"Splendid Isolation" is what you call your Imperial system, right?
One foot is 0.3048 meters.
1128m (this new tower)
452m (Petronas Twin, Kuala Lumpur)
321m (Eiffel Tower)
244m (Canary Wharf, London)
137m (London Eye)
10 billion should be $7 billion - but as a non-native speaker, I'm always confused with the million/billion trickery - so I might be off some 1,000 times;-)
Sidebar near picture: tower predicted to oscillate nearly 2.4m at its summit, structure to rest on 914m wide concrete base.
Altavista's Metricfish said:
UNLIKE the Great Wall, it would not be seen from space. But a 1128m Bionic Tower that China's leaders are considering building may come to rival the wall as a feat of human engineering and symbol of national might.
Officials in the teeming port city of Shanghai are discussing plans to tackle urban overcrowding by creating a 300-storey home for 100,000 people. Its European designers describe it as a "vertical city".
The concrete, metal and glass tower, costing about $7 billion, would be 43m higher than Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales, and would contain hotels, offices, cinemas and hospitals.
Dwarfing Kuala Lumpur's twin Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings at 452m high, it would be set in a gigantic, wheel-shaped base incorporating shopping malls and car parks.
The Spanish architects envisage 368 lifts, with the journey from bottom to top taking less than two minutes. Water and energy would be transported along 92 vertical columns.
"Of course, we'd all like to live in a house on the beach, but Shanghai's population is expected to reach 30m over the next four to five decades," said Professor Javier Pioz, the head of the team that designed the Bionic Tower. "We need a new way of conquering vertical space."
Pioz has created a root-like system of foundations that would descend 200m, surrounded by an artificial lake to absorb vibrations caused by any earth tremors. The top of the tower is predicted to oscillate by a maximum of nearly 2.4m, as much as the Empire State Building in New York but so slowly that it would not be perceptible to inhabitants.
People would be banned from opening the windows of their apartments, but could breathe fresh air on concourses thanks to openings in the outer glass and aluminium shell.
They would live on 12 levels and although some people would move in as soon as the first level was completed it would be 15 years before the building work above them finally stopped.
The designers have met Xu Kuangdi, the mayor of Shanghai, and urban planners, who have indicated a willingness to proceed and have set up a group to consider possible sites and how to meet the cost from both private and public funds.
Marco Goldschmied, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said the project could herald a much-needed new way of thinking about urban sprawl in China, which is already building the equivalent of 600 cities the size of Bristol. In Shanghai alone 10 new districts are expected to be built over the next five years, each big enough to house 100,000 people.
"If you can send a man to the moon you can certainly build a tower for 100,000 people," said Goldschmied. He hoped the project would form a blueprint for future developments that would help preserve the environment.
However, he added a warning: "The main pitfall is the towering inferno scenario - what happens if fire breaks out? It could be the ultimate disaster. Imagine 100,000 people suffocating. And you'd have to organise the place pretty well to stop people feeling like rats in a cage."
Pioz says the risk of fire has been taken into account, with sealed compartments built in to act like fire doors. People escaping from a fire on one level would need to flee only 40 yards away, upwards or downwards, to the closest safe area, he said.
"When the Eiffel Tower was built, many people said it was too dangerous - they wanted to kill Mr Eiffel. But it's still standing."
Last month I spent a whole evening searching for former classmates. I had my yearbook (1988) with lists of names, some of them common, some of them uncommon. I did not find any of them.
So the answer is: "certain people". This might be hard for us geeks, but the Internet is still a separate world, where you'll find some things, and won't find others.
Gee - that could not have been done worse. They actually make the 1 processor kernel with ``make bzImage'', and the (so called) dual processor with ``make clean; make -j3 bzImage''.
This suggests that they made a kernel on the same system before, and try to ``undo'' the make.
This is stupid. Why? Because:
they did not run a ``make dep''. This means the so-called ``single processor compile'' (which it is not!) is set back several seconds (make dep takes 40 seconds on my SMP Celeron 466).
The SMP version can take advantage of this, as ``make clean'' does not need ``make dep'' anymore. (AFAIK).
``make -j3'' is *not* the same as ``testing an SMP compile''.
If they really wanted a single vs. dual processor kernel compile test, they should have started with two real kernels, one for uniprocessor, one for SMP.
Then make a ``test config''.config-file, for example with ``cp arch/i386/defconfig.config; make oldconfig'' (and press a couple of enters). Copy this file to ``Testconfig'' or something.
Now start the system with the single processor kernel and run the following:
make mrproper; cp Testconfig.config; make oldconfig; make dep; time make -j$N bzImage
... for $N being 1-3. Write down results. This is the ``single processor'' kernel compile time. The ``make mrproper'' makes sure there is no garbage left (another, even better, way of testing would be unpacking a new kernel source tree for every test).
Now reboot the system and run the dual processor kernel. Recompile, with -j$N maybe going up to 4 or 5 or so.
Now *that* is something that comes close to a benchmark.
The article talks the old tale of ``Microsoft Linux'' hitting the market. I see no point in that. If Microsoft finally delivers an OS that is well documented, has a file system that has a directory structure with a (kind of a) clue and can be extended and changed easily: good. Really, great.
But they can't possibly port the ``Win32 API'' (if there is such a thing, which is highly theoretical, IMHO) to Linux. They will have some sort of Wine-like interface, or maybe even have a Win32 layer that runs the Linux stuff.
Also, Microsoft would have a hard time not getting their own software polluted with GPL'ed sources.
This would not work. Microsoft is a license-selling company. They sell middle of the road software to John Doe. Office did not change much since version 6.0. Neither did the 16-bit Windos since version 95. Basically it's all the same stuff with new marketing. They only get away with it because they do marketing.
Now suppose IBM starts marketing for the Open Source. (They will, some time).
What would MS Linux add? That it can run Office, the great proprietary Office Suite that costs $400? That you can run the proprietary IIS on Linux now? That you get Linux with Innovation?
Proprietary software is hard to maintain, hard to interface to and hard to manage. ''MS Linux'' will not change that.
Slashdot Mirror
One foot is 0.3048 meters.
1128m (this new tower)
452m (Petronas Twin, Kuala Lumpur)
321m (Eiffel Tower)
244m (Canary Wharf, London)
137m (London Eye)
10 billion should be $7 billion - but as a non-native speaker, I'm always confused with the million/billion trickery - so I might be off some 1,000 times ;-)
Sidebar near picture: tower predicted to oscillate nearly 2.4m at its summit, structure to rest on 914m wide concrete base.
Altavista's Metricfish said: UNLIKE the Great Wall, it would not be seen from space. But a 1128m Bionic Tower that China's leaders are considering building may come to rival the wall as a feat of human engineering and symbol of national might.
Officials in the teeming port city of Shanghai are discussing plans to tackle urban overcrowding by creating a 300-storey home for 100,000 people. Its European designers describe it as a "vertical city".
The concrete, metal and glass tower, costing about $7 billion, would be 43m higher than Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales, and would contain hotels, offices, cinemas and hospitals.
Dwarfing Kuala Lumpur's twin Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings at 452m high, it would be set in a gigantic, wheel-shaped base incorporating shopping malls and car parks. The Spanish architects envisage 368 lifts, with the journey from bottom to top taking less than two minutes. Water and energy would be transported along 92 vertical columns.
"Of course, we'd all like to live in a house on the beach, but Shanghai's population is expected to reach 30m over the next four to five decades," said Professor Javier Pioz, the head of the team that designed the Bionic Tower. "We need a new way of conquering vertical space."
Pioz has created a root-like system of foundations that would descend 200m, surrounded by an artificial lake to absorb vibrations caused by any earth tremors. The top of the tower is predicted to oscillate by a maximum of nearly 2.4m, as much as the Empire State Building in New York but so slowly that it would not be perceptible to inhabitants.
People would be banned from opening the windows of their apartments, but could breathe fresh air on concourses thanks to openings in the outer glass and aluminium shell.
They would live on 12 levels and although some people would move in as soon as the first level was completed it would be 15 years before the building work above them finally stopped.
The designers have met Xu Kuangdi, the mayor of Shanghai, and urban planners, who have indicated a willingness to proceed and have set up a group to consider possible sites and how to meet the cost from both private and public funds.
Marco Goldschmied, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said the project could herald a much-needed new way of thinking about urban sprawl in China, which is already building the equivalent of 600 cities the size of Bristol. In Shanghai alone 10 new districts are expected to be built over the next five years, each big enough to house 100,000 people. "If you can send a man to the moon you can certainly build a tower for 100,000 people," said Goldschmied. He hoped the project would form a blueprint for future developments that would help preserve the environment.
However, he added a warning: "The main pitfall is the towering inferno scenario - what happens if fire breaks out? It could be the ultimate disaster. Imagine 100,000 people suffocating. And you'd have to organise the place pretty well to stop people feeling like rats in a cage." Pioz says the risk of fire has been taken into account, with sealed compartments built in to act like fire doors. People escaping from a fire on one level would need to flee only 40 yards away, upwards or downwards, to the closest safe area, he said.
"When the Eiffel Tower was built, many people said it was too dangerous - they wanted to kill Mr Eiffel. But it's still standing."
Any bricklayer can become MCSE these days. "That's not NT, is it? Better hide it then."
So the answer is: "certain people". This might be hard for us geeks, but the Internet is still a separate world, where you'll find some things, and won't find others.
This suggests that they made a kernel on the same system before, and try to ``undo'' the make.
This is stupid. Why? Because:
- they did not run a ``make dep''. This means the so-called ``single processor compile'' (which it is not!) is set back several seconds (make dep takes 40 seconds on my SMP Celeron 466).
- The SMP version can take advantage of this, as ``make clean'' does not need ``make dep'' anymore. (AFAIK).
- ``make -j3'' is *not* the same as ``testing an SMP compile''.
If they really wanted a single vs. dual processor kernel compile test, they should have started with two real kernels, one for uniprocessor, one for SMP.Then make a ``test config'' .config-file, for example with ``cp arch/i386/defconfig .config; make oldconfig'' (and press a couple of enters). Copy this file to ``Testconfig'' or something.
Now start the system with the single processor kernel and run the following:
make mrproper; cp Testconfig .config; make oldconfig; make dep; time make -j$N bzImage
Now reboot the system and run the dual processor kernel. Recompile, with -j$N maybe going up to 4 or 5 or so.
Now *that* is something that comes close to a benchmark.
But they can't possibly port the ``Win32 API'' (if there is such a thing, which is highly theoretical, IMHO) to Linux. They will have some sort of Wine-like interface, or maybe even have a Win32 layer that runs the Linux stuff.
Also, Microsoft would have a hard time not getting their own software polluted with GPL'ed sources.
This would not work. Microsoft is a license-selling company. They sell middle of the road software to John Doe. Office did not change much since version 6.0. Neither did the 16-bit Windos since version 95. Basically it's all the same stuff with new marketing. They only get away with it because they do marketing.
Now suppose IBM starts marketing for the Open Source. (They will, some time).
What would MS Linux add? That it can run Office, the great proprietary Office Suite that costs $400? That you can run the proprietary IIS on Linux now? That you get Linux with Innovation?
Proprietary software is hard to maintain, hard to interface to and hard to manage. ''MS Linux'' will not change that.
Open Source programmers should stay away from the Windows sourcecode, and wait until the intruders find parts of GPL'ed code.