hmmm... remember long time ago on slashdot or lwn there was an article about a hospital that used and archived x-rays digitally.
also, i used to know a fella in spain who was a programmer working at a hospital doing image processing. it wasnt x-rays, but he was working on stuff to enhance images and recognition algorithms.
basically, while i'm sure there are decisions that have to be made (resolution, etc..) there's no fundamental reason they can not be made. I mean I'm sure someone had to decide what grain film and what exposure to use for X-rays...:)
according to the CIA world factbook luxembourg has the highest per capita GDP in the world. US is second by a couple of hundred dollars ($36.4k Vs $36.2k gdp/per capita)
CVT was first done by DAF (dutch car company) in the 1950s. used 2 belts driving spring loaded "cones" (the load on the belt would drive the cones apart, and the spring would return them, thus varying the gearing ratio)..
I have driven cars from the 30's and it isn't that much more complicated if you already know how to drive a car with a standard with partial or no synchro on the manual transmission
he... i drive a car built/5/ years ago and i have to double-declutch when changing down (a la pre-synchromesh cars). it's a '97 mini and the synchro on 2nd gear is horribly bad.
- clutch - neutral - clutch out - blip gas - clutch and change down
and you have to do the above (esp. last 2 steps) reasonably close together. great fun...:)
its not the light that bends, its space-time that is bent by gravity. the light still travels in a "straight line", just the space it travels through bends.
hmmm.. it wasnt that the cable could support only half the tension, it was that the joints (those for the upper cable to upper walkway joint) had to take double the load.
in original design joints for each level supported only the load of that level (only the roof joints supported entire weight). by splitting the rod and having 2 joints on the upper level, the upper cable to upper level joint had to support the weight of both the walkways - which it couldnt do.:(
Let's debunk this six-type argument, shall we... Six types, Analog, GSM1900, TDMA800, TDMA1900, CDMA800, and CDMA1900. Try and actually find a phone that was made in the last three or four years that actually supports just one type.
you know... i think you've just gone and completely missed the other's guys point.
the point is not about/phone/ support, the point is about/coverage/. In Europe it's one system, so even if your own carrier doesnt provide coverage chances are there are at least 2 other carriers who do - and it will be compatible with your phone cause all the carriers use GSM.
in EU:
- i can send text messages to anyone, irrespective of what carrier they are on or what phone they use and they will receive it fine.
- i can use whatever sim i want with whatever phone i want. (well the pre-paid phones/seem/ to have different software. still pre-paid SIM from a french carrier works in an irish pre-paid phone)
(anybody know what the difference is between phones that take pre-paid SIMs and normal GSM phones? it seems that "bill" phones will take pre-paid SIMs, but that pre-paid phones wont take "Bill" SIMs. ??)
- my dad and sister often swap phones (they both use pre-paid). we have about 4 phones of varying age lying around the house, ericson T10, Nokia 5110, an absolutely crap "Trium", newer Ericson something or another. Battery low and you're in a hurry? Phone broken? just grab another one.. no fuss - they're all GSM - insert SIM and move on.
Another example of this, something that's happened to me a few times, you're in a pub or nightclub and someone will ask you if they can quickly use your phone cause their battery is dead, and they'll stick their own SIM in your phone and make the call on their own credit.:)
- my dad travels a lot, so he has 4 pre-paid SIM cards. In france? use the french carrier SIM, Netherlands? Use the dutch carrier SIM, etc..
- As the previous poster mentioned, in some countries providers are starting to offer "pay-by-phone" services, eg, finland is one. Got no cash? want to buy something? SMS the money over.:)
but most importantly, as the other poster alluded to:
- Wherever i go in Europe, i/will/ have coverage.
dont need to worry about tri-band phones or which carrier offers what network where, i just/will/ have coverage. hate to state the obvious, but what use is a mobile phone if you cant use it?
The US, for once, is/way/ behind.. i'd hate to have to deal with 5+ different types of networks. hell...
I wonder if it costs less for me to call Europe than Europe to call me.
the story is even sadder, it is perhaps a quarter of the price. in fact there are "call-back" companies who make use of US cheap rates to offer cheaper international/intra-european/ calls.
way it works is:
- you dial call-back company (US number), type in pin number and hang up.
- call-back company rings you, you type in the number you want to call and the call-back company rings that number and connects you to them.
obviously, for this to work out, it means that *2* US-originated transatlantic calls are/cheaper/ than a single international call/within/ europe.
well the EU equivalent of traveling from "state to state" in the US is traveling from "country to country". so we're equal on that count.:)
point is, here in europe (and presumably Asia too) roaming is a complete non-issue: it just works. If there is an issue it is of cost. the only new thing is 1.8GHz GSM, but all the 1.8GHz GSM phones are dual-band and can roam between both old 900MHz GSM and newer 1.8GHz GSM networks.
How many different mobile phone standards/types of networks are in use in the states at the moment? Dont you guys still have some analogue mobile networks in operation? Do you have quinta-band phones in the states for the true "hardcore roamer"?:)
--paul 'European making the most of a once in a lifetime gloating opportunity' j
i'm amazed, usually here in Europe we have to sneer and hide our jealously behind sarcastic comments in all things communication related, eg you have always on DSL, we're still waiting (well, DSL is/starting/ to become more a bit widespread in some EU countries), you have 155Mbit/s OC-3c's while for the same price we get E2's (4Mbit/s), you have free local calls - we're still getting screwed by former state monopolies who still control the local loop and do their damnedest to make it difficult for the competition to get access... etc..
But at last we europeans (and those asians even more so) have a chance to cast a gloating data communications eye across the water: the USA is still in the mobile phone dark ages!
Over here, you can buy any phone and have it work anywhere in europe with any carrier. It's all GSM here. (well, actually there are pre-paid phones, and bill phones) and I can go on holiday to a little greek island and my phone could roam on either of the 2 greek carriers that covered the island. I go to london, get off the airplane and my phone has a choice of a whole bunch of networks!
My dad travels a lot, so to save on roaming costs he bought a pre-paid GSM SIM card in each country that he regularly spends time in. So when he gets off the plane, he just puts whichever SIM card into his phone according to which carrier has the best rates. the only disadvantage is that to reach him i might have to dial 4 numbers (Dad, Dad-FR, Dad-NL, Dad-ES). But hey..
Also, do people in the states have to pay full price on the handsets? At least here in EU, most of the cost of handsets is subsidised by the carriers (low-end nokia's are about EUR30 to EUR70 depending on the carrier's deal - used to be they gave them out free, but not anymore)
anyway.. GSM - we pee in your general direction! hu hu..
SGI were/are doing work on linux on the MIPS Origin 2k machines to prepare for the IA-64 Origin 3k and have linux running on 64 node 128 CPU Origin 2k, see:
i think the biggest difference is that AGP specifies that there/must/ be an IO-MMU to translate between bus addresses (which the AGP card specifies in requests) and physical addresses (ie of RAM). Ie the AGP host bridge can make system memory appear wherever it wants from the POV of the AGP card.
Note that PCI too can access memory "directly" (ie it can initiate a transfer) and that PCI chipsets used in Alpha's (21174 and up) and Sun have IO-MMU's. However, there is no requirement for PCI host bridges to be able to translate memory accesses.
IO-MMU's are useful on 64bit machines. Without them data held outside of the 4GB of adddress space that PCI can reference must be first copied into address space accessible to the PCI card (bounce buffering) - which is bad for performance. With an IO-MMU you can map the PCI address space to wherever you want in system address space.
Good IO-MMUs (eg the DEC 21x7x) can map very specific ranges of bus addresses to multiple ranges of system address space (ie hardware scatter gather).
what about the interconnect? the machine in question is/not/ a simple beowulf cluster, it's NUMA. Non Uniform Memory Architecture, which implies there is some form of memory architecture, and that the main difference between that architecture and that of a normal computer is that it is non-uniform.
Ie, the CPUs in this computer share a common address space and can reference any memory, just that some memory (eg located at another node) has a higher cost of access than other memory. (as opposed to a typical SMP system where all memory has an equal 'cost of access').
at the moment, under linux, this implies that there is special hardware in between those CPUs to provide the memory coherency - ie lots of bucks - cause there is no software means of providing that coherency (least not in linux today).
NB: normal linux SMP could run fine on a NUMA machine (from the memory management POV), but it would be slower because it would not take the non-uniform bit into account.
anyway... despite what the post says, this machine is/not/ a collection of cheap PCs connected via 100/1G ethernet or other high-speed packet interconnect.
the de Havilland Comet was the "lets take a huge risk and build a jet" trailblazer.
boeing et al learned from the Comets mistakes (rapid development of metal fatigue in fully pressurised aircraft being the major one).
where boeing did well was its 247 twin-engined airliner, which paved the way towards development of large four-engined aircraft, most famously the B-17.
heck, he can buy/2/ $2k AMD boxes and be redundant, and still be $6k better off than you.
presuming revenue is not so huge that $6k is a miniscule sum (reasonable assumption if his business uses only 2 AMD boxes, and yours uses only one SPARC), then he's/way/ ahead of you.
given these are the only 'facts' to hand, i know which one i'd invest in if i was a shareholder.
Slashdot Mirror
it's extremely unlikely to be OC-anything, cause it's in Europe and they use the STM/SDH system. :)
--paulj
It'd probably be longer if I never watched vids straight off it.
/years/.
ie, it does crash sometimes and you attribute this to using it.
he.. i admin a linux box which has an uptime of over 2.5
--paulj
ie it's a secured loan.
- The house belongs to you.
- The loan the bank gave you is secured by the house.
So if you default on the loan, the bank can sell your house to recover the money owed.
hmmm... remember long time ago on slashdot or lwn there was an article about a hospital that used and archived x-rays digitally.
:)
also, i used to know a fella in spain who was a programmer working at a hospital doing image processing. it wasnt x-rays, but he was working on stuff to enhance images and recognition algorithms.
basically, while i'm sure there are decisions that have to be made (resolution, etc..) there's no fundamental reason they can not be made. I mean I'm sure someone had to decide what grain film and what exposure to use for X-rays...
according to the CIA world factbook luxembourg has the highest per capita GDP in the world. US is second by a couple of hundred dollars ($36.4k Vs $36.2k gdp/per capita)
hmmm.... patat frite.
/think/) and mayonaise with a sprinkling of onion on chips -> patat oorlog - hmmmm.....
or even better sate sauce (spicy peanuty sauce from indonesia i
--paulj
CVT was first done by DAF (dutch car company) in the 1950s. used 2 belts driving spring loaded "cones" (the load on the belt would drive the cones apart, and the spring would return them, thus varying the gearing ratio)..
:)
my grandad used to have one..
I have driven cars from the 30's and it isn't that much more complicated if you already know how to drive a car with a standard with partial or no synchro on the manual transmission
/5/ years ago and i have to double-declutch when changing down (a la pre-synchromesh cars). it's a '97 mini and the synchro on 2nd gear is horribly bad.
:)
he... i drive a car built
- clutch
- neutral
- clutch out
- blip gas
- clutch and change down
and you have to do the above (esp. last 2 steps) reasonably close together. great fun...
"All quiet on the Western Front" is indeed a brilliant work (be it the book or film), and sadly not many know of it as its what, 70 years old?
its not the light that bends, its space-time that is bent by gravity. the light still travels in a "straight line", just the space it travels through bends.
hmmm.. it wasnt that the cable could support only half the tension, it was that the joints (those for the upper cable to upper walkway joint) had to take double the load.
:(
in original design joints for each level supported only the load of that level (only the roof joints supported entire weight). by splitting the rod and having 2 joints on the upper level, the upper cable to upper level joint had to support the weight of both the walkways - which it couldnt do.
hmmm.. i thought it meant "Errors & Omissions Excepting".
Let's debunk this six-type argument, shall we...
/phone/ support, the point is about /coverage/. In Europe it's one system, so even if your own carrier doesnt provide coverage chances are there are at least 2 other carriers who do - and it will be compatible with your phone cause all the carriers use GSM.
/seem/ to have different software. still pre-paid SIM from a french carrier works in an irish pre-paid phone)
:)
:)
/will/ have coverage.
/will/ have coverage. hate to state the obvious, but what use is a mobile phone if you cant use it?
/way/ behind.. i'd hate to have to deal with 5+ different types of networks. hell...
Six types, Analog, GSM1900, TDMA800, TDMA1900, CDMA800, and CDMA1900. Try and actually find a phone that was made in the last three or four years that actually supports just one type.
you know... i think you've just gone and completely missed the other's guys point.
the point is not about
in EU:
- i can send text messages to anyone, irrespective of what carrier they are on or what phone they use and they will receive it fine.
- i can use whatever sim i want with whatever phone i want. (well the pre-paid phones
(anybody know what the difference is between phones that take pre-paid SIMs and normal GSM phones? it seems that "bill" phones will take pre-paid SIMs, but that pre-paid phones wont take "Bill" SIMs. ??)
- my dad and sister often swap phones (they both use pre-paid). we have about 4 phones of varying age lying around the house, ericson T10, Nokia 5110, an absolutely crap "Trium", newer Ericson something or another. Battery low and you're in a hurry? Phone broken? just grab another one.. no fuss - they're all GSM - insert SIM and move on.
Another example of this, something that's happened to me a few times, you're in a pub or nightclub and someone will ask you if they can quickly use your phone cause their battery is dead, and they'll stick their own SIM in your phone and make the call on their own credit.
- my dad travels a lot, so he has 4 pre-paid SIM cards. In france? use the french carrier SIM, Netherlands? Use the dutch carrier SIM, etc..
- As the previous poster mentioned, in some countries providers are starting to offer "pay-by-phone" services, eg, finland is one. Got no cash? want to buy something? SMS the money over.
but most importantly, as the other poster alluded to:
- Wherever i go in Europe, i
dont need to worry about tri-band phones or which carrier offers what network where, i just
The US, for once, is
I wonder if it costs less for me to call Europe than Europe to call me.
/intra-european/ calls.
/cheaper/ than a single international call /within/ europe.
the story is even sadder, it is perhaps a quarter of the price. in fact there are "call-back" companies who make use of US cheap rates to offer cheaper international
way it works is:
- you dial call-back company (US number), type in pin number and hang up.
- call-back company rings you, you type in the number you want to call and the call-back company rings that number and connects you to them.
obviously, for this to work out, it means that *2* US-originated transatlantic calls are
sad isnt it?
rob.... what's the story? that's 2 comments in a row where you've been modded down. you must be losing your touch.
hint: anything vaguely condescending of the US gets modded down.. i mean how dare you suggest America doesnt have good criminals.
:)
well the EU equivalent of traveling from "state to state" in the US is traveling from "country to country". so we're equal on that count. :)
:)
point is, here in europe (and presumably Asia too) roaming is a complete non-issue: it just works. If there is an issue it is of cost. the only new thing is 1.8GHz GSM, but all the 1.8GHz GSM phones are dual-band and can roam between both old 900MHz GSM and newer 1.8GHz GSM networks.
How many different mobile phone standards/types of networks are in use in the states at the moment? Dont you guys still have some analogue mobile networks in operation? Do you have quinta-band phones in the states for the true "hardcore roamer"?
--paul 'European making the most of a once in a lifetime gloating opportunity' j
i'm amazed, usually here in Europe we have to sneer and hide our jealously behind sarcastic comments in all things communication related, eg you have always on DSL, we're still waiting (well, DSL is /starting/ to become more a bit widespread in some EU countries), you have 155Mbit/s OC-3c's while for the same price we get E2's (4Mbit/s), you have free local calls - we're still getting screwed by former state monopolies who still control the local loop and do their damnedest to make it difficult for the competition to get access... etc..
But at last we europeans (and those asians even more so) have a chance to cast a gloating data communications eye across the water: the USA is still in the mobile phone dark ages!
Over here, you can buy any phone and have it work anywhere in europe with any carrier. It's all GSM here. (well, actually there are pre-paid phones, and bill phones) and I can go on holiday to a little greek island and my phone could roam on either of the 2 greek carriers that covered the island. I go to london, get off the airplane and my phone has a choice of a whole bunch of networks!
My dad travels a lot, so to save on roaming costs he bought a pre-paid GSM SIM card in each country that he regularly spends time in. So when he gets off the plane, he just puts whichever SIM card into his phone according to which carrier has the best rates. the only disadvantage is that to reach him i might have to dial 4 numbers (Dad, Dad-FR, Dad-NL, Dad-ES). But hey..
Also, do people in the states have to pay full price on the handsets? At least here in EU, most of the cost of handsets is subsidised by the carriers (low-end nokia's are about EUR30 to EUR70 depending on the carrier's deal - used to be they gave them out free, but not anymore)
anyway.. GSM - we pee in your general direction! hu hu..
what kind of waffle is that?
Linux 2.4 handily beats Win2k for SMP (eg linux holds the specweb record). pthread? Linux again pisses all over for Win2k for thread creation.
NUMA? what in the name of gods does good NUMA support have to do with plain low-end SMP?
--paulj
SGI were/are doing work on linux on the MIPS Origin 2k machines to prepare for the IA-64 Origin 3k and have linux running on 64 node 128 CPU Origin 2k, see:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/LinuxScalability/
--paulj
i think the biggest difference is that AGP specifies that there /must/ be an IO-MMU to translate between bus addresses (which the AGP card specifies in requests) and physical addresses (ie of RAM). Ie the AGP host bridge can make system memory appear wherever it wants from the POV of the AGP card.
Note that PCI too can access memory "directly" (ie it can initiate a transfer) and that PCI chipsets used in Alpha's (21174 and up) and Sun have IO-MMU's. However, there is no requirement for PCI host bridges to be able to translate memory accesses.
IO-MMU's are useful on 64bit machines. Without them data held outside of the 4GB of adddress space that PCI can reference must be first copied into address space accessible to the PCI card (bounce buffering) - which is bad for performance. With an IO-MMU you can map the PCI address space to wherever you want in system address space.
Good IO-MMUs (eg the DEC 21x7x) can map very specific ranges of bus addresses to multiple ranges of system address space (ie hardware scatter gather).
openldap has a mysql backend. so you could write the glue to export the mysql data via LDAP.
you can do snapshots on linux with lvm.
what about the interconnect? the machine in question is /not/ a simple beowulf cluster, it's NUMA. Non Uniform Memory Architecture, which implies there is some form of memory architecture, and that the main difference between that architecture and that of a normal computer is that it is non-uniform.
/not/ a collection of cheap PCs connected via 100/1G ethernet or other high-speed packet interconnect.
Ie, the CPUs in this computer share a common address space and can reference any memory, just that some memory (eg located at another node) has a higher cost of access than other memory. (as opposed to a typical SMP system where all memory has an equal 'cost of access').
at the moment, under linux, this implies that there is special hardware in between those CPUs to provide the memory coherency - ie lots of bucks - cause there is no software means of providing that coherency (least not in linux today).
NB: normal linux SMP could run fine on a NUMA machine (from the memory management POV), but it would be slower because it would not take the non-uniform bit into account.
anyway... despite what the post says, this machine is
the de Havilland Comet was the "lets take a huge risk and build a jet" trailblazer.
boeing et al learned from the Comets mistakes (rapid development of metal fatigue in fully pressurised aircraft being the major one).
where boeing did well was its 247 twin-engined airliner, which paved the way towards development of large four-engined aircraft, most famously the B-17.
indeed... and he'd be $8k better off than you.
/2/ $2k AMD boxes and be redundant, and still be $6k better off than you.
/way/ ahead of you.
heck, he can buy
presuming revenue is not so huge that $6k is a miniscule sum (reasonable assumption if his business uses only 2 AMD boxes, and yours uses only one SPARC), then he's
given these are the only 'facts' to hand, i know which one i'd invest in if i was a shareholder.