They would look at the code as more of a structured psuedo-code, rather than something they thought would compile.
I had a fortran instructor sort-of like that. But then his code wouldn't compile. The final was a 2 page listing and the question "Tell me what this code does". I told him it would error durring compile at line 30.
He gave me an A for that. It would have been much easier if I could have used a compiler to find the result though..
what would prompt ILM to pick LINUX above an obviously proven set of tools?
In a nutshell, more bang for the buck. From the article:
half of our desktops and about 30% of our 2,000 CPU renderfarm is now Linux'', says ILM Director of Research and Development Andy Hendrickson. ``We've got 700-plus O2 machines'', adds Beyer. ``But it isn't affordable to replace those with Octanes.'' SGI is recognized for producing high-end workstations and servers but has abandoned competing with commodity PC hardware.
As to sun, well, while sun makes more stable hardware, with the recent advances in speed on the intel hardware and the slacking of development by sun in the wake of it's dot.com loss intel has taken the lead in number crunching for low-end hardware.
Who wouldn't rather have a farm of cheap, easily replacable boxes than a farm of expensive machines?
And if you are asking why linux, it says in the article they decided to go with what is mainstream:
R&D Principal Engineer Phil Peterson says ILM chose the Red Hat distro because it seemed easier to go with what's popular.
I didn't know Linux had some magical CPU performance enhancement system that makes it run software so much faster than other operating systems on the same hardware...
If you:
a) use an OS with a good scheduler b) tune the kernel to the computer you are using c) use only the drivers you need d) don't run software you don't need.
You will see quite a speed increase. The last 3 are things you have a hard time doing on most closed/proprietary operating systems.
The Computers of ILM ILM says they have rarely seen artists get excited by hardware, but artists fought to get the new Linux workstations--Dell single-CPU P4s with NVIDIA Quadra 2 Pro graphics cards. The question became, ``Where's my Linux box?''
Production Engineering Manager Ken Beyer says
More than 350 Linux boxes were deployed during Episode II. Animators and modelers got their workstations first, then compositors. The first group had flat panels because animators lack the desk space for monitors. There were problems with monitor calibration under Red Hat 7.1. We used flat panels to get Linux out there. Last to get workstations were TDs. They push the envelope of what they ask for. An issue was how quickly we could get things ported for them.
``We've changed over quite a bit of our plant here to Linux--half of our desktops and about 30% of our 2,000 CPU renderfarm is now Linux'', says ILM Director of Research and Development Andy Hendrickson. ``We've got 700-plus O2 machines'', adds Beyer. ``But it isn't affordable to replace those with Octanes.'' SGI is recognized for producing high-end workstations and servers but has abandoned competing with commodity PC hardware. SGI seems to be rebounding in the military market but less so in entertainment. ``Our renderfarm towers carry the Deathstar logo'', points out Beyer. A render tower is a stack of 1RU 2-CPU units connected together with inexpensive 100Base-TX. He says:
These are 1RU, 2-CPU P4 units. If we lose a unit it is more convenient now that it is just two CPUs rather than four or eight with SGI 2800. For Episode II we had to double available capacity and power. It's 512 processors. We use dual 225 kVA UPS systems, and have three AC systems that rotate. Power goes out often in the San Rafael area. We can run on UPS for 15 minutes then [on a] diesel generator.
An unexpected snag arose during the upgrade: all the PC fans had to be replaced because they were defective. Systems R&D Group Manager Mike Kiernan reports a few problems with Linux:
Sometimes when I arrive in the morning a quarter of the Linux cluster is locked up. Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often. VM problems in the 2.4 kernel appear to be at the root of our kernel lockup problem. Recent improvements in the 2.4 kernel may resolve that. Things look promising.
But he adds that ``Linux needs work on NFS big time.''
We won't be going to Linux for our NFS servers. I wish we could replace NFS, but none of the document management systems is flexible enough. And the ones that are flexible have a rather high integration cost. When AFS is distributed natively for all the client platforms we need to support, perhaps we'll consider it.
ILM is comfortable with multiple platforms. Its 1,400 employees use a variety of operating systems. The art department has Macs, with the rotoscopers and painters transitioning to OS X. Hendrickson sees OS X as a possible player. ``What attracts us is the BSD-like Darwin core and network compatibility.'' ILM has few Windows boxes, besides those on business side. ``There's no advantage to a Windows conversion for us'', says Hendrickson. ``We're a UNIX shop and probably always will be.'' R&D Principal Engineer Phil Peterson says ILM chose the Red Hat distro because it seemed easier to go with what's popular. ``At ILM the 2.4.9 kernel is deployed, and 2.4.17 or 2.4.18 is in test. We tweak the kernel--things like shared memory size, number of file descriptors, default stack size--nothing dramatic.'' Open Motif 2.1 did a good job maintaining the look-and-feel of IRIX, so ILM didn't try LessTif. ILM workstations include limited installations of GNOME and KDE. ``No special effort was spent to strip machines down'', says Peterson. ``We just left out unused portions of the full install. We're pretty vanilla.''
An unusual aspect of the ILM Linux workstation configuration is the replacement of the MESA libs with the SGI open source, OpenGL implementation. ``MESA is behind compared to the SGI version in aspects such as libGLU'', explains Peterson. Other studios haven't experienced the best stability using Maya on Linux with NVIDIA drivers. It seems that may be due to MESA and not Maya, NVIDIA or Linux, as previously thought. ILM has replaced the MESA libraries with a combination of NVIDIA's core OpenGL and libraries from the SGI open-source sample implementation.
``Chances are you will not find solutions in any documentation'', notes Peterson.
We don't have a support line to call. We fix things and extend. It introduces a layer of maintenance we're not used to. We had to use open-source drivers with tablets. With calibrating monitors, the work is ongoing. Still, we've had an easy road. Our artists are technically savvy, able to endure pain. Having the best testers in the world around the corner from you provides quick feedback.
Hendrickson concurs that Linux support can be a problem. He says, ``As we get into Linux we're not finding one company to hand-hold. IBM and HP aren't there, yet. But, before Linux it was out of our control and out of control. [Now] we own our Linux problems.'' Is it possible for Linux to be too fast? ``Due to the speed of Linux, for the first time in my life, 15 years in the business, I'm starting to feel some RSI [repetitive strain injury]'', says Technical Director Robert Weaver. ``Usually you are working the machine, but Linux is so fast it can overwork you.'' Weaver has to remember to take breaks because with Linux he doesn't get any breaks waiting for the machine anymore.
One of the things they have been talking about for a long while was Cyc approaching the ability to "read" for itself, and gather new information for it's database from the web, newspapers, or any other authoritative source.
Isn't that how the MCP got started? As I remember they were pretty hush hush about how far along it was too..
... a protection that should keep Cyc from being filled with erroneous information during its public education, which for now is possible only on computers with the Linux operating system.
does it mean Linux is the only operating system to that can be filled with erroneous information?
Obviously any computer can be filled with erroneous information. I would presume that the "protection" they refer to has not been ported to other operating systems.
Another possibility is that this is a case of a non-technical journalist speaking to a group of programmers with heavy accents and doing the best he can to get a story out of it, without actually understanding it.
Then again, perhaps that was just thrown in there as slashdot-bait. Maybe webfin.com wanted to test out some new gear or something..
My sister just graduated from high school, and in her grade are a group of guys who are called the "Cisco boys", who are just a step bellow skilled athletes on the social ladder. I mean crap, if I had been born 4 years later, maybe I would have gotten some before I passed my prime.
I doubt it. My bet is your sister just has better thingies.
The problem was not with the name hammer itself, per sae, but with the cost of manufacturing the little anti-static balloon pants they were going to ship the CPUs in.
Like anything in computers, if you want to do it right, do it for the hell of it.
This is exactly correct. And this may well benefit you more than any plan to make money.
The release of open-source software lets people see for themselves if you are any good. Having working (and ideally popular) code available on the internet looks good on a resume. Companies like absolute value systems have turned their open source project into a sucessful consulting business. I think both RMS and Linus have done pretty well for themselves by giving it away. There are quite a few sucess stories like these out there.
In any event, do it because you want to do it, because you enjoy doing it. You may find out along the way that you suck, you may find out that you don't enjoy coding once it's down to the details. Then again, you may find that you are good at it and enjoy it. In any event, you'll learn something about yourself, and it will be less stressful if you aren't putting pressure on yourself by making it a "job".
But don't go into it as a plan to quit your day job. Do it because you enjoy doing it- everything else is, in the longrun, a moot point.
The article author sorta makes me feel like I'm supposed to feel bad that my old harddrive ends up in China.
Don't throw out that old hard drive, strip it instead! Inside you'll find a couple of very strong rare earth magnets (scroll down to the section labled Drive Magnets once you get past the ferrofluid) that you can have all kinds of fun with or use to pick up all those screws you dropped when you were building that new computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a fortran instructor sort-of like that. But then his code wouldn't compile. The final was a 2 page listing and the question "Tell me what this code does". I told him it would error durring compile at line 30.
He gave me an A for that. It would have been much easier if I could have used a compiler to find the result though..
In a nutshell, more bang for the buck. From the article:
As to sun, well, while sun makes more stable hardware, with the recent advances in speed on the intel hardware and the slacking of development by sun in the wake of it's dot.com loss intel has taken the lead in number crunching for low-end hardware.
Who wouldn't rather have a farm of cheap, easily replacable boxes than a farm of expensive machines?
And if you are asking why linux, it says in the article they decided to go with what is mainstream:
If you:
a) use an OS with a good scheduler
b) tune the kernel to the computer you are using
c) use only the drivers you need
d) don't run software you don't need.
You will see quite a speed increase. The last 3 are things you have a hard time doing on most closed/proprietary operating systems.
Here's the text from the article:
The Computers of ILM
ILM says they have rarely seen artists get excited by hardware, but artists fought to get the new Linux workstations--Dell single-CPU P4s with NVIDIA Quadra 2 Pro graphics cards. The question became, ``Where's my Linux box?''
Production Engineering Manager Ken Beyer says
More than 350 Linux boxes were deployed during Episode II. Animators and modelers got their workstations first, then compositors. The first group had flat panels because animators lack the desk space for monitors. There were problems with monitor calibration under Red Hat 7.1. We used flat panels to get Linux out there. Last to get workstations were TDs. They push the envelope of what they ask for. An issue was how quickly we could get things ported for them.
``We've changed over quite a bit of our plant here to Linux--half of our desktops and about 30% of our 2,000 CPU renderfarm is now Linux'', says ILM Director of Research and Development Andy Hendrickson. ``We've got 700-plus O2 machines'', adds Beyer. ``But it isn't affordable to replace those with Octanes.'' SGI is recognized for producing high-end workstations and servers but has abandoned competing with commodity PC hardware. SGI seems to be rebounding in the military market but less so in entertainment.
``Our renderfarm towers carry the Deathstar logo'', points out Beyer. A render tower is a stack of 1RU 2-CPU units connected together with inexpensive 100Base-TX. He says:
These are 1RU, 2-CPU P4 units. If we lose a unit it is more convenient now that it is just two CPUs rather than four or eight with SGI 2800. For Episode II we had to double available capacity and power. It's 512 processors. We use dual 225 kVA UPS systems, and have three AC systems that rotate. Power goes out often in the San Rafael area. We can run on UPS for 15 minutes then [on a] diesel generator.
An unexpected snag arose during the upgrade: all the PC fans had to be replaced because they were defective.
Systems R&D Group Manager Mike Kiernan reports a few problems with Linux:
Sometimes when I arrive in the morning a quarter of the Linux cluster is locked up. Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often. VM problems in the 2.4 kernel appear to be at the root of our kernel lockup problem. Recent improvements in the 2.4 kernel may resolve that. Things look promising.
But he adds that ``Linux needs work on NFS big time.''
We won't be going to Linux for our NFS servers. I wish we could replace NFS, but none of the document management systems is flexible enough. And the ones that are flexible have a rather high integration cost. When AFS is distributed natively for all the client platforms we need to support, perhaps we'll consider it.
ILM is comfortable with multiple platforms. Its 1,400 employees use a variety of operating systems. The art department has Macs, with the rotoscopers and painters transitioning to OS X. Hendrickson sees OS X as a possible player. ``What attracts us is the BSD-like Darwin core and network compatibility.'' ILM has few Windows boxes, besides those on business side. ``There's no advantage to a Windows conversion for us'', says Hendrickson. ``We're a UNIX shop and probably always will be.''
R&D Principal Engineer Phil Peterson says ILM chose the Red Hat distro because it seemed easier to go with what's popular. ``At ILM the 2.4.9 kernel is deployed, and 2.4.17 or 2.4.18 is in test. We tweak the kernel--things like shared memory size, number of file descriptors, default stack size--nothing dramatic.'' Open Motif 2.1 did a good job maintaining the look-and-feel of IRIX, so ILM didn't try LessTif. ILM workstations include limited installations of GNOME and KDE. ``No special effort was spent to strip machines down'', says Peterson. ``We just left out unused portions of the full install. We're pretty vanilla.''
An unusual aspect of the ILM Linux workstation configuration is the replacement of the MESA libs with the SGI open source, OpenGL implementation. ``MESA is behind compared to the SGI version in aspects such as libGLU'', explains Peterson. Other studios haven't experienced the best stability using Maya on Linux with NVIDIA drivers. It seems that may be due to MESA and not Maya, NVIDIA or Linux, as previously thought. ILM has replaced the MESA libraries with a combination of NVIDIA's core OpenGL and libraries from the SGI open-source sample implementation.
``Chances are you will not find solutions in any documentation'', notes Peterson.
We don't have a support line to call. We fix things and extend. It introduces a layer of maintenance we're not used to. We had to use open-source drivers with tablets. With calibrating monitors, the work is ongoing. Still, we've had an easy road. Our artists are technically savvy, able to endure pain. Having the best testers in the world around the corner from you provides quick feedback.
Hendrickson concurs that Linux support can be a problem. He says, ``As we get into Linux we're not finding one company to hand-hold. IBM and HP aren't there, yet. But, before Linux it was out of our control and out of control. [Now] we own our Linux problems.''
Is it possible for Linux to be too fast? ``Due to the speed of Linux, for the first time in my life, 15 years in the business, I'm starting to feel some RSI [repetitive strain injury]'', says Technical Director Robert Weaver. ``Usually you are working the machine, but Linux is so fast it can overwork you.'' Weaver has to remember to take breaks because with Linux he doesn't get any breaks waiting for the machine anymore.
I couldn't agree more- I mean where does it end? What if MIB2 decideds they want to fly a mothership 600' over the planet?
*THWAP*
It has been a long time since I have had the oppertunity to thwap someone with a flounder.
So I thank you.
Yeah, and there are groups of people that believe they need to drink urine to stay healthy.
There are all types out there, so what's your point?
It works.
Try hitting "refresh" or "reload" or whatever your browser calls it.
Try this.
It really doesn't take an "event" to swap your card.
My friends and I have been swapping whenever possible since they first introduced the things.
And most stores let you just give them your phone number if you've forgotten your card, so you don't even need to let them know you've "swapped".
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
One of the things they have been talking about for a long while was Cyc approaching the ability to "read" for itself, and gather new information for it's database from the web, newspapers, or any other authoritative source.
Isn't that how the MCP got started? As I remember they were pretty hush hush about how far along it was too..
... a protection that should keep Cyc from being filled with erroneous information during its public education, which for now is possible only on computers with the Linux operating system.
does it mean Linux is the only operating system to that can be filled with erroneous information?
Obviously any computer can be filled with erroneous information. I would presume that the "protection" they refer to has not been ported to other operating systems.
Another possibility is that this is a case of a non-technical journalist speaking to a group of programmers with heavy accents and doing the best he can to get a story out of it, without actually understanding it.
Then again, perhaps that was just thrown in there as slashdot-bait. Maybe webfin.com wanted to test out some new gear or something..
I doubt it. My bet is your sister just has better thingies.
They seem to be doing a fine job of that without hydrinos or anyone telling them anything.
Havn't you seen The Godfather? Nobody in their right minds mess with the italians.
Oh wait..
If you don't have a basis for comparison, how would you know?
You certainly missed out on a whole slew of pentium FP bug panics.
The problem was not with the name hammer itself, per sae, but with the cost of manufacturing the little anti-static balloon pants they were going to ship the CPUs in.
Oh my!
I don't know if I'm quite ready to let millions of little bugs loose on my privates..
Well, maybe I am, but not as a contraceptive device.. unless you mean the preventative form of contraceptive.
I don't have the patience for that anymore:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
saves a lot of time. Works especially good on a box running any flavor of windows (use a *nix boot disk)
This is exactly correct. And this may well benefit you more than any plan to make money.
The release of open-source software lets people see for themselves if you are any good. Having working (and ideally popular) code available on the internet looks good on a resume. Companies like absolute value systems have turned their open source project into a sucessful consulting business. I think both RMS and Linus have done pretty well for themselves by giving it away. There are quite a few sucess stories like these out there.
In any event, do it because you want to do it, because you enjoy doing it. You may find out along the way that you suck, you may find out that you don't enjoy coding once it's down to the details. Then again, you may find that you are good at it and enjoy it. In any event, you'll learn something about yourself, and it will be less stressful if you aren't putting pressure on yourself by making it a "job".
But don't go into it as a plan to quit your day job. Do it because you enjoy doing it- everything else is, in the longrun, a moot point.
:/ I've had that happen at home.
now I check how clean my roommates are before I let them move in..
I would be willing to bet that you can.
The article author sorta makes me feel like I'm supposed to feel bad that my old harddrive ends up in China.
Don't throw out that old hard drive, strip it instead! Inside you'll find a couple of very strong rare earth magnets (scroll down to the section labled Drive Magnets once you get past the ferrofluid) that you can have all kinds of fun with or use to pick up all those screws you dropped when you were building that new computer.
And the platters make nice wind chimes.