Actually, some algorithms (like fluid simulation and a very large neural net) are not that hard to parallelize to run on a million cores.
Building the memory backplane and communication system (assuming you're going for a cluster) to support a million CPUs is non-trivial. Without those, you'll go faster with fewer CPUs. That's why supercomputers are expensive (it's not in the processors, but in the rest of the infrastructure to support them).
banking transactions being disrupted tends to terrorize people with money
Terrorizing bankers? That's likely to win them a medal from everyone else...
disrupting mass transit can be scary
Except the safety-critical parts of mass transit systems are designed to fail safe. Disrupt them and all you get is a bunch of cross people on a stopped train; hardly terror.
actually causing crashes of mass transit would be outright terroristic
And also highly unlikely.
publishing false news stories ranks somewhere between scary and terroristic
Quick everyone! We've got to arrest the "journalists" at Fox News as terrorists!
disrupting news services is at least mildly scary
But disrupting all news sources is really difficult because they are a diverse bunch.
disrupting or taking over Department of Defense networks can contribute to terror
Are we talking about delaying the email of low-level folks (a way to boost productivity) or impacting a secure network? The DOD doesn't mix the internet with the properly secured stuff.
actually STEALING Department of Defense secrets is REALLY scary
And they take measures to try to prevent that, yes? That's why they have real counter-intelligence people.
disrupting critical health care services - hospitals primarily, ambulances secondarily disrupting police communications
But emergency response doesn't go over the internet. There's just too many ways it can go wrong when it matters, even without malicious "hacker terrorists" in the mix. Non-emergency communications can usually wait, or switch to other channels (e.g., sending invoices by post).
Mostly disrupting the net means that people communicate more slowly (often not a disaster) or stops them goofing off on youtube at work; a lack of such things doesn't contribute to terror, but rather to boredom and irritation.
"How goes the great cyberterror attack?" "Excellent! We've raised their productivity by 15% and encouraged a renaissance in the writing of letters!" "Any actual terror?" "Well... no. But we've made a vast number of middle manager put down their blackberries in frustration. That's got to count for something, yes?"
To be fair, you do have at least one reasonable point in your list (which I've broken out of your original order):
taking down the power grid can be scary
And apparently some power suppliers and grid operators are very exposed this way; this is Bad and needs to be fixed. (There's also what happens if a Smart Grid is implemented with lots of people being small providers of power at some times of the way through, say, solar or wind power. That's where things become a headache, because it will be really hard to make that many people properly secure their systems...)
I don't understand why the OS would keep all those other files. The user's not very likely to take the hard drive out and stick it in a PowerPC box sometime in the future, so why not just delete all the files that aren't for your architecture?
Turn it around. Why delete them? Disk space is really cheap and is getting cheaper all the time.
In fact, why would you even download all those extra files in the first place? Wouldn't it be nice if you had some application that would selectively download just the files you need to install the software?
A few points. Firstly, bandwidth is really cheap. Secondly, the space consumed by the binaries is a small proportion of the whole for most third-party apps. Thirdly, selectively downloading bits and pieces is far more likely to go wrong in hard to debug ways than giving everyone the exact same package.
In fact, how is this at all better than the current package management solutions the various Linux distributions use?
You only ever want software provided by your distribution maker? How... short-sighted. It would be far better if there was a thriving third-party vendor market, producing (and probably selling) things like specialist applications and games, and for people in that sort of situation, having the distro makers as sole gateways is wholly unacceptable; never ever going to happen.
Enabling third-party apps is an important step for being more than just a niche OS. Simplifying the process of delivering those apps is an important part of that enablement. Fat binaries makes that delivery simpler. QED.
The 'fat binary' principle is only useful for non-free applications, where the end-user can't compile the application himself and has to use the binary provided by the vendor.
On the other hand, it's a poor platform if it is too hostile to third party software (some of which will be sufficiently specialist to be effectively commercial-only, because you're really paying for detailed support). The big benefit is being able to say "this is a Linux program" as opposed to "this is a 32-bit x86 Linux program"; for most end users this is just a much easier statement to handle because they don't (and won't ever want to) understand the technical parts. (There's a smaller benefit to people serving up applications over networked filesystems to an enterprise's heterogenous Linux systems, but that's a less common scenario.)
Marketing. It sucks, but sometimes you need it anyway.
Could this technology also help binaries to link against multiple versions of standard libraries (glibc, libstdc++)?
Probably not. Or not without getting headaches like you get with assemblies on Vista. Keying off the system architecture (32-bit x86 vs. 64-bit ia64) is much simpler than keying off library versions.
The fix with standard libraries is for the makers of them to stop screwing around and stick with ABI compatibility for a good number of years. OK, this does tend to codify some poor decisions but is enormously more supportive of application programmers. Note that I differentiate from API compat.; rebuilding against a later version of the API can result in a different - later - part of the ABI being used, and it's definitely possible to extend the ABI if structure and offset versioning is done right. But overall, it takes a lot of discipline (i.e., commitment to being a foundational library) from the part of the authors of the standard libs, and some languages make that hard (it's easier in C than in C++, for example).
Most of the non-geeks I know have under 10GB of data. They have cheap digital cameras that produce images in the 1-2MB range, so they don't take up much space, and they don't record video. Most of these people are in the 20-30 age bracket.
One of things that's known to be true is that people's usage changes as they get older. They get more expensive (higher resolution) gadgets. They take more pictures/videos, and these are of things that can't be downloaded again (e.g., of friends' weddings or children's first steps). Their usage will rise.
Not at the rate at which storage capacity per $ is increasing though.
Apple may not publish directly much, but they have taken an active interest in supporting research. Take a look at that WWDC poster session link I posted two levels up if you want to see some examples.
So you've established that it's non-zero. Now compare levels of investment in R&D with those in the rest of the industry, with a particular focus on mobile equipment manufacturers for preference (given this story).
How do you make a huge stink against someone who owns the media and can disconnect you from the Internet at will?
All it takes is three independent people to accuse them of stealing copyrighted content on different occasions. If citizens spontaneously start using this to attack Big Media, it would at least be poetic justice (and the politicians will probably be laughing too hard to repeal the law for at least a few days...)
Your post clearly explains why ipod is popular. However, the GP just pointed out that "Popular" does not imply "Superior" (a word that was used to describe Apple products)...
If you had a product that was much more popular than all its competitors and which was visually distinct, wouldn't you claim that it was "Superior" too? It's just marketing. Don't sweat over it.
Oh, but both are marks of incompetence. On the first one, not getting your gas meter fixed when you know it is broken, or not suspecting that something is wrong when it doesn't go down, is a mark of basic incompetence. On the second, undertaking substantial travel without the money to do so... well, why is it not incompetence? (And if you know you're running low, why not use techniques to increase your efficiency so that you can get to the next gas station?)
Politicians don't like to be in a position where they might get blamed for job losses.
Actually they don't mind too much (especially during recessions) so long as the job losses fall somewhere else than their constituency. Since EU commissioners are nominated by their home countries and serve 5 year terms, they're difficult to pressurize in the way you're thinking (and national governments find it very convenient to let the EU force them into unpleasant actions; shifts the blame nicely...)
If you work for Opel in Germany (or sit on Magna's board) I don't think you'll be believing it is possible for someone like her to have an evil twin...
For [a flywheel] to be safe in a vehicle the containment vessel has to be very strong and also lightweight - which means it'll be expensive, unfortunately.
Research in this area has been encouraged within the space of F1 motor racing. The aim is exactly that if there is a containment breach (relatively likely in a crash in F1, which isn't exactly the world's safest sport) then the flywheel turns to dust rather than killing the driver. Something like that sounds like what's needed for the bus application...
No matter what a person does if one of the premises is unsound or false the conclusion is false.
You'd be better off describing the conclusion as unsound; it's usually the case that reasoning involves implication and when the premises are not satisfied there, it ends up impossible to make any statement about the truth-status of the conclusion (based on that evidence anyway; other deductions might lead to useful statements).
Except... that hits different parts of the population massively differently. I don't think it's a good idea to effectively price the poor out of having certain things while letting the rich continue to do anything they want.
That's an exceptionally left-wing position you've got there. Downright Communist (and I say this as a European). Taxing carbon at source (there's a need for a tariff system to cope with trade between regions that apply such taxes and those that don't) is about the only mechanism that will really target the core problem in a totally equitable way.
Economic incentives hit different parts of the population in vastly different ways.
Well duh! (One of the key ways in which they change things is by influencing where people live and their lifestyles.)
Atleast a narrowly defined rule is going to do pretty much exactly what it intends to do.
And so you ignore the evidence from many US states over many years. Narrowly defined rules just enrich those people who are adept at finding loopholes. Broad principles are much harder to sidestep, though it does mean that the practice of the law depends more on case law than it otherwise might.
Here's a programming analogy. I could make a function to add two bytes together by building a massive collection of nested switch statements that cover every possible combination of inputs and return the result without computation (the "narrowly defined rule" approach). Or I can use the addition operator and do it trivially in one very short line of code (the "principled" approach). Just about every programmer I've ever heard of knows instinctively which is better, but I continue to be startled that people go the other way when considering laws.
You could take this a step further and require each item to be labeled with the cost (at the current electricity cost) of operating it for an hour and for the number of hours it is typically operated in one year.
But not everyone pays the same thing for energy, not even close. The best you can do is probably to describe the estimated total energy consumption (in kWh) over a year with average levels of usage.
We shouldn't break the company. What we should do is fire all corporate executives (Everyone who legally empowered to agree to contracts.), and the board of directors, cancel all stock and leave it operated by the government for a while. (1) They will run it basically as before, and also do a housecleaning to find illegal behaviors that have become ingrained in
One nice refinement is to declare the former executives (especially those who should have had oversight of the problematic area) to be not fit and proper people to be executive officers or on the board of any corporation (either temporarily or permanently, depending on case details). This kicks them out of the corporate aristocracy, and so serves as a mighty warning to others.
And it's not like it prevents them from earning a living. They can still sweep streets or clean windows.
I've tried trains, they just don't make sense on most trips. Even in what's supposed to be the best train area in America, the "Northeast Corridor", a Delta Shuttle flight booked in advance is still half the price and half the time of a train ride (regular or Acela) from New York to either D.C. or Boston.
Are you doing a door-to-door analysis? This matters because trains often win for reducing the non-train parts of the journey; there are a lot of overheads at an airport. (Of course, if you're going real long distance, flying makes huge sense, overwhelming the airport costs. If you're going intercontinental... flying is the only practical option at all unless you like multi-day boat trips.)
Wow, your experience with trains is totally different than mine (a few trips in California and three weeks spent travelling across Japan on trains). I've found them to be clean, quite, comfortable, and relaxing.
It's variable. Some lines have rather old rolling stock in use, but others are really modern. But most of the problem is due to the sheer number of people using the service; UK trains are very busy and the peculiarities of how the whole system works makes upgrading the number of carriages difficult. (Not sure why.)
OTOH, for comparison I commute by train. My route requires the use of two trains in each direction with a transfer, and the endpoint stations are about a mile from my destination in each direction. On both routes, the trains are every 15 minutes; if I miss one, it's not the end of the world. At peak times, the trains are very busy indeed (i.e., running out of standing room) but off the peak things are much better. The cost of going by train if I use a season ticket is below that of driving (I'm not sure if it is below the price of parking and fuel, but definitely below the amortized cost of a car); the only cheaper option for me would be long-distance bus, but that's much harder to work on and far more stressful (I did it for years back when I was short of money).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, some algorithms (like fluid simulation and a very large neural net) are not that hard to parallelize to run on a million cores.
Building the memory backplane and communication system (assuming you're going for a cluster) to support a million CPUs is non-trivial. Without those, you'll go faster with fewer CPUs. That's why supercomputers are expensive (it's not in the processors, but in the rest of the infrastructure to support them).
A list of possible targets:
Get real...
banking transactions being disrupted tends to terrorize people with money
Terrorizing bankers? That's likely to win them a medal from everyone else...
disrupting mass transit can be scary
Except the safety-critical parts of mass transit systems are designed to fail safe. Disrupt them and all you get is a bunch of cross people on a stopped train; hardly terror.
actually causing crashes of mass transit would be outright terroristic
And also highly unlikely.
publishing false news stories ranks somewhere between scary and terroristic
Quick everyone! We've got to arrest the "journalists" at Fox News as terrorists!
disrupting news services is at least mildly scary
But disrupting all news sources is really difficult because they are a diverse bunch.
disrupting or taking over Department of Defense networks can contribute to terror
Are we talking about delaying the email of low-level folks (a way to boost productivity) or impacting a secure network? The DOD doesn't mix the internet with the properly secured stuff.
actually STEALING Department of Defense secrets is REALLY scary
And they take measures to try to prevent that, yes? That's why they have real counter-intelligence people.
disrupting critical health care services - hospitals primarily, ambulances secondarily
disrupting police communications
But emergency response doesn't go over the internet. There's just too many ways it can go wrong when it matters, even without malicious "hacker terrorists" in the mix. Non-emergency communications can usually wait, or switch to other channels (e.g., sending invoices by post).
Mostly disrupting the net means that people communicate more slowly (often not a disaster) or stops them goofing off on youtube at work; a lack of such things doesn't contribute to terror, but rather to boredom and irritation.
"How goes the great cyberterror attack?"
"Excellent! We've raised their productivity by 15% and encouraged a renaissance in the writing of letters!"
"Any actual terror?"
"Well... no. But we've made a vast number of middle manager put down their blackberries in frustration. That's got to count for something, yes?"
To be fair, you do have at least one reasonable point in your list (which I've broken out of your original order):
taking down the power grid can be scary
And apparently some power suppliers and grid operators are very exposed this way; this is Bad and needs to be fixed. (There's also what happens if a Smart Grid is implemented with lots of people being small providers of power at some times of the way through, say, solar or wind power. That's where things become a headache, because it will be really hard to make that many people properly secure their systems...)
I don't understand why the OS would keep all those other files. The user's not very likely to take the hard drive out and stick it in a PowerPC box sometime in the future, so why not just delete all the files that aren't for your architecture?
Turn it around. Why delete them? Disk space is really cheap and is getting cheaper all the time.
In fact, why would you even download all those extra files in the first place? Wouldn't it be nice if you had some application that would selectively download just the files you need to install the software?
A few points. Firstly, bandwidth is really cheap. Secondly, the space consumed by the binaries is a small proportion of the whole for most third-party apps. Thirdly, selectively downloading bits and pieces is far more likely to go wrong in hard to debug ways than giving everyone the exact same package.
In fact, how is this at all better than the current package management solutions the various Linux distributions use?
You only ever want software provided by your distribution maker? How... short-sighted. It would be far better if there was a thriving third-party vendor market, producing (and probably selling) things like specialist applications and games, and for people in that sort of situation, having the distro makers as sole gateways is wholly unacceptable; never ever going to happen.
Enabling third-party apps is an important step for being more than just a niche OS. Simplifying the process of delivering those apps is an important part of that enablement. Fat binaries makes that delivery simpler. QED.
The 'fat binary' principle is only useful for non-free applications, where the end-user can't compile the application himself and has to use the binary provided by the vendor.
On the other hand, it's a poor platform if it is too hostile to third party software (some of which will be sufficiently specialist to be effectively commercial-only, because you're really paying for detailed support). The big benefit is being able to say "this is a Linux program" as opposed to "this is a 32-bit x86 Linux program"; for most end users this is just a much easier statement to handle because they don't (and won't ever want to) understand the technical parts. (There's a smaller benefit to people serving up applications over networked filesystems to an enterprise's heterogenous Linux systems, but that's a less common scenario.)
Marketing. It sucks, but sometimes you need it anyway.
Could this technology also help binaries to link against multiple versions of standard libraries (glibc, libstdc++)?
Probably not. Or not without getting headaches like you get with assemblies on Vista. Keying off the system architecture (32-bit x86 vs. 64-bit ia64) is much simpler than keying off library versions.
The fix with standard libraries is for the makers of them to stop screwing around and stick with ABI compatibility for a good number of years. OK, this does tend to codify some poor decisions but is enormously more supportive of application programmers. Note that I differentiate from API compat.; rebuilding against a later version of the API can result in a different - later - part of the ABI being used, and it's definitely possible to extend the ABI if structure and offset versioning is done right. But overall, it takes a lot of discipline (i.e., commitment to being a foundational library) from the part of the authors of the standard libs, and some languages make that hard (it's easier in C than in C++, for example).
Most of the non-geeks I know have under 10GB of data. They have cheap digital cameras that produce images in the 1-2MB range, so they don't take up much space, and they don't record video. Most of these people are in the 20-30 age bracket.
One of things that's known to be true is that people's usage changes as they get older. They get more expensive (higher resolution) gadgets. They take more pictures/videos, and these are of things that can't be downloaded again (e.g., of friends' weddings or children's first steps). Their usage will rise.
Not at the rate at which storage capacity per $ is increasing though.
Apple may not publish directly much, but they have taken an active interest in supporting research. Take a look at that WWDC poster session link I posted two levels up if you want to see some examples.
So you've established that it's non-zero. Now compare levels of investment in R&D with those in the rest of the industry, with a particular focus on mobile equipment manufacturers for preference (given this story).
As a resident of 'Holland' I have to give a stern warning about the parent's post: walking around in surf gear in Holland will get you a pneumonia.
No. Surf gear in Holland is a full wet suit, and as such, walking around in it will get you invited to some very select parties...
How do you make a huge stink against someone who owns the media and can disconnect you from the Internet at will?
All it takes is three independent people to accuse them of stealing copyrighted content on different occasions. If citizens spontaneously start using this to attack Big Media, it would at least be poetic justice (and the politicians will probably be laughing too hard to repeal the law for at least a few days...)
It's time for Twoogle!
Your post clearly explains why ipod is popular. However, the GP just pointed out that "Popular" does not imply "Superior" (a word that was used to describe Apple products)...
If you had a product that was much more popular than all its competitors and which was visually distinct, wouldn't you claim that it was "Superior" too? It's just marketing. Don't sweat over it.
Very good point. I've run out of gas twice
Once is unlucky. Twice is incompetent.
Not if your gas guage is broke, or if you are.
Oh, but both are marks of incompetence. On the first one, not getting your gas meter fixed when you know it is broken, or not suspecting that something is wrong when it doesn't go down, is a mark of basic incompetence. On the second, undertaking substantial travel without the money to do so... well, why is it not incompetence? (And if you know you're running low, why not use techniques to increase your efficiency so that you can get to the next gas station?)
Politicians don't like to be in a position where they might get blamed for job losses.
Actually they don't mind too much (especially during recessions) so long as the job losses fall somewhere else than their constituency. Since EU commissioners are nominated by their home countries and serve 5 year terms, they're difficult to pressurize in the way you're thinking (and national governments find it very convenient to let the EU force them into unpleasant actions; shifts the blame nicely...)
Erm, she is called Neelie Kroes.
Nancy is Neelie's hotter evil twin sister.
If you work for Opel in Germany (or sit on Magna's board) I don't think you'll be believing it is possible for someone like her to have an evil twin...
Awesome! So instead of buying a video card, I will now have an option to pay yet another monthly fee to play games? Im so excited!
Not just that, you also get to have much worse latency too! Yay!
For [a flywheel] to be safe in a vehicle the containment vessel has to be very strong and also lightweight - which means it'll be expensive, unfortunately.
Research in this area has been encouraged within the space of F1 motor racing. The aim is exactly that if there is a containment breach (relatively likely in a crash in F1, which isn't exactly the world's safest sport) then the flywheel turns to dust rather than killing the driver. Something like that sounds like what's needed for the bus application...
congrats, you have successfully deciphered the first claim of the patent, what about the other 28?
You only really need to decipher the independent claims. Without them, the dependent claims don't hold up.
Computer programmers are not that weird.
True. Sysadmins on the other hand...
Actually, it's a banner. When we finally decipher it, we'll read, "Do Not Feed The Monkeys."
I'd be happier if it said "Do Not Feed On The Monkeys" to be honest.
No matter what a person does if one of the premises is unsound or false the conclusion is false.
You'd be better off describing the conclusion as unsound; it's usually the case that reasoning involves implication and when the premises are not satisfied there, it ends up impossible to make any statement about the truth-status of the conclusion (based on that evidence anyway; other deductions might lead to useful statements).
Except... that hits different parts of the population massively differently. I don't think it's a good idea to effectively price the poor out of having certain things while letting the rich continue to do anything they want.
That's an exceptionally left-wing position you've got there. Downright Communist (and I say this as a European). Taxing carbon at source (there's a need for a tariff system to cope with trade between regions that apply such taxes and those that don't) is about the only mechanism that will really target the core problem in a totally equitable way.
Economic incentives hit different parts of the population in vastly different ways.
Well duh! (One of the key ways in which they change things is by influencing where people live and their lifestyles.)
Atleast a narrowly defined rule is going to do pretty much exactly what it intends to do.
And so you ignore the evidence from many US states over many years. Narrowly defined rules just enrich those people who are adept at finding loopholes. Broad principles are much harder to sidestep, though it does mean that the practice of the law depends more on case law than it otherwise might.
Here's a programming analogy. I could make a function to add two bytes together by building a massive collection of nested switch statements that cover every possible combination of inputs and return the result without computation (the "narrowly defined rule" approach). Or I can use the addition operator and do it trivially in one very short line of code (the "principled" approach). Just about every programmer I've ever heard of knows instinctively which is better, but I continue to be startled that people go the other way when considering laws.
You could take this a step further and require each item to be labeled with the cost (at the current electricity cost) of operating it for an hour and for the number of hours it is typically operated in one year.
But not everyone pays the same thing for energy, not even close. The best you can do is probably to describe the estimated total energy consumption (in kWh) over a year with average levels of usage.
We shouldn't break the company. What we should do is fire all corporate executives (Everyone who legally empowered to agree to contracts.), and the board of directors, cancel all stock and leave it operated by the government for a while. (1) They will run it basically as before, and also do a housecleaning to find illegal behaviors that have become ingrained in
One nice refinement is to declare the former executives (especially those who should have had oversight of the problematic area) to be not fit and proper people to be executive officers or on the board of any corporation (either temporarily or permanently, depending on case details). This kicks them out of the corporate aristocracy, and so serves as a mighty warning to others.
And it's not like it prevents them from earning a living. They can still sweep streets or clean windows.
I've tried trains, they just don't make sense on most trips. Even in what's supposed to be the best train area in America, the "Northeast Corridor", a Delta Shuttle flight booked in advance is still half the price and half the time of a train ride (regular or Acela) from New York to either D.C. or Boston.
Are you doing a door-to-door analysis? This matters because trains often win for reducing the non-train parts of the journey; there are a lot of overheads at an airport. (Of course, if you're going real long distance, flying makes huge sense, overwhelming the airport costs. If you're going intercontinental... flying is the only practical option at all unless you like multi-day boat trips.)
Wow, your experience with trains is totally different than mine (a few trips in California and three weeks spent travelling across Japan on trains). I've found them to be clean, quite, comfortable, and relaxing.
It's variable. Some lines have rather old rolling stock in use, but others are really modern. But most of the problem is due to the sheer number of people using the service; UK trains are very busy and the peculiarities of how the whole system works makes upgrading the number of carriages difficult. (Not sure why.)
OTOH, for comparison I commute by train. My route requires the use of two trains in each direction with a transfer, and the endpoint stations are about a mile from my destination in each direction. On both routes, the trains are every 15 minutes; if I miss one, it's not the end of the world. At peak times, the trains are very busy indeed (i.e., running out of standing room) but off the peak things are much better. The cost of going by train if I use a season ticket is below that of driving (I'm not sure if it is below the price of parking and fuel, but definitely below the amortized cost of a car); the only cheaper option for me would be long-distance bus, but that's much harder to work on and far more stressful (I did it for years back when I was short of money).