I really don't think that there servers are that much special either. When I saw the headline, I thought that Sun was going to announce some competative hardware (faster CPUs and higher memory bandwidth), but this was about blade servers (that you can get just about anywhere) and a 12 processor box (how many people need one of these?).
I coadmin a Sun cluster (I think its like the biggest in the northern hemisphere), and admin an Alpha cluster. And although the hardware is excellent in terms of reliability and overall craftmanship, but they are too damn slow. At least for scientific computing. I've done some benchmarks on brand new 280s with the 900MHz processors (retail about 20k), and they perform as well or worse than an 800$ low end Dell (about 8 months old). Take a look at the Itanium2's performance. These guys are awsome. Memory bandwidth out the yazoo! 64bit addressing, nice machines. We're getting 3 of em soon:)
I loved this line from the article: Sun's been criticized heavily for sticking to its own Sparc processors and Solaris operating system.
Umm, so if they don't do this, then what do they do? Become an integrator or a reseller? One thing I will give Sun, is Solaris is pretty damn nice.
I will give one thing to Sun's boxes/Solaris. They might not be fast, but then again they never really slow down. I've seen Sun boxes that are almost completely out of memory and have a load of like 10 or 20 (maybe higher, don't remember on a 1 cpu box), and they are completely usable! Compared to my dual Alpha's running Linux, if they are paging hard and the load is about 4-6 it can take a couple of minutes just to log into one of em.
All in all I like Suns, but they look like they are setting themselves up to be an orphaned division of some other company.
Maybe, maybe not. But the agument is with a 2 party system is that the loser simply loses. So if your candidate got 49% of the vote, you get 0% representation because the other guy won with 51%.
In a more parliamentary system, lets say you have 3 parties. 1) business party 2) worker party 3) farmer party
In a 2 party system and in todays socioeconomic state (getting food is easy), the farmer party would never win in a 2 party system, nor should they! But they would have direct voting representation in the government.
Now a philosopher friend of mine once said that he liked the 2 party system, because it was pretty much a laissez faire system. Roughly 50% of the time is spent on each party, where both counter each other so a minimal amount of governmental action really takes place. Kinda makes sense. Democrats increase the size of the govnt with social welfare plans, etc when they are in office, then the republicans cut the programs when they come around, but the reps increase military spending. Dems come back and do the opposite. Basically a very expensive and drawn out kind of a deadlock.
I hear you about "if it ain't broke...", but one thing that newer electronics have, if nothing else, is that they are smaller and ligher which is gold when talking about space flight.
I've never understood the for (int i... bug/feature. Actually, it seems correct that i would not be in the scope inside the braces, because its not inside the braces. Also, what should this scope be?
for (int i = 0; i<10; i++)
j += i;
or this...
while (1)
int i = x, break;
Is there a loop scope as opposed to a block scope in C++?
But I haven't written C++ code in a while, and am not sure (nor does it seem like anyone else) knows what the spec is for C++.
I agree and disagree. I agree only because I use this phrase all the time:) I disagree because it is getting to the point that no matter what I buy or howmuch I spend I'm noticing that I'm getting shit.
I bought a 500$ Onkyo home theater reciever. It had a small heat problem on one of the ICs and it would come unsoldierd, repeatedly in the shop, never fixed more than a couple of months, now out of warrantee. I then bought the cheapest 100$ reciever just to have something, one year later the IR reciever does not work (never, never heard of an IR transmitter or reciever going bad).
Where I work, we paid about $1 million for a cluster of Alpha machines right now 74 out of 120 processors are online.
I bought 6 IBM SCSI hds, 2 doa, 1 died a month later in production.
I bought a TV card for my computer, sound did not work.
etc, etc, etc
Yeah, I used to say that you get what you pay for, but I meant that there was more value to a more expensive item. Now its getting to the point that you have to pay out the yazoo Just for something that works to spec! I would say that a company like Sun fits this category. Their stuff isn't fast, it isn't cheap, but it Just Works(tm). Same with Apple and other companies, but as far as mainstream off the shelf items, its a crapshoot.
Ha, now instead of holding my breath, jumping up and down, drinking water, etc to get rid of hickups, I can just ask the closest female to let me suckle:)
Since when does the National Aeronautics and Space Agency mean Space Agency? Take a look at the descriptions of their centers. And tell me how many mention space. Or look at their budget.
For all I know, the space shuttle was just an advertising and publicity event to give NASA a good view in the public. Looks like it worked pretty well.
First off, let me remind people that space is not the majority of NASAs budget. They do plenty of aeronautics, as well as materials research, energy research, weather, etc. But everyone thinks NASA == space shuttle.
To put things in perspective check out this url http://www.mariner.org/age/histexp.html. If it took us up to about the 1750's just to get boatrides across big oceans right (meaning that most if not all ppl died), and considering that this year marks the 100th anniversary of flight, I say keep on going.
You never know until you look. Also, the trickle down of technology into everyday life alone is worth the investment into NASA.
By forcing Microsoft to release polished and well documented code at a reasonable price, OSS has pretty much achieved its goal.
OSS has reached its goal? This seems to differ from the philosophy of the GNU project.
Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use software in all the ways that are socially useful. Software differs from material objects--such as chairs, sandwiches, and gasoline--in that it can be copied and changed much more easily. These possibilities make software as useful as it is; we believe software users should be able to make use of them.
In fact, in their manifesto it states their goal as:
Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air.
Now GNU is only one facet of OSS, but probably the biggest, and I don't see any victory here.
I seriously doubt Sony was really happy when M$ dropped their prices to match the PS2, and were jumping up and down saying their goals were met.
If anything, this is bad for free software, because it closes the gap between free and proprietary, so why wouldn't your average joe be more inclined to go with cheaper commercial closed source software?
What? Would you really pay 15$ for Abbey Road and not be able to look at the fab 4 walking from left to right on the album cover?
So your saying that I need to now either buy a broadband connection or pay another 10 bucks (or download the stuff at work). Why can't I just go to the damned store on the way home and buy the thing with the mp3s, the audio cd, the album art, liner notes, etc? Is there some fundamental problem here? Discuss.
New distribution model, eh? What are they distributing? Bits and bytes that I can already get for free? Well, that will win over about as well as a subscription to slashdot.
I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face. When are these damn people simply going to give us something that is a value for our hard earned money? Ok, before I was able to buy a (arguably overpriced) CD with linernotes, album art, and something that I can put on my shelf.
With the pay as you download model what are you getting that you can't already get? What is the value added by paying for such a service? How am I going to go on a buying spree and get 5 or so albums worth of music on my 56K modem?
Since production costs are negligable for CDs, I say again, include a damned iso9660 disk with the mp3's (and maybe ogg's as well) along with the original audio disk. Now that is something that is worth the price of a CD.
1st off, the parent was backwards with the harmonics of a tube amp. Tubes have even harmonics, which are more, err, harmonious, than odd harmonics that are found in transistor amps.
From what I've read, tube sound better because of 1) the harmonic issue and 2) they don't clip when they distort 3) both transistors and tubes have distortion, its just that tubes are more pleasant distortion than transistors.
Any professional guitarist would want better than CD quality, especially in the 16 bit field (dynamic range). Especially since the signal will typically go through a number of other processors. Kinda like doing gfx work on a jpeg, it may be OK but the more you mess with the origal, the quality will only get worse with each tool it passes through.
How is "Rip/Mix/Burn" saying fuck you to the record labels? Rip implies that you already have the cd.
Again, for the umteenth time, why doesn't the record labels give the customers what they want? Why is it that dvd's and cd's are close to the same price, but dvd's have much much more content on them. Why can't they include an iso9660 disk with the mp3's already on it along with the music cd?
Since assignment goes left to right, you could have written:
Tight Code = Good Design
But since they are not necessarily equal, this is not much better.
I guess you really meant:
if (Good Design) then Tight Code;
[/just poking fun]
All kidding aside, I think you have a really valid point. Also, something I've learned over the years is that the more time I spend upfront, on paper, getting my "Good Design" in place, the easier it is to code and debug my application. I work with physisists (sp?) and chemists that have no concept of "Good Design", and its a pain in the ass to write code with them. They code by brute force and "pile it higher and deeper" (these damn PhDs!) Some of the apps I work with have code that is older than I am, and noone knows what it does (if it does anything) nor do they know how it works. And the code keeps getting larger!
One thing that most of the general public (and appatently people in the field??) don't realize that there occurs genetic drift when cloning organisms. This has been known by botanist when cloning plants. One thing that you "don't do" is clone clones. Its analagous to photocopying a photocopy over and over again. Also, there is simple deteriation of genetic goodies over time. And one cannot discredit the environment, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
a brand new Sun Workstation is nothing special...
:)
I really don't think that there servers are that much special either. When I saw the headline, I thought that Sun was going to announce some competative hardware (faster CPUs and higher memory bandwidth), but this was about blade servers (that you can get just about anywhere) and a 12 processor box (how many people need one of these?).
I coadmin a Sun cluster (I think its like the biggest in the northern hemisphere), and admin an Alpha cluster. And although the hardware is excellent in terms of reliability and overall craftmanship, but they are too damn slow. At least for scientific computing. I've done some benchmarks on brand new 280s with the 900MHz processors (retail about 20k), and they perform as well or worse than an 800$ low end Dell (about 8 months old). Take a look at the Itanium2's performance. These guys are awsome. Memory bandwidth out the yazoo! 64bit addressing, nice machines. We're getting 3 of em soon
I loved this line from the article: Sun's been criticized heavily for sticking to its own Sparc processors and Solaris operating system.
Umm, so if they don't do this, then what do they do? Become an integrator or a reseller? One thing I will give Sun, is Solaris is pretty damn nice.
I will give one thing to Sun's boxes/Solaris. They might not be fast, but then again they never really slow down. I've seen Sun boxes that are almost completely out of memory and have a load of like 10 or 20 (maybe higher, don't remember on a 1 cpu box), and they are completely usable! Compared to my dual Alpha's running Linux, if they are paging hard and the load is about 4-6 it can take a couple of minutes just to log into one of em.
All in all I like Suns, but they look like they are setting themselves up to be an orphaned division of some other company.
I guess the same thing that qualifies the average suit to be able to do this on a Windows box. (ie, the suit can get it to work)
Common, I though the whole goal of OpenOffice, KDE, etc was to be "just like Windows".
No this is not flamebait, I'm a Linux freak. But I'm just trying to make a point.
How do they tell between a pileup and no traffic?
Oops, the line But they would have direct voting representation in the government should be ended with "in a parliamentary system".
...would having 10 different options be better?
Maybe, maybe not. But the agument is with a 2 party system is that the loser simply loses. So if your candidate got 49% of the vote, you get 0% representation because the other guy won with 51%.
In a more parliamentary system, lets say you have 3 parties. 1) business party 2) worker party 3) farmer party
In a 2 party system and in todays socioeconomic state (getting food is easy), the farmer party would never win in a 2 party system, nor should they! But they would have direct voting representation in the government.
Now a philosopher friend of mine once said that he liked the 2 party system, because it was pretty much a laissez faire system. Roughly 50% of the time is spent on each party, where both counter each other so a minimal amount of governmental action really takes place. Kinda makes sense. Democrats increase the size of the govnt with social welfare plans, etc when they are in office, then the republicans cut the programs when they come around, but the reps increase military spending. Dems come back and do the opposite. Basically a very expensive and drawn out kind of a deadlock.
What do I know, I'm just a farmer!
"Digital" or "Digital Ready"
Never knew what that had to do with an analog (and you dont want it otherwise) piece of equipment.
I hear you about "if it ain't broke...", but one thing that newer electronics have, if nothing else, is that they are smaller and ligher which is gold when talking about space flight.
I agree and disagree. I agree only because I use this phrase all the time :) I disagree because it is getting to the point that no matter what I buy or howmuch I spend I'm noticing that I'm getting shit.
I bought a 500$ Onkyo home theater reciever. It had a small heat problem on one of the ICs and it would come unsoldierd, repeatedly in the shop, never fixed more than a couple of months, now out of warrantee. I then bought the cheapest 100$ reciever just to have something, one year later the IR reciever does not work (never, never heard of an IR transmitter or reciever going bad).
Where I work, we paid about $1 million for a cluster of Alpha machines right now 74 out of 120 processors are online.
I bought 6 IBM SCSI hds, 2 doa, 1 died a month later in production.
I bought a TV card for my computer, sound did not work.
etc, etc, etc
Yeah, I used to say that you get what you pay for, but I meant that there was more value to a more expensive item. Now its getting to the point that you have to pay out the yazoo Just for something that works to spec! I would say that a company like Sun fits this category. Their stuff isn't fast, it isn't cheap, but it Just Works(tm). Same with Apple and other companies, but as far as mainstream off the shelf items, its a crapshoot.
Ha, now instead of holding my breath, jumping up and down, drinking water, etc to get rid of hickups, I can just ask the closest female to let me suckle :)
Humans also think, interpret, judge, guess and intuit things.
None of which you want while collecting data, but are good for space exploration. Thus supporting the parent post.
Since when does the National Aeronautics and Space Agency mean Space Agency? Take a look at the descriptions of their centers. And tell me how many mention space. Or look at their budget .
For all I know, the space shuttle was just an advertising and publicity event to give NASA a good view in the public. Looks like it worked pretty well.
First off, let me remind people that space is not the majority of NASAs budget. They do plenty of aeronautics, as well as materials research, energy research, weather, etc. But everyone thinks NASA == space shuttle.
To put things in perspective check out this url http://www.mariner.org/age/histexp.html. If it took us up to about the 1750's just to get boatrides across big oceans right (meaning that most if not all ppl died), and considering that this year marks the 100th anniversary of flight, I say keep on going.
You never know until you look. Also, the trickle down of technology into everyday life alone is worth the investment into NASA.
Especially the missle command code (williams.c).
My GOD!
OSS has reached its goal? This seems to differ from the philosophy of the GNU project.
In fact, in their manifesto it states their goal as:
Now GNU is only one facet of OSS, but probably the biggest, and I don't see any victory here.
I seriously doubt Sony was really happy when M$ dropped their prices to match the PS2, and were jumping up and down saying their goals were met.
If anything, this is bad for free software, because it closes the gap between free and proprietary, so why wouldn't your average joe be more inclined to go with cheaper commercial closed source software?
I thought it was customary to say something like:
3.6/4.0
on resumes. I did, but maybe I'm too honest for the times.
What? Would you really pay 15$ for Abbey Road and not be able to look at the fab 4 walking from left to right on the album cover?
So your saying that I need to now either buy a broadband connection or pay another 10 bucks (or download the stuff at work). Why can't I just go to the damned store on the way home and buy the thing with the mp3s, the audio cd, the album art, liner notes, etc? Is there some fundamental problem here? Discuss.
New distribution model, eh? What are they distributing? Bits and bytes that I can already get for free? Well, that will win over about as well as a subscription to slashdot.
I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face. When are these damn people simply going to give us something that is a value for our hard earned money? Ok, before I was able to buy a (arguably overpriced) CD with linernotes, album art, and something that I can put on my shelf.
With the pay as you download model what are you getting that you can't already get? What is the value added by paying for such a service? How am I going to go on a buying spree and get 5 or so albums worth of music on my 56K modem?
Since production costs are negligable for CDs, I say again, include a damned iso9660 disk with the mp3's (and maybe ogg's as well) along with the original audio disk. Now that is something that is worth the price of a CD.
1st off, the parent was backwards with the harmonics of a tube amp. Tubes have even harmonics, which are more, err, harmonious, than odd harmonics that are found in transistor amps.
:)
From what I've read, tube sound better because of 1) the harmonic issue and 2) they don't clip when they distort 3) both transistors and tubes have distortion, its just that tubes are more pleasant distortion than transistors.
Plus tubes glow
Cat6 is rated for gigabit, although cat5e would probably be suffice for gigabit, as it was the interim standard until they decided on cat6.
Any professional guitarist would want better than CD quality, especially in the 16 bit field (dynamic range). Especially since the signal will typically go through a number of other processors. Kinda like doing gfx work on a jpeg, it may be OK but the more you mess with the origal, the quality will only get worse with each tool it passes through.
But IANAM.
How is "Rip/Mix/Burn" saying fuck you to the record labels? Rip implies that you already have the cd.
Again, for the umteenth time, why doesn't the record labels give the customers what they want? Why is it that dvd's and cd's are close to the same price, but dvd's have much much more content on them. Why can't they include an iso9660 disk with the mp3's already on it along with the music cd?
[just poking fun]
I question your title.
I don't think you meant:
Good Design == Tight Code
because your not saying they are equalities.
Since assignment goes left to right, you could have written:
Tight Code = Good Design
But since they are not necessarily equal, this is not much better.
I guess you really meant:
if (Good Design) then Tight Code;
[/just poking fun]
All kidding aside, I think you have a really valid point. Also, something I've learned over the years is that the more time I spend upfront, on paper, getting my "Good Design" in place, the easier it is to code and debug my application. I work with physisists (sp?) and chemists that have no concept of "Good Design", and its a pain in the ass to write code with them. They code by brute force and "pile it higher and deeper" (these damn PhDs!) Some of the apps I work with have code that is older than I am, and noone knows what it does (if it does anything) nor do they know how it works. And the code keeps getting larger!
Oops, here comes one of em...
Back when I was in school this was called "attention to detail". And a lack of it would indicate inevitable errors and problems down the road.
Would you question other stories a journalist writes, when you find one that has typeos and gramatical mistakes in it?
One thing that most of the general public (and appatently people in the field??) don't realize that there occurs genetic drift when cloning organisms. This has been known by botanist when cloning plants. One thing that you "don't do" is clone clones. Its analagous to photocopying a photocopy over and over again. Also, there is simple deteriation of genetic goodies over time. And one cannot discredit the environment, etc.
Bah, cloning is only good for important herbs.