There are plenty of silicon bugs and I have seen many of them. Some were real ugly. (I currently do ASIC verification in my day job) - I remember seeing about 3 or 4 pages of errata on the 386. In most cases, they had software workarounds except for the infamous fdiv bug - i.e. don't use these two instructions together, pad certain things with a nop, flush the cache if you cross a page boundary under certain conditions, etc.
After the FDIV bug, they added a means of "patching" the instruction set in software as part of the BIOS boot procedure. Of course, there is no substitute for testing the hell out of it as much as possible before releasing.
Software can be just as reliable if you put the effort into it. Usually it isn't done, because it is usually easy to patch the software on the fly, but a bad ASIC bug means an expensive respin.
Hardware design is actually software design anyway - they have special languages for it such as Verilog and VHDL. If you have a foot in both camps, you would be suprise how little difference there is between hardware and software design methodologies.
You would also have to have an enemy that was nice enough to invade when the sun was shining brightly, and facing the right way, so the sun's rays could be reflected onto the enemy ship. That means you were screwed if they delayed their invasion to 3:00 PM when the sun was behind your mirror. And since the focal length couldn't be changed on the fly, they had to park their invasion fleet at the correct distance from the death ray, one ship at a time.
I think I would rather rely on the flaming oil, spears and arrows as defensive weapons.
Actually, it would be helpful for any law clerks or paralegals (Pamela are you there?) or lawyers to give critical feedback to the Oo developers, so any perceived deficiencies or missing features can be added to the next release.
As you are being wheeled into the operating room you notice the surgeon examining the instruments with which his about to work on you. You are horrified to notice that he is wielding a mixed assortment of hand carpentry tools.
"Apologies" he says - "these are not the tools I wanted. But I was told by the administrator they are much easier to maintain and they do save the hospital a lot of money. I shall make do as best as I can..."
Most basic home or small business MS systems ship with XP home edition, and you are in for a rude surprise the instant you try to connect it up to a home or office LAN.
Actually, inline code can be slower than a function call, since a frequently called function will hit on the cache. Repeated inline code will miss, because the the repeated sequences occur at different addresses. The penalties for a cache miss can sometimes be much higher than the overhead for a function call.
The term "Reasonable" is nebulous, (what is reasonable to you?) and non discriminatory is incorrect as it shuts out all open source software.
This needs to be clearly brought to the attention of EU politicians and media. There are certainly standards the EU cannot control, (DHCP, 802.11, etc.) but they must stick to their guns for standards that they can control. As for the IEEE adopting standards that include restrictive patents, well that is something I am trying to change from within, unless they are willing to open the relevent patent for use in FOSS as IBM has recently done.
If you want to bid on contracts with proprietary software, go ahead - but the file formats and protocols must be kept open in order to avoid vendor lock-in, and allow for interoperability. After all, this Bill Gate's latest big spiel wasn't it?
I heard dialing was an invention by a funeral home operator, who was wondering why his business seemed to be getting worse for some reason, and his upstart competitor was doing so well. As it turned out, the wife of his competitor just happened to be the town's telephone switchboard operator.
Wire the camera up to a DSP running image stabilization and enhancement software. An perhaps a PWM for the motor, (similar to those used to creep electric trains) so that he can drive at variable speed.
If you could point Hubble back to earth, I could imagine a market for the ultra detailed (approaching what the military could achieve) photos it could take. The intelligence services of a few small countries that couldn't afford their own spy satellite would be happy to rent time, until the thing gave out for good.
But I bet the telescope's namesake would be rolling in his grave...
The Ferarri analogy is wrong
on
Hondas in Space
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· Score: 1
NASA spacecraft intended to carry humans are much analogous to a Rolls Royce, with every part is made to exacting quasi-military specifications and assembled by hand.
Yes, but I assume you do want backups for your terabyte hard drive? And you are going to want to move large, but less frequently used files (HD home movies anybody?) off the drive.
On the other hand, watching somebody who just lost 1TB of data change colours like a chameleon would be interesting to watch.
Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
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· Score: 1
How quickly they forget the Apple III: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_3
Slashdot Mirror
It was once my favorite program back in the '70s. I want the built in 40x zoom and night vision capabilities that he had!
There are plenty of silicon bugs and I have seen many of them. Some were real ugly. (I currently do ASIC verification in my day job) - I remember seeing about 3 or 4 pages of errata on the 386. In most cases, they had software workarounds except for the infamous fdiv bug - i.e. don't use these two instructions together, pad certain things with a nop, flush the cache if you cross a page boundary under certain conditions, etc.
After the FDIV bug, they added a means of "patching" the instruction set in software as part of the BIOS boot procedure. Of course, there is no substitute for testing the hell out of it as much as possible before releasing.
Software can be just as reliable if you put the effort into it. Usually it isn't done, because it is usually easy to patch the software on the fly, but a bad ASIC bug means an expensive respin.
Hardware design is actually software design anyway - they have special languages for it such as Verilog and VHDL. If you have a foot in both camps, you would be suprise how little difference there is between hardware and software design methodologies.
http://www.winchesterguns.com/prodinfo/catalog/det ail.asp?cat_id=535&type_id=973&cat=001C
I think I can find some 65 million year old prior art in the local museum.
You would also have to have an enemy that was nice enough to invade when the sun was shining brightly, and facing the right way, so the sun's rays could be reflected onto the enemy ship. That means you were screwed if they delayed their invasion to 3:00 PM when the sun was behind your mirror. And since the focal length couldn't be changed on the fly, they had to park their invasion fleet at the correct distance from the death ray, one ship at a time.
I think I would rather rely on the flaming oil, spears and arrows as defensive weapons.
Actually, it would be helpful for any law clerks or paralegals (Pamela are you there?) or lawyers to give critical feedback to the Oo developers, so any perceived deficiencies or missing features can be added to the next release.
As you are being wheeled into the operating room you notice the surgeon examining the instruments with which his about to work on you. You are horrified to notice that he is wielding a mixed assortment of hand carpentry tools.
"Apologies" he says - "these are not the tools I wanted. But I was told by the administrator they are much easier to maintain and they do save the hospital a lot of money. I shall make do as best as I can..."
Most basic home or small business MS systems ship with XP home edition, and you are in for a rude surprise the instant you try to connect it up to a home or office LAN.
Until you go into your toddlers room late one night and find the MS teddy bear repeating submliminal messages while they sleep:
"Don't steal software"
"Only communists use open source"
"Support software patents"
so I prefer to call it a rat.
for Microsoft to hate Google.
Actually, inline code can be slower than a function call, since a frequently called function will hit on the cache. Repeated inline code will miss, because the the repeated sequences occur at different addresses. The penalties for a cache miss can sometimes be much higher than the overhead for a function call.
The term "Reasonable" is nebulous, (what is reasonable to you?) and non discriminatory is incorrect as it shuts out all open source software.
This needs to be clearly brought to the attention of EU politicians and media. There are certainly standards the EU cannot control, (DHCP, 802.11, etc.) but they must stick to their guns for standards that they can control. As for the IEEE adopting standards that include restrictive patents, well that is something I am trying to change from within, unless they are willing to open the relevent patent for use in FOSS as IBM has recently done.
If you want to bid on contracts with proprietary software, go ahead - but the file formats and protocols must be kept open in order to avoid vendor lock-in, and allow for interoperability. After all, this Bill Gate's latest big spiel wasn't it?
Unless Excel was being used to store patient drug records, or do structural load calculations?
They found the paperwork, and some guy named "Osama" signed for it.
And yet if I purchase an automobile that is later determined to have a serious safety defect, the manufacturer is obligated to fix it for free.
Something that Billy G failed to mention when he made that famous speech comparing software to automobiles.
When any user logs into your PC, pop up a brief dialog box warning that all use is being monitored.
I heard dialing was an invention by a funeral home operator, who was wondering why his business seemed to be getting worse for some reason, and his upstart competitor was doing so well. As it turned out, the wife of his competitor just happened to be the town's telephone switchboard operator.
if he was flying on an aircraft controlled by systems that gave somewhat unpredictable results.
How about covering the hull of the enterprise in ads like a formula 1 race car?
Seeing a big Viagra ad splayed across the top of the saucer section would be worth watching the show again...
Wire the camera up to a DSP running image stabilization and enhancement software. An perhaps a PWM for the motor, (similar to those used to creep electric trains) so that he can drive at variable speed.
If you could point Hubble back to earth, I could imagine a market for the ultra detailed (approaching what the military could achieve) photos it could take. The intelligence services of a few small countries that couldn't afford their own spy satellite would be happy to rent time, until the thing gave out for good.
But I bet the telescope's namesake would be rolling in his grave...
NASA spacecraft intended to carry humans are much analogous to a Rolls Royce, with every part is made to exacting quasi-military specifications and assembled by hand.
Yes, but I assume you do want backups for your terabyte hard drive? And you are going to want to move large, but less frequently used files (HD home movies anybody?) off the drive.
On the other hand, watching somebody who just lost 1TB of data change colours like a chameleon would be interesting to watch.
How quickly they forget the Apple III:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_3