duh. My HP is a 2gig hz. (Max you get on powerbook is 800mhz? duh!!)
Do your lips move when you read? I'm just wondering because you seem to type your thoughs out, even while your brain farts.
If you've ever used a G4 TiBook, you would understand how stupid your lame attempt at belittling it's speed was. The 2 GHz. mobile P4 in your HP is detuned so as not to melt through your lap. It doesn't come close to the desktop version's speed. The G4 runs cool enough to be run at full bore, which is much faster clock-per-clock than the P3 or P4, especially the mobile ones.
2 Firewire portS d0h. USB 2 d0h (care to see that on your powerbook?)
I have no clue if your machine has firewire or not as your brainfart seemed to become corrupted, but at least Firewire and USB work perfectly on the Mac. Where is USB 2 support from MS?
No, the PB doesn't have USB 2, it doesn't need it. I have yet to see a device where USB 2 really makes sense. Firewire is a much more elegant solution with none of the drawbacks since it is peerable and supports asynchronus and isochronus tansfers.
I thought that at first, but it seems likely that the larger one in the center is a fan. I can't read Japanese, so I was just speculating on the tiny picture.
In the semi-transparent view on the upper right of the page? It looks like it.
Two fans, 16.1" screen, a Pent 4 and a DVD-RW drive. This seems like a power-hungry desktop, rather than a laptop. Anyone venture to guess on the lap temperature? How about deci-Bell levels?
Once, I was talking to another engineer who told me about his discovery of this product. Apparently, a couple of german engineers were paying him a visit, and one had a bottle of this stuff.
There was a small pond (about 60 foot in diameter) beside his company's office that had a few ducks calmly swimming on the water. The german engineer poured half of the bottle in to the edge of the pond, and the surface tension broke across the entire surface. The ducks sunk into the pond and drowned before they had a chance to try to fly away!
I know this is hearsay, but I don't doubt this guy.
Last year, one team took advantage of a loophole in the rules that was supposed to limit trapping the ball out of camera range. Since an overhead camera in the middle of the field supplies a video feed to each team, a robot could remove the ball from view by pushing it into a corner and sitting on it. The rules state that a robot could attempt to retrieve the ball from the corner for a maximum of 20 seconds, after which, a ref would knock the ball free.
One team programmed their AI to pin the ball in the corner for exactly 19 seconds, and then pull it out and shoot at the opposing goal.
Since the camera wouldn't couldn't see the ball when it is put into the corner (with a robot blocking it from view), most of the AI would either go dead, or scramble the team it had control of, so as to reveal the ball. As such, most other teams were caught with their pants down when the ball was not put into play by the ref, but by the player hoarding it in the first place.
This was legal by the rules, but hardly in the spirit of the game.
Because of tactics like this and the buldozer technique employed by less skilled teams, I expect to see a SellingTheFoul() function show up in many of control programs this year.
That would depend on each team that is participating, and what league you want to know about. The "Humanoid" league is new this year, so everything there is new.
The software agent, small, medium, and quadraped (AIBO) are returning leagues. Unfortunately, the results page doesn't have any in-depth information about what teams have done to improve, or what gives certain teams an edge.
I know that the Cornell Big Red (small league) team derrives much of it's success (two-time champion, placed third last year) from being multi-discipline based team. For the entire year, separate CS, ME, and EE teams work on improving every aspect of their robots and the AI that they run on.
This year, their robots are faster, more agile and have better ball control. Since they design and construct their own team, they can optimize all aspects of their team's performance. Other teams are primarily CS based, some even buying their robots off-the-shelf (in addition to the AIBO-toy league which is hardware constrained). Many of these teams can only focus on improving the AI to match what they have.
One thing that I haven't seen on the RoboCup site though is a listing for their first eleven-on-eleven match. Most physical games are five-on-five, except for the humanoid league, which is still nascent.
The eleven-on-eleven match is an exhibition match between Cornell's 2001 robots and another team that placed second last year's tournament. I'm not sure who the other team is, but I know that they are really good as well.
The Cornell Big Red team is the one that introduced the spinning bar (dribbler), omnidirectional travel, and passing. You have to see these robots in action to appreciate how well this works.
Our current robots can trap the ball and move from one end of the field to the other, backwards in under a second. The ball looks like it is stuck to the robot! On top of just pulling the ball in, they also have a transverse dribbler so that the robot can also move side to side without loosing the ball at the end of the roller.
Most teams are pure CS majors, but Cornell uses a team of Mech. E., EE, and CS students. By doing this, the team can concentrate on developing more innovative robots with new features to better play the game.
Oh, and brute-force is forbidden by the rules. A ref. is supposed to assess penalties against robots that hit into the opposing team's players.
-- Len
Re:modded new imac!
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Inside the eMac
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Dell would never produce anything that looks like that, because they are in to square obtrusive things.
The white iMacs have a matte finish as well. The matte black paint job just makes the already unobtrusive iMac even more so.
Whining crybaby companies like Lucent, who got on the 1394 bandwagon too late. Apple developed Firewire (1394) on it's own, and then partnered with Sony and Texas Instruments to provide chipsets and other products. As these companies and some others formed a consortium for patent sharing (similar to JDEC for RAM), they had a trivial, if not free licensing for early adopters. Sometime after the IEEE accepted this as the 1394 standard, the consortium decided to charge royalties to the "Johnny-come-lately" companies that didn't sign on early. All of the early adopters that shouldered the weight of developing this technology were allowed to use the catchy name that Apple coined, Firewire. Sony had a bit of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome and probably felt that it could market this as a proprietary technology by calling it i.Link.
Lucent and some other laggards got all huffy, because they found USB to suck, too late in the game, and wanted to produce chipsets for Firewire too. Because they were slow to the mark, they would be charged a licensing fee to use the name and symbology of Firewire. By just following the 1394 standard, they didn't have to license the name Firewire (or i.Link). In geeky magazine ads in embeded systems trade wrags, Lucent went as far as admonishing customers "Don't use the 'F' word, its 1394!"
I have nothing against Lucent, but they are the one that springs to my mind now. Other PC manufacturers were late to the table (HPaQ) and used 1394 as a label for their ports (which confuses and befuddles their typical users).
... Our enemies will talk themselves in circles...
Think about it. Searching for content across an enterprise will be used primarily by middle managers and others of higher order ambiguous executive titleature. It will be used in the never-ending quest to micromanage and meddle with formerly successful projects. The downfall of this system will result from one word:
Synergy
The PHB types just can't resist that word, and when the going gets tough, the feeble minded will grope the enterprise file system by searching for this single word. With either the volume of searches or volume of hits, the system will melt-down and freeze as only Microsoft crap can!
I just feel its tough to speak with authority when you have skeletons in you closet. I mean, imagine if Bill Gates were to interogate Linus about having a monopoly on the development of the Linux kernel.
-- Len
Re:People like you are part of the problem
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ULTra Robo-Taxi
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· Score: 2
I didn't say that all public transit was a waste of taxpayer money, just that poorly conceived public transit was. And while I may be to the right of you, I'm still a conservationist and quite sane.
Due to the massive political-industrial complex that has been built up around this unecessarily complex automobile system (all funded by the taxpayer, of course, whether you use these roads or not), consideration of alternatives which could return substantially more for our tax money investment, are not considered.
Are you blinded by ideology or did you just not read my post? Regardless of your use of these roads, you still benefit from them. Your cost of living is greatly affected by the presense of the highway and road systems in all of the developed world. They enable you to have a much higher quality of life because they make everything you need to get cheaper. Also, there are no current alternatives which would return more for our tax investment. Railroads had their day and now they can't compete, even with government subsidies out the wazoo!
There are other problems with the Cardiff system besides ones raised in other posts. Pollution you say, about the current roadway system. I contend that the Cardiff system will cause more!
As much as I've wanted breeder reactors and cold fusion, they just haven't materialized. Where will the electricity come from to power this thing? Besides nuclear, we don't have any clean power generation, and nuclear causes many nutcases to get their panties in a bunch.
Besides that, what about the heavy metals used in the production and disposal of the batteries that this thing will have to use?
Also, I feel that if they could honestly get this system built and running with only 30 cars, for $65 million, it would be a bargain! If this thing was truely viable, I would think that Disney World and EPCOT would already have one of these running. They dont.
I still contend that there will be NO Return On Investment (ROI) for most public transit systems, especially this one!
Hollings has received campaign donations from Enron, but that hasn't slowed him from raising a stink over Ashcroft recusing himself from the Enron investigation. Ashcroft did receive donations from Enron, when he ran as a senator, so he recused himself from the criminal investigation, to avoid the appearance that the donation had tainted his objectivity.
Likewise, as governor of South Carolina, he signed a bill to fly the confederate flag over the state capitol, and recently tried to use that issue in the 2000 Presidential campaign against the Republicans, for them not insisting that it should come down.
A senator with as much seniority as he has only listens to the highest bidder.
-- Len
People like you are part of the problem
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ULTra Robo-Taxi
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· Score: 2
You must realize that the roadway system is currently supported by taxpayers because all taxpayers and non-taxpayers benefit from it. Since you live in Canada, a developed country, you can't even think that you don't benefit from public roadway systems.
Anyone living in any first-world country greatly benefits from roadway development! How much would it cost to buy your food, clothes, medicine, or other goods and services if there was no way for them to economically arrive at your local vendors?
Taxpayers, and not all citizens pay taxes, fund the construction and maintenance of these roads for the benefit of the local and national economy. The roadway ifrastructure is an engine of commerce!
Light rail, mass transit, etc. are not fair to taxpayers, as not all taxpayers (most) don't use them, and only marginal economic benefit is provided to the local area by them. In the San Jose example sited at the beginning of this thread, the riders (beneficiaries) of the rail system provide revenue of only 1/8 the cost of operation, which is not profitable in any length of time. If the fares were calculated to be break-even, then the ridership is too low. If the fares were increased to make this operation economically feasible, the ridership will fall even lower. The light rail is limited to pedestrian and bike ridership, with no possibility of commercial utility, so there is no benefit to the local economy derrived from it. It simply doesn't work, so the taxpayers get hosed.
The only exceptions, where mass transit is viable, are where large transient populations exist. Primarily, this would be college towns where the local population doubles when school is in session, and tourist traps. In college towns, you have a large "transportationally challenged" subset of the population, and the local economy does derrive substantial benefit from the public transit ridership. In heavy tourism areas, you will find privatized mass transit that can operate successfully while turning a profit.
The roadway system, while not perfect, does provide wealth by making inexpensive commerce possible. It is a worthy enterprise to be funded by the public.
should learn new tricks. Especially AC dumbastic trolls.
Why do you need the Control key placed there? PC's have the Control key in the exact same place as where Apple put it, because it makes it so much easier to press Alt-Ctrl-Del when it is where it is at.
Most modern UNIX systems have devalued the Control key anyway. Sun uses Apple's Command Key shortcuts while SGI and HP use stupid Windows ones with the same lower-left Control Key placement.
I bet if you just gave it half of the effort that you put in to that last post, you could get used to the Control key being where it is now. Better yet, you could map another really illogical spiffy key like F7 to be the Control key.
By the way, I learned UNIX by using my old Apple//c to connect to my University's mainframe. It had the Control key where the Caps Lock key now sits. Blame the PC for the current location and get a USB keyboard with the control key where you want it.
I'm only responding to this AC, because he/she is SO wrong, that I would hope that their thought processes won't poison too many people.
PPC is Big Endian (the right way!) in it's Mac application, while x86 and other intel crap is little endian. There is no overhead in processing one way or the other, although the PPC is much more adept at handling endian issues than the antiquated x86.
From the beginning, the PPC architecture has featured bi-endian ability. Natively, it is Big Endian, like all real processors, favoring the Most Significant Bit (MSB) at the lowest adressed data line. Unlike almost all other processors though, the PPC can switch to Little Endian mode favoring the Least Significant Bit (LSB) at the lowest addressed data line. Big Endian is how we (westen culture humans) read binary numbers, while Little Endian is the other way arround.
The endian issue is only an issue when dealing with things like memory space and floating point numbers. Important problems, no doubt, but not so large that it would incapacitate most modern processors. The memory space issues are usually handled in hardware (PCI is little endian even in the Mac), while transform functions (think MMX, SSE, 3DNow) could easily deal with endian data issues.
Connectix Virtual PC actually switches the endianness of the PPC chip in execution, to help emulate the x86. This does make the emulation much faster. Unfortunately, the same trick cannot be used on x86 to emulate the PPC, as MMX and friends would cause a context switch and register flush on both sides of execution. If the code were to be dynamically recompiled though, the endian issue could be greatly reduced by only doing the conversion when absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, the differences between CISC and RISC code (ignoring AltiVec) would make this a very difficult proposition. RISC's ability to emulate CISC instruction sets is why both intel and AMD have RISC cores in both the P6 family and the Athlon, and not the other way around.
Not so, just threaded code (Posix, Carbon, NS_tread) will run MP. If you are doing massive scientific calculations, you should be doing this already!
Otherwise, run two (or three) instances of the code on each machine, and OS X will juggle the load on the available processors. OS X is much more flexible than hard coding to MPI or PVM, although you can use those. Also, you can use third party load balancers like LSF Platform to do the multiple executions on each node.
It's not your fault, because you probably didn't know this, but the USC Mac cluster didn't cost anything near $440,000, and it didn't have any 1000 MHz. G4's in it.
At the "Macs in Science and Engineering" user conference at Macworld, they gave the general specs. of this cluster, and all of the machines were dual processors, but of different hardware generations. Although the fastest machines were dual 800 Mhz. on 133 MHz. bus, the majority were slower dual 450 and 500 Mhz. machines with 100 Mhz. buses.
With the fact that all were dual, and ignoring depreciation on the older hardware, the cost would be at most $220,000, If you were using Dual 1 GHz. G4's, it would still be only $220,000. My notes are on my laptop, but I believe that the actual cost of the USC cluster was less than $200,000.
Also, I assume that you think that the 270 uni-processor T-birds will scale performance linearly as well. I doubt it would only cost ~$600 per node as you would have to use Myrinet or some other fast fabric, and with three and a half times as many nodes, the latencies, hardware, and administration cost would be crippling. I have the same cost argument if you use dual Athlons, as the boards are quite rare, and the node count is almost double the Mac node count.
What he means is that the OS will balance load by divvying up the processes and threads (tasks) between the available processors. Also, if an application is threaded (in any of the supported thread architectures) then it will also automagically take advantage of the available processors.
OS X maps processes and threads to mach tasks, which will get pre-emptively scheduled on available processors. I don't have my docs with me, but there are three different threading systems which will take advantage of multiple processors. The exception is applications running in Classic (MacOS 9 running on OS X) are stuck on the processor that Classic is running on. These apps will run threaded, but are bound by the limitations imposed by the Classic environment.
Yes, but there are several major problems in implementing something like this in Pittsburgh (in particular) or in other places in general.
First, Pittsburgh is very spread out geographically (and economically), while the places people want to go are generally concentrated. How do you balance the load to guarantee availability of thes small cars in the sparse areas that people are living, and not have an overload at the destinations?
Second, Pittsburgh's culture supports individuality. The current HOV lanes are a joke because nobody uses them! A useful solution to the HOV lane debaucle would be to convert the existing space into a monorail/subway system extending into the North Hills.
Third, the infrastructure cost would be beyond prohibitive. Look at how crappy the current belt system is, with a maze of poorly maintained roads through BFE. If you think that the Mag-Lev train will cost a lot, this track mesh would take much new construction that would cause the local taxpayer base to revolt!
Fourth, if these little electric cars are supposed to provide inner city transportation, can they handle the hills in Pittsburgh? The whole reason the infrastructure in the inner city sucks is because the hills are outrageously steep and the streets are poorly laid out.
Finally, I doubt that it could be economically implemented anywhere on earth, as buses and trains are cheaper because they use economically feasible infrastructures (existing roads and tracks) , and many more specially designed small cars would have to be designed and built from scratch. This system would need near 100% utilization to even come close to being economically feasible.
But neither is Jean Louis Gaseé. Marconi was a showman, full of bravado. His extroverted nature was opposite of Tesla's introvert scientist personality.
Tesla is credited for inventing radio by the USPTO, because his 1881 Tesla coil was able to transmit power over large distances, using high frequency electromagnetic waves (radio). His original device was not used for voice communication, but power transmission. A true pioneer, he was working on the last mile power delivery problem before we even had a power grid in the US.
In truth, Marconi received the patent originally, but the USPTO overturned Marconi's patent in 1943, three months after Tesla's death. This patent dispute lasted for nearly half a decade! Marconi was lauded, while Tesla died pennyless.
Tesla was the prototypical geek, the antithesis of Edison and Marconi. Both were showmen, not scientific inventors, which greatly irritated Tesla. Also, because English was not his native language (Serbo-Croat), he avoided any public speaking, as such "demonstrations" by slavic immigrants at the time warranted visits from the KKK. Tesla was poorly treated in a time when no equal opportunity existed for eastern european immigrants.
I guess it's more and more like kernel hacking, in that you have to get into minute detail for minor changes.
Check out Neuspeed for what's involved with supercharging modern Volkswagens and Audi's. Since these cars are computer controlled, adding a supercharger involves reworking the ECM. This is not a simple chip swap anymore!
For more fun, check out the Philips Automotive Lighting Forum for people hacking their headlights to use Xenon High Intensity Discharge (HID) light systems. People in this group hack all sorts of ways around Benz and BMW computers that throw hissy fits when they think that a light bulb has burned out.
As far as I can tell, Thomas Paine was famous for writing Common Sense. Anyone who's ever read all of Katz's collumns knows that Jon's authority on this subject is fleeting.
Seriously though, Paine was a revolutionary who used fact and logic to form opinion. I think that this is unfortunately lacking in today's Web.
Just because someone can rant on their web page or in the blurb of a slashdot article about any subject does not make them either convincing or revolutionary.
Not that anyone will read this now that it's dropped from the front page, but...
You aren't capable of ignoring people? Freedom from religion is equivalent in my book to ignorance, in the polite way.
If you don't want to go into a church, synagogue, mosque, shrine or coven when you walk by any of them, then fine, don't go in. Ignore them. I'm sure that the sermons, organs, bells, singing and praying can be heard outside of most. This doesn't mean that they should be soundproofed to protect you from their religious message. Just unbunch your panties and ignore them.
As to the Valedvictorian speech, the pulpit is given to this individual as an honor of their achievement. It is this individual's soap box to use his right of free speech to whatever point that he wants to use it for. The valedvictorian of my HS class used it for a drunken rant; it was his perogitive. If he wanted to use this opportunity to summon the demons of hell, well he "earned" the spot to say whatever he wanted to.
Slashdot Mirror
Do your lips move when you read? I'm just wondering because you seem to type your thoughs out, even while your brain farts.
If you've ever used a G4 TiBook, you would understand how stupid your lame attempt at belittling it's speed was. The 2 GHz. mobile P4 in your HP is detuned so as not to melt through your lap. It doesn't come close to the desktop version's speed. The G4 runs cool enough to be run at full bore, which is much faster clock-per-clock than the P3 or P4, especially the mobile ones.
I have no clue if your machine has firewire or not as your brainfart seemed to become corrupted, but at least Firewire and USB work perfectly on the Mac. Where is USB 2 support from MS?
No, the PB doesn't have USB 2, it doesn't need it. I have yet to see a device where USB 2 really makes sense. Firewire is a much more elegant solution with none of the drawbacks since it is peerable and supports asynchronus and isochronus tansfers.
--Len
I thought that at first, but it seems likely that the larger one in the center is a fan. I can't read Japanese, so I was just speculating on the tiny picture.
-- Len
In the semi-transparent view on the upper right of the page? It looks like it.
Two fans, 16.1" screen, a Pent 4 and a DVD-RW drive. This seems like a power-hungry desktop, rather than a laptop. Anyone venture to guess on the lap temperature? How about deci-Bell levels?
-- Len
Water Wetter is powerful stuff!
Once, I was talking to another engineer who told me about his discovery of this product. Apparently, a couple of german engineers were paying him a visit, and one had a bottle of this stuff.
There was a small pond (about 60 foot in diameter) beside his company's office that had a few ducks calmly swimming on the water. The german engineer poured half of the bottle in to the edge of the pond, and the surface tension broke across the entire surface. The ducks sunk into the pond and drowned before they had a chance to try to fly away!
I know this is hearsay, but I don't doubt this guy.
-- Len
The refs are a bit forgiving.
Last year, one team took advantage of a loophole in the rules that was supposed to limit trapping the ball out of camera range. Since an overhead camera in the middle of the field supplies a video feed to each team, a robot could remove the ball from view by pushing it into a corner and sitting on it. The rules state that a robot could attempt to retrieve the ball from the corner for a maximum of 20 seconds, after which, a ref would knock the ball free.
One team programmed their AI to pin the ball in the corner for exactly 19 seconds, and then pull it out and shoot at the opposing goal.
Since the camera wouldn't couldn't see the ball when it is put into the corner (with a robot blocking it from view), most of the AI would either go dead, or scramble the team it had control of, so as to reveal the ball. As such, most other teams were caught with their pants down when the ball was not put into play by the ref, but by the player hoarding it in the first place.
This was legal by the rules, but hardly in the spirit of the game.
Because of tactics like this and the buldozer technique employed by less skilled teams, I expect to see a SellingTheFoul() function show up in many of control programs this year.
-- Len
That would depend on each team that is participating, and what league you want to know about. The "Humanoid" league is new this year, so everything there is new.
The software agent, small, medium, and quadraped (AIBO) are returning leagues. Unfortunately, the results page doesn't have any in-depth information about what teams have done to improve, or what gives certain teams an edge.
I know that the Cornell Big Red (small league) team derrives much of it's success (two-time champion, placed third last year) from being multi-discipline based team. For the entire year, separate CS, ME, and EE teams work on improving every aspect of their robots and the AI that they run on.
This year, their robots are faster, more agile and have better ball control. Since they design and construct their own team, they can optimize all aspects of their team's performance. Other teams are primarily CS based, some even buying their robots off-the-shelf (in addition to the AIBO-toy league which is hardware constrained). Many of these teams can only focus on improving the AI to match what they have.
One thing that I haven't seen on the RoboCup site though is a listing for their first eleven-on-eleven match. Most physical games are five-on-five, except for the humanoid league, which is still nascent.
The eleven-on-eleven match is an exhibition match between Cornell's 2001 robots and another team that placed second last year's tournament. I'm not sure who the other team is, but I know that they are really good as well.
-- LenThe Cornell Big Red team is the one that introduced the spinning bar (dribbler), omnidirectional travel, and passing. You have to see these robots in action to appreciate how well this works.
Our current robots can trap the ball and move from one end of the field to the other, backwards in under a second. The ball looks like it is stuck to the robot! On top of just pulling the ball in, they also have a transverse dribbler so that the robot can also move side to side without loosing the ball at the end of the roller.
Most teams are pure CS majors, but Cornell uses a team of Mech. E., EE, and CS students. By doing this, the team can concentrate on developing more innovative robots with new features to better play the game.
Oh, and brute-force is forbidden by the rules. A ref. is supposed to assess penalties against robots that hit into the opposing team's players.
-- Len
Dell would never produce anything that looks like that, because they are in to square obtrusive things.
The white iMacs have a matte finish as well. The matte black paint job just makes the already unobtrusive iMac even more so.
-- Len
Whining crybaby companies like Lucent, who got on the 1394 bandwagon too late. Apple developed Firewire (1394) on it's own, and then partnered with Sony and Texas Instruments to provide chipsets and other products. As these companies and some others formed a consortium for patent sharing (similar to JDEC for RAM), they had a trivial, if not free licensing for early adopters. Sometime after the IEEE accepted this as the 1394 standard, the consortium decided to charge royalties to the "Johnny-come-lately" companies that didn't sign on early. All of the early adopters that shouldered the weight of developing this technology were allowed to use the catchy name that Apple coined, Firewire. Sony had a bit of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome and probably felt that it could market this as a proprietary technology by calling it i.Link.
Lucent and some other laggards got all huffy, because they found USB to suck, too late in the game, and wanted to produce chipsets for Firewire too. Because they were slow to the mark, they would be charged a licensing fee to use the name and symbology of Firewire. By just following the 1394 standard, they didn't have to license the name Firewire (or i.Link). In geeky magazine ads in embeded systems trade wrags, Lucent went as far as admonishing customers "Don't use the 'F' word, its 1394!"
I have nothing against Lucent, but they are the one that springs to my mind now. Other PC manufacturers were late to the table (HPaQ) and used 1394 as a label for their ports (which confuses and befuddles their typical users).
-- Len
Think about it. Searching for content across an enterprise will be used primarily by middle managers and others of higher order ambiguous executive titleature. It will be used in the never-ending quest to micromanage and meddle with formerly successful projects. The downfall of this system will result from one word:
Synergy
The PHB types just can't resist that word, and when the going gets tough, the feeble minded will grope the enterprise file system by searching for this single word. With either the volume of searches or volume of hits, the system will melt-down and freeze as only Microsoft crap can!
-- Len
Good point.
I just feel its tough to speak with authority when you have skeletons in you closet. I mean, imagine if Bill Gates were to interogate Linus about having a monopoly on the development of the Linux kernel.
-- Len
Are you blinded by ideology or did you just not read my post? Regardless of your use of these roads, you still benefit from them. Your cost of living is greatly affected by the presense of the highway and road systems in all of the developed world. They enable you to have a much higher quality of life because they make everything you need to get cheaper. Also, there are no current alternatives which would return more for our tax investment. Railroads had their day and now they can't compete, even with government subsidies out the wazoo!
There are other problems with the Cardiff system besides ones raised in other posts. Pollution you say, about the current roadway system. I contend that the Cardiff system will cause more!
As much as I've wanted breeder reactors and cold fusion, they just haven't materialized. Where will the electricity come from to power this thing? Besides nuclear, we don't have any clean power generation, and nuclear causes many nutcases to get their panties in a bunch.
Besides that, what about the heavy metals used in the production and disposal of the batteries that this thing will have to use?
Also, I feel that if they could honestly get this system built and running with only 30 cars, for $65 million, it would be a bargain! If this thing was truely viable, I would think that Disney World and EPCOT would already have one of these running. They dont.
I still contend that there will be NO Return On Investment (ROI) for most public transit systems, especially this one!
--Len
Senator Hollings especially!
Hollings has received campaign donations from Enron, but that hasn't slowed him from raising a stink over Ashcroft recusing himself from the Enron investigation. Ashcroft did receive donations from Enron, when he ran as a senator, so he recused himself from the criminal investigation, to avoid the appearance that the donation had tainted his objectivity.
Likewise, as governor of South Carolina, he signed a bill to fly the confederate flag over the state capitol, and recently tried to use that issue in the 2000 Presidential campaign against the Republicans, for them not insisting that it should come down.
A senator with as much seniority as he has only listens to the highest bidder.
-- Len
You must realize that the roadway system is currently supported by taxpayers because all taxpayers and non-taxpayers benefit from it. Since you live in Canada, a developed country, you can't even think that you don't benefit from public roadway systems.
Anyone living in any first-world country greatly benefits from roadway development! How much would it cost to buy your food, clothes, medicine, or other goods and services if there was no way for them to economically arrive at your local vendors?
Taxpayers, and not all citizens pay taxes, fund the construction and maintenance of these roads for the benefit of the local and national economy. The roadway ifrastructure is an engine of commerce!
Light rail, mass transit, etc. are not fair to taxpayers, as not all taxpayers (most) don't use them, and only marginal economic benefit is provided to the local area by them. In the San Jose example sited at the beginning of this thread, the riders (beneficiaries) of the rail system provide revenue of only 1/8 the cost of operation, which is not profitable in any length of time. If the fares were calculated to be break-even, then the ridership is too low. If the fares were increased to make this operation economically feasible, the ridership will fall even lower. The light rail is limited to pedestrian and bike ridership, with no possibility of commercial utility, so there is no benefit to the local economy derrived from it. It simply doesn't work, so the taxpayers get hosed.
The only exceptions, where mass transit is viable, are where large transient populations exist. Primarily, this would be college towns where the local population doubles when school is in session, and tourist traps. In college towns, you have a large "transportationally challenged" subset of the population, and the local economy does derrive substantial benefit from the public transit ridership. In heavy tourism areas, you will find privatized mass transit that can operate successfully while turning a profit.
The roadway system, while not perfect, does provide wealth by making inexpensive commerce possible. It is a worthy enterprise to be funded by the public.
-- Len
should learn new tricks. Especially AC dumbastic trolls.
//c to connect to my University's mainframe. It had the Control key where the Caps Lock key now sits. Blame the PC for the current location and get a USB keyboard with the control key where you want it.
Why do you need the Control key placed there? PC's have the Control key in the exact same place as where Apple put it, because it makes it so much easier to press Alt-Ctrl-Del when it is where it is at.
Most modern UNIX systems have devalued the Control key anyway. Sun uses Apple's Command Key shortcuts while SGI and HP use stupid Windows ones with the same lower-left Control Key placement.
I bet if you just gave it half of the effort that you put in to that last post, you could get used to the Control key being where it is now. Better yet, you could map another really illogical spiffy key like F7 to be the Control key.
By the way, I learned UNIX by using my old Apple
-- Len
The other way around.
I'm only responding to this AC, because he/she is SO wrong, that I would hope that their thought processes won't poison too many people.
PPC is Big Endian (the right way!) in it's Mac application, while x86 and other intel crap is little endian. There is no overhead in processing one way or the other, although the PPC is much more adept at handling endian issues than the antiquated x86.
From the beginning, the PPC architecture has featured bi-endian ability. Natively, it is Big Endian, like all real processors, favoring the Most Significant Bit (MSB) at the lowest adressed data line. Unlike almost all other processors though, the PPC can switch to Little Endian mode favoring the Least Significant Bit (LSB) at the lowest addressed data line. Big Endian is how we (westen culture humans) read binary numbers, while Little Endian is the other way arround.
The endian issue is only an issue when dealing with things like memory space and floating point numbers. Important problems, no doubt, but not so large that it would incapacitate most modern processors. The memory space issues are usually handled in hardware (PCI is little endian even in the Mac), while transform functions (think MMX, SSE, 3DNow) could easily deal with endian data issues.
Connectix Virtual PC actually switches the endianness of the PPC chip in execution, to help emulate the x86. This does make the emulation much faster. Unfortunately, the same trick cannot be used on x86 to emulate the PPC, as MMX and friends would cause a context switch and register flush on both sides of execution. If the code were to be dynamically recompiled though, the endian issue could be greatly reduced by only doing the conversion when absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, the differences between CISC and RISC code (ignoring AltiVec) would make this a very difficult proposition. RISC's ability to emulate CISC instruction sets is why both intel and AMD have RISC cores in both the P6 family and the Athlon, and not the other way around.
-- Len
Not so, just threaded code (Posix, Carbon, NS_tread) will run MP. If you are doing massive scientific calculations, you should be doing this already!
Otherwise, run two (or three) instances of the code on each machine, and OS X will juggle the load on the available processors. OS X is much more flexible than hard coding to MPI or PVM, although you can use those. Also, you can use third party load balancers like LSF Platform to do the multiple executions on each node.
-- Len
It's not your fault, because you probably didn't know this, but the USC Mac cluster didn't cost anything near $440,000, and it didn't have any 1000 MHz. G4's in it.
At the "Macs in Science and Engineering" user conference at Macworld, they gave the general specs. of this cluster, and all of the machines were dual processors, but of different hardware generations. Although the fastest machines were dual 800 Mhz. on 133 MHz. bus, the majority were slower dual 450 and 500 Mhz. machines with 100 Mhz. buses.
With the fact that all were dual, and ignoring depreciation on the older hardware, the cost would be at most $220,000, If you were using Dual 1 GHz. G4's, it would still be only $220,000. My notes are on my laptop, but I believe that the actual cost of the USC cluster was less than $200,000.
Also, I assume that you think that the 270 uni-processor T-birds will scale performance linearly as well. I doubt it would only cost ~$600 per node as you would have to use Myrinet or some other fast fabric, and with three and a half times as many nodes, the latencies, hardware, and administration cost would be crippling. I have the same cost argument if you use dual Athlons, as the boards are quite rare, and the node count is almost double the Mac node count.
Your price/performance assertions don't stand up!
-- Len
What he means is that the OS will balance load by divvying up the processes and threads (tasks) between the available processors. Also, if an application is threaded (in any of the supported thread architectures) then it will also automagically take advantage of the available processors.
OS X maps processes and threads to mach tasks, which will get pre-emptively scheduled on available processors. I don't have my docs with me, but there are three different threading systems which will take advantage of multiple processors. The exception is applications running in Classic (MacOS 9 running on OS X) are stuck on the processor that Classic is running on. These apps will run threaded, but are bound by the limitations imposed by the Classic environment.
-- Len
Yes, but there are several major problems in implementing something like this in Pittsburgh (in particular) or in other places in general.
First, Pittsburgh is very spread out geographically (and economically), while the places people want to go are generally concentrated. How do you balance the load to guarantee availability of thes small cars in the sparse areas that people are living, and not have an overload at the destinations?
Second, Pittsburgh's culture supports individuality. The current HOV lanes are a joke because nobody uses them! A useful solution to the HOV lane debaucle would be to convert the existing space into a monorail/subway system extending into the North Hills.
Third, the infrastructure cost would be beyond prohibitive. Look at how crappy the current belt system is, with a maze of poorly maintained roads through BFE. If you think that the Mag-Lev train will cost a lot, this track mesh would take much new construction that would cause the local taxpayer base to revolt!
Fourth, if these little electric cars are supposed to provide inner city transportation, can they handle the hills in Pittsburgh? The whole reason the infrastructure in the inner city sucks is because the hills are outrageously steep and the streets are poorly laid out.
Finally, I doubt that it could be economically implemented anywhere on earth, as buses and trains are cheaper because they use economically feasible infrastructures (existing roads and tracks) , and many more specially designed small cars would have to be designed and built from scratch. This system would need near 100% utilization to even come close to being economically feasible.
--Len
No... he wasn't.
But neither is Jean Louis Gaseé. Marconi was a showman, full of bravado. His extroverted nature was opposite of Tesla's introvert scientist personality.
-- Len
Tesla is credited for inventing radio by the USPTO, because his 1881 Tesla coil was able to transmit power over large distances, using high frequency electromagnetic waves (radio). His original device was not used for voice communication, but power transmission. A true pioneer, he was working on the last mile power delivery problem before we even had a power grid in the US.
In truth, Marconi received the patent originally, but the USPTO overturned Marconi's patent in 1943, three months after Tesla's death. This patent dispute lasted for nearly half a decade! Marconi was lauded, while Tesla died pennyless.
Tesla was the prototypical geek, the antithesis of Edison and Marconi. Both were showmen, not scientific inventors, which greatly irritated Tesla. Also, because English was not his native language (Serbo-Croat), he avoided any public speaking, as such "demonstrations" by slavic immigrants at the time warranted visits from the KKK. Tesla was poorly treated in a time when no equal opportunity existed for eastern european immigrants.
-- Len
I guess it's more and more like kernel hacking, in that you have to get into minute detail for minor changes.
Check out Neuspeed for what's involved with supercharging modern Volkswagens and Audi's. Since these cars are computer controlled, adding a supercharger involves reworking the ECM. This is not a simple chip swap anymore!
For more fun, check out the Philips Automotive Lighting Forum for people hacking their headlights to use Xenon High Intensity Discharge (HID) light systems. People in this group hack all sorts of ways around Benz and BMW computers that throw hissy fits when they think that a light bulb has burned out.
-- Len
As far as I can tell, Thomas Paine was famous for writing Common Sense. Anyone who's ever read all of Katz's collumns knows that Jon's authority on this subject is fleeting.
Seriously though, Paine was a revolutionary who used fact and logic to form opinion. I think that this is unfortunately lacking in today's Web.
Just because someone can rant on their web page or in the blurb of a slashdot article about any subject does not make them either convincing or revolutionary.
-- Len
You aren't capable of ignoring people? Freedom from religion is equivalent in my book to ignorance, in the polite way.
If you don't want to go into a church, synagogue, mosque, shrine or coven when you walk by any of them, then fine, don't go in. Ignore them. I'm sure that the sermons, organs, bells, singing and praying can be heard outside of most. This doesn't mean that they should be soundproofed to protect you from their religious message. Just unbunch your panties and ignore them.
As to the Valedvictorian speech, the pulpit is given to this individual as an honor of their achievement. It is this individual's soap box to use his right of free speech to whatever point that he wants to use it for. The valedvictorian of my HS class used it for a drunken rant; it was his perogitive. If he wanted to use this opportunity to summon the demons of hell, well he "earned" the spot to say whatever he wanted to.
-- Len