We primarily do life-science/health/biology related tasks on our existing (fairly small) HPC. We intend to continue this usage, but to also open it up for new uses (energy comes to mind). Additionally, we'd like to lease access to recoup some of our costs.
I click on a link to check out the interface and the first thing I see is a bunch of garish primary colors. Come on, Microsoft, if you're going to rip off Apple at least do it well.
Both are right. The rate of demand increase is falling and is expected to go negative in a few years. From the article:
Over the next decade, experts expect residential power use to fall, reversing an upward trend that has been almost uninterrupted since Thomas Edison invented the modern light bulb....
From 1980 to 2000, residential power demand grew by about 2.5 percent a year. From 2000 to 2010, the growth rate slowed to 2 percent. Over the next 10 years, demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry.
Overall demand, including from factories and businesses, is still expected to grow, but at only a 0.7 percent annual rate through 2035, the government says. That's well below the average of 2.5 percent a year the past four decades.
The article is actually pretty detailed and quantitative (at least for the AP). It lists the big drivers as being more efficient lighting and appliances, federal and state efficiency subsidies, and people trying to save money. Over the next couple decades they're projecting ~20-25% reduction in appliance energy use and ~50% reduction in lighting energy use.
I tried MTW as an EE and didn't get very far. The first problem is that it's a graduate-level textbook, which means it wants you to do all the work yourself. The second is that it's a graduate-level *physics* textbook, which means it assumes you have advanced undergrad knowledge of E&M, mechanics, etc., not just a first-year physics course. Beautiful book, though -- worth owning as a work of art if nothing else. Wheeler also co-authored a book on special relativity which is targeted more at the undergrad/advanced high school level, and should probably be considered a prerequisite for GR.
I read some of the Hartle book and intend to dive into it in the future. It seems like a great book for a non-physicist.
To what extent does any large organization plan 50 years into the future? Predicting social, technological, and economic change is much harder than predicting climate change.
I think the feeling of being informed is a factor, at least for some people. I've been on planes where they let me listen to air traffic control and felt much safer knowing what the plane was going to do in advance. It still feels like the plane is falling out of the sky whenever it dives, but at least I know to expect it.
I agree, but between always-on antivirus, backup software, hard drive encryption, firewalls, third-party version control software that hooks into the OS, drivers for weird custom peripherals, changing internet connections, and MS Office, crashes happen sometimes. Flaky hard drives are more common than anyone would like. Hot undocking is a big problem with our Dell laptops at work. I personally avoid it, but the people who don't tend to end up with corrupted mouse cursors and all kinds of other weirdness.
A funnier example: my boss was giving a presentation and had me man the laptop. After a few minutes, a BSOD came up. I hit the power button to turn off the computer in preparation for a restart, only to discover that it was actually a screensaver. Had I waited a few seconds longer, I would've seen the Sad Mac and known that all was well.
30 seconds vs. 10 seconds isn't a big deal. 30 seconds vs. 5 minutes is. Imagine if you're giving a presentation, and right near the start your laptop crashes. That's 1/10 of your presentation gone, plus however long it takes to get everyone focused again. This is not uncommon, especially when hot-undocking is involved. Or imagine installing software for a new member of your group and having to reboot four or five times. That's 20-30 minutes gone. Long waits also make it easy to get distracted. That's not a problem in the morning, but during the day it can cost a lot more time than you'd think.
For the database -- if you can hack it, you can delete it and wreck the whole validation system. Or pull the data and use it to create valid signatures for close-enough counterfeit units. Competitors could use it for espionage on proprietary manufacturing processes, then spread rumors (true or not) about potential quality problems. Paranoid customers can complain about not getting the "best" chips. But the biggest problem is that's it's a direct link between production hardware and the public internet. Even if you're really careful about designing a one-way read-only database copying system, there's still a risk that you could screw something up, and then someone destroys your expensive test equipment.
But having several parameters to measure makes this method more reliable. Maybe they're talking about program disturb because they have a purely user-mode test. I was thinking the high-voltage outputs for program/erase or internal oscillator frequencies would be a better signature, but those require analog test pins that often aren't bonded out.
I don't buy this as an anti-counterfeiting technique, though. That would require some kind of public access to manufacturing test databases, which is a security risk in itself. Any non-user mode tests would require access to built-in test functionality, which is not something you usually want customers to have. The high security example with the stolen cell phone was more convincing.
I liked AQ2 more than Counterstrike, mostly because it was based on action movies and let me do ridiculous things like dive forward while firing my guns. Also, it never pretended to be anything other than a cheesy mod. Killing several people while bleeding to death was fun, but I can see how it would get on someone's nerves.
CS was probably a better game overall, but punished me too much for failure. It wasn't unusual to spend more than 75% of my playing time waiting for a round to end so I could respawn. The high degree of randomness and hitbox issues didn't help, either. Nor did the "hardcore" crowd's love for broken gameplay elements like melee sniper rifles or bunny hopping. CS wasn't the first game to strive for realism, but I think it was the best at making players scream.
As several people have pointed out, 100W seems like too much. I bet this is just a specification tweak to provide headroom for devices that need more than 4.5W (like 8W or 10W or 15W). In other words, the spec is no longer an artificial limit on how much power you can provide.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
The problem is that stuff costs a lot
Does it really? Universal healthcare is cheaper than our private system. My understanding is that Social Security isn't terribly expensive, either (another manufactured crisis). Lowering unemployment in the next couple years comes from deficit spending now, which is made up for by a larger tax base later.
Would I rather have a social safety net or be able to keep more than 10% of my income? The latter, please.
You don't have to give up all your income. That's what I'm saying -- these things just aren't that expensive.
(U.S. taxation as a percentage of GDP is ~25%, by the way.)
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
There isn't a real debt crisis. The crisis was over modifying a law that prevents the United States from borrowing more money to keep paying its bills -- in other words, a law that forces us to default when arbitrary conditions are met. This was a manufactured political event that had no basis in any real need. As a percentage of GDP, the debt is not abnormal. The main cause of high deficits right now is the bad economy.
The solution to this is a large stimulus (i.e. lots of government spending) in the short run followed by tax increases and spending cuts in the long run, mainly from health care reform, which is already partly taken care of. It doesn't take many cuts because the economy grows continuously over time.
Yes, this means that we can have universal health care, a social safety net, lower unemployment, *and* eliminate the debt if we want to. It's really good news. Unfortunately, progressives are not so good at explaining good news to the public and Obama has practically turned into a Republican in a futile attempt to get the Tea Partiers to stop hating him.
No. I'm talking about practical decision-making in a world where everyone has partial knowledge and some people are (intellectually) dishonest. What I'm saying is:
The people who are best able to determine if the science is good (other scientists) think the science is good. The scientific consensus is global, crossing political, economic, generational, racial, gender, etc. boundaries. This means there is less chance of a systemic bias.
Climate skepticism as a movement is selective, with (impossibly) high standards for climate science but low standards for other science (or the implications of its own ideas). It is driven by politically-motivated non-scientists who care more about the implications of climate change than they do about understanding climate. There is no reason to give climate skeptics the benefit of the doubt since there's nothing special about the belief that humans aren't causing climate change. (The real skeptical position is "we don't know", not "it isn't happening".) Furthermore, the alternate explanation includes an implausible conspiracy theory. Climate skeptics follow the pattern of denial, moving goalposts and repeating old arguments.
As a non-climate scientist (like most on Slashdot), I have to decide what to believe based mostly on the credibility of the people involved. I see no reason to doubt the global scientific community, which has a good track record for figuring things out. I see lots of reasons to doubt climate skeptics. Therefore, as a practical matter, I go with the scientists. Your standard is nice in theory, but in practice it would force me to also be skeptical about relativity, the Holocaust, the September 11th attacks, Obama's citizenship, evolution and the age of the earth, etc., which is a spectacular waste of my time. No matter how good the evidence, you can never convince everyone, especially when egos and fortunes are on the line.
It's founded on the principles of skepticism and independent confirmation.
True, but skepticism is just a tool to keep from fooling yourself. If you use it as a debating tactic or to avoid dealing with conclusions that make you unhappy, you won't get closer to the truth.
For if your theory is correct - your proof in the face of skepticism will show it, unequivocally.
In the real world, not everyone is trained in rationality and evaluation of evidence, and not everyone is willing to be honest and put their egos aside. Few people are climate scientists. What, exactly, constitutes unequivocal proof? Unless you take all the measurements yourself and do all the analysis yourself (which you won't), you have to trust other people at some point.
With that in mind, consider which of these options should provoke more skepticism:
1. A worldwide scientific consensus based on empirical data, understood via well-known physical mechanisms, and confirmed by ongoing measurements. 2. A worldwide conspiracy theory to promote political control of the (American?) economy, which failed for decades but everyone went along with it anyway and now it's finally gaining traction.
Because really, that's about all the deniers have -- a bunch of hand-wavy statements about how politicians will do anything for control, scientists will do anything for grant money, and developing nations will do anything for subsidies. Never mind that it's almost impossible to get people worked up about a disaster that's decades away. Never mind that such a conspiracy makes no sense in the political context of countries like China or Nigeria. Never mind that the scale and length of such a conspiracy would be ludicrous -- is this supposed to be some leftover project from the Cold War?
Computing is a lot better now than it was back then, but there are a few things I miss. Knowing what every file and directory was used for. Being able to "uninstall" programs just by deleting their directory, with no config files or registry entries or forgotten documentation left lying around. Having total control over the (fast) system startup, which was finished the moment the command prompt appeared -- no waiting five minutes for everything to finish loading. That cleanness and simplicity is something that no modern operating system has been able to reproduce.
Doom 3 gave people a first glimpse of what every other game that came after it had to aspire to.
On consoles, maybe. For a PC game it wasn't that great. Even at the time, Doom 3 was widely criticized for exactly the same reasons it is today. There's little to it except the lights going off and monsters appearing, over and over and over. It managed to make surprise attacks boring and predictable -- "Hey, a power-up sitting in a beam of light at the end of a long hallway! Wonder what'll happen when I pick it up?". Granted, the darkness was nice, but it was also way overused. Half-Life 2 came out later that same year and there was no competition. With superior storytelling, design, and an interactive physics engine, it sold at least double what Doom 3 did. [Great game -- give it a try if you've never played it; it holds up well today.]
Actually, even on the consoles it seems like Halo was more influential. I only played the first one, but didn't Halo invent stuff like the now-universal regenerating health mechanic?
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, but my GP's question was:
So I think it's a valid question, right?
Sounds exciting! Just out of curiosity, what is that used for?
But the speed of light does vary in different materials as a function of the index of refraction.
It did have one. Right there in the submission:
I click on a link to check out the interface and the first thing I see is a bunch of garish primary colors. Come on, Microsoft, if you're going to rip off Apple at least do it well.
Both are right. The rate of demand increase is falling and is expected to go negative in a few years. From the article:
The article is actually pretty detailed and quantitative (at least for the AP). It lists the big drivers as being more efficient lighting and appliances, federal and state efficiency subsidies, and people trying to save money. Over the next couple decades they're projecting ~20-25% reduction in appliance energy use and ~50% reduction in lighting energy use.
I tried MTW as an EE and didn't get very far. The first problem is that it's a graduate-level textbook, which means it wants you to do all the work yourself. The second is that it's a graduate-level *physics* textbook, which means it assumes you have advanced undergrad knowledge of E&M, mechanics, etc., not just a first-year physics course. Beautiful book, though -- worth owning as a work of art if nothing else. Wheeler also co-authored a book on special relativity which is targeted more at the undergrad/advanced high school level, and should probably be considered a prerequisite for GR.
I read some of the Hartle book and intend to dive into it in the future. It seems like a great book for a non-physicist.
To what extent does any large organization plan 50 years into the future? Predicting social, technological, and economic change is much harder than predicting climate change.
I think the feeling of being informed is a factor, at least for some people. I've been on planes where they let me listen to air traffic control and felt much safer knowing what the plane was going to do in advance. It still feels like the plane is falling out of the sky whenever it dives, but at least I know to expect it.
I think elrous0 was making a BioShock joke. I missed it too, until I noticed "would you kindly".
I agree, but between always-on antivirus, backup software, hard drive encryption, firewalls, third-party version control software that hooks into the OS, drivers for weird custom peripherals, changing internet connections, and MS Office, crashes happen sometimes. Flaky hard drives are more common than anyone would like. Hot undocking is a big problem with our Dell laptops at work. I personally avoid it, but the people who don't tend to end up with corrupted mouse cursors and all kinds of other weirdness.
A funnier example: my boss was giving a presentation and had me man the laptop. After a few minutes, a BSOD came up. I hit the power button to turn off the computer in preparation for a restart, only to discover that it was actually a screensaver. Had I waited a few seconds longer, I would've seen the Sad Mac and known that all was well.
Does slashdot even have editors anymore?
Yes, but they seem to think global warming is fiction.
30 seconds vs. 10 seconds isn't a big deal. 30 seconds vs. 5 minutes is. Imagine if you're giving a presentation, and right near the start your laptop crashes. That's 1/10 of your presentation gone, plus however long it takes to get everyone focused again. This is not uncommon, especially when hot-undocking is involved. Or imagine installing software for a new member of your group and having to reboot four or five times. That's 20-30 minutes gone. Long waits also make it easy to get distracted. That's not a problem in the morning, but during the day it can cost a lot more time than you'd think.
For the database -- if you can hack it, you can delete it and wreck the whole validation system. Or pull the data and use it to create valid signatures for close-enough counterfeit units. Competitors could use it for espionage on proprietary manufacturing processes, then spread rumors (true or not) about potential quality problems. Paranoid customers can complain about not getting the "best" chips. But the biggest problem is that's it's a direct link between production hardware and the public internet. Even if you're really careful about designing a one-way read-only database copying system, there's still a risk that you could screw something up, and then someone destroys your expensive test equipment.
But having several parameters to measure makes this method more reliable. Maybe they're talking about program disturb because they have a purely user-mode test. I was thinking the high-voltage outputs for program/erase or internal oscillator frequencies would be a better signature, but those require analog test pins that often aren't bonded out.
I don't buy this as an anti-counterfeiting technique, though. That would require some kind of public access to manufacturing test databases, which is a security risk in itself. Any non-user mode tests would require access to built-in test functionality, which is not something you usually want customers to have. The high security example with the stolen cell phone was more convincing.
I bet it's peak power for a tiny fraction of a second. Aren't lasers usually pulsed in this kind of situation?
I liked AQ2 more than Counterstrike, mostly because it was based on action movies and let me do ridiculous things like dive forward while firing my guns. Also, it never pretended to be anything other than a cheesy mod. Killing several people while bleeding to death was fun, but I can see how it would get on someone's nerves.
CS was probably a better game overall, but punished me too much for failure. It wasn't unusual to spend more than 75% of my playing time waiting for a round to end so I could respawn. The high degree of randomness and hitbox issues didn't help, either. Nor did the "hardcore" crowd's love for broken gameplay elements like melee sniper rifles or bunny hopping. CS wasn't the first game to strive for realism, but I think it was the best at making players scream.
As several people have pointed out, 100W seems like too much. I bet this is just a specification tweak to provide headroom for devices that need more than 4.5W (like 8W or 10W or 15W). In other words, the spec is no longer an artificial limit on how much power you can provide.
The problem is that stuff costs a lot
Does it really? Universal healthcare is cheaper than our private system. My understanding is that Social Security isn't terribly expensive, either (another manufactured crisis). Lowering unemployment in the next couple years comes from deficit spending now, which is made up for by a larger tax base later.
Would I rather have a social safety net or be able to keep more than 10% of my income? The latter, please.
You don't have to give up all your income. That's what I'm saying -- these things just aren't that expensive.
(U.S. taxation as a percentage of GDP is ~25%, by the way.)
There isn't a real debt crisis. The crisis was over modifying a law that prevents the United States from borrowing more money to keep paying its bills -- in other words, a law that forces us to default when arbitrary conditions are met. This was a manufactured political event that had no basis in any real need. As a percentage of GDP, the debt is not abnormal. The main cause of high deficits right now is the bad economy.
The solution to this is a large stimulus (i.e. lots of government spending) in the short run followed by tax increases and spending cuts in the long run, mainly from health care reform, which is already partly taken care of. It doesn't take many cuts because the economy grows continuously over time.
Yes, this means that we can have universal health care, a social safety net, lower unemployment, *and* eliminate the debt if we want to. It's really good news. Unfortunately, progressives are not so good at explaining good news to the public and Obama has practically turned into a Republican in a futile attempt to get the Tea Partiers to stop hating him.
No. I'm talking about practical decision-making in a world where everyone has partial knowledge and some people are (intellectually) dishonest. What I'm saying is:
The people who are best able to determine if the science is good (other scientists) think the science is good. The scientific consensus is global, crossing political, economic, generational, racial, gender, etc. boundaries. This means there is less chance of a systemic bias.
Climate skepticism as a movement is selective, with (impossibly) high standards for climate science but low standards for other science (or the implications of its own ideas). It is driven by politically-motivated non-scientists who care more about the implications of climate change than they do about understanding climate. There is no reason to give climate skeptics the benefit of the doubt since there's nothing special about the belief that humans aren't causing climate change. (The real skeptical position is "we don't know", not "it isn't happening".) Furthermore, the alternate explanation includes an implausible conspiracy theory. Climate skeptics follow the pattern of denial, moving goalposts and repeating old arguments.
As a non-climate scientist (like most on Slashdot), I have to decide what to believe based mostly on the credibility of the people involved. I see no reason to doubt the global scientific community, which has a good track record for figuring things out. I see lots of reasons to doubt climate skeptics. Therefore, as a practical matter, I go with the scientists. Your standard is nice in theory, but in practice it would force me to also be skeptical about relativity, the Holocaust, the September 11th attacks, Obama's citizenship, evolution and the age of the earth, etc., which is a spectacular waste of my time. No matter how good the evidence, you can never convince everyone, especially when egos and fortunes are on the line.
It's founded on the principles of skepticism and independent confirmation.
True, but skepticism is just a tool to keep from fooling yourself. If you use it as a debating tactic or to avoid dealing with conclusions that make you unhappy, you won't get closer to the truth.
For if your theory is correct - your proof in the face of skepticism will show it, unequivocally.
In the real world, not everyone is trained in rationality and evaluation of evidence, and not everyone is willing to be honest and put their egos aside. Few people are climate scientists. What, exactly, constitutes unequivocal proof? Unless you take all the measurements yourself and do all the analysis yourself (which you won't), you have to trust other people at some point.
With that in mind, consider which of these options should provoke more skepticism:
1. A worldwide scientific consensus based on empirical data, understood via well-known physical mechanisms, and confirmed by ongoing measurements.
2. A worldwide conspiracy theory to promote political control of the (American?) economy, which failed for decades but everyone went along with it anyway and now it's finally gaining traction.
Because really, that's about all the deniers have -- a bunch of hand-wavy statements about how politicians will do anything for control, scientists will do anything for grant money, and developing nations will do anything for subsidies. Never mind that it's almost impossible to get people worked up about a disaster that's decades away. Never mind that such a conspiracy makes no sense in the political context of countries like China or Nigeria. Never mind that the scale and length of such a conspiracy would be ludicrous -- is this supposed to be some leftover project from the Cold War?
Computing is a lot better now than it was back then, but there are a few things I miss. Knowing what every file and directory was used for. Being able to "uninstall" programs just by deleting their directory, with no config files or registry entries or forgotten documentation left lying around. Having total control over the (fast) system startup, which was finished the moment the command prompt appeared -- no waiting five minutes for everything to finish loading. That cleanness and simplicity is something that no modern operating system has been able to reproduce.
Not that I'm in any hurry to go back, mind you...
I must point out that the DOOM movie was actually pretty damn good.
Yeah, that was a surprise. Oddly enough, it seems like the games that have the least plot end up making the best movies.
Doom 3 gave people a first glimpse of what every other game that came after it had to aspire to.
On consoles, maybe. For a PC game it wasn't that great. Even at the time, Doom 3 was widely criticized for exactly the same reasons it is today. There's little to it except the lights going off and monsters appearing, over and over and over. It managed to make surprise attacks boring and predictable -- "Hey, a power-up sitting in a beam of light at the end of a long hallway! Wonder what'll happen when I pick it up?". Granted, the darkness was nice, but it was also way overused. Half-Life 2 came out later that same year and there was no competition. With superior storytelling, design, and an interactive physics engine, it sold at least double what Doom 3 did. [Great game -- give it a try if you've never played it; it holds up well today.]
Actually, even on the consoles it seems like Halo was more influential. I only played the first one, but didn't Halo invent stuff like the now-universal regenerating health mechanic?