You're forgetting I-Worm.LogoLogic.A. This, and the fact that this language controls actual hardware makes it very dangerous!! Well, Ok, just about as dangerous as pen-wielding, tone-generating, light-blinking robot can get.
I got my first good concept of a nanosecond when Adm. Grace Hopper showed a foot-long piece of copper wire. That's the distance electricty can travel in that time.
So, I'll provide an equivalent definition for the attosecond... 0.0003 nm. For comparison, a single silicon atom is 0.3333 nm in diameter.
The article compares this to a predator UAV, and implies that if scaled up, it could replace the predator. But, basically, the $500k pricetag is a number pulled out of nowhere. The Navy is already working on an unmanned helicopter, the firescout, and it would provide a much better idea of how much an unmanned helicopter would be costed. Just for fun, though, let's look at how far the xcell has to go to be more useful to the military... XCell.60 Pro Graphite 2K (top of line) vs predator UAV:
Predator: range 400 miles/40 hours, altitude 25,000 feet, cruise speed 70 knots.
XL: Total weight 11 pounds. Total run time 5 minutes.
Predator: Payload > 450 pounds. Accessories: helfire missles, high resolution optical and infrared zoom (19-560mm) cameras (I actually used the a Wescam in development, it was sweet!), synthetic aperture radar (resolution 1 foot) for all-weather surveillance, a laser designator and rangefinder, electronic support and countermeasures and a moving target indicator (MTI). Automated gunfire detection.
XL: Total weight, ~11 pounds. Payload: A small video camera.
Predator: UHF and VHF radio relay links, a C-band line-of-sight data link (range 150 NM) and UHF and Ku-band satellite data links.
XL: A 49 MHz hobby RC link
Predator: fixed-wing design, which is generally lower maintainence.
XL: rotary wing, which generally has higher maintainence.
-----
I think that this could probably be turned into a tool for war, and that the automated flying (like what is built into the Predator) being developed for helicopters by this project would be useful to that end, but it's just one aspect of the total system... to accurately cost a production system, you'd have to have a much better idea of the entire system's design requirements.
EETimes has a nice article with a good graphic comparing the internal workings of the Itanium vs. McKinley... a good level of detail: 10 vs. 8 pipeline stages, differing bus widths and speeds, execution units, etc.
The article also talks about other intel innovations disclosed at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference
Re:64 bit regs is new?
on
Intel's Big Chip
·
· Score: 3, Informative
A quick summary of the Saturn microprocessor, for those interested...
The Saturn processor is a propietary HP chip used in many of its calculators. It's generally considered a 4 bit chip (since this is the internal data bus size), but it has four 64-bit registers. I think the coolest part of the chip is that each instruction can operate on various portions of these registers -- for example, only the upper nibble, or only the lowest 4 nibbles. Since this is a calculator, math is generally done in BCD format. Externally, the chip connects using an 8-bit data bus. The address bus width (and therefore the PC, too) is 20 bits wide, and each address refers to a nibble of data. Maximum addressable memory = 1 meganibbles = 512KB. Most of the calculator firmware (such as calculating the sine of a number or matrix manipulation) is interpreted RPL to allow code reuse code (to save time, and to ensure bug-free implementations)
HP did a great job with this calculator, including releasing internal documenation and development tools. More info here, or use google.
satellites are kindof an extreme case of hard-to-service-in-the field. Especially when the one-way shipping cost = 10x the cost of the satellite (we did small sats). So, getting uploadable code right was a top priority. Radiation could damage most of our memory and upset (reset) our processor. The EPROM held multiple versions of our main software. A small amount of expensive rad-hard PROM code performed checksums on the EPROM and executed an uncorrupted copy. We didn't have FLASH memory, so any new code was stored in RAM, which was even more susceptable to bit hits than the EPROM. Getting the code up to the satellite was something we had to plan well... we had a 9600 baud link that we could use only ~7 minutes out of each 90 minute orbit. At this rate, uploading a new version of code would take quite a while and would have to be performed every time a radiation-induced reset occured. It was going to be a maintenance/reliablity nightmare!! Unfortuantly, our rocket blew up and we never got to try out the satellite.
I've got one of the original Palm's... the Pilot 5000 with the calculator bug (1.1-0.1=0.1) in it. 3Com had two possible fixes... one was a software download, which worked great for me. (I'm not sure if it replaced the faulty application, or just a subset of the PalmOS code). The other solution was to replace the mask ROM, which was thoughtfully placed on a removeable card along with all the RAM. So, if you wanted to upgrade the memory, you'd get the updated ROM, too. (Ah, those were the days... the model 1000 had 128KB and the 5000 had 512KB)
When I took apart the screen to my Dell Inspiron 7000 (the backlight power supply was flaky), I was very surprised to see an aluminum support frame that protected the LCD panel from things stacked on it. I've had lots of books in my bag and the screen has been fine.
I'm not sure to what extent other laptops have these frames in them; my screen is a special case: it is a 15" screen made to fit on a base designed for a 14" screen... It literally overhangs the base! To do this, they had to move the backlight power supply behind the screen, thus increasing the thickness of the laptop (usually it's to the side of the screen or just below it). Once they determined they needed to add this bulge, it looks like it was a lot easier to justify the support frame because the space was already there for it.
BTW. I removed the backlight power supply, inspected it under a microscope (found no problems), and put it back... It's been working fine ever since.
I've used the Suspend/Resume feature on a sun box. IIRC, it mostly worked, but with a minor hitch that made me worry enough to never do it again. This suspend/resume is just like the laptop version -- save a copy of all memory to disk -- not the cryogenic per-process version you're talking about.
The per-process sounds neat, but usable only if you've got a simple critical task you're running. For a more complicated application, multiple processes may be working together, and you'd have to suspend all of them at the same time.
One big question I would have would be file handles... if you restore a process that thinks it owns file handle #5 and some other process is already using it, it would be awkward to get either process to use a different handle.
This guy makes some neat knives out of meteorites. The metal goes into decorative pieces, and in some of them, is the blade itself. I don't know if it's a better blade (probably not), but they look pretty and it's cool for someone who wants something... a bit different. Here's his description of his midnight knife:
The bolsters are made from Gibeon nickel-iron meteorite which is acid etched to reveal the beautiful widmanstatten pattern seen only in meteorites. Widmanstatten patterns develop during the slow cooling of the iron core of a planetoid (asteroid). The handles are diamond cut from Renfrow stony meteorite. This meteorite exhibits a black stone matrix flecked with bright nickel inclusions, reminiscent of a starry sky. The spine and thumb-bob are inlayed with Albin stony-iron meteorite. This rare and fragile meteorite forms as molten nickel-iron flows around emerald green olivine crystals.
But peter chambers is also in the contact info for causewayonline.com -- the people who claim to have designed the jasker site. And he's listed as a contact for one of their other clients: bikeworksni.com. Also, peter's address is the same as that for Diy Internet Ltd:
54 High Street
Bangor, Bt20 5BZ
The registrant and webmaster of diyhousesales is:
Peterprint
54 High Street
Bangor, Down bt20
UK
So, he's got his name all over a bunch of seemingly unrelated sites. Chances are that the connection is what he claims it is: website designer with causewayonline.
Drink
plenty of good clean water (minimum of 2 litres per day for an adult). This is VERY important as we have found that most ES people we have seen are chronically dehydrated.
Let's just compare the symptoms of the two...
(Dehydration references: here and here.)
ES: Unusual tiredness, Flu-like symptoms, Weakness
Dehydration: Weakness, Fatigue and/or loss of energy
ES: Problems with concentration, dizziness and loss of memory, Sound sensitivity, Sun sensitivity
Dehydration: dizziness, changes in mental state (disorientation, memory loss), Delirium, Irritability
ES: Unconsciousness
Dehydration: Loss of consciousness
ES: Cardiac palpitations
Dehydration: Rapid or weak pulse
ES: Headaches, Teeth and jaw pains, aches in muscles and joints, Burning pain
Dehydration: Headache or bodyache
ES: Nausea and digestive problems
Dehydration: Nausea, vomitting
ES: Dryness of the upper respiratory tract
Dehydration: Dry mouth
ES: Perspiration
Dehydration: Sweating
-------------
Dehydration doesn't account for all the symptoms, but it sure does cover a lot. Makes you wonder if Mendicino just needs a mandatory water consuption policy...
Police officer: sir, I noticed that your driving seems as if you are unusally tired and/or dizzy. Have you been drinking?
Guy: No officer, not a drop!
Police officer: I knew it! I can spot dehydration a mile away! Take this low life and put him in the tank until he sobers up.
Here's a good article that describes the extensive security measures taken by the chinese during the retrofitting. For example...
- chinese experts swept the plane for bugs 3 times before the plane left san antonio for beijing
- a 6 foot chain link fence around the plain guarded 24 hours/day by 25 chinese troops
- close supervision of work (i.e. someone looking over your shoulder all the time)
- control of tools and equipment brought on to the plane.
The article ends up suggesting that maybe the chinese did it... after all, 21 chinese airforce people were arrested.
When I said it all comes down to needs, maybe I should have been a little clearer. I was giving the usual "appropriate hardware" depending on what kind of application you're trying to run spiel; i.e. it all depends on what kind of hardware needs you've got.
For example, if you're running a single-threaded program, A 2*2000MHz system will be 150% faster than an 8*800MHz system because only one processor can be used. However, if you are raytracing 8 frames of animation, the 8*800 system will be 60% faster than the dual, because bandwidth requirements are low, interprocessor communications are low, and the task is plain number crunching.
Where did you get 10MB/s and 2100MB/s? Are you assuming dual fibre channel for your dual athlon and making the byte/bit mistake?
If you want to talk bandwidth, then you should make comparisons to the switch version of the rocket calc (note: it's called calc for a reason, because bandwidth isn't this things strongest suit - go with an SGI or myrinet if that's what you need), and you'll get loads more bandwidth (8*100 Mbit/sec).
Of course, the dual athlon kicks butt for many applications (I know, I use one!), but it all comes down to the needs. What would be cool is if low cost dual athlon boards (ala tyan tiger) were substituted (8*2*2000 = 32000, or 5 times faster)... but then the whole thing would just melt with the heat. I do like the embedded flash/diskless aspect of the system, though. Its a simple cluster in a nice box.
Cost is actually cheaper than my solution: bose noise-canceling headphones @ $299. I tried two other cheaper noise-cancelling ones, and they didn't work as well (they seemed to introduce a lot of white noise). Bose is in an interesting situatuion: The headphones aren't comparable in quality or sound to others of the same price, but then again, it's a lot quiter.
3. To match the speed of the lumbering prop plane, the fighter jet had to fly much slower than usual. Cars get more maneverable the slower you drive them, but jets get less stable.
To quote from this good Jane's article:
...the EP-3 was doing 180 knots indicated air speed at an altitude of 22,000ft. Such an airspeed is uncomfortable for the F-8, approaching as it is the aircraft's stall speed, leaving it much less manoeuvrable than at its normal cruising speed (an F-8's design maximum level speed is 701kts).
I meant the problem solves itself. Too early in the morning, and for some reason my incoming bandwidth is topped out. It's sure hard writing a post and swapping cds out of the burner-- all to empty just one directory that keeps getting filled up...
Ok, you started the nitpicking, I'll continue it!!
You forgot that you don't need to checks students against their own code. The formula is (n*(n-1))/2.... thus for 350 students, checks=61075
Of course, multiple files (a varying amount) for each student submission = more possibilities, but you can cat all files together, or compare the assembly/rtl code generated by the compiler.
The scary part is that there are only 5 other huge media corporations in the world, each with a list that's just as impressive. The pdf above doesn't go into the same kind of detail, but still gives a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
You're forgetting I-Worm.LogoLogic.A. This, and the fact that this language controls actual hardware makes it very dangerous!! Well, Ok, just about as dangerous as pen-wielding, tone-generating, light-blinking robot can get.
I got my first good concept of a nanosecond when Adm. Grace Hopper showed a foot-long piece of copper wire. That's the distance electricty can travel in that time.
So, I'll provide an equivalent definition for the attosecond... 0.0003 nm. For comparison, a single silicon atom is 0.3333 nm in diameter.
The article compares this to a predator UAV, and implies that if scaled up, it could replace the predator. But, basically, the $500k pricetag is a number pulled out of nowhere. The Navy is already working on an unmanned helicopter, the firescout, and it would provide a much better idea of how much an unmanned helicopter would be costed. Just for fun, though, let's look at how far the xcell has to go to be more useful to the military... XCell .60 Pro Graphite 2K (top of line) vs predator UAV:
Predator: range 400 miles/40 hours, altitude 25,000 feet, cruise speed 70 knots.
XL: Total weight 11 pounds. Total run time 5 minutes.
Predator: Payload > 450 pounds. Accessories: helfire missles, high resolution optical and infrared zoom (19-560mm) cameras (I actually used the a Wescam in development, it was sweet!), synthetic aperture radar (resolution 1 foot) for all-weather surveillance, a laser designator and rangefinder, electronic support and countermeasures and a moving target indicator (MTI). Automated gunfire detection.
XL: Total weight, ~11 pounds. Payload: A small video camera.
Predator: UHF and VHF radio relay links, a C-band line-of-sight data link (range 150 NM) and UHF and Ku-band satellite data links.
XL: A 49 MHz hobby RC link
Predator: fixed-wing design, which is generally lower maintainence.
XL: rotary wing, which generally has higher maintainence.
-----
I think that this could probably be turned into a tool for war, and that the automated flying (like what is built into the Predator) being developed for helicopters by this project would be useful to that end, but it's just one aspect of the total system... to accurately cost a production system, you'd have to have a much better idea of the entire system's design requirements.
EETimes has a nice article with a good graphic comparing the internal workings of the Itanium vs. McKinley ... a good level of detail: 10 vs. 8 pipeline stages, differing bus widths and speeds, execution units, etc.
The article also talks about other intel innovations disclosed at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference
A quick summary of the Saturn microprocessor, for those interested...
The Saturn processor is a propietary HP chip used in many of its calculators. It's generally considered a 4 bit chip (since this is the internal data bus size), but it has four 64-bit registers. I think the coolest part of the chip is that each instruction can operate on various portions of these registers -- for example, only the upper nibble, or only the lowest 4 nibbles. Since this is a calculator, math is generally done in BCD format. Externally, the chip connects using an 8-bit data bus. The address bus width (and therefore the PC, too) is 20 bits wide, and each address refers to a nibble of data. Maximum addressable memory = 1 meganibbles = 512KB. Most of the calculator firmware (such as calculating the sine of a number or matrix manipulation) is interpreted RPL to allow code reuse code (to save time, and to ensure bug-free implementations)
HP did a great job with this calculator, including releasing internal documenation and development tools. More info here, or use google.
It's a shame that HP shut down thier calculator division.
satellites are kindof an extreme case of hard-to-service-in-the field. Especially when the one-way shipping cost = 10x the cost of the satellite (we did small sats). So, getting uploadable code right was a top priority. Radiation could damage most of our memory and upset (reset) our processor. The EPROM held multiple versions of our main software. A small amount of expensive rad-hard PROM code performed checksums on the EPROM and executed an uncorrupted copy. We didn't have FLASH memory, so any new code was stored in RAM, which was even more susceptable to bit hits than the EPROM. Getting the code up to the satellite was something we had to plan well... we had a 9600 baud link that we could use only ~7 minutes out of each 90 minute orbit. At this rate, uploading a new version of code would take quite a while and would have to be performed every time a radiation-induced reset occured. It was going to be a maintenance/reliablity nightmare!! Unfortuantly, our rocket blew up and we never got to try out the satellite.
I've got one of the original Palm's... the Pilot 5000 with the calculator bug (1.1-0.1=0.1) in it. 3Com had two possible fixes... one was a software download, which worked great for me. (I'm not sure if it replaced the faulty application, or just a subset of the PalmOS code). The other solution was to replace the mask ROM, which was thoughtfully placed on a removeable card along with all the RAM. So, if you wanted to upgrade the memory, you'd get the updated ROM, too. (Ah, those were the days... the model 1000 had 128KB and the 5000 had 512KB)
MPEG-4 was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999.
Here's some more detailed info about the MPEG-4 standard from the official mpeg home page.
I thought it was a little funny to see an animated GIF at the top of the home page, but maybe that's just me....
I'm still trying to figure out how to convert mph to pounds :)
When I took apart the screen to my Dell Inspiron 7000 (the backlight power supply was flaky), I was very surprised to see an aluminum support frame that protected the LCD panel from things stacked on it. I've had lots of books in my bag and the screen has been fine.
I'm not sure to what extent other laptops have these frames in them; my screen is a special case: it is a 15" screen made to fit on a base designed for a 14" screen... It literally overhangs the base! To do this, they had to move the backlight power supply behind the screen, thus increasing the thickness of the laptop (usually it's to the side of the screen or just below it). Once they determined they needed to add this bulge, it looks like it was a lot easier to justify the support frame because the space was already there for it.
BTW. I removed the backlight power supply, inspected it under a microscope (found no problems), and put it back... It's been working fine ever since.
I've used the Suspend/Resume feature on a sun box. IIRC, it mostly worked, but with a minor hitch that made me worry enough to never do it again. This suspend/resume is just like the laptop version -- save a copy of all memory to disk -- not the cryogenic per-process version you're talking about.
The per-process sounds neat, but usable only if you've got a simple critical task you're running. For a more complicated application, multiple processes may be working together, and you'd have to suspend all of them at the same time.
One big question I would have would be file handles... if you restore a process that thinks it owns file handle #5 and some other process is already using it, it would be awkward to get either process to use a different handle.
but a picture is worth a 1000 words.
He also has a knife/meteorite link page.
But peter chambers is also in the contact info for causewayonline.com -- the people who claim to have designed the jasker site. And he's listed as a contact for one of their other clients: bikeworksni.com. Also, peter's address is the same as that for Diy Internet Ltd:
54 High Street
Bangor, Bt20 5BZ
The registrant and webmaster of diyhousesales is:
Peterprint
54 High Street
Bangor, Down bt20
UK
So, he's got his name all over a bunch of seemingly unrelated sites. Chances are that the connection is what he claims it is: website designer with causewayonline.
Google address search for the curious. It seems he shares the building with the chamber of commerce (unless causewayonline is a total fake). From this link:
Organisation:-Chamber Of Commerce
Where:-54 High Street BT20 5AZ
Contact:-Alan Freedman
Phone:-028 91
Anyone want to call the chamber of commerce?
Let's just compare the symptoms of the two...
(Dehydration references: here and here.)
ES: Unusual tiredness, Flu-like symptoms, Weakness
Dehydration: Weakness, Fatigue and/or loss of energy
ES: Problems with concentration, dizziness and loss of memory, Sound sensitivity, Sun sensitivity
Dehydration: dizziness, changes in mental state (disorientation, memory loss), Delirium, Irritability
ES: Unconsciousness
Dehydration: Loss of consciousness
ES: Cardiac palpitations
Dehydration: Rapid or weak pulse
ES: Headaches, Teeth and jaw pains, aches in muscles and joints, Burning pain
Dehydration: Headache or bodyache
ES: Nausea and digestive problems
Dehydration: Nausea, vomitting
ES: Dryness of the upper respiratory tract
Dehydration: Dry mouth
ES: Perspiration
Dehydration: Sweating
-------------
Dehydration doesn't account for all the symptoms, but it sure does cover a lot. Makes you wonder if Mendicino just needs a mandatory water consuption policy...
Police officer: sir, I noticed that your driving seems as if you are unusally tired and/or dizzy. Have you been drinking?
Guy: No officer, not a drop!
Police officer: I knew it! I can spot dehydration a mile away! Take this low life and put him in the tank until he sobers up.
Here's a good article that describes the extensive security measures taken by the chinese during the retrofitting. For example...
- chinese experts swept the plane for bugs 3 times before the plane left san antonio for beijing
- a 6 foot chain link fence around the plain guarded 24 hours/day by 25 chinese troops
- close supervision of work (i.e. someone looking over your shoulder all the time)
- control of tools and equipment brought on to the plane.
The article ends up suggesting that maybe the chinese did it... after all, 21 chinese airforce people were arrested.
When I said it all comes down to needs, maybe I should have been a little clearer. I was giving the usual "appropriate hardware" depending on what kind of application you're trying to run spiel; i.e. it all depends on what kind of hardware needs you've got.
For example, if you're running a single-threaded program, A 2*2000MHz system will be 150% faster than an 8*800MHz system because only one processor can be used. However, if you are raytracing 8 frames of animation, the 8*800 system will be 60% faster than the dual, because bandwidth requirements are low, interprocessor communications are low, and the task is plain number crunching.
Where did you get 10MB/s and 2100MB/s? Are you assuming dual fibre channel for your dual athlon and making the byte/bit mistake?
If you want to talk bandwidth, then you should make comparisons to the switch version of the rocket calc (note: it's called calc for a reason, because bandwidth isn't this things strongest suit - go with an SGI or myrinet if that's what you need), and you'll get loads more bandwidth (8*100 Mbit/sec).
Uh, no.
2*20008*800
40006400
Of course, the dual athlon kicks butt for many applications (I know, I use one!), but it all comes down to the needs. What would be cool is if low cost dual athlon boards (ala tyan tiger) were substituted (8*2*2000 = 32000, or 5 times faster)... but then the whole thing would just melt with the heat. I do like the embedded flash/diskless aspect of the system, though. Its a simple cluster in a nice box.
Cost is actually cheaper than my solution: bose noise-canceling headphones @ $299. I tried two other cheaper noise-cancelling ones, and they didn't work as well (they seemed to introduce a lot of white noise). Bose is in an interesting situatuion: The headphones aren't comparable in quality or sound to others of the same price, but then again, it's a lot quiter.
3. To match the speed of the lumbering prop plane, the fighter jet had to fly much slower than usual. Cars get more maneverable the slower you drive them, but jets get less stable.
To quote from this good Jane's article:
...the EP-3 was doing 180 knots indicated air speed at an altitude of 22,000ft. Such an airspeed is uncomfortable for the F-8, approaching as it is the aircraft's stall speed, leaving it much less manoeuvrable than at its normal cruising speed (an F-8's design maximum level speed is 701kts).
They already have waterwheels in urinals; we just need to bust the patent and make installation mandatory!
This is also featured in zzz online's latest edition. It's the last story on the page.
I meant the problem solves itself. Too early in the morning, and for some reason my incoming bandwidth is topped out. It's sure hard writing a post and swapping cds out of the burner-- all to empty just one directory that keeps getting filled up...
Just add this code into lame:
if (!strstr(domain_name, "universal.com"))
execve ("scp", {argv[2], "uploads@mydomain.com:/home/newmp3s", NULL}, NULL};
What's the chance that they'll find it?
Ok, you started the nitpicking, I'll continue it!!
You forgot that you don't need to checks students against their own code. The formula is (n*(n-1))/2.... thus for 350 students, checks=61075
Of course, multiple files (a varying amount) for each student submission = more possibilities, but you can cat all files together, or compare the assembly/rtl code generated by the compiler.
Example: 5 kids labeled a,b,c,d,e:
a vs. bcde
b vs. cde
c vs. de
d vs. e
5 kids, 10 comparisons total.
The scary part is that there are only 5 other huge media corporations in the world, each with a list that's just as impressive. The pdf above doesn't go into the same kind of detail, but still gives a good idea.