Ah, cute, I didn't see that. Shows how long I've been away from C... about three years now. Three years ago I would have slapped myself for doing something so silly... today I just say "gee, I feel sorry for those C programmers." Of course, garbage collection (Java's garbage collection is not conservative... but do even conservative garbage collectors have problems with non-circular structures?) would make the issue moot, as you say... and I see that exceptions make it, perhaps, a tad prettier, but certainly not much. How about C# new 'using' word? (Yes, I know that C# is garbage collected... that's not the point. I'm just trying to understand this new keyword, and whether it has any advantages over try/finally.) Would that help at all?
Don't knock the imagewriter as a major detail, though. To this day, I have an imagewriter one (the rectangular brick-of-doom, not the sleek-and-slanted iw two) connected to my mac, still working beautifully. And when I got my first mac, knowing I wouldn't have to buy a new printer was a really big deal; it was one of the things that prevented me from even looking at dos.
Given that ext2 seems to be the clear winner now (which I'm not quite sure I believe, but it is a more mature solution on Linux), how does ext3 perform? I was somewhat surprised to see it left out of these tests... is it possible it inherits some performance from ext2?
Windows 2k AS can also use more than 4GB of ram... I've tested it with 12GB, and it worked fine with that. An 8GB limit would be mildly bizarre... 33 bit addressing? (Recent) Pentiums use 36 bit addressing, giving the 64GB limit which is inherent to well-designed OS's stuck on an Intel platform.
Nonsense. I change my processor far more often than I change my motherboard, where my classical north bridge lives. This actually makes improvements easier, and more likely.
How would you like to be the manager of this team, knowing that if one person gets injured or killed, your whole project is grounded indefinitely? Sure, it's nice to have 'the local genious'... but by relying on him, you risk a hell of a lot.
For those of us on the other end of the chain, the youngun's, what do you recommend? I've been astounded by the quality of (most of) my University education at a mediocre school... but it's hard to get real mentorship. Is this even possible in this day and age?
Incidentally, is fibre channel actually supposed to be called fibre channel or is it just one of those meter/metre things?
Don't quote me on this, but I seem to recall that the name was changed from "fiber channel" to "fibre channel" when it was realized that most people would not be using real fiber for the protocol.
optical computing was promised a long time ago, along with persistant RAM and lots of other vapourware
Patience! Just because it is not here today does not mean that it shall never be. The first prototype, or even the first discussion of a concept, is the necessary precursor to developing that concept.
And back to persistant RAM... they promised you persistant RAM. Today, you can get a gig of persistant RAM that weighs less than 30 grams... about the same scale as normal RAM. It's not as fast, it's not perfect... but by slow steps and evolutionary progress, we do move along. By all means, embrace current technologies (Serial ATA) in the present, but consider also that these 'promises' will some day come of age.
Assuming that this is feasible, why is this desirable? All the benefits of fiber optics, except reliability and flexibility. (Think, for a minute... if a processor requires line-of-site to a north bridge, how the heck do you make a laptop with a different form factor than the chip was originally designed for?) While it's a neat idea, I can't see a single advantage that this has over fiber... especially since, if you're using pins for power (and for lining things up!) anyway, you might as well toss in a few fiber optics sockets.
Firstly, the length of the bus on a motherboard is so short that there are few real gains over a copper/gold track, and those gains that are made are outweighed by the encoders/decoders that do the photonelectron conversions.
Close, but not quite. What you're alluding to here is that the latency gains are negligable, or even negative. But there's another factor, which you mention later... bandwidth. A nice fiber optic wire has a lot more bandwidth than some gold or copper. And this really does eliminate "all these problems" (except latency).
Another poster mentioned Serial ATA. How is it possible, on first glance, that a serial protocol, sending a single bit at a time, is faster than a parallel one, sending bytes at a time? Simple! It sends a bit much more often. And you could do the same thing with fiberoptics. If a fiber gives you 10Gb/s bandwidth, then connecting your memory takes exactly ONE 'pin' if you want a 10Gb/s memory bus.
A wider bus gives more bandwidth, yes, and means more pins on the chip, but a much faster medium can, and in the case of fiber optics, does outweigh this effect.
I've actually done some work with this research group. The stuff they're looking at for chip cooling (not my area, I was looking at organ-pipe sized doodads) is really high frequency. Your dog can't hear it. Maybe it's fleas can, if they're young. Very young.
Nobody "chooses" to give these sites the right to launch porn pop ups as fast as you close them...
Sure they do. Heck, you do. First, by going to porn sites, which are significantly more likely to have porn popups than, say, cnn.com. Second, by using javascript. Third, by allowing javascript to open new windows.
Here, if that idea is still uncomfortable to you, I'll give you a way to deny responsibility. Maybe you're not the one choosing to allow websites to open windows (although, clearly, you are); rather, whoever added that feature to the browser you, um, don't choose to use but use anyway chose to allow web sites to do this. Those copper wires going into your network card do not magically give another computer miles and miles away the ability to do anything.
And that's one of the problems with Polaroids, in my experience... you can't have copies at home. Short of photocopying the original photo (which, let's face it, is ugly), you're stuck with a single copy of each shot.
Have you considered getting a mac? The iBook is an amazingly decent little beastie for the price, and the Ti is simply astounding. Good (and I mean good) battery life, you can underclock the iBook easily for more battery life if you like that tradeoff, OSX, OS9, or Linux, built in networking... seems to satisfy your every desire.
How much control should a web site have over the user's browser? As much as the user gives it, of course! Now, even in brain-dead browsers like IE there are zones, where you can simply say "If i don't know this domain, don't give it full control." The default of giving away user control is admittedly unfortunate... but it is the user, by choosing the software, that is giving the site, explicitly, this freedom.
Yes, explicitly. I have installed a piece of software which has no purpose other than to let a web site control my browser... and now controlling my browser is illegal? Huh? If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't have installed the software...
Perhaps I'm missing something, so please, enlighten me, don't label me a troll.
In what situation, ever, does the uptime of a single system matter? It doesn't matter if my server has one nine (90%) uptime, because I'd be crazy to have just one server. Instead, it's the uptime of the cluster/infrastructure/system and fallback that matters, right? I mean, uptime isn't just a feel-good-about-lots-of-nines number, it's supposed to reflect how often your site/service is unavailable. Which, with only a little work and some redundancy, is as close to never as you choose, even when the single system explodes in a fire ball. No?
I know I'm feeding a troll, but heck, I don't have any mod points, and somehow this guy has been modded up...
As someone who has programmed robots, I can assure you that the level of effort required to get a robot to move consistently in a straight line, let alone navigate areound obstacles through sensory input is prohibitive.
There are few things I love more than the mentality "I can't do it, therefore it can't be done." Someone please mod this fella down now?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the little nubly things (we really need a word... nublets?) would be quite aerodynamic. Like the dimples in a golf ball, they would do some fancy fluid dynamic whiz-bangs and actually make the whatsit fly better. No?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, cute, I didn't see that. Shows how long I've been away from C... about three years now. Three years ago I would have slapped myself for doing something so silly... today I just say "gee, I feel sorry for those C programmers." Of course, garbage collection (Java's garbage collection is not conservative... but do even conservative garbage collectors have problems with non-circular structures?) would make the issue moot, as you say... and I see that exceptions make it, perhaps, a tad prettier, but certainly not much. How about C# new 'using' word? (Yes, I know that C# is garbage collected... that's not the point. I'm just trying to understand this new keyword, and whether it has any advantages over try/finally.) Would that help at all?
I'm a java programmer, so I prefer exceptions... but what's the big deal?
/* Here we do something with p1, p2, p3 */
int allocate_3(void){
int *p1, *p2, *p3 ;
if( !(p1 = malloc(SOME_NUMBER*sizeof(int)) )) return -1;
if( !(p2 = malloc(SOME_NUMBER*sizeof(int)) )) return -1;
if( !(p3 = malloc(SOME_NUMBER*sizeof(int)) )) return -1;
if( p1 ) free ( p1 ) ;
if( p2 ) free ( p2 ) ;
if( p3 ) free ( p3 ) ;
return 0 ;
}
Don't knock the imagewriter as a major detail, though. To this day, I have an imagewriter one (the rectangular brick-of-doom, not the sleek-and-slanted iw two) connected to my mac, still working beautifully. And when I got my first mac, knowing I wouldn't have to buy a new printer was a really big deal; it was one of the things that prevented me from even looking at dos.
Given that ext2 seems to be the clear winner now (which I'm not quite sure I believe, but it is a more mature solution on Linux), how does ext3 perform? I was somewhat surprised to see it left out of these tests... is it possible it inherits some performance from ext2?
Windows 2k AS can also use more than 4GB of ram... I've tested it with 12GB, and it worked fine with that. An 8GB limit would be mildly bizarre... 33 bit addressing? (Recent) Pentiums use 36 bit addressing, giving the 64GB limit which is inherent to well-designed OS's stuck on an Intel platform.
Nonsense. I change my processor far more often than I change my motherboard, where my classical north bridge lives. This actually makes improvements easier, and more likely.
How would you like to be the manager of this team, knowing that if one person gets injured or killed, your whole project is grounded indefinitely? Sure, it's nice to have 'the local genious'... but by relying on him, you risk a hell of a lot.
For those of us on the other end of the chain, the youngun's, what do you recommend? I've been astounded by the quality of (most of) my University education at a mediocre school... but it's hard to get real mentorship. Is this even possible in this day and age?
Incidentally, is fibre channel actually supposed to be called fibre channel or is it just one of those meter/metre things?
Don't quote me on this, but I seem to recall that the name was changed from "fiber channel" to "fibre channel" when it was realized that most people would not be using real fiber for the protocol.
optical computing was promised a long time ago, along with persistant RAM and lots of other vapourware
Patience! Just because it is not here today does not mean that it shall never be. The first prototype, or even the first discussion of a concept, is the necessary precursor to developing that concept.
And back to persistant RAM... they promised you persistant RAM. Today, you can get a gig of persistant RAM that weighs less than 30 grams... about the same scale as normal RAM. It's not as fast, it's not perfect... but by slow steps and evolutionary progress, we do move along. By all means, embrace current technologies (Serial ATA) in the present, but consider also that these 'promises' will some day come of age.
Assuming that this is feasible, why is this desirable? All the benefits of fiber optics, except reliability and flexibility. (Think, for a minute... if a processor requires line-of-site to a north bridge, how the heck do you make a laptop with a different form factor than the chip was originally designed for?) While it's a neat idea, I can't see a single advantage that this has over fiber... especially since, if you're using pins for power (and for lining things up!) anyway, you might as well toss in a few fiber optics sockets.
Firstly, the length of the bus on a motherboard is so short that there are few real gains over a copper/gold track, and those gains that are made are outweighed by the encoders/decoders that do the photonelectron conversions.
Close, but not quite. What you're alluding to here is that the latency gains are negligable, or even negative. But there's another factor, which you mention later... bandwidth. A nice fiber optic wire has a lot more bandwidth than some gold or copper. And this really does eliminate "all these problems" (except latency).
Another poster mentioned Serial ATA. How is it possible, on first glance, that a serial protocol, sending a single bit at a time, is faster than a parallel one, sending bytes at a time? Simple! It sends a bit much more often. And you could do the same thing with fiberoptics. If a fiber gives you 10Gb/s bandwidth, then connecting your memory takes exactly ONE 'pin' if you want a 10Gb/s memory bus.
A wider bus gives more bandwidth, yes, and means more pins on the chip, but a much faster medium can, and in the case of fiber optics, does outweigh this effect.
HP is great about setups like that. My, um, desktop is currently a 200 lb. HP server... 8 xeon processors chugging along, and not a fan on them. Wow.
I've actually done some work with this research group. The stuff they're looking at for chip cooling (not my area, I was looking at organ-pipe sized doodads) is really high frequency. Your dog can't hear it. Maybe it's fleas can, if they're young. Very young.
I've read the product page, but can't quite decode it. Does it also support 802.llb?
Nobody "chooses" to give these sites the right to launch porn pop ups as fast as you close them...
Sure they do. Heck, you do. First, by going to porn sites, which are significantly more likely to have porn popups than, say, cnn.com. Second, by using javascript. Third, by allowing javascript to open new windows.
Here, if that idea is still uncomfortable to you, I'll give you a way to deny responsibility. Maybe you're not the one choosing to allow websites to open windows (although, clearly, you are); rather, whoever added that feature to the browser you, um, don't choose to use but use anyway chose to allow web sites to do this. Those copper wires going into your network card do not magically give another computer miles and miles away the ability to do anything.
I have copies at home!
And that's one of the problems with Polaroids, in my experience... you can't have copies at home. Short of photocopying the original photo (which, let's face it, is ugly), you're stuck with a single copy of each shot.
Have you considered getting a mac? The iBook is an amazingly decent little beastie for the price, and the Ti is simply astounding. Good (and I mean good) battery life, you can underclock the iBook easily for more battery life if you like that tradeoff, OSX, OS9, or Linux, built in networking... seems to satisfy your every desire.
-W is widescreen. Also, you're missing my favorite: QVGA! That's right the almighty Quarter VGA... 320x240.
How much control should a web site have over the user's browser? As much as the user gives it, of course! Now, even in brain-dead browsers like IE there are zones, where you can simply say "If i don't know this domain, don't give it full control." The default of giving away user control is admittedly unfortunate... but it is the user, by choosing the software, that is giving the site, explicitly, this freedom.
Yes, explicitly. I have installed a piece of software which has no purpose other than to let a web site control my browser... and now controlling my browser is illegal? Huh? If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't have installed the software...
Not everything... I know it sounds bizarre, but try welsh words and names. I've had an astoundingly high success rate.
Perhaps I'm missing something, so please, enlighten me, don't label me a troll.
In what situation, ever, does the uptime of a single system matter? It doesn't matter if my server has one nine (90%) uptime, because I'd be crazy to have just one server. Instead, it's the uptime of the cluster/infrastructure/system and fallback that matters, right? I mean, uptime isn't just a feel-good-about-lots-of-nines number, it's supposed to reflect how often your site/service is unavailable. Which, with only a little work and some redundancy, is as close to never as you choose, even when the single system explodes in a fire ball. No?
I know I'm feeding a troll, but heck, I don't have any mod points, and somehow this guy has been modded up...
As someone who has programmed robots, I can assure you that the level of effort required to get a robot to move consistently in a straight line, let alone navigate areound obstacles through sensory input is prohibitive.
There are few things I love more than the mentality "I can't do it, therefore it can't be done." Someone please mod this fella down now?
I'm not saying the parent is wrong... only that it's posts like this that make me wish there was a -1, asshole moderation.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the little nubly things (we really need a word... nublets?) would be quite aerodynamic. Like the dimples in a golf ball, they would do some fancy fluid dynamic whiz-bangs and actually make the whatsit fly better. No?