Re:Too Much... (properly, this time)
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
Java uses number of milliseconds, expressed as a "long", which ranges from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 (reference). According to my maths, this means we're safe until around 292,269,049AD.
Can anyone remember when our sun is scheduled to go nova? Oh, and this of course assumes people use Java correctly - its still quite possible to write non-Y2k compliant code in Java!
Okay, how? Short of the person turning up in person with photo ID, 100% proof of identity just isn't going to happen. On the other hand, posting the new password to the user's registered address would have made a lot more sense to me, or maybe just calling back with the password. Not foolproof, but it makes it non-trivial to get someone else's password.
How many is a few? Do you know how many people will return boards because of this? I doubt its more than 2-3. Maybe a few hundreds, possibly thousands. ATI's current profits are around 4 million (taken from their Q1 2003 report (PDF). Call it a 1,000 boards at $100 per chip. Sounds good to me. That's 2.5% of their total profits. Is that really so insignificant?
Okay, a few coders are safe to leave running servers, but as a general rule we're not terribly good at it. Horribly out of date, insecure, systems that are unlikely to survive a reboot (and no, they weren't on UPSes) were the result last time someone left my colleagues running their own systems. It wasn't pretty.
Now, admittadely, we're an academic research group, so we can barely afford the programmers, let alone an IT guy, but as a general rule I would strongly suggest that it's a very good idea to have enough IT guys to handle your servers, leaving the programmers to do what they do best (caffeinne -> code).
I maintain a small number of servers, for a research project. All of these run the minimum of services for our purposes, have their own firewalls (in addition to the main organisational firewall), and once I apply the new packages for RHSA-2003:001, they will be up to date with all available patches.
This does not mean that they are unhackable. While it may be unlikely that someone will write a worm that uses a previously unknown bug, it could happen. By what you're saying, I'd still be liable. Should I have checked every single line of code my box runs?
As much as it may frustrate people when they get DDOS by wormed systems, this is not the solution. Better arrangements for having ISPs disconnect wormed systems, in my opinion, is the solution.
However, multi-threaded programming in most low-ish level programming languages (C/C++ downwards, pretty much) is still non-trivial (assuming using shared memory for IPC - if using some form of messaging for IPC, it can become a lot simpler, but also a lot slower). Doing it in assembly, which is quite likely to be relevant, is certainly likely to leave people with headaches!
The good news is, unless Sony are doing something really freaky, it shouldn't matter how many processors they have, above 2.
The bad news is that game programmers are probably going to have a nightmare of a time getting their head around using more than a single processor, effectively. Game programmers are going to have to figure out which parts of their code can run concurrently, without the gain from splitting the code being higher than the loss through synchronization. The only game I can remember that has ever used multiple processors is Quake 3, and I think that might not just be because multi-processor systems are rare.
Having said that, I think multi-processor systems will become more common as time goes on, both in the traditional seperate processor way, and in technologies such as the cell processor. This means that programmers are more likely to have dealt with multi-processor systems apart from the PS 3, or skills learn for the PS 3 will be transferrable. I also think that the PS 3's architecture will be easier to learn than that of the PS 2.
Its called Amiga DE. Its kinda like Java, except, err... okay, let me get back to you on that. Its available for Windows and Linux, last time I checked. More info, including a store that sells the player and a few games, at http://www.amiga-anywhere.com/.
I got the impression that the secondary network would be inactive, unless the primary failed. Therefore an event that brought the first down, would not affect the second.
Unless of course, whatever broke the first, took the second down when it came online...
On a similar note, who wants to bet they'd put both networks on the same power source?
Ditto. I have a PC, a Mac, a PS2 and an XBox. All of these can play CDs, and the PC has easily the best speaker setup in the house. I don't want a seperate CD player, I have no need for a seperate CD player, and I'm not going to buy one. Which means, unless their copy protection is completely ineffectual, I cannot play any "CD" BMG produce. Oh well.
Somehow, this seems worse to me, not better. A single unit with upgradable parts seems much better to me. Having it in five different pieces just means I have to work out how to juggle all of them. up until the point where I realise I've lost one of them.
Also, can you imagine having to find multiple parts of your phone when it rings!
My boss makes a good example of this. If I tell him it doesn't work because I've been testing under Mozilla, he'll have a nervous breakdown. If I tell him it doesn't work because he's still using Netscape 4, he's okay with it.
Yikes. Maybe its just me, but I'd have to have the music turned up a helluva lot further than I like, to really drown out the fan noise. I dislike the noise because I want to play my music at a lower level. Also, if there's stuff going on in the background, I like to be able to hear that over the drone of fans.
There was a really strange conversation between my flatmates and I about one bit, single pixel Quake, and likely rendering speeds. I don't know why. I suspect sleep deprevation. This in fact made a lot more sense before I started typing.
"To put these results into perspective, a single frame rendered at 1600x1200 with 32 bits of color weighs in at about 7.5MB. Double that to 64-bit color, and it's 15MB per frame. And a single image at 1600x1200 in 128-bit color is over 30MB."
Huh? Why on earth would they want 128-bit colour. AFAIK the human eye can't tell the difference beyond 24-bit, and 32-bit is just there to make the processing a bit easier. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but it seems an extremely poorly thought out complaint.
You want analogue instead of digital? Why? DVI should provide much better image quality - component video might be comparable, but not without spending far far more on the cabling. So what do you want component?
They already have people checking source code. Apparently the official line is that for critical systems, if they can't check the code, it doesn't get used!
While I'm not aware of either companies involved with this box, it sounds a lot like the "Sky+" box we have in the UK. Basically, Sky, satellite TV company (and given that a lot of the country cannot receive cable, by far the supplier of TV beyond the standard 5 channels), has come up with a box that can spool the incoming digital TV signal on to HD.
As the signal received is digital (I believe they actually use MPEG-2), there is no loss from encoding, except that at origin. The first boxes were released around a year ago, and although they've had their problems, seem like a good idea.
The boxes sell for the equivalent of about $450, and have a monthly subscription cost of around $13 on top of that. They come with two tuners, so they can record one channel while you watch another, and are generally great.
AFAIK they have no advert skip function, however they do allow time delaying of pay per view events (you can record them when you want, and then watch them whenever you want, although I beleive it erases them after watching).
Although the production boards aren't out yet, you can join the "I am Amiga" club for $50, which includes a $50 voucher against the cost of an AmigaOne or AmigaOS 4.0.
Whether this is a good idea or not, I'm not going to comment on, beyond that I'm intending on buying one, but some people have expressed concerns about whether the production boards will ever be released. However the URL of the promotion is:
I believe its been done before. Certainly one company has made IR shielding swim suits to protect against Sony cameras. Never actually seen them on sale, only ever heard of them.
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Java uses number of milliseconds, expressed as a "long", which ranges from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 (reference). According to my maths, this means we're safe until around 292,269,049AD.
Can anyone remember when our sun is scheduled to go nova? Oh, and this of course assumes people use Java correctly - its still quite possible to write non-Y2k compliant code in Java!
Java uses number of milliseconds, expressed as a "long", which ranges from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807
Okay, how? Short of the person turning up in person with photo ID, 100% proof of identity just isn't going to happen. On the other hand, posting the new password to the user's registered address would have made a lot more sense to me, or maybe just calling back with the password. Not foolproof, but it makes it non-trivial to get someone else's password.
How many is a few? Do you know how many people will return boards because of this? I doubt its more than 2-3. Maybe a few hundreds, possibly thousands. ATI's current profits are around 4 million (taken from their Q1 2003 report (PDF). Call it a 1,000 boards at $100 per chip. Sounds good to me. That's 2.5% of their total profits. Is that really so insignificant?
Okay, a few coders are safe to leave running servers, but as a general rule we're not terribly good at it. Horribly out of date, insecure, systems that are unlikely to survive a reboot (and no, they weren't on UPSes) were the result last time someone left my colleagues running their own systems. It wasn't pretty.
Now, admittadely, we're an academic research group, so we can barely afford the programmers, let alone an IT guy, but as a general rule I would strongly suggest that it's a very good idea to have enough IT guys to handle your servers, leaving the programmers to do what they do best (caffeinne -> code).
I maintain a small number of servers, for a research project. All of these run the minimum of services for our purposes, have their own firewalls (in addition to the main organisational firewall), and once I apply the new packages for RHSA-2003:001, they will be up to date with all available patches.
This does not mean that they are unhackable. While it may be unlikely that someone will write a worm that uses a previously unknown bug, it could happen. By what you're saying, I'd still be liable. Should I have checked every single line of code my box runs?
As much as it may frustrate people when they get DDOS by wormed systems, this is not the solution. Better arrangements for having ISPs disconnect wormed systems, in my opinion, is the solution.
Centre is the spelling used in the UK, too, thanks a lot. Probably a typo though. under the circumstances.
However, multi-threaded programming in most low-ish level programming languages (C/C++ downwards, pretty much) is still non-trivial (assuming using shared memory for IPC - if using some form of messaging for IPC, it can become a lot simpler, but also a lot slower). Doing it in assembly, which is quite likely to be relevant, is certainly likely to leave people with headaches!
The good news is, unless Sony are doing something really freaky, it shouldn't matter how many processors they have, above 2.
The bad news is that game programmers are probably going to have a nightmare of a time getting their head around using more than a single processor, effectively. Game programmers are going to have to figure out which parts of their code can run concurrently, without the gain from splitting the code being higher than the loss through synchronization. The only game I can remember that has ever used multiple processors is Quake 3, and I think that might not just be because multi-processor systems are rare.
Having said that, I think multi-processor systems will become more common as time goes on, both in the traditional seperate processor way, and in technologies such as the cell processor. This means that programmers are more likely to have dealt with multi-processor systems apart from the PS 3, or skills learn for the PS 3 will be transferrable. I also think that the PS 3's architecture will be easier to learn than that of the PS 2.
Its called Amiga DE. Its kinda like Java, except, err... okay, let me get back to you on that. Its available for Windows and Linux, last time I checked. More info, including a store that sells the player and a few games, at http://www.amiga-anywhere.com/.
Try being a adult non-driver. Every time a car goes past I want to press the triangle button... :)
It's shipping, people have the new motherboards up and running. See Eyetech's (who are making the boards) announcement at http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/oct252002a.php, or the discussion at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amigaone/. The OS itself isn't out yet, but the boards run Linux PPC just fine.
I got the impression that the secondary network would be inactive, unless the primary failed. Therefore an event that brought the first down, would not affect the second.
Unless of course, whatever broke the first, took the second down when it came online...
On a similar note, who wants to bet they'd put both networks on the same power source?
However, the probability of both failing at the same time is:
0.1 * 0.1 = 1%
So as long as it can run on just one out of two, get you get ten-fold increase in stability.
Ditto. I have a PC, a Mac, a PS2 and an XBox. All of these can play CDs, and the PC has easily the best speaker setup in the house. I don't want a seperate CD player, I have no need for a seperate CD player, and I'm not going to buy one. Which means, unless their copy protection is completely ineffectual, I cannot play any "CD" BMG produce. Oh well.
Somehow, this seems worse to me, not better. A single unit with upgradable parts seems much better to me. Having it in five different pieces just means I have to work out how to juggle all of them. up until the point where I realise I've lost one of them.
Also, can you imagine having to find multiple parts of your phone when it rings!
My boss makes a good example of this. If I tell him it doesn't work because I've been testing under Mozilla, he'll have a nervous breakdown. If I tell him it doesn't work because he's still using Netscape 4, he's okay with it.
Yikes. Maybe its just me, but I'd have to have the music turned up a helluva lot further than I like, to really drown out the fan noise. I dislike the noise because I want to play my music at a lower level. Also, if there's stuff going on in the background, I like to be able to hear that over the drone of fans.
There was a really strange conversation between my flatmates and I about one bit, single pixel Quake, and likely rendering speeds. I don't know why. I suspect sleep deprevation. This in fact made a lot more sense before I started typing.
"To put these results into perspective, a single frame rendered at 1600x1200 with 32 bits of color weighs in at about 7.5MB. Double that to 64-bit color, and it's 15MB per frame. And a single image at 1600x1200 in 128-bit color is over 30MB."
Huh? Why on earth would they want 128-bit colour. AFAIK the human eye can't tell the difference beyond 24-bit, and 32-bit is just there to make the processing a bit easier. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but it seems an extremely poorly thought out complaint.
You want analogue instead of digital? Why? DVI should provide much better image quality - component video might be comparable, but not without spending far far more on the cabling. So what do you want component?
They already have people checking source code. Apparently the official line is that for critical systems, if they can't check the code, it doesn't get used!
While I'm not aware of either companies involved with this box, it sounds a lot like the "Sky+" box we have in the UK. Basically, Sky, satellite TV company (and given that a lot of the country cannot receive cable, by far the supplier of TV beyond the standard 5 channels), has come up with a box that can spool the incoming digital TV signal on to HD.
As the signal received is digital (I believe they actually use MPEG-2), there is no loss from encoding, except that at origin. The first boxes were released around a year ago, and although they've had their problems, seem like a good idea.
The boxes sell for the equivalent of about $450, and have a monthly subscription cost of around $13 on top of that. They come with two tuners, so they can record one channel while you watch another, and are generally great.
AFAIK they have no advert skip function, however they do allow time delaying of pay per view events (you can record them when you want, and then watch them whenever you want, although I beleive it erases them after watching).
Although the production boards aren't out yet, you can join the "I am Amiga" club for $50, which includes a $50 voucher against the cost of an AmigaOne or AmigaOS 4.0.
Whether this is a good idea or not, I'm not going to comment on, beyond that I'm intending on buying one, but some people have expressed concerns about whether the production boards will ever be released. However the URL of the promotion is:
http://www.amiga-anywhere.com/main.php?prod_id=41
I believe its been done before. Certainly one company has made IR shielding swim suits to protect against Sony cameras. Never actually seen them on sale, only ever heard of them.