome" does not necessarily make a site better).
The sheer number of people that risk (for example) climbing mount everest is quite amazing (even despite the large fee (I think it's about 40k USD) simply for the privelidge of being able to climb the mountain).
Similarly, people do lots of crazy things. Don't forget how many different teams that attempted to fly around the Earth in a balloon. Each one of those attempts cost many millions of dollars and all of them contained a very substantial risk of death. Nevertheless, they continued unabated until someone finally did it.
CPU's certainly chew up their fair share of battery life, but I would look toward that large lush active matrix backlit LCD for the reason your battery life is so low. Also, don't forget about those hard drives, they suck power like nobody's business.
ugh, it's distressing how often I am reminded of the usefullness of setting my threshold at 2.
Anywho, the reported 2 watts of power is most likely the minimum amount of power the cpu can consume (following the long tradition of hardware and software manufacturers reporting numbers that are theoretically important but have little bearing on average performance/usage and are often misleading). The Intel (and as far as I know, just about every other CPU manufacturer other than Transmeta) power conservation design is very very clunky (bordering on bletcherous) which is vaguely analagous to running a car for a short period and then coasting in order to decrease gas usage. Transmeta's design, on the other hand, is much more elegant and thoughtfull. More important is the ability of the Transmeta chips to fine tune power usage for any particular application (running at the lowest speed appropriate). Relating to the example above, this would be like running at 25 mph instead of alternating between coasting and 80 mph.
Transmeta's design is not only superior and on average more likely to use less electrical power (and consequently generate less heat), but is also easier on the processor (preserving lifetime, not that that matters anymore), and in general provides for a "nicer" interface between the CPU and other components (for example, a processor that is running slower, but is nevertheless always on, responds to external interrupts better and more reliably).
On a side note, I'm really waiting for RSFQ technology (Rapid Single Flux Quantum logic / memory, which (BTW) requires superconductors so I'll probably not see it anytime soon) which uses so little power that you should be able to operate in the 1 teraflops range using less than a tenth of a watt.
Yes, I have noticed this as well. The main problem (IMO) seems to be that the foundational model of modern OS's and software was developed in a time when system security was not a nearly as important a concern as just getting things working. This is especially evident with Unix and it's (seeming) general concept that everyone can be trusted (witness setuid and setgid programs, etc.).
Additionally, I think there is something else at work. Or actually a compination of three things. One is the concept of the "application" as a semi-monolithic structure (even under the "unix ideology). The second is the total lack of distinction between user activities. rm -rf *, ls -l, and/bin/newfs/dev/sd1a are equal in the eyes of the operating system, requiring no higher level of authentication or extra levels of protection for actions that are clearly of more import and heavier consequences. The third is the lack of a clear understanding for what has ultimate control over "the system". You almost always see a competition between software and operating systems as to which one is the master. A comfortable level of security will not be reached until an OS design finally lays down the law for the programs and the users and brings some intelligent design to system security.
It's an infinite loop if you read it like a moron. It's not a simple program, it uses the English language (which is not programmatic). People understand that the word "repeat" applies to the first two instructions and not the "repeat" itself. If this were the meaning, it would read "repeat indefinitely". Clearly the fact that people understand what it means (in English) is an indication that the concept of it being a "infinite loop" is simply nonsensical.
FFT should be much higher, it is so very very useful and important.
The Fortran compiler??? Is this a joke?
Where are the compression algorithms? LZW, Wavelets, etc. Where are the error correction algorithms?!
Compression, error correction, and the FFT are like the holy trinity of modern computing. Everything from CD's DVD's and spacecraft orbiting Mars and Jupiter use compression and error correction. How could they deny the importance of sheer power of these algorithms?!
So, does this mean that AOL should be broken up too? into:
1. Software (Netscape, ICQ, Nullsoft) 2. Internet & Media (TimeWarner Cable, AOL ISP, etc.)
Or Apple:
1. OSes 2. Hardware development (Firewire, PowerPC, etc.) 3. Hardware maker (mice, motherboards, etc.) 4. OEM (Computer assembly) 5. Development tools (whatever ungodly creations Apple has in this arena) 6. Applications (Quicktime, etc.) 7. ISP (oh wait, that completely failed a long time ago, never mind)
First off, mr. "we started this whole thing but now we're not sure we like where it's headed" decides that maybe it won't be such a good idea to stick it to "the man" (aka Billy). If IE defeated Netscape before through roughly equal technology and careful placement (and a better business plan), it will certainly clobber the hell out of Netscape now that it is adrift and barely able to get new versions of its browser released (except maybe with massive efforts by Open Source workers).
Secondly, isn't it interesting now that we hear someone from Netscape saying "competition is bad"? Is Netscape so weak and behind the curve that they fear healthy competition in areas where they are the de facto monopoly (like Linux)? I think the answer is clearly yes. Hmmm, I for one am reminded of the pot and the kettle.
Heh, if you only took a week to learn all of perl then I'd hate to see the code you write. To learn a language well requires experience dealing with it, and that will always take time and effort.
I think more accurately it would be called a "limitation that may be useful under some circumstances". Sure it's annoying to miss a brace here and there, but properly formatted code makes that easy to spot. And sometimes the standard formatting is not the best choice. Occasionally putting the statement and the control structure on the same line helps if both are small (such as a big block of else-ifs with really short "blocks" for each case). Limiting what you can do to prevent you from doing something "wrong" seems to be very popular, but I prefer freedom. That's one of the reasons why perl is so popular. Perl doesn't have the anal retentive idea that it needs to be orthogonal or that it needs to force you not to do things that may or may not be stupid.
when I go into the shop I don't want to play with nerf tools and plastic scissors, I want a table saw, I want a grinder, I want a stick welder, I want a sledge hammer, I want a hack saw, I want a drill press, I want real tools. And yes, these things can be dangerous, but they are also enormously powerful. If you can't work with the tools without cutting off your thumb perhaps you should take up embroidery.
Ummm, how exactly does one supercomputer that costs over a million dollars (US) that performs at the same level as a collection of computers that costs a few 10's of thousands of dollars metamorphose into "better price"? Sure if you have the money to burn, go custom. But most of the computing projects out there do not require that kind of "big iron" and couldn't even afford it if they did. Besides, most of the time (unless you are in the DoD or NSA or such-like) you only end up with a small slice of that "big iron" which may or may not be roughly equivalent to being able to run your proggies on a computer that is all yours 24/7.
Also, it sounds like you're arguing about ASICs vs. CPU's which is not what this is about at all. ASICs obviously are enormously useful (witness their vast dominance in the market), but it has nothing to do with whether or not you buy some custom supercomuter from SGI or build one yourself out of PCs and ethernet cabling for a fraction of the cost.
Secondly, that's "theoretical peak performance", otherwise known as the "guaranteed not to exceed" performance. On their highly specialized code it'll probably do ok, but on other calculations I'd be surprised if it got 10% of that speed, especially if a lot of cross-node communication is occuring. Don't forget, this is not a general purpose computer, it's like a really really big math co-processor that is optimized to run a very very specific type of program fairly well.
That ain't very fast. I think general purpose computation is seriously kicking ass in the supercomputer arena. Not because it's faster, but because it is so much cheaper and yet still performance competitive. Even a few million dollars for a supercomputer pretty much limits their use to the most important projects capable. It also tends to force them into a "time lease" model where everybody shares the supercomputer time and you need to go through a lengthy process of application selection to get your measely share of computer time. Networked supercomputers using off the shelf hardware and free software (on the other hand) are well within many research budgets and can be bought and used solely by one group 24/7 for whatever they see fit. Giving them much more time to debug their code as well as run their calculations and gain more detailed / accurate / more complete results.
The custom design ultra high performance on the order of a teraflops machines will still have their place at the top of the pile crunching stuff like quantum chromo-dynamics, simulated nuke blasts, and what-not, but the land of the middle of the line custom built number crunchers (from SGI, Sun, IBM, etc.) is quickly eroding.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a thought, keep track of what little Johnie does on the computer etc. and when he does something you don't approve of, admonish him. Wow, shocking, who would have thought of such a revolutionary idea.
Here's another though, maybe you should kick Johnie out of the house and force him to play in the yard every now and then. If you're under 12 and you don't spend a lot of time outdoors messing around in the dirt, there's something wrong with you (IMO).
Now, why would NSI not want to do this? The reason is that if they let it lapse then they give up control over the registration of that domain. In other words, under the old system, if someone didn't pay their NSI bills, then when the domain lapsed, someone else (or the same person) could easily pick up the domain and register it at another registrar, such as register.com etc. By auctioning off the domains they retain total control over them and thus simultaneously snag potential business away from their competitors and gain a little extra cash (and publicity) in the process.
It's quite devious really, just the kind of thing I'd expect from NSI / VeriSign.
Sorry, I was a bit unclear there. What I meant was that an understanding of how to obtain a solution to the problem was not known. There are lot's of problems like that. For example, speech recognition / generation, many types of design optimization, etc. Problems where you know how to measure the quality of a solution, and where you maybe know roughly what one should look like, but you don't know how to specifically (and algorithmically) generate the optimal solution are prime targets for genetic algorithms.
The FY 2000 Federal Budget of the US
A citizen's guide to the federal budget (pdf), in there you will find a break down of US government spending: 15% National Defense, 17% non-defense discretionary (this is stuff like the NASA budget, spending on dams, national parks, federally funded cancer research, etc., basically everything that's not an entitlement or national defense), 27% social security, 11% interest on the national debt, 11% medicare, 6% medicaid, 6% "other mandatory" (federal retirement and insurance, unemployment, farmer subsidies, etc.), 6% "other means-tested entitlements" (stuff like foodstamps, children's lunch programs, etc.), 6% reserve spending social security reform. Total spending, about 1.7 Trillion dollars.
In the last link you will also find:
...
General science, space, and technology: 19 billion dollars
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 14 billion dollars.
Note that the US spends 10 times more on Medicare alone than it does on NASA.
Also, note that this doesn't take into account spending of any individual states, which includes a substantial amount of spending on various "helping humans stuff".
hehe, btw, nice ascii schematics
Now, what's really cool about this finding (and several others) is not that there's stuff that's identical to what we have on Earth in comets etc., but all this adds up to much higher chances for life coming into existence other places in the universe.
The three most important recent and/or semi-recent discoveries in this area are (IMO) the discovery that simple sugars exist in the interstellar medium, the discovery that asteroids contain salts, and the discovery (this is older) that comets contain amino acids. Put these things together and you get some INCREDIBLY interesting chemistry. Sugars and a phosphate salt form the backbone of nucleic acids (like DNA), sugars are a great source of energy as well as a great way to store it, simple strings of amino acids can do amazing things, when amino acid strings get long and complicated enough we call them proteins.
These discoveries show that the fundamental elements of the goo that is required for life to emerge is present throughout the universe and in fairly high abundance. This means that provided a good place to "stew" for a while (which may be rare, we do not fully know yet) the chances for life coming about are very high indeed.
Less than 50 years ago we had only a vague understanding of the factors that went into determing how rare / plentiful life and intelligent beings other than our own were in our universe. Now, we have narrowed down the ranges and gotten a good handle on most of these factors. A lot of this information has come in the last 5 to 10 years! There are now many more planets known to exist outside our good ol' Solar System than inside it, we now know of 2 other places inside our Solar System that have a good chance of being suitable places for life to exist, we know that almost any place that is suitable for life to exist on will most likely be deluged (relatively speaking) with the raw essence of the basics of life. This is truly an amazing time to be alive.
I hate the "let's settle everything here on Earth." line. It's lame. First off we never will settle everything here on Earth, nor should that be our main concern. If we concentrate solely on survival, making sure every human on planet Earth is well-fed, clothed, and safe from danger. What have we become? What would we give up for this? Our art? Our exploration of the unknown? Our soul? That which makes us human and not animal? Second, far more money is spent on wellfare, social security, medicare, medicaid, unemployment, and other social services than are spent on space exploration. In fact, the amount of money spent by the US government every year on "helping humans on planet Earth" is probably far more than has EVER been spent on space exploration, including the Apollo program.
Currently there is a little robotic spaceraft orbiting Mars. This spacecraft is called the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). It cost about as much to build, send to Mars, and operate as 1 or 2 top of the line fighter jets. It's entire cost is less than one dollor for every person in the United States (this is not on a yearly basis, this is a fixed one time cost that pays for the entire multi-year mission of MGS). Personally I think this is a very small investment for something that gives us so much information about the majesty and diversity of even our little corner of the universe, what the chances for life are in the rest of the universe, and even what it means to be human.
If you won't give your dollar entrance fee to this great exploration (actually it's more like half a dollar), then I'll gladly take up your share.
Additionally, I would like to point out that we do not need a moon base, a space station, warp drive, flux capacitors, or what-all to get to Mars. There are very good designs that can allow us to send humans to Mars for well under 40 billion dollars (US). This seems like a lot of money, but keep in mind that this is the whole cost (including adjustments for expected cost overruns, etc., worked out over over the length of such a program, this comes to less than 4 billion dollars per year) and it pays for over a decade of exploration (and many person-years of people actually living on and exploring Mars!). The US spends somewhere near 300 billion dollars every year on defense, and over 1 trillion dollars every year on social security etc.
Games for consoles rarely (if ever) come in big boxes and are often just a cd in a jewel case with a booklet. Even cartridge based games have very small packaging. A lot of console games are expensive (anywhere from 30 bucks to 80 bucks for a new high quality game), yet people don't seem to be put off by their small packaging.
Or.....it occurs to me that software is distributed mostly in CD format. Maybe (and I'm just reaching into blue sky here) they could use the magnetic anti-theft strips they use for CD's and DVD's for software too. I dunno, it's wacky and untested and all kinds of crazy but it just...might...work.
-Bandwidth (and lots of it)
-Security (A server with important information located off-site can be exactly the kind of thing that keeps you up at night. Make sure the ISP has good security, and develop your own security procedures and systems as well.)
-Access (Make sure that you can visit your server(s) whenever you choose, not just during some restricted "visiting hours").
-Reliability (Do they have good power? Do you have a big enough UPS there? Do they have more than one connection to the net? How often are they "down" from the net? Are their routers high quality? Even 1% packet loss can be annoying (and bad for your business or interest) as hell.
-Service (If you call them up and tell them to reboot your server will they do it? Will they call you if your server goes down? If they have a problem with their internal network will they be responsive in fixing it quickly?)
You really need to get a good hold on all of your concerns, needs, as well as an understanding of important eventualities (i.e. how do you detect the server going down? what is the plan when that happens? etc.). Once you have all that down, organize it, group it, prioritize it, and then pick the ISP that gives you what you need.
I think we pretty much knew that a lot of nations (notably China) don't allow much online freedom. It's still better than Myanmar though, where the unlicensed ownership of a modem usually results in a several year stay in prison.
This may be useful in a niche way, but I don't see it really making inroads on the big boys. Jpeg, jpeg2000, and flash/shockwave are going to be all the multimedia necessary for websites in the present and in the foreseable future. Animated gifs are soo old school that they are almost embarassing, typically are vastly overused and tend to detract from the aesthetics and usability of a site. I have seen very few sites that use animated gifs in a useful or even artistic / cool way, whereas I have seen many that use flash and javascript and standard html in very cool ways that enhance usability (though, of course, the use of flash and other elements of "chrome" does not necessarily make a site better).
The sheer number of people that risk (for example) climbing mount everest is quite amazing (even despite the large fee (I think it's about 40k USD) simply for the privelidge of being able to climb the mountain).
Similarly, people do lots of crazy things. Don't forget how many different teams that attempted to fly around the Earth in a balloon. Each one of those attempts cost many millions of dollars and all of them contained a very substantial risk of death. Nevertheless, they continued unabated until someone finally did it.
CPU's certainly chew up their fair share of battery life, but I would look toward that large lush active matrix backlit LCD for the reason your battery life is so low. Also, don't forget about those hard drives, they suck power like nobody's business.
Anywho, the reported 2 watts of power is most likely the minimum amount of power the cpu can consume (following the long tradition of hardware and software manufacturers reporting numbers that are theoretically important but have little bearing on average performance/usage and are often misleading). The Intel (and as far as I know, just about every other CPU manufacturer other than Transmeta) power conservation design is very very clunky (bordering on bletcherous) which is vaguely analagous to running a car for a short period and then coasting in order to decrease gas usage. Transmeta's design, on the other hand, is much more elegant and thoughtfull. More important is the ability of the Transmeta chips to fine tune power usage for any particular application (running at the lowest speed appropriate). Relating to the example above, this would be like running at 25 mph instead of alternating between coasting and 80 mph.
Transmeta's design is not only superior and on average more likely to use less electrical power (and consequently generate less heat), but is also easier on the processor (preserving lifetime, not that that matters anymore), and in general provides for a "nicer" interface between the CPU and other components (for example, a processor that is running slower, but is nevertheless always on, responds to external interrupts better and more reliably).
On a side note, I'm really waiting for RSFQ technology (Rapid Single Flux Quantum logic / memory, which (BTW) requires superconductors so I'll probably not see it anytime soon) which uses so little power that you should be able to operate in the 1 teraflops range using less than a tenth of a watt.
FIRST POST!
"Hello, Dr. Falken
Would you like to play a game?"
It needs higher level access. THE WOZ RULES!
That sounds like a Red Hat versus Slackware debate. They're just script kiddies.
Additionally, I think there is something else at work. Or actually a compination of three things. One is the concept of the "application" as a semi-monolithic structure (even under the "unix ideology). The second is the total lack of distinction between user activities. rm -rf *, ls -l, and /bin/newfs /dev/sd1a are equal in the eyes of the operating system, requiring no higher level of authentication or extra levels of protection for actions that are clearly of more import and heavier consequences. The third is the lack of a clear understanding for what has ultimate control over "the system". You almost always see a competition between software and operating systems as to which one is the master. A comfortable level of security will not be reached until an OS design finally lays down the law for the programs and the users and brings some intelligent design to system security.
It's an infinite loop if you read it like a moron. It's not a simple program, it uses the English language (which is not programmatic). People understand that the word "repeat" applies to the first two instructions and not the "repeat" itself. If this were the meaning, it would read "repeat indefinitely". Clearly the fact that people understand what it means (in English) is an indication that the concept of it being a "infinite loop" is simply nonsensical.
FFT should be much higher, it is so very very useful and important.
The Fortran compiler??? Is this a joke?
Where are the compression algorithms? LZW, Wavelets, etc. Where are the error correction algorithms?!
Compression, error correction, and the FFT are like the holy trinity of modern computing. Everything from CD's DVD's and spacecraft orbiting Mars and Jupiter use compression and error correction. How could they deny the importance of sheer power of these algorithms?!
1. Software (Netscape, ICQ, Nullsoft)
2. Internet & Media (TimeWarner Cable, AOL ISP, etc.)
Or Apple:
1. OSes
2. Hardware development (Firewire, PowerPC, etc.)
3. Hardware maker (mice, motherboards, etc.)
4. OEM (Computer assembly)
5. Development tools (whatever ungodly creations Apple has in this arena)
6. Applications (Quicktime, etc.)
7. ISP (oh wait, that completely failed a long time ago, never mind)
Secondly, isn't it interesting now that we hear someone from Netscape saying "competition is bad"? Is Netscape so weak and behind the curve that they fear healthy competition in areas where they are the de facto monopoly (like Linux)? I think the answer is clearly yes. Hmmm, I for one am reminded of the pot and the kettle.
Heh, if you only took a week to learn all of perl then I'd hate to see the code you write. To learn a language well requires experience dealing with it, and that will always take time and effort.
when I go into the shop I don't want to play with nerf tools and plastic scissors, I want a table saw, I want a grinder, I want a stick welder, I want a sledge hammer, I want a hack saw, I want a drill press, I want real tools. And yes, these things can be dangerous, but they are also enormously powerful. If you can't work with the tools without cutting off your thumb perhaps you should take up embroidery.
Also, it sounds like you're arguing about ASICs vs. CPU's which is not what this is about at all. ASICs obviously are enormously useful (witness their vast dominance in the market), but it has nothing to do with whether or not you buy some custom supercomuter from SGI or build one yourself out of PCs and ethernet cabling for a fraction of the cost.
Secondly, that's "theoretical peak performance", otherwise known as the "guaranteed not to exceed" performance. On their highly specialized code it'll probably do ok, but on other calculations I'd be surprised if it got 10% of that speed, especially if a lot of cross-node communication is occuring. Don't forget, this is not a general purpose computer, it's like a really really big math co-processor that is optimized to run a very very specific type of program fairly well.
The custom design ultra high performance on the order of a teraflops machines will still have their place at the top of the pile crunching stuff like quantum chromo-dynamics, simulated nuke blasts, and what-not, but the land of the middle of the line custom built number crunchers (from SGI, Sun, IBM, etc.) is quickly eroding.