"Hello. I see you are trying to move Mount Fuji. Would you:
o) Like me create a template for this task for you?
o) Search for more information on the topic?
[ok] [cancel]"
I did something similar for a while os my ST, when I was booting with some wierd configuration stuffs going on (I can't recall what though...). Booting off RAM was blindingly quick compared to booting off hard disk.
Most of the time taken when booting up, on new machines and old, is spent waiting for the disk arm to move to the correct part of the disk, and then wait for the disk platter to spin round to the correct point before the data is read fully.
Yes, there are various caches and buffers at oh so many points in the process from getting data into main memory from disk, but it's still really slow.
Concorde had major problems in its early years, and on occasion has had to emergency land due to in flight problems (these were picked up by the press more often after the Paris crash).
If you equate the word 'accident' with 'disaster', however, so be it.
Indeed, I was going to post here to say that Glasgow University was around 550 years old, but then remembered the University only actually moved to it's current site almost 140 years ago. That said, some of the architecture on the old main building is pretty impressive stuff, and certainly isn't going to fall down of it's own accord within the next couple of hundred years at least.
I don't live too far away from Lanark though, which has been around for 850 years. Although there aren't any structures of that age still standing, there are some that are at least 200 years old, and are probably going to be standing for many years to come. Next to Lanark is New Lanark, being around 200 years old, whose buildings are all from that era, and given the amount of work that has been going on for years to restore the insides of these buildings, are very likely to be in good condition in another 200.
But hardware really shouldn't fail as much as we're used to, and we really shouldn't have to put up with the number of bugs even the `best' code has.
Seeing as we're still in a young industry, it's nice to think that over the coming years things *should* get better, on the hardware side at least.
The problem with software development is that it's so damn easy to ship a product, let hundreds (thousands? tens of thousands?) of users test the product for you, then release appropriate bug fixes. People don't design a new bridge and let thousands of people try it out before declaring it safe, nor when building new buildings, and usually not even when designing a new microprocessor, so why are we still getting away with it in software engineering?
Presumably because Microsoft has let the general public get used to this as "the way it is";)
I would only wait for the very first block, and from then on would initiate the next block read, start processing the current block, and by the time I was ready for it the next block was there.
Chances are that by reading the first block on disk that the surrounding data on that track was read into a buffer inside the drive anyway, so by requesting subsequent blocks you've already knocked (at least) a few hundred milliseconds off the access time.
Yes, there are lots of ways of speeding up an inherently slow system, but none of them are 100% reliable. The point I was trying to make was that the hard drive is a very, very, _very_ slow device as far as the CPU is concerned, and there isn't much that can alter this.
The HDD bottleneck? When do you have a HDD bottleneck? While this misnomer is often repeated, repetition doesn't indicate a foundation of truth. My machine, XP, boots in about 15 seconds, and shortly after all my apps are running it barely ever touches the harddrive at all (a standard 7200RPM IDE), running virtually everything in the copious RAM. Even for things like video compression my CPU is currently the limiting factor, and of course where the harddrive is the limiting factor feel free to buy a high performance solution: You can set yourself up a 6 disk RAID 10 15,000RPM array today to eliminate all of your hard drive needs.
You make the common mistake of assuming that if the hard drive is fast enough for you, it's fast enough for the processor.
The hard drive really is a major bottleneck on any modern computing system - it can take hundreds of milliseconds to retrieve a piece of data and have it transfered all the way into memory, where the processor operates in terms of nanoseconds. The thread waiting on the data is left waiting for thousands of cycles, where it could be getting on with some work.
Sure, various levels of caching inside the processor, on the motherboard, and on the hard drive itself help alleviate the problem, but don't clear the problem entirely, and none of these mechanisms can predict to within a reasonable degree of accuracy what data the user will request off the disk next.
In "average" day to day use (lets say email, word processing, web surfing), the CPU spends a crazy amount of time idle, and for much of the time where the user is actually interacting with the system, is waiting for data to be retrieved either from disk (or, even worse, a network).
You might be happy with the speed of your hard drive, but your processor isn't.
You've obviously made the incorrect assumption that Computing Science is meant to teach you Software Engineering then, where the two subjects are completely different.
Yes, there's a lot of coding involved in CS, but CS is more theory based, the study of complex algorithms, and the broader spectrum of topics to cover, gives the student a clearer understanding of computing than could be achieved otherwise.
Software Engineering edges far more toward the design process, professional software development techniques, and the building of embedded systems than CS would ever try to - it is far more a course for people just trying to get a qualification for the (often flaky) promise of a high paid job afterward.
Both are challenging courses, but far too many people make the mistake you made. I'm happy on my CS course, and enjoy the challenges that some of the material has presented me with, and will continue to do so, but then I'm interested in CS, and not just getting a job where I get to code day in day out.
This, however, is akin to developing your own computer system from logic gates, then writing a compiler for your CPU architecture, then compiling that open source software on it.
Yes, the first post on this thread took something and stretched it a little too far, but at least try to compare on even grounds when replying:)
For anyone interested in games of yesteryear in the UK (like myself), I'd recommend the Edge magazine spin-off Retro.
The current issue has a truckload of "The making of..." articles from Edge, covering a lot of games up to the early 90's, including: Space War, Asteroids, Battlezone, Civilization, Carrier Command, Populous and many others:)
Instead you should accept it as an honest mistake, and leave the thread alone, seeing as there's no requirement for you to post in every article that makes it onto the front page.
It's worth reminding some of those here that the clock speed stated doesn't tell you anything about how powerful this processor is -- it's possible this processor is roughly as powerful as a 500MHz Celeron (for example).
I'd also imagine that this chip will be intended first of all for use in business machines also, where a powerful processor is not as important to the user as it is to the guy who tries to squeeze every last frame per second out of UT2k3.
Bear that in mind before forming an opinion on something that the article doesn't even shed much light on:)
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Normal users would get the answer from Clippy.
"Hello. I see you are trying to move Mount Fuji. Would you:
o) Like me create a template for this task for you?
o) Search for more information on the topic?
[ok] [cancel]"
I did something similar for a while os my ST, when I was booting with some wierd configuration stuffs going on (I can't recall what though...). Booting off RAM was blindingly quick compared to booting off hard disk.
Most of the time taken when booting up, on new machines and old, is spent waiting for the disk arm to move to the correct part of the disk, and then wait for the disk platter to spin round to the correct point before the data is read fully.
Yes, there are various caches and buffers at oh so many points in the process from getting data into main memory from disk, but it's still really slow.
Is Red Dwarf not included on the site? (I can't get there, for the site is currently down...)
:)
If memory serves (and this might just be randomly plucked from a dream), RD was around 5 miles long. How does that compare with the other ships?
Why can I see many other similar posts about the supposedly faked moon landings cropping up?
There are many counter arguments for all arguments that can be put on the table by the conspiracy theorists. Give it up, already.
"Exactly one *major* accident".
Concorde had major problems in its early years, and on occasion has had to emergency land due to in flight problems (these were picked up by the press more often after the Paris crash).
If you equate the word 'accident' with 'disaster', however, so be it.
code monkey?
"3. Rewrite Windows in Haskell"
Oh dear god, no! AAHH!! You've brought my memories of Haskell coding back to me, and combined it with an MS product!!
What sort of HELL have you unleashed?!! Are you MAD?!?!
You simply put together a bigger PigeonRank(TM) system than they have.
Damnit! Numerous people went for the 'ludicrous speed' joke before I got to the post.
:sniff:
Oh, how long I've waited to make a good ludicrous speed joke.
You mean like in Lemmings, when you double clicked the 'Nuke!' button?
Well, here's where I read it for the first time on The register
Indeed, I was going to post here to say that Glasgow University was around 550 years old, but then remembered the University only actually moved to it's current site almost 140 years ago. That said, some of the architecture on the old main building is pretty impressive stuff, and certainly isn't going to fall down of it's own accord within the next couple of hundred years at least.
I don't live too far away from Lanark though, which has been around for 850 years. Although there aren't any structures of that age still standing, there are some that are at least 200 years old, and are probably going to be standing for many years to come. Next to Lanark is New Lanark, being around 200 years old, whose buildings are all from that era, and given the amount of work that has been going on for years to restore the insides of these buildings, are very likely to be in good condition in another 200.
Personally I don't know much about any kernel release before 2.0.
... as in, 12>7. If it was 0.1.2, I'd see what you were getting at.
But surely 0.12 > 0.7
But hardware really shouldn't fail as much as we're used to, and we really shouldn't have to put up with the number of bugs even the `best' code has.
;)
Seeing as we're still in a young industry, it's nice to think that over the coming years things *should* get better, on the hardware side at least.
The problem with software development is that it's so damn easy to ship a product, let hundreds (thousands? tens of thousands?) of users test the product for you, then release appropriate bug fixes. People don't design a new bridge and let thousands of people try it out before declaring it safe, nor when building new buildings, and usually not even when designing a new microprocessor, so why are we still getting away with it in software engineering?
Presumably because Microsoft has let the general public get used to this as "the way it is"
I would only wait for the very first block, and from then on would initiate the next block read, start processing the current block, and by the time I was ready for it the next block was there.
Chances are that by reading the first block on disk that the surrounding data on that track was read into a buffer inside the drive anyway, so by requesting subsequent blocks you've already knocked (at least) a few hundred milliseconds off the access time.
Yes, there are lots of ways of speeding up an inherently slow system, but none of them are 100% reliable. The point I was trying to make was that the hard drive is a very, very, _very_ slow device as far as the CPU is concerned, and there isn't much that can alter this.
The HDD bottleneck? When do you have a HDD bottleneck? While this misnomer is often repeated, repetition doesn't indicate a foundation of truth. My machine, XP, boots in about 15 seconds, and shortly after all my apps are running it barely ever touches the harddrive at all (a standard 7200RPM IDE), running virtually everything in the copious RAM. Even for things like video compression my CPU is currently the limiting factor, and of course where the harddrive is the limiting factor feel free to buy a high performance solution: You can set yourself up a 6 disk RAID 10 15,000RPM array today to eliminate all of your hard drive needs.
You make the common mistake of assuming that if the hard drive is fast enough for you, it's fast enough for the processor.
The hard drive really is a major bottleneck on any modern computing system - it can take hundreds of milliseconds to retrieve a piece of data and have it transfered all the way into memory, where the processor operates in terms of nanoseconds. The thread waiting on the data is left waiting for thousands of cycles, where it could be getting on with some work.
Sure, various levels of caching inside the processor, on the motherboard, and on the hard drive itself help alleviate the problem, but don't clear the problem entirely, and none of these mechanisms can predict to within a reasonable degree of accuracy what data the user will request off the disk next.
In "average" day to day use (lets say email, word processing, web surfing), the CPU spends a crazy amount of time idle, and for much of the time where the user is actually interacting with the system, is waiting for data to be retrieved either from disk (or, even worse, a network).
You might be happy with the speed of your hard drive, but your processor isn't.
STD: Sexually Transmitted Disease.
STI: Sexually Transmitted Infection.
I too use terminals all the time, and rarely do I need the ` button.
However, when I'm writing any Latex documentation, the ` comes in very handy to get proper '66' and '99' speech marks.
You've obviously made the incorrect assumption that Computing Science is meant to teach you Software Engineering then, where the two subjects are completely different.
Yes, there's a lot of coding involved in CS, but CS is more theory based, the study of complex algorithms, and the broader spectrum of topics to cover, gives the student a clearer understanding of computing than could be achieved otherwise.
Software Engineering edges far more toward the design process, professional software development techniques, and the building of embedded systems than CS would ever try to - it is far more a course for people just trying to get a qualification for the (often flaky) promise of a high paid job afterward.
Both are challenging courses, but far too many people make the mistake you made. I'm happy on my CS course, and enjoy the challenges that some of the material has presented me with, and will continue to do so, but then I'm interested in CS, and not just getting a job where I get to code day in day out.
This, however, is akin to developing your own computer system from logic gates, then writing a compiler for your CPU architecture, then compiling that open source software on it.
:)
Yes, the first post on this thread took something and stretched it a little too far, but at least try to compare on even grounds when replying
For anyone interested in games of yesteryear in the UK (like myself), I'd recommend the Edge magazine spin-off Retro.
:)
:)
The current issue has a truckload of "The making of..." articles from Edge, covering a lot of games up to the early 90's, including: Space War, Asteroids, Battlezone, Civilization, Carrier Command, Populous and many others
I bought it today and it's excellent, IMHO
No.
Instead you should accept it as an honest mistake, and leave the thread alone, seeing as there's no requirement for you to post in every article that makes it onto the front page.
Oddly enough, with every word in that sentence duplicated, I didn't notice what you'd done until I read the link.
:)
Just goes to show that you don't really look at the words when you're reading things on screen
So if you don't enjoy any of them, you have to pay?? That sounds like a pretty wierd way of working to me. ;)
It's worth reminding some of those here that the clock speed stated doesn't tell you anything about how powerful this processor is -- it's possible this processor is roughly as powerful as a 500MHz Celeron (for example).
:)
I'd also imagine that this chip will be intended first of all for use in business machines also, where a powerful processor is not as important to the user as it is to the guy who tries to squeeze every last frame per second out of UT2k3.
Bear that in mind before forming an opinion on something that the article doesn't even shed much light on