I disagree with this. Just because GCC supports some extensions doesn't mean you have to use them in your code to write useful and efficient code. For starters, the GCC optimizer is just plain better than that of MSVC. Most CC's are even better and well the interface of GCC is based on the typical CC...
But that said, if the features are available why not take advantage of them?
In my TFM math library I support x86_{32|64|sse2}, ppc32 and ARMv4 as well as plain ol' C from the same source. I use the GCC smart assembler to drop efficient multiply/add routines in the middle of C code to get what effectively amounts to THE FASTEST BIGNUM library in the public domain.
The code will build with standard C syntax [e.g. without GNU extensions]. But since they're available I can have the option of using them. The result is from a FREE compiler with the extensions I get a free high performance library. I don't view that as a negative. If MSVC [or ICC] was capable of the same I'd support them as well.
You make it sound like the extensions are without design or purpose. Implemented solely because the team didn't want to follow specs. That's hardly the case. Where GNU extends the C compiler it is to do useful things that aren't feasible in the spec [e.g. assembler]
The difference between GNU extensions and IE extensions though is that GCC at least strives to implement the ISO specs FIRST then worry about extensions. Whereas IE *replaces* standards with it's extensions.
The fact you can write portable code with GCC and then have it build with CCs from all over the place, MSVC, Borland, etc kinda shoots down that hole "gcc is anti-freedom".
??? You don't have to use the GCC features though? I don't get this.
For those of us who use GNU tools it's great. But we can also stick to portable code.
In my crypto library I have some assembler for x86_{32|64} platforms using GCC but it also will build without the asm out of the box [without manual config] on any other platform with a valid C compiler [by using the C equivalents of things like rotates and what not]. However, I see this as a good thing because GCC is available on BSD and Linux based OSes and x86_{32|64} is rather popular. But just because I use GCC extensions doesn't mean my code requires them to build and be useful.
As for my whining as you put it. A smart assembler is very ***USEFUL*** I'm not bitching because the glorious GNU has it and all else should but rather because MS Visual Studio costs $1200, doesn't include an optimizing C compiler and the feature subset has not been updated in a decade.
I'd be happier [well limited extent as I don't use win32 that often] if MSVC supported a smarter assembler even if it used their own syntax. For their sake it probably would make more sense to adopt the GNU way [or improve it] as they're currently "the leaders" on that issue.
What? Are you Ali G?... Yes I watched his season one DVD today... BTW for anyone living near toronto... Amazon.ca is f'ing amazing. I ordered the DVD on the weekend and got it before noon today. Apparently it helps that they ship out of Mississauga:-)
I disagree with this statement 100%. I routinely write software that I primarily test by compiling with GCC that works out of the box with ICC v8, MSVC [CL version 6, 7 and 8] and CC from various UNIX'es [e.g. AIX, IRIX and HP-UX]
Yes, GCC supports things like a smart assembler inliner and packed structures. But I ask you, why doesn't MSVC? In this day and age it still uses the "we put code in verbatim with params" model that Watcom made famous in the EARLY NINETIES.
With GCC I can say "pass me these variables in registers" and then mix with C and ASM code in the same routine. GCC will sort out which registers to assign and even alias the variables automatically as possible.
With MSVC it's totally atomic. You can't tell it to alias registers with variables and once you leave your asm block you're totally fucked.
HOWEVER, when striving to write portable code GCC is a hell of a lot more compliant. Where are "long long"s in MSVC? Where are VLA and other C99 keywords?
Speaking as someone who actually works on a diverse set of platforms I'd like to qualify your post as "cheapshot".
This is why people like me bitch about being forced to use Redhat because vendors are retarded and think Linux means "Redhat".
I'm a fan of portable software. Why, for instance, are tools like Verilog compilers not 100% portable? They're userspace text reading applications. Not like they need something from a kernel other than a heap and a file system.
Every time someone tells you "I use word" or "We only support $DISTRO" tell them "then you don't get my money".
Fuck them. There is more important issue to think of. What do you think those high end pcs run on? I'll tell you one thing, it likely isn't some form of high efficiency power. PC components are also not made of biodegradable material.
Where do you suppose all the resources and landfill space will come from in 20 years?
I have a PSP and the web browser is the least attractive feature ever. It's quicker to run upstairs to my lab then to boot the PSP and enter a URL to go to....
That and the UI ain't exactly straightforward.
That said, GTA for the PSP is a hella fun game. I call it "portable mayhem" cuz I mostly drive around squishing people. I've only completed like 6 missions so far:-)
The problem I find is this spreads the "talentless shits" all over the place.
The Nintendo DS for example sounds like a decently capable machine [provided they haven't crippled it internally I don't know as I don't develop for it] yet the games are lamer than what you could get with a 386/25 ten years ago. In fact most DS games are even direct ports of GBA games, retarded mini games, or mode7 style racing games. Where are the true 3D games we were promissed?
I want portable quake and the like!!!
Few new developers are acustomed to the ideals of developing for resource constrained systems. Tell a developer you have 64KB of ram and a 20Mhz ARM to work with and they can fathom how to make things dance.
People are still lingering on to old school thinking in some respect. "we gotta use Word, our clients use Word", "we gotta use Redhat, our vendor only support Redhat". It's a matter of taking a stand and saying "our documents are available in open document format and PDF, that's all" and "we run a modern Linux distro, support us."
When I was working at $PREVIOUS_EMPLOYER their standard line was "the vendors would have a huge support matrix if they had to support Gentoo as well as Redhat, etc" and my thinking as basically "it's worth the risk if it means our developers don't have to put up with an aging distro".
The developers were on fedora core, ES and other redhat distro based boxes. Setting up things like NIS and printing was a challenge to say the least [for the record, the gentoo boxes we setup were always the first to get printing and NIS as they were the easiest].
Sometimes it's about taking calculated risks to see payoffs down the road.
If you take the risk of using ODF and PDF document formats today it could mean that in a year or two years or three years... that you never have to hear "we use.doc format only" again. Tell your customers you value their payments and you're not squandering it on bullshit expenses like MS Office. Tell them when they are buying or licensing your software that your income goes to pay developers to support and improve the product.
Somehow that TOTALLY OBVIOUS point is something most econ101s seem to miss.
There is plenty of news to back this up. The original 487 was a fullfledged 486 with the FPU enabled, most modern processors are actually made in the same process. The "ideal" few processors are the ones rated for the higher clock rates. [that's not universally true, eventually you need a new design to get higher rates].
In that case though that's because lithography is not a perfect process and errors [e.g. skew, heat, etc] can make it unstable at higher rates. That's why you'll see "worst case 100C" listed on sites like Atmel and ARM.
That particular CDC story may or may not be true. It could be that the higher clockrate machines were suffering the same problem and their yield was lower.
I bought a 6600 PCI-E for 179$. Why did I buy a 6600 PCI-E for 179$?
It was the cheapest "non-crap" PCI-E from nvidia I could find. And you know what? It plays Far Cry, Thief3, Battlefield2 and the others JUST fine.
This bullshit article about "needing a 6800GT to enjoy the games" is just that. Bullshit. Sure the game may look shinier at 1600x1200 with 200fps and a billion texels/sec or whatever... But if that's what it takes to make the game "fun" we're obviously not playing the same games.
Point is this article is all about selling the latest bullshit cards you don't need. A 6600 will do you just fine if you're an average gamer [e.g. you have REAL work to do the rest of the day], it can play games at 1024 and 1280 reasonable well [very well at the former].
If you're on a budget and you think you need to spend 250$ USD [keep in mind 179$ I'm talking about is Canadian not USD] to enjoy games... you need a few moments of education:-)
This is just a press release disguised on a 30 page article [chalk full of ads no less] to sell the latest and greatest...
When I'm buying desktops I always go ASUS or Gigabyte because they're more often than not decently priced and very stable. It also happens to help to shop at stores with good exchange policies. Once in a while you get bad boards but a quick replacement or BIOS upgrade [ASUS did mess up the A8N-E boards when they first shipped the BIOS was unworkable] is all they need.
On the otherhand when I chose ECS a few years back [around 2003 or so] I had no end of trouble. They didn't really support AGP and the overall board quality was just lame. If you're trying to save 30$ by going from ASUS to ECS... I don't see the point. An hour of downtime costs you 30$ so you might as well pick a board that won't get you in that mess.
As for the other comments, a developer machine has to be decently powerful not only to compile code but to test and verify it. For instance, a quick test I usually do [weeds out almost every single bug I've encountered] of my bignum code is to run it through random vectors against a library I know works. [it also helps that I only work one of my math libraries at a time].
So each time I do a new optimization I run the code through millions of test vectors. Being able to do that in less time saves me time and money. For instance, my AMDx2 can do a million "across the board" tests in less than an hour. My Prescott P4 would take more than twice that. A cheapy VIA C3 would take even longer, etc, etc.
I'm assuming this box is solely meant for people who just want to chat and write emails [I suppose read them too]. If that's the case this is hardly a creative [or news] worthy solution.
It'd be like me selling compact cars from 1973 as a "economical solution" for poor people. The car from 1973 is likely a piece of shit, burns gas like a mo'fo, isn't environmentally friendly, etc..
Similarly this electron-guzzling kit from 2000 isn't power efficient, environmentally friendly, etc...
My point is with todays technology you can have a box capable of handling email that draws less current, requires less resources to create [and run] and contributes less to overall polution. The flipside too of using non-x86 is that you get thrown headfirst into the world of OSS which I think is a good thing.
A 400Mhz PPC [IBM 405] processor draws less than a Watt of power, in turn the power supply doesn't have to be as big [and wasteful, keep in mind they're not 100% efficient]. You won't need a huge motherboard, the cpu doesn't even need a fan, etc, etc.
Take 64MB of SDRAM, throw in a 512MB flash drive, 400Mhz PPC and typical I/O ports [USB. PS/2, Ethernet, sound, VGA] and you'd have a silent PC, that's a fraction the size of a typical PC that draws about as much current as your alarm clock radio. I'd make things like the ram and flashdrive changeable [e.g. use SODIMM and CF respectively] so you can upgrade and maintain as required [flash does wear out eventually...] but you get the jist.
It would be more than powerful enough to browse the web, handle emails and do typical office processing you'd do at home [e.g. spreadsheet for finances, writer for letters to family, etc].
My point of bitching is what Fry's is doing is not that special. They're taking technology from 5 years ago and selling it today. Keep in mind that it may have been "good" in 2000 but it still wasn't efficient. That 250W power supply is probably less than 60% efficient, the cpu likely takes over 40W, the spinning hard disk takes another 25W, the case is a lot bigger than it needs to be, etc, etc.
In short it's not resource efficient for the task it is meant to solve.
first off, copying to a device like raid or usb is NOT a backup you should rely on. In my case I have a cronjob that does nightlies to the RAID then I do manual burns to a CD.
Copying to another HD is a good temp storage but not a backup.
If you're a software developer who works for home and you don't have a lot of resources you need some short term stability. A raid-5 or raid-1 setup is a must. If you can manage another box to host it, all the power to ya [hehehe punny].
While a RAID setup is not a "backup" it's more reliable then just putting it on a single drive. Losing even a single "really productive day" of work can be disheartening and a setback.
ECS motherboard... 250W noname power supply unit, AGP 4x support!!!!
If all you want is something to write emails with or whatever then that's good.... I guess. If you want a PC to play games with or develop software this isn't it. 250W doesn't allow you to have [say] a decent CPU and multiple hard disks. Something most home developers require. etc..
I guess it serves a purpose but I'd rather see some innovation. This isn't creative, it's just OLD. How about you make a PC out of an IBM 405 [or 440] PPC processor, 128MB of SDRAM, 512M flash. some Linux distro, etc. That box would take far less power, be smaller and be just as capable to write emails.
Tom
[*] you could build the same PC out of a MIPS or ARM processor... I just have a PPC fetish lately:-)
I'm not trying to speak ill of her. But I'd expect more from this genius crypto prodigy. I mean Dr. Wagner has more publications to his name and he hasn't really had any press the way she has had [he's been cited I think a few times but that's it].
To be fair I think the press is to blame and not her in this respect.
I say *IF* this kid can pass his internship then all the power to him. Though I suspect he'll find it hard. Not just because of the social pressure [e.g. being mocked for his age] but because real medicine is nothing like memorizing bullshit from a textbook.
Maybe because this has been in the news before, you really don't hear much from them afterwards.
The kid is passing exams at age 8 because he's memorizing the equations and solutions to the problems specific to the curriculum. Part of the whole "experience" is coming up with solutions on your own. Like in my Calculus we often were given problems [e.g. rates of change] before we were given the techniques to solve them. We had to do THINKING.
And don't confuse smart with intelligence. Smart just means you know a lot of things. Intelligence is the ability to put thought in action.
At least for me, I'm not disagreeing with this article because I'm jealous. I'm making a living doing what I wanted to do since I was a teen [e.g. software development and crypto]. I'm disagreeing because I know the news is blowing this out of proportion and the sad little kid will end up in obscurity in only a few short months.
Usually the news blows this out of proportion. Remember that Sarah chick from Ireland that was a "crypto prodigy"? Yeah, she fell off the radar something hard. Never published, never pokes up in discussion forums, etc.
It isn't because she's stupid or something. It's because she had a high school project and the news blew it up to something it wasn't. It was just that. She heard of RSA and thought "this would be neat". Her idea didn't work out in the end but it was still an intelligent project none the less.
Chances are this kid is doing the bare minimum to pass exams or something and when you actually ask him to solve a problem not listed in the textbooks he'll get stumped. It takes a very short time to memorize data, it takes longer to form the patterns in the brain to be able to manipulate the data.
So the reason you don't hear about them in the future is because they end up fluttering into "blandness". He'll get his degree at age 12 or whatever and it'll take him 20 years to actually know what to do with the knowledge.
And I'm not trying to shoot down these people. I just hate how the media focuses on all the wrong qualities and blows things way out of proportion....
To get a bit philosophical who is the terrorist? The crazy guy with a fixation 7500 miles away or the government that burdens you under the guise of "security"? I'll tell you one thing, you americans have to calm the fuck down. Try this experiment. Try being in Canadian, American and European airports within the same week. Notice some differences?:-)
How they figure it could cost 7 billion a year is beyond me. A trivial capture method is to just bridge your upstream net connection. A linux box [or set for each upstream] with two NICs could do this transparently.
Hell, I did this as part of my IPsec testing work at my former job. For all of 450$ we built a PC capable of bridging two lans [in order to pick out ESP/AH packets and send them to the offload engine].
You have to ask yourself though, why did they do the courses online? Was it because it was easier [e.g. how do you prevent cheating?].
I mean how do you fail an exam that is online? You can just google for the answer!!!
Not that I think exams are the be-all of talent discovery. I do think they're a good filter though. Chances are if you can't at least pass an exam you don't know what you're doing [there are of course always exceptions, yada yada].
Things I'd look for when hiring
1. First off, right off the bat, have they ever demonstrated the ability before? OSS projects are very good character discovery tool. If you can see their projects [e.g. code, setup, distribution, DOCUMENTATION] ahead of time you can weed out quite a bit.
2. Second, do they have a diploma or degree so I can happy the investors?
3. Personality, work ethics, etc...
4. Logistics [e.g. can they work for me, salary, etc].
A lot of people make it through college AND do open source work. If you have a candidate who couldn't have been bothered to put their talents to use while in college then who the fuck needs them?
Slashdot Mirror
"not replaced 5 months later"...
... um you realize AMD makes *dual-core* processors right?
You can still buy AMD64 and Sempron based 754-pin processors years after the spec was released.
In otherwords SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU IGNORANT LITTLE SHIT OMG YOU ARE TEH STUPID.
As for stacking cpus
Tom
I don't recall long long working with msvc, but if that's the case it certainly isn't popular knowledge.
Tom
I disagree with this. Just because GCC supports some extensions doesn't mean you have to use them in your code to write useful and efficient code. For starters, the GCC optimizer is just plain better than that of MSVC. Most CC's are even better and well the interface of GCC is based on the typical CC ...
But that said, if the features are available why not take advantage of them?
In my TFM math library I support x86_{32|64|sse2}, ppc32 and ARMv4 as well as plain ol' C from the same source. I use the GCC smart assembler to drop efficient multiply/add routines in the middle of C code to get what effectively amounts to THE FASTEST BIGNUM library in the public domain.
The code will build with standard C syntax [e.g. without GNU extensions]. But since they're available I can have the option of using them. The result is from a FREE compiler with the extensions I get a free high performance library. I don't view that as a negative. If MSVC [or ICC] was capable of the same I'd support them as well.
You make it sound like the extensions are without design or purpose. Implemented solely because the team didn't want to follow specs. That's hardly the case. Where GNU extends the C compiler it is to do useful things that aren't feasible in the spec [e.g. assembler]
The difference between GNU extensions and IE extensions though is that GCC at least strives to implement the ISO specs FIRST then worry about extensions. Whereas IE *replaces* standards with it's extensions.
The fact you can write portable code with GCC and then have it build with CCs from all over the place, MSVC, Borland, etc kinda shoots down that hole "gcc is anti-freedom".
Tom
??? You don't have to use the GCC features though? I don't get this.
For those of us who use GNU tools it's great. But we can also stick to portable code.
In my crypto library I have some assembler for x86_{32|64} platforms using GCC but it also will build without the asm out of the box [without manual config] on any other platform with a valid C compiler [by using the C equivalents of things like rotates and what not]. However, I see this as a good thing because GCC is available on BSD and Linux based OSes and x86_{32|64} is rather popular. But just because I use GCC extensions doesn't mean my code requires them to build and be useful.
As for my whining as you put it. A smart assembler is very ***USEFUL*** I'm not bitching because the glorious GNU has it and all else should but rather because MS Visual Studio costs $1200, doesn't include an optimizing C compiler and the feature subset has not been updated in a decade.
I'd be happier [well limited extent as I don't use win32 that often] if MSVC supported a smarter assembler even if it used their own syntax. For their sake it probably would make more sense to adopt the GNU way [or improve it] as they're currently "the leaders" on that issue.
Tom
$50,000 to 5000,000.
... Yes I watched his season one DVD today... BTW for anyone living near toronto ... Amazon.ca is f'ing amazing. I ordered the DVD on the weekend and got it before noon today. Apparently it helps that they ship out of Mississauga :-)
What? Are you Ali G?
Tom
I disagree with this statement 100%. I routinely write software that I primarily test by compiling with GCC that works out of the box with ICC v8, MSVC [CL version 6, 7 and 8] and CC from various UNIX'es [e.g. AIX, IRIX and HP-UX]
Yes, GCC supports things like a smart assembler inliner and packed structures. But I ask you, why doesn't MSVC? In this day and age it still uses the "we put code in verbatim with params" model that Watcom made famous in the EARLY NINETIES.
With GCC I can say "pass me these variables in registers" and then mix with C and ASM code in the same routine. GCC will sort out which registers to assign and even alias the variables automatically as possible.
With MSVC it's totally atomic. You can't tell it to alias registers with variables and once you leave your asm block you're totally fucked.
HOWEVER, when striving to write portable code GCC is a hell of a lot more compliant. Where are "long long"s in MSVC? Where are VLA and other C99 keywords?
Speaking as someone who actually works on a diverse set of platforms I'd like to qualify your post as "cheapshot".
Tom
This is why people like me bitch about being forced to use Redhat because vendors are retarded and think Linux means "Redhat".
I'm a fan of portable software. Why, for instance, are tools like Verilog compilers not 100% portable? They're userspace text reading applications. Not like they need something from a kernel other than a heap and a file system.
Every time someone tells you "I use word" or "We only support $DISTRO" tell them "then you don't get my money".
That'll curb this idiocy fairly quick.
Tom
Fuck them. There is more important issue to think of. What do you think those high end pcs run on? I'll tell you one thing, it likely isn't some form of high efficiency power. PC components are also not made of biodegradable material.
Where do you suppose all the resources and landfill space will come from in 20 years?
Tom
I have a PSP and the web browser is the least attractive feature ever. It's quicker to run upstairs to my lab then to boot the PSP and enter a URL to go to....
:-)
That and the UI ain't exactly straightforward.
That said, GTA for the PSP is a hella fun game. I call it "portable mayhem" cuz I mostly drive around squishing people. I've only completed like 6 missions so far
Tom
The problem I find is this spreads the "talentless shits" all over the place.
The Nintendo DS for example sounds like a decently capable machine [provided they haven't crippled it internally I don't know as I don't develop for it] yet the games are lamer than what you could get with a 386/25 ten years ago. In fact most DS games are even direct ports of GBA games, retarded mini games, or mode7 style racing games. Where are the true 3D games we were promissed?
I want portable quake and the like!!!
Few new developers are acustomed to the ideals of developing for resource constrained systems. Tell a developer you have 64KB of ram and a 20Mhz ARM to work with and they can fathom how to make things dance.
Tom
Bingo. Well for the most part.
... that you never have to hear "we use .doc format only" again. Tell your customers you value their payments and you're not squandering it on bullshit expenses like MS Office. Tell them when they are buying or licensing your software that your income goes to pay developers to support and improve the product.
People are still lingering on to old school thinking in some respect. "we gotta use Word, our clients use Word", "we gotta use Redhat, our vendor only support Redhat". It's a matter of taking a stand and saying "our documents are available in open document format and PDF, that's all" and "we run a modern Linux distro, support us."
When I was working at $PREVIOUS_EMPLOYER their standard line was "the vendors would have a huge support matrix if they had to support Gentoo as well as Redhat, etc" and my thinking as basically "it's worth the risk if it means our developers don't have to put up with an aging distro".
The developers were on fedora core, ES and other redhat distro based boxes. Setting up things like NIS and printing was a challenge to say the least [for the record, the gentoo boxes we setup were always the first to get printing and NIS as they were the easiest].
Sometimes it's about taking calculated risks to see payoffs down the road.
If you take the risk of using ODF and PDF document formats today it could mean that in a year or two years or three years
Somehow that TOTALLY OBVIOUS point is something most econ101s seem to miss.
Tom
There is plenty of news to back this up. The original 487 was a fullfledged 486 with the FPU enabled, most modern processors are actually made in the same process. The "ideal" few processors are the ones rated for the higher clock rates. [that's not universally true, eventually you need a new design to get higher rates].
In that case though that's because lithography is not a perfect process and errors [e.g. skew, heat, etc] can make it unstable at higher rates. That's why you'll see "worst case 100C" listed on sites like Atmel and ARM.
That particular CDC story may or may not be true. It could be that the higher clockrate machines were suffering the same problem and their yield was lower.
Tom
I bought a 6600 PCI-E for 179$. Why did I buy a 6600 PCI-E for 179$?
... But if that's what it takes to make the game "fun" we're obviously not playing the same games.
... you need a few moments of education :-)
It was the cheapest "non-crap" PCI-E from nvidia I could find. And you know what? It plays Far Cry, Thief3, Battlefield2 and the others JUST fine.
This bullshit article about "needing a 6800GT to enjoy the games" is just that. Bullshit. Sure the game may look shinier at 1600x1200 with 200fps and a billion texels/sec or whatever
Point is this article is all about selling the latest bullshit cards you don't need. A 6600 will do you just fine if you're an average gamer [e.g. you have REAL work to do the rest of the day], it can play games at 1024 and 1280 reasonable well [very well at the former].
If you're on a budget and you think you need to spend 250$ USD [keep in mind 179$ I'm talking about is Canadian not USD] to enjoy games
This is just a press release disguised on a 30 page article [chalk full of ads no less] to sell the latest and greatest...
Tom
When I'm buying desktops I always go ASUS or Gigabyte because they're more often than not decently priced and very stable. It also happens to help to shop at stores with good exchange policies. Once in a while you get bad boards but a quick replacement or BIOS upgrade [ASUS did mess up the A8N-E boards when they first shipped the BIOS was unworkable] is all they need.
... I don't see the point. An hour of downtime costs you 30$ so you might as well pick a board that won't get you in that mess.
On the otherhand when I chose ECS a few years back [around 2003 or so] I had no end of trouble. They didn't really support AGP and the overall board quality was just lame. If you're trying to save 30$ by going from ASUS to ECS
As for the other comments, a developer machine has to be decently powerful not only to compile code but to test and verify it. For instance, a quick test I usually do [weeds out almost every single bug I've encountered] of my bignum code is to run it through random vectors against a library I know works. [it also helps that I only work one of my math libraries at a time].
So each time I do a new optimization I run the code through millions of test vectors. Being able to do that in less time saves me time and money. For instance, my AMDx2 can do a million "across the board" tests in less than an hour. My Prescott P4 would take more than twice that. A cheapy VIA C3 would take even longer, etc, etc.
I'm assuming this box is solely meant for people who just want to chat and write emails [I suppose read them too]. If that's the case this is hardly a creative [or news] worthy solution.
It'd be like me selling compact cars from 1973 as a "economical solution" for poor people. The car from 1973 is likely a piece of shit, burns gas like a mo'fo, isn't environmentally friendly, etc..
Similarly this electron-guzzling kit from 2000 isn't power efficient, environmentally friendly, etc...
Tom
My point is with todays technology you can have a box capable of handling email that draws less current, requires less resources to create [and run] and contributes less to overall polution. The flipside too of using non-x86 is that you get thrown headfirst into the world of OSS which I think is a good thing.
A 400Mhz PPC [IBM 405] processor draws less than a Watt of power, in turn the power supply doesn't have to be as big [and wasteful, keep in mind they're not 100% efficient]. You won't need a huge motherboard, the cpu doesn't even need a fan, etc, etc.
Take 64MB of SDRAM, throw in a 512MB flash drive, 400Mhz PPC and typical I/O ports [USB. PS/2, Ethernet, sound, VGA] and you'd have a silent PC, that's a fraction the size of a typical PC that draws about as much current as your alarm clock radio. I'd make things like the ram and flashdrive changeable [e.g. use SODIMM and CF respectively] so you can upgrade and maintain as required [flash does wear out eventually...] but you get the jist.
It would be more than powerful enough to browse the web, handle emails and do typical office processing you'd do at home [e.g. spreadsheet for finances, writer for letters to family, etc].
My point of bitching is what Fry's is doing is not that special. They're taking technology from 5 years ago and selling it today. Keep in mind that it may have been "good" in 2000 but it still wasn't efficient. That 250W power supply is probably less than 60% efficient, the cpu likely takes over 40W, the spinning hard disk takes another 25W, the case is a lot bigger than it needs to be, etc, etc.
In short it's not resource efficient for the task it is meant to solve.
Tom
first off, copying to a device like raid or usb is NOT a backup you should rely on. In my case I have a cronjob that does nightlies to the RAID then I do manual burns to a CD.
Copying to another HD is a good temp storage but not a backup.
Tom
If you're a software developer who works for home and you don't have a lot of resources you need some short term stability. A raid-5 or raid-1 setup is a must. If you can manage another box to host it, all the power to ya [hehehe punny].
While a RAID setup is not a "backup" it's more reliable then just putting it on a single drive. Losing even a single "really productive day" of work can be disheartening and a setback.
Tom
ECS motherboard ... 250W noname power supply unit, AGP 4x support!!!!
... I guess. If you want a PC to play games with or develop software this isn't it. 250W doesn't allow you to have [say] a decent CPU and multiple hard disks. Something most home developers require. etc..
:-)
If all you want is something to write emails with or whatever then that's good.
I guess it serves a purpose but I'd rather see some innovation. This isn't creative, it's just OLD. How about you make a PC out of an IBM 405 [or 440] PPC processor, 128MB of SDRAM, 512M flash. some Linux distro, etc. That box would take far less power, be smaller and be just as capable to write emails.
Tom
[*] you could build the same PC out of a MIPS or ARM processor... I just have a PPC fetish lately
I'm not trying to speak ill of her. But I'd expect more from this genius crypto prodigy. I mean Dr. Wagner has more publications to his name and he hasn't really had any press the way she has had [he's been cited I think a few times but that's it].
To be fair I think the press is to blame and not her in this respect.
Tom
Doogie Howser?
hahahaha
I say *IF* this kid can pass his internship then all the power to him. Though I suspect he'll find it hard. Not just because of the social pressure [e.g. being mocked for his age] but because real medicine is nothing like memorizing bullshit from a textbook.
Tom
Maybe because this has been in the news before, you really don't hear much from them afterwards.
The kid is passing exams at age 8 because he's memorizing the equations and solutions to the problems specific to the curriculum. Part of the whole "experience" is coming up with solutions on your own. Like in my Calculus we often were given problems [e.g. rates of change] before we were given the techniques to solve them. We had to do THINKING.
And don't confuse smart with intelligence. Smart just means you know a lot of things. Intelligence is the ability to put thought in action.
At least for me, I'm not disagreeing with this article because I'm jealous. I'm making a living doing what I wanted to do since I was a teen [e.g. software development and crypto]. I'm disagreeing because I know the news is blowing this out of proportion and the sad little kid will end up in obscurity in only a few short months.
Tom
Usually the news blows this out of proportion. Remember that Sarah chick from Ireland that was a "crypto prodigy"? Yeah, she fell off the radar something hard. Never published, never pokes up in discussion forums, etc.
It isn't because she's stupid or something. It's because she had a high school project and the news blew it up to something it wasn't. It was just that. She heard of RSA and thought "this would be neat". Her idea didn't work out in the end but it was still an intelligent project none the less.
Chances are this kid is doing the bare minimum to pass exams or something and when you actually ask him to solve a problem not listed in the textbooks he'll get stumped. It takes a very short time to memorize data, it takes longer to form the patterns in the brain to be able to manipulate the data.
So the reason you don't hear about them in the future is because they end up fluttering into "blandness". He'll get his degree at age 12 or whatever and it'll take him 20 years to actually know what to do with the knowledge.
And I'm not trying to shoot down these people. I just hate how the media focuses on all the wrong qualities and blows things way out of proportion....
Tom
To get a bit philosophical who is the terrorist? The crazy guy with a fixation 7500 miles away or the government that burdens you under the guise of "security"? I'll tell you one thing, you americans have to calm the fuck down. Try this experiment. Try being in Canadian, American and European airports within the same week. Notice some differences? :-)
How they figure it could cost 7 billion a year is beyond me. A trivial capture method is to just bridge your upstream net connection. A linux box [or set for each upstream] with two NICs could do this transparently.
Hell, I did this as part of my IPsec testing work at my former job. For all of 450$ we built a PC capable of bridging two lans [in order to pick out ESP/AH packets and send them to the offload engine].
Tom
Replying to your link in your sig...
If you seriously have never heard of the Good News bible before and your a church going motherfucker.... you have serious fucking issues.
I'm a Jesus-hater [formerly a anglican-christian] and even *I* know about it. Never read it, but have heard of it.
Seriously, maybe you can find jobs because you're a weirdo living in a box somewhere isolated from human contact?
Tom
You have to ask yourself though, why did they do the courses online? Was it because it was easier [e.g. how do you prevent cheating?].
I mean how do you fail an exam that is online? You can just google for the answer!!!
Not that I think exams are the be-all of talent discovery. I do think they're a good filter though. Chances are if you can't at least pass an exam you don't know what you're doing [there are of course always exceptions, yada yada].
Things I'd look for when hiring
1. First off, right off the bat, have they ever demonstrated the ability before? OSS projects are very good character discovery tool. If you can see their projects [e.g. code, setup, distribution, DOCUMENTATION] ahead of time you can weed out quite a bit.
2. Second, do they have a diploma or degree so I can happy the investors?
3. Personality, work ethics, etc...
4. Logistics [e.g. can they work for me, salary, etc].
A lot of people make it through college AND do open source work. If you have a candidate who couldn't have been bothered to put their talents to use while in college then who the fuck needs them?
Tom