Random words mixed in with the key ones, random delays between searches, random User-Agent, etc., etc. Seems like it would be easy to do, and hard to track...
Don't forget random IPs... without that, the tracking becomes very easy
The most probable reality is that the strikers sabotaged the equipment. Use your head.
I neither agree nor disagree with your statement. I did use my head. What my head told me is that I have far too few facts of the matter to make a decision. I have read one anecdotal-style news item of the incident. I have not even confirmed as fact that the facility in question exists, let alone verified one single statement in this report.
I do not believe that you have any more information than I do, yet you choose to come to a conclusion from one admittedly biased source.
RTFA... it mentions that there were 3 backup generators, and that they all failed to start. The article hints that the cause may be inadequately trained temporary works, hired when the engineers responsible for maintaining the generators went on strike 5 months previous to the incident.
...call me when this shoots beams when the wielder's at full hearts.
Not to nitpick but this sword is actually the Sword of Time from Zelda: Ocarina of time.
The only master sword that could every shoot beams was in Zelda: Link to the Past (and 4 swords, the GBA conversion of same)... the swords in Zelda and ZeldaII were never referred to as Master Swords, though the title probably comes from the translation in Zelda of the text "Master using this and you can have it", which is what the ghost of the swordsman says when he gives you the most powerful sword in the game.
I did some work for a company with a multi TB database, it was being stored in flat file on an old mainframe. We moved it to SQL Server 2000; it took two years of tuning (both by us and by Microsoft) to get the performance to be acceptable compared to the old flat file.
Remember, in computing there are always tradeoffs. Database technology is often a trade of complexity management (in the form of metadata) for speed.
Re:Considering how people flail and pound on butto
on
Hand-Powered Hardware?
·
· Score: 1
Take a look into asynchronous computing.
One of the fundamental power wasters in modern computing is that every chip, every logic gate on every chip, draws just a little bit of current, whether needed or not, on every clock pulse. By designing a computer that doesn't require a clock, you can design it so that the vast majority of power wasted on the clock is not consumed.
While we're discussing mobile computing power requirements, tho, allow me to point out that LCDs require a current even when things are not being changed on screen. This current is between 50-100mA depending on screen type, size, etc. (RCA LCD TV at 2.2" is 50 mA) that and sound are probably your biggest power wasters. Most mobile devices top out for their total power utilization somewhere around 200 mA, though I've seen some that go as high as 500 mA... most AAs are (nominally) around 1800 mAh @ 1.5V so you can do the math, but beware the voltage converter...
The point being that its not just the computer that takes the power. In pdas and gameboys, if the manufacturer was smart, the computer could very well be the least power-demanding component...
I tried this sort of thing. EPIA under seat, hooked into the car audio and video system (5" on-dash LCD)... custom harness to interact with the in-car computer. Luckily the busses are serial, so a regular serial port or a hacked hi-speed parallel port can interface...
A couple observations:
1. The interface should not be mouse driven no matter what. You need buttons. Buttons are BETTER than a touch screen in this case.
2. A numpad can be used for interface, but a serial module with built in buttons or some other contraption would be better.
3. Very few commercial programs are suitable to this interface method. Expect to do some heavy lifting in code to pass the girlfriend test. The girlfriend test is the same one I have for MythTV. If she sits down with no instruction, does this gadget improve the experience, or at least not degrade it in any way?
4. Audible interface is nice. You need a music pass through for a regular CD player, on top of whatever lossy compression you're using to store music. Any type of audible, no-eyes-off-the-road notifications are great. A good text reader would be even better but I doubt you could get it to work well enough.
5. Forget speech recognition. It's still just barely good enough to be acceptable in a lab environment. Road noise will completely kill any chance you have of running it in your car.
6. Certain applications should not be used while driving. No, not even stuck in traffic. Ideally, if the car is in drive, they will simply be unavailable. E-mail is a maybe. Video playback is a maybe. Any program requiring more than three or four buttons to operate should be avoided while driving.
Point 3 reads in part "You allege that Timothy Roberts has helmed several businesses that have failed or gone bankrupt in the last six years. [...] You need to correct the statement to reflect that Timothy Roberts was never at the head or helm of any business while it was in bankruptcy proceedings"
While point 16 reads in part "You allege that Mr. Roberts helmed several businesses that have failed or have gone bankrupt in the last six years...In fact, there has been only one that failed during the time that Mr. Roberts was there."
So which is it, no bankruptcy/failures, or one bankruptcy/failure in the last six years?
It continues "Mr. Roberts personally started three businesses prior to forming Infinium Labs. He did so between 1995 and 2000, and to be succesful in one out of three ventures does not imply a series of failures."
So which is it, one bankruptcy/failure, or two?
If you found this entertaining you might want to check out point 18 too...
I use eFax. Not sure about alternative OS, but windows client is pretty good. It works mostly through e-mail, sending.efx files to your email and a specially formatted e-mail address for outgoing. The.efx format seems to just be tiff with some metadata...
I wonder what he was thinking -- why he didn't get Nehemiah core motherboards. For that matter, I wonder why he used microdrives instead of just getting extra RAM and having the motherboards do net boots?
Check out my recent posts. In one I discuss the viability of PXE booting and the comparative cost savings, plus a proposed network topology to make the computer more efficient. Remember, in a cluster, the fundamental limit isn't the computing power available but the bandwidth to combine it. In another few I suggest Live CD distributions that are already configured to do it.
Well, unless you gave MP3.com exclusive ownership of the songs, there is a law. Copyright laws. Sure, the new owner could still play your song somewhere you'll never hear it, but they could still do that no matter how many laws are passed.
I did not give them exclusive ownership. Technically I'm covered by the law. But lets be honest, if they decide to go against my wishes and play my songs in rented out muzak, what are my chances of finding out? Especially since they didn't send any confirmation that they received my cancellation request, and could simply claim that I made no such request?
I originally signed up for my songs to be licensed through MP3.com and managed by me in their web admin tool. I believe that by removing the web admin features, the agreement has fundamentally changed...
Video encoding? (Now, where'd I put that parallel-processing version of AVISynth?)
dyne:bolic is a Live CD distribution, very small, that can be PXE boot, with full audio/video capture/editing/processing/streaming capabilities plus the usual suite of tools, a few games and whatnot... and is auto-clustering on a private network.
Re:Floating point performance
on
Mini-ITX Clustering
·
· Score: 3, Informative
He used the VIA EPIA V8000A motherboard with an Eden core CPU. From what I found on google (here), the Eden core does run the FPU at full clock speed.
I have the VIA EPIA 8000 (not sure what the V and A modifiers mean), with an Ezra core. FYI, Eden isn't a core, it's an initiative. The VIA Eden is aka VIA EPIA 5000, and was the first fanless Mini-ITX. Eden was the development product moniker, and came to refer to the motherboard that was first produced from that initiative. It can also refer to any C3 CPU made to run fanless.
Back onto the original topic; my EPIA 8000 with an Ezra core runs the FPU at half clock. This document on the differences between the Ezra/Ezra-T and Nehemiah cores indicates that one of the fundamental differences between the two is the full speed FPU. So I doubt that the article you quoted is accurate...
Just some more info... Nehemiah was manufactured at 933 MHz, 1 GHz, and speeds up to 2 GHz are planned. The Ezra was manufactured at 533 MHz and 800 MHz in its first run; the 533 is also known as the Eden. The Ezra-T (the second run of the Ezra) was made at 600 MHz (aka Eden), 800 MHz, 933 MHz, and 1 GHz.
Why this particular set of software / booting?
on
Mini-ITX Clustering
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I mean, those IBM 340 MB microdrives aren't really that cheap... you can get full size hard drives for the same price...
I've always wondered; why not PXE boot something like this? Set your node controller to also do DHCP and you're set.
While you're at it, use the CL version for the controller which has two network cards and build a NATTING firewall into the node controller too. Then you have a plug-in appliance that doesn't interfere with your network topology at all. PXE boot it and the motherboards will only need RAM.
The board he used is available for $99 with proc. A stick of 256 is probably around $20.
The best price froogle would give me on the drives he's using is $60, and they're prone to wear and tear.
Add in the $10 CF-IDE adapter and the drive is %60 of the cost of the motherboard itself...
Hell if you don't want the network bogged down with a bunch of PXE booting nodes all the time, just get cheap CD drives and put dyne:bolic on it, which does automagic clustering...
Personally, if I were to do it, I'd set dynebolic to PXE boot, get a huge stack of motherboards and RAM, and do it that way. Then adding/changing nodes is relatively simple... IIRC, they're even factory set to try PXE booting if no IDE devices are found...
The only other change I would make would be to ditch the 16-port switch... move to 4-ports, connect those to a 4-port with gigabit uplink, and connect that to a gigabit switch. Of course at this point I'm talking about really scaling the cluster up, to a few hundred nodes or so. At that point I'd stop using a mini-ITX board for my node controller and go with a motherboard with a bit more juice behind it, dual procs, RAID 0/1, the whole shebang...
Now if only I had a couple grand burning a hole in my pocket... speaking of which:
So, not counting the costs of cabinets, power rectifier/UPS, wiring, network gear, and labor, you can increase the size of your cluster by %30 for the same cost, just for setting up PXE boot...
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes,
on
Mini-ITX Clustering
·
· Score: 2, Informative
So, he's got 12 of them, which is probably less CPU power than an average dual P4 motherboard...
RTFA... he compares performance to 4-6 P4s. He does clustering for a living so I'm assuming he knows how to measure and compare performance at this scale...
I decided against a mini-ITX cluster because the floating point performance (why else would you build a cluster?) of VIA CPUs is just abyssmal.
Not only does the Nehemiah core (which wasn't used in this cluster) have full speed FPUs (unlike the half-speed Ezra core), but it has hardware acceleration support for RSA and keygen operations.
Is there any reason why there are no P4 or AMD mini-ITX mobos around?
There are a few versions with P4 Mobiles. One of the big reasons is that the low cost and low size of the mini-ITX depends on not using a ZIF socket, but having the CPU actually soldered in. The other reason is heat. If you're building a small form factor computer but have to put three fans in and plan for 2-3 liters of airspace, that kind of defeats the point...
Slashdot Mirror
Random words mixed in with the key ones, random delays between searches, random User-Agent, etc., etc. Seems like it would be easy to do, and hard to track...
Don't forget random IPs... without that, the tracking becomes very easy
Good point, if /. had editing ability for posts, I probibly would have added: Consider the source. Some flaky sensational NYNY tabloid rag...
:)
I can't say how many times I wished I could go back and correct some post or other...
Of course that's completely off topic...
The most probable reality is that the strikers sabotaged the equipment. Use your head.
I neither agree nor disagree with your statement. I did use my head. What my head told me is that I have far too few facts of the matter to make a decision. I have read one anecdotal-style news item of the incident. I have not even confirmed as fact that the facility in question exists, let alone verified one single statement in this report.
I do not believe that you have any more information than I do, yet you choose to come to a conclusion from one admittedly biased source.
I did not choose to come to such a conclusion.
RTFA... it mentions that there were 3 backup generators, and that they all failed to start. The article hints that the cause may be inadequately trained temporary works, hired when the engineers responsible for maintaining the generators went on strike 5 months previous to the incident.
Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.
Or experience it for yourself by going to the official star trek website... it uses the same UI from the TNG show...
FYI I live in Winston Salem.
:)
I'm thinking I might schedule a lunch session to talk with this doctor
If it's big enough to assume spherical shape by the action of gravity, it's a planet.
I'd like to point out that no planet is perfectly spherical; maybe there's a certain amount of deviation that needs to be factored in?
...call me when this shoots beams when the wielder's at full hearts.
Not to nitpick but this sword is actually the Sword of Time from Zelda: Ocarina of time.
The only master sword that could every shoot beams was in Zelda: Link to the Past (and 4 swords, the GBA conversion of same)... the swords in Zelda and ZeldaII were never referred to as Master Swords, though the title probably comes from the translation in Zelda of the text "Master using this and you can have it", which is what the ghost of the swordsman says when he gives you the most powerful sword in the game.
Google works in a surprisingly similar fashion.
I did some work for a company with a multi TB database, it was being stored in flat file on an old mainframe. We moved it to SQL Server 2000; it took two years of tuning (both by us and by Microsoft) to get the performance to be acceptable compared to the old flat file.
Remember, in computing there are always tradeoffs. Database technology is often a trade of complexity management (in the form of metadata) for speed.
Take a look into asynchronous computing.
One of the fundamental power wasters in modern computing is that every chip, every logic gate on every chip, draws just a little bit of current, whether needed or not, on every clock pulse. By designing a computer that doesn't require a clock, you can design it so that the vast majority of power wasted on the clock is not consumed.
While we're discussing mobile computing power requirements, tho, allow me to point out that LCDs require a current even when things are not being changed on screen. This current is between 50-100mA depending on screen type, size, etc. (RCA LCD TV at 2.2" is 50 mA) that and sound are probably your biggest power wasters. Most mobile devices top out for their total power utilization somewhere around 200 mA, though I've seen some that go as high as 500 mA... most AAs are (nominally) around 1800 mAh @ 1.5V so you can do the math, but beware the voltage converter...
The point being that its not just the computer that takes the power. In pdas and gameboys, if the manufacturer was smart, the computer could very well be the least power-demanding component...
For those curious, the sheriff's department has put up a new website to replace the old one.
/.ing extortion? If you don't think it is, vote by clicking that second link a few times :)
The new one sucks.
Here's a bad snapshot of the Old one
Here's the New one
So is a
This for 3.5 million users per year.
Actually, that's 3.5 million users per month...
42 million per year
115.5 million for the lifetime of the site
So then, would the book be "Beowulf?"
..."
I can see it now. The first virus will be called "Grendal
And the AntiVirus software will be called Heorot
I tried this sort of thing. EPIA under seat, hooked into the car audio and video system (5" on-dash LCD)... custom harness to interact with the in-car computer. Luckily the busses are serial, so a regular serial port or a hacked hi-speed parallel port can interface...
A couple observations:
1. The interface should not be mouse driven no matter what. You need buttons. Buttons are BETTER than a touch screen in this case.
2. A numpad can be used for interface, but a serial module with built in buttons or some other contraption would be better.
3. Very few commercial programs are suitable to this interface method. Expect to do some heavy lifting in code to pass the girlfriend test. The girlfriend test is the same one I have for MythTV. If she sits down with no instruction, does this gadget improve the experience, or at least not degrade it in any way?
4. Audible interface is nice. You need a music pass through for a regular CD player, on top of whatever lossy compression you're using to store music. Any type of audible, no-eyes-off-the-road notifications are great. A good text reader would be even better but I doubt you could get it to work well enough.
5. Forget speech recognition. It's still just barely good enough to be acceptable in a lab environment. Road noise will completely kill any chance you have of running it in your car.
6. Certain applications should not be used while driving. No, not even stuck in traffic. Ideally, if the car is in drive, they will simply be unavailable. E-mail is a maybe. Video playback is a maybe. Any program requiring more than three or four buttons to operate should be avoided while driving.
Point 3 reads in part "You allege that Timothy Roberts has helmed several businesses that have failed or gone bankrupt in the last six years. [...] You need to correct the statement to reflect that Timothy Roberts was never at the head or helm of any business while it was in bankruptcy proceedings"
While point 16 reads in part "You allege that Mr. Roberts helmed several businesses that have failed or have gone bankrupt in the last six years...In fact, there has been only one that failed during the time that Mr. Roberts was there."
So which is it, no bankruptcy/failures, or one bankruptcy/failure in the last six years?
It continues "Mr. Roberts personally started three businesses prior to forming Infinium Labs. He did so between 1995 and 2000, and to be succesful in one out of three ventures does not imply a series of failures."
So which is it, one bankruptcy/failure, or two?
If you found this entertaining you might want to check out point 18 too...
I use eFax. Not sure about alternative OS, but windows client is pretty good. It works mostly through e-mail, sending .efx files to your email and a specially formatted e-mail address for outgoing. The .efx format seems to just be tiff with some metadata...
I don't know how you'd draw in traffic, except to say that Google's AdWords might be useful.
:)
That and, you know, posting +5, Insightful comments on slashdot with a link to your site
I wonder what he was thinking -- why he didn't get Nehemiah core motherboards. For that matter, I wonder why he used microdrives instead of just getting extra RAM and having the motherboards do net boots?
:)
Check out my recent posts. In one I discuss the viability of PXE booting and the comparative cost savings, plus a proposed network topology to make the computer more efficient. Remember, in a cluster, the fundamental limit isn't the computing power available but the bandwidth to combine it. In another few I suggest Live CD distributions that are already configured to do it.
As I said before, if only I had a few grand
I have a mini-ITX with traditional hard drive, DC-DC power supply, ultra tiny case (Cubid 2677), DVD drive, and Hauppauge capture card for $450.
The capture card itself was $150, so deduct accordingly if you don't need it...
Well, unless you gave MP3.com exclusive ownership of the songs, there is a law. Copyright laws. Sure, the new owner could still play your song somewhere you'll never hear it, but they could still do that no matter how many laws are passed.
I did not give them exclusive ownership. Technically I'm covered by the law. But lets be honest, if they decide to go against my wishes and play my songs in rented out muzak, what are my chances of finding out? Especially since they didn't send any confirmation that they received my cancellation request, and could simply claim that I made no such request?
I originally signed up for my songs to be licensed through MP3.com and managed by me in their web admin tool. I believe that by removing the web admin features, the agreement has fundamentally changed...
Video encoding? (Now, where'd I put that parallel-processing version of AVISynth?)
dyne:bolic is a Live CD distribution, very small, that can be PXE boot, with full audio/video capture/editing/processing/streaming capabilities plus the usual suite of tools, a few games and whatnot... and is auto-clustering on a private network.
He used the VIA EPIA V8000A motherboard with an Eden core CPU. From what I found on google (here), the Eden core does run the FPU at full clock speed.
I have the VIA EPIA 8000 (not sure what the V and A modifiers mean), with an Ezra core. FYI, Eden isn't a core, it's an initiative. The VIA Eden is aka VIA EPIA 5000, and was the first fanless Mini-ITX. Eden was the development product moniker, and came to refer to the motherboard that was first produced from that initiative. It can also refer to any C3 CPU made to run fanless.
Back onto the original topic; my EPIA 8000 with an Ezra core runs the FPU at half clock. This document on the differences between the Ezra/Ezra-T and Nehemiah cores indicates that one of the fundamental differences between the two is the full speed FPU. So I doubt that the article you quoted is accurate...
Just some more info... Nehemiah was manufactured at 933 MHz, 1 GHz, and speeds up to 2 GHz are planned. The Ezra was manufactured at 533 MHz and 800 MHz in its first run; the 533 is also known as the Eden. The Ezra-T (the second run of the Ezra) was made at 600 MHz (aka Eden), 800 MHz, 933 MHz, and 1 GHz.
I mean, those IBM 340 MB microdrives aren't really that cheap... you can get full size hard drives for the same price...
I've always wondered; why not PXE boot something like this? Set your node controller to also do DHCP and you're set.
While you're at it, use the CL version for the controller which has two network cards and build a NATTING firewall into the node controller too. Then you have a plug-in appliance that doesn't interfere with your network topology at all. PXE boot it and the motherboards will only need RAM.
The board he used is available for $99 with proc. A stick of 256 is probably around $20.
The best price froogle would give me on the drives he's using is $60, and they're prone to wear and tear.
Add in the $10 CF-IDE adapter and the drive is %60 of the cost of the motherboard itself...
Hell if you don't want the network bogged down with a bunch of PXE booting nodes all the time, just get cheap CD drives and put dyne:bolic on it, which does automagic clustering...
Personally, if I were to do it, I'd set dynebolic to PXE boot, get a huge stack of motherboards and RAM, and do it that way. Then adding/changing nodes is relatively simple... IIRC, they're even factory set to try PXE booting if no IDE devices are found...
The only other change I would make would be to ditch the 16-port switch... move to 4-ports, connect those to a 4-port with gigabit uplink, and connect that to a gigabit switch. Of course at this point I'm talking about really scaling the cluster up, to a few hundred nodes or so. At that point I'd stop using a mini-ITX board for my node controller and go with a motherboard with a bit more juice behind it, dual procs, RAID 0/1, the whole shebang...
Now if only I had a couple grand burning a hole in my pocket... speaking of which:
motherboard: $100
RAM: $20
DC-DC converter: $30
CF adapter: $10
Microdrive: $60
Total: $220
Total PXE booter: $150
Savings: 30%
So, not counting the costs of cabinets, power rectifier/UPS, wiring, network gear, and labor, you can increase the size of your cluster by %30 for the same cost, just for setting up PXE boot...
So, he's got 12 of them, which is probably less CPU power than an average dual P4 motherboard...
RTFA... he compares performance to 4-6 P4s. He does clustering for a living so I'm assuming he knows how to measure and compare performance at this scale...
I decided against a mini-ITX cluster because the floating point performance (why else would you build a cluster?) of VIA CPUs is just abyssmal.
Not only does the Nehemiah core (which wasn't used in this cluster) have full speed FPUs (unlike the half-speed Ezra core), but it has hardware acceleration support for RSA and keygen operations.
Is there any reason why there are no P4 or AMD mini-ITX mobos around?
There are a few versions with P4 Mobiles. One of the big reasons is that the low cost and low size of the mini-ITX depends on not using a ZIF socket, but having the CPU actually soldered in. The other reason is heat. If you're building a small form factor computer but have to put three fans in and plan for 2-3 liters of airspace, that kind of defeats the point...