I get dead-tree Wired for $10 a year; less than a buck an issue. So for the price of more than 5 such issues, I should buy a single issue with a glorified shovel-ware interface?
Hmmm, let me think about that for a second. OK, no.
Yes, I agree with this. I get it cheap, too. I've been collecting it for years.
Bad enough Wired never grew up out of its hipster typeface fetish, rendering many of the paper pages barely legible; I shudder to imagine what it looks like on an iPad.
Completely not true. They gave up the illegible chaotic design many years ago. The main article text is all the same typeface black on white, laid out as normal (parallel to the bottom of the page). The diagonally set text on paisley backgrounds, or whatever, was fun for a bit, but stopped a long LONG time ago.
I went to the AT&T store on Lexington Avenue and approx 61st Street in midtown last Monday (one week ago today) and had no problem adding a second iPhone to my account (for my wife).
You have to know SPARC hardware a little bit to know that that box is already infinitely outdated. I have many outdated sparc machines much newer and more powerful than that. I can't decide if that makes them better or worse as a place to store my ashes one day. Probably worse.
is 1080p still a movie industry mastering format? don't they master at 2k and 4k nowadays?
or 8K. For example Baraka on Blu-Ray was transferred at 8K. I just watched it last week after receiving my copy on Blu-Ray from Amazon. I am very happy with this mode of consumption and don't want to even think about the hassle time and expense of trying to download something like that.
Anyone know if the other two related stories are any good (Mono Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero)?
They are good, but as Gibson himself said Mona Lisa Overdrive was where he started to run out of material a little. Still they hold up much better than, say, the last couple of Dune books (in my opinion).
IBM buying Sun means the big-endian server landscape is in big trouble. One mega-vendor plus a bunch of small-fry. I have just written a report that recommends an urgent port over to little-endian platforms (well actually a port to be endian neutral) as a strategic precaution. No matter whether IBM was good or bad, owning AIX/POWER and SPARC/SOLARIS it would have too much power/dominance in big iron unix).
Ironically this could push people into using Windows server. If we really will end up with monopoly proprietary single-vendor lock-in, Windows on PC servers is just cheaper.
Windows is still maintained on Itanium; both it and the Alpha port could run x86 binaries at close to native (or, at one point in the Alpha's lifetime, faster.) I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I don't think they're stupid.
Alpha/NT could run x86 applications, but not x86 device drivers. One of the big problems with that version of NT was the drivers. They couldn't make it compelling the first time round. Now there are no chips available with the horsepower advantage to emulate x86 faster than native x86. Alpha is dead. Itanium is dying. Power is back to being an in-order design and even with all that cache, memory bandwidth and raw clock cycles probably still couldn't quite match a Nehalam running native x86 binaries.
I'd like some anti-Microsoft news that at least appears reputable, and not overly sensationalized "ZOMG Balmer blew up M$ eats babies" crap like the stuff I've seen here for the past few weeks.
Is it possible to also have the ethernet for this device go over the power lines like so many home networking devices? Then you could literally plug it and and have it running.
Yes.
or... actually no, not really.
You can connect this device to another ethernet device with a cable. If that other device is a powerline adapter then yes it's sort of doing what you want, however it can't receive ethernet signals over it's own power connectors, which I think is what you're really asking.
he lays the blame on PC developers (read: Microsoft) who kicked the time-honored waterfall model to the curb
The waterfall model is long-discredited and its downfall is nothing to do with Microsoft. Ian Sommerville in his Software Engineering book was discussing this in the early 90s. I recall a diagram of the spiral model which is very much like agile development, although we didn't call it that then.
I find it hard to believe that another route could not be found. It might take some doing, but both Verizon and Cogent peer with quite a few networks. I recall seeing a peering chart that showed that Cogent (was PSI) was near the center of peering on the Internet. Are you saying that all of the networks that Verizon and Cogent peer with do not have transit links? Are you saying thet none of those networks would pass Verizon or Cogent traffic for a price? That was the way it worked before Cogent and Verizon had an agreement. Why couldn't it revert back to the way it was?
It's boring, I know, but actually this was all covered in the original article.
This looks like you could put it on your desk if you wanted, but you certainly could put it under your desk, so it's going to be a similar experience to "desktop AIX". We got one in this week for $5k where I work - not cheap but not mainframe prices.
However, unfortunately, the noise these things make is unforgivable, so you'd be best off getting the rack-mount version, putting it in the machine room and accessing it remotely, unless you absolutely need AIX with fast local graphics.
At startup it makes a noise like a jet engine during landing, and then when it settles down it makes a noise that is audible and annoying half a floor away. The thing is packed with small high-speed fans.
Kind of makes me appreciate my Sun Blade 1000. It's not a fast machine of course, but it also has a hot cpu inside and yet is so quiet people walking by my desk don't realise it's on and fiddle with the power switch (it is on top of a pedestal/shelf unit next to my desk).
Presumably the POWER6 inside the POWER 520 EXPRESS machine is not just hot but ludicrously hot.
Slashdot Mirror
Ada is named after a real person, Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, therefore should not be typed in all caps. thx
I think it was out in 2008, but we went last year, and if I had the money I'd go again this year. Awesome venue for F1.
Yeah, ok maybe, but the Nordschleife is NOT an "F1 Track" - not any more. I was thinking of "tracks you can go to to see a race".
After all, tracks they used to run on includes all kinds of weird and wonderful places. If they still did Watkins Glen I'd probably go see that too.
Spa Francorchamps, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBmcjp-vAaY
Saw the race last year. Simply awesome.
I get dead-tree Wired for $10 a year; less than a buck an issue. So for the price of more than 5 such issues, I should buy a single issue with a glorified shovel-ware interface?
Hmmm, let me think about that for a second. OK, no.
Yes, I agree with this. I get it cheap, too. I've been collecting it for years.
Bad enough Wired never grew up out of its hipster typeface fetish, rendering many of the paper pages barely legible; I shudder to imagine what it looks like on an iPad.
Completely not true. They gave up the illegible chaotic design many years ago. The main article text is all the same typeface black on white, laid out as normal (parallel to the bottom of the page). The diagonally set text on paisley backgrounds, or whatever, was fun for a bit, but stopped a long LONG time ago.
...Both Alpha and Itanium were in-order...
IIRC the Alpha 21264 was out of order actually, see http://courses.ece.illinois.edu/ece512/Papers/21264.pdf
Don't press any keys at all in XP.
I went to the AT&T store on Lexington Avenue and approx 61st Street in midtown last Monday (one week ago today) and had no problem adding a second iPhone to my account (for my wife).
This story seems like some kind of mistake.
http://www.goodcleantech.com/2009/03/its_official_apple_mac_mini_is.php
"The mini uses only 15W while idling in our tests, and a low 34W while running the CineBench benchmark test"
You have to know SPARC hardware a little bit to know that that box is already infinitely outdated. I have many outdated sparc machines much newer and more powerful than that. I can't decide if that makes them better or worse as a place to store my ashes one day. Probably worse.
is 1080p still a movie industry mastering format? don't they master at 2k and 4k nowadays?
or 8K. For example Baraka on Blu-Ray was transferred at 8K. I just watched it last week after receiving my copy on Blu-Ray from Amazon. I am very happy with this mode of consumption and don't want to even think about the hassle time and expense of trying to download something like that.
Anyone know if the other two related stories are any good (Mono Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero)?
They are good, but as Gibson himself said Mona Lisa Overdrive was where he started to run out of material a little. Still they hold up much better than, say, the last couple of Dune books (in my opinion).
This looks like something I ought to buy.
If you want to follow the spirit of the book, find a copy of the text illegally on-line and download it to your phone!
Also, this is my first first post ever!
Welcome!
UNIX has evolved for a good reason. Only an academic would find this pursuit to be a reasonable use of time.
Oh thank God. If I ever have hobbies that are considered a reasonable use of time please just kill me...
kill, death
IBM buying Sun means the big-endian server landscape is in big trouble. One mega-vendor plus a bunch of small-fry. I have just written a report that recommends an urgent port over to little-endian platforms (well actually a port to be endian neutral) as a strategic precaution. No matter whether IBM was good or bad, owning AIX/POWER and SPARC/SOLARIS it would have too much power/dominance in big iron unix).
Ironically this could push people into using Windows server. If we really will end up with monopoly proprietary single-vendor lock-in, Windows on PC servers is just cheaper.
Windows is still maintained on Itanium; both it and the Alpha port could run x86 binaries at close to native (or, at one point in the Alpha's lifetime, faster.) I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I don't think they're stupid.
Alpha/NT could run x86 applications, but not x86 device drivers. One of the big problems with that version of NT was the drivers. They couldn't make it compelling the first time round. Now there are no chips available with the horsepower advantage to emulate x86 faster than native x86. Alpha is dead. Itanium is dying. Power is back to being an in-order design and even with all that cache, memory bandwidth and raw clock cycles probably still couldn't quite match a Nehalam running native x86 binaries.
I'd like some anti-Microsoft news that at least appears reputable, and not overly sensationalized "ZOMG Balmer blew up M$ eats babies" crap like the stuff I've seen here for the past few weeks.
You're new around here, aren't you?
Is it possible to also have the ethernet for this device go over the power lines like so many home networking devices? Then you could literally plug it and and have it running.
Yes.
or... actually no, not really.
You can connect this device to another ethernet device with a cable. If that other device is a powerline adapter then yes it's sort of doing what you want, however it can't receive ethernet signals over it's own power connectors, which I think is what you're really asking.
That's the Peter Principle
he lays the blame on PC developers (read: Microsoft) who kicked the time-honored waterfall model to the curb
The waterfall model is long-discredited and its downfall is nothing to do with Microsoft. Ian Sommerville in his Software Engineering book was discussing this in the early 90s. I recall a diagram of the spiral model which is very much like agile development, although we didn't call it that then.
the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse
AMD also described NVIDIA's Quadroplex as more of an online My Little Pony.
I find it hard to believe that another route could not be found. It might take some doing, but both Verizon and Cogent peer with quite a few networks. I recall seeing a peering chart that showed that Cogent (was PSI) was near the center of peering on the Internet. Are you saying that all of the networks that Verizon and Cogent peer with do not have transit links? Are you saying thet none of those networks would pass Verizon or Cogent traffic for a price? That was the way it worked before Cogent and Verizon had an agreement. Why couldn't it revert back to the way it was?
It's boring, I know, but actually this was all covered in the original article.
Yes, you're right. The second link is missing. Actually so is the first. The only link provided is to the Seattle Times coverage, whereas the excerpts appear to be from http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/10791_3785611_1
So we can deduce that almost nobody even tried to RTFA. No surprise there.
You will be able to get a Power 520 in tower format, look at http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/520/configs/8203e4a1a.html
This looks like you could put it on your desk if you wanted, but you certainly could put it under your desk, so it's going to be a similar experience to "desktop AIX". We got one in this week for $5k where I work - not cheap but not mainframe prices.
However, unfortunately, the noise these things make is unforgivable, so you'd be best off getting the rack-mount version, putting it in the machine room and accessing it remotely, unless you absolutely need AIX with fast local graphics.
At startup it makes a noise like a jet engine during landing, and then when it settles down it makes a noise that is audible and annoying half a floor away. The thing is packed with small high-speed fans.
Kind of makes me appreciate my Sun Blade 1000. It's not a fast machine of course, but it also has a hot cpu inside and yet is so quiet people walking by my desk don't realise it's on and fiddle with the power switch (it is on top of a pedestal/shelf unit next to my desk).
Presumably the POWER6 inside the POWER 520 EXPRESS machine is not just hot but ludicrously hot.