I'll take a look at it. I have no use for Optimus - I just need a laptop with basic CUDA support. The model I unwittingly got was an Inspiron, and there didn't seem any way to disable Optimus. I'd love to be wrong (no RMA until after the holidays so it's not out the door yet) but I saw no options in the BIOS. I'm used to not being able to use the bleeding edge features in Linux, I'm just not used to being shut out completely, at least by nVidia products.
Be wary on the Linux side of the 'Optimus' technology. I didn't do due diligence and impetuously ordered a new laptop from Dell with an nVidia card (GT 525M). Turns out that there was no way in the Dell laptop to turn it off, and Linux couldn't see the nVidia card, just the intermediating Intel card. The ‘automatic graphics switching’ is done in software only under Win7. End result - no OpenGL under Linux. End-end result, I sent it back.
There is a project to get Optimus working on Linux (https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee) but I really don't have time, and the switching has to be done manually at the moment.
It may be a little off topic, but it seems worthwhile to plug to a nice GPL'd robotics package which runs on *nix, has built in simulators for 2D and 3D, and supports a lot of COTS robots (including Roombas):
In a nutshell, his premise is that the underlying assumptions that make data mining work for such things as credit card fraud don't hold when searching for terrorist plots. Also, that trying to apply those models will result in a flurry of false negatives so large as to make the whole effort useless and a waste of resources which could otherwise be better spent. It's hard to argue with...
I can't believe I'm saying this ( after a fair amount of time spent cursing the titanium-strength type system ) but Ada isn't a bad choice for teaching programming concepts.
Upsides include a strong and explicit type system, verbose and readable syntax, free implementations via the GNAT system, and good support for programming in the large concepts.
Now I'm aware of the downsides, and a lot of ppl feel that a basic programming course should use a language that's lower level (ie C). But I'd think a Programming course would focus on the abstractions of programming, and the underlying architecture issues should somewhat seperate.
BTW, I'd be leary of C++ as an intro to programming. The interactions in C++ can be subtle and nasty - I got bit by a lot of unexpected behaviors when shifting from Java to C++. I think Java makes OO cleaner to read and understand, despite it's shortcomings WRT other languages.
Anyway YMMV - some things I'm glad I only have to learn once - C++ is one of them.
Oh, and BTW Ada's relative obscurity these days makes it a level playing field in a classroom filled with ppl with diverse backgrounds.
I've been looking really hard on the web for the answer to that question. Christ, I even went to the MS site...
I suspect there was/is no tag; some flak just said "Oh, you'll be able to disable it with a Meta tag" when they got cornered by some journalist. They're probably working on it as we speak. Feh.
Slashdot Mirror
"About 50% of the human race is middle man and they don't take kindly to being eliminated."
Malcom Reynolds - Firefly
I'll take a look at it. I have no use for Optimus - I just need a laptop with basic CUDA support. The model I unwittingly got was an Inspiron, and there didn't seem any way to disable Optimus. I'd love to be wrong (no RMA until after the holidays so it's not out the door yet) but I saw no options in the BIOS. I'm used to not being able to use the bleeding edge features in Linux, I'm just not used to being shut out completely, at least by nVidia products.
Thanks m(__)m
Be wary on the Linux side of the 'Optimus' technology. I didn't do due diligence and impetuously ordered a new laptop from Dell with an nVidia card (GT 525M). Turns out that there was no way in the Dell laptop to turn it off, and Linux couldn't see the nVidia card, just the intermediating Intel card. The ‘automatic graphics switching’ is done in software only under Win7. End result - no OpenGL under Linux. End-end result, I sent it back.
There is a project to get Optimus working on Linux (https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee) but I really don't have time, and the switching has to be done manually at the moment.
It may be a little off topic, but it seems worthwhile to plug to a nice GPL'd robotics package which runs on *nix, has built in simulators for 2D and 3D, and supports a lot of COTS robots (including Roombas):
Player/Stage: http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
Probably not exactly the same target audience as MS's SDK, but we're all geeks, here, right?
Bruce Schneier wrote an interesting piece on why data-mining not only doesn't work, but can't work in the context of finding terrorist plots:
t w=wn_story
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70357-0.html?
In a nutshell, his premise is that the underlying assumptions that make data mining work for such things as credit card fraud don't hold when searching for terrorist plots. Also, that trying to apply those models will result in a flurry of false negatives so large as to make the whole effort useless and a waste of resources which could otherwise be better spent. It's hard to argue with...
I can't believe I'm saying this ( after a fair amount of time spent cursing the titanium-strength type system ) but Ada isn't a bad choice for teaching programming concepts.
Upsides include a strong and explicit type system, verbose and readable syntax, free implementations via the GNAT system, and good support for programming in the large concepts.
Now I'm aware of the downsides, and a lot of ppl feel that a basic programming course should use a language that's lower level (ie C). But I'd think a Programming course would focus on the abstractions of programming, and the underlying architecture issues should somewhat seperate.
BTW, I'd be leary of C++ as an intro to programming. The interactions in C++ can be subtle and nasty - I got bit by a lot of unexpected behaviors when shifting from Java to C++. I think Java makes OO cleaner to read and understand, despite it's shortcomings WRT other languages.
Anyway YMMV - some things I'm glad I only have to learn once - C++ is one of them.
Oh, and BTW Ada's relative obscurity these days makes it a level playing field in a classroom filled with ppl with diverse backgrounds.
I've been looking really hard on the web for the answer to that question. Christ, I even went to the MS site...
I suspect there was/is no tag; some flak just said "Oh, you'll be able to disable it with a Meta tag" when they got cornered by some journalist. They're probably working on it as we speak. Feh.
>I certainly can't imagine doing anything in front >of the computer on acid!
What about Cthugha? 8-P