"those conducting computationally intense tasks such as scheduling airplanes"
"Huh? I understand that the nation's air traffic controllers may need updated equipment in light of the existing crisis, but how hard can scheduling be? I could see a use for a massively parallel monster like this in, say, flow-through or structural analysis or something, but scheduling? "
What your missing is that this isn't a matter of airtraffic control. This is a matter of determining which planes and crews to fly to which locations at what times to maximize revenue. This is a classic, big, nasty travelling salesman problem. The bigger of a beast of a machine you get, the closer you get to an optimized solution. I.E. Most passengers willing to pay this most money with the least use of resources. It's a huge problem that needs massive computational power.
There are major campaigns to get everyone fingerprinted from the get-go already. Why? To help locate missing children. The idea is to create a registry of children's fingerprints. And no, I wouldn't have a problem with the governement having my fingerprint. A camera in my house is a bit nasty, but the impression my finger makes in dirt just doesn't bother me.
This is essentially a card which links your Social security number to your fingerprint, and sticks a picture of your face on the front for good measure. While I think having to use this in order to get into a resturaunt would be a bad thing, using it to get into airport shouldn't be bad. It would be fairly tough to forge. On the other hand, we can't legislate that the British and everyone else on the planet would have to have the same thing. Without that, any foriegner would be exempt from this sort of thing within US borders and the advantages of the added security would be minimal. This is worth taking a look at, but it better be a long, hard look that weighs the pros and cons very carefully.
Right on man. There are certain things you do out of respect. For radio stations, it is watching what you play. For baseball, it's taking a few days off and not playing games. For the far left wing, its taking a few days off from saying "Global trade is bad and the U.S. should stop doing X and Y and Z." For Congress its being civil to one another. What we see and hear changes for a short while. Not because of censorship, which is a bad thing, but because of a desire to be respectful and decent which of course is a good thing.
"I just hope that Sun & Co. will not try to go for their profits immediately. It'd be better to lower the prices, perhaps sponsor some Open-Source work,"
From what I've read, it looks like Sun is just trying to sell some servers. If that's the goal, they are pretty likely to play nice and try to get the software that makes their server more useful in as many hands as possible.
HP is not a huge company that makes a variety of computers as their main business. An absurd amount of their profit comes from sales of printer cartridges. Actual printers are a decent business as well. Considering that Compaq computers often sell with a Compaq printer (OEMed from Lexmark I believe), I have to ask if this isn't as much about hurting a rising competitor in the printer industry as much as anything else?
Moreover, considering how weak HP's computer business has been - both desktop and server - for the company, aquiring Compaq might be a good idea since Compaq is more comfortable in this segment. Overall though, I don't think either of these companies alone had what it took to survive in the server market against IBM and Sun or in the desktop market against Dell. I'm not sure the new company will have the capabilites, but it might.
Oftentimes the science fiction that resonates best with the audience and is well read relates to the problems that future science could bring. Most normal people would refuse to listen to a long intellectual commentary on what could go wrong (or right) with most science. Science fiction offers a way for the common person to explore some of these issues in an entertaining way.
Microsoft's execution here has been almost perfect (read evil). They start by leveraging their monopoly to win the browser war. This happens quick enough that they can then evade a lawsuit and Sun's attacks by shifting I.E. away from Netscape style standards and Java. Their new psuedo-monopoly in the browser arena allows them to move away from old standards and impose.Net. All this happens while they are able to say, "We're not evil, these other companies are forcing us to behave this way."
Interestingly enough. I think what will make this difficult, is the large number of old I.E. browsers out there (not to mention the 5-10% of users who use other browsers). These browsers won't have the capability to do what I.E. 6 supports. Who I feel really bad for are designers of web pages who are caught in the middle.
Moreover, what's most impressive about this goes back to why Microsoft entered the browser war. Netscape + Java was a device that allowed programs to be run on a Windows machine that were not designed exclusively for Windows. Now, Microsoft is in position to control the delivery of these programs to Windows machines. This means they once again control the barrier to entry that they were worried would erode 6 years ago.
Near perfect execution by Microsoft - too bad for the rest of us.
"Are you from this planet? Earth that is. Compare Linux marketshare with windowsmarketshare. It's not like windows is facing death anytime soon."
Sorry, I should have quoted the guy I was responding to. He said that it would be bad if Linux came to gain huge market share. His reasoning was that it would put a whole bunch of MCSE's who didn't have other skills out of work. I responded to this by trying to explain that if "magically"...and only now do I realize that I'm responding to an Anonymous Coward with Score 0.. oh well.
I believe I read recently that only something like 30% of google's income came from advertising. The rest came from selling it's searching capabilities to other search engines. I know I've read that Yahoo works to maintain there own categories while using Google for its web page matches.
I'm sorry, but in the tech industry, if you can't add to your skill set in a hurry, you're likely to get screwed. If you're MSCE, you need to stay current. If magically the whole world moves to Linux and you're MSCE, it isn't time to cry, it's time to go get those skills that work in Linux land.
It's a $53 million($US) project. Using about a thousand CPUs at say, $1000($US) each, you have an expense of $1million. Clearly, the cost of the CPUs is not going to be where the project will be limited. It's the cost of integration. More processors which are cheaper individually will likely have a higher integration cost and therefore be more expensive, not less. The real question is why they choose Itanium which is really an unproven technology.
My gut instinct is that IBM has done some tweaking to the OS. IBM knows about as much as anyone else how to make really, really big systems work. I'm not a huge fan of them, but they have always had a decent portion of their team devoted to big iron.
Re:Why people use Netscape instead of IE or Mozill
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
"There are also a lot of corporations that use this kind of mentality when deciding on software"
Some of these stick with Netscape because they believe in branded products and have a deep hatred of Microsoft. I've seen this a few times, it's kind of funny really.
What if instead of releasing a virus, you made a program which waited for probes from infected machines and responded to those probes by exploiting the hole to close the hole?
At my former employer, I had the dubious distinction of being the "recommend our next DSL provider." I had this 'honor' a couple times, my choices explain this:
1) Jato
2) Northpoint
3) Covad...
I kinda feel bad for them, but life goes on. BTW, I wasn't fired despite my 'skill' at choosing. At least this time it looks like Covad will continue to provide service to their DSL folks.
I doubt home users or IT departments, by enlarge, will cooperate with an unenthusiastic recall from Microsoft. The products won't be defective (well.. more than normal) and would be a pain to uninstall. Recalls are generally reserved for when a company ships a dangerous or unacceptably defective product and folks would want their money back. So perhaps, 'can't' was too strong, but I think 'won't' is appropriate.
I'm willing to bet that Mircrosoft will appeal this to the Supremem Court, if only to slow down the process. Microsoft won the browser with the tactics no being declared illegal and is looking to win instant messanging, multimedia delivery and a few other items this way as well. WinXP is the key to this, and it has to ship soon, and with all the 'features' in place. Microsoft is just playing the game to prevent the gov. from stopping the release of XP. Once XP is out there, it can't be taken back. If Mircrosoft is forced to play fairly only after XP is released, it's more bad news for the rest of us.
Everyone seems to assume that a basic Sun workstation will set them back 5-10K. I just checked the website and you can get an entry level system for about a $1000(US). Sun is a bit server-centric though.
I think Sun's chips have been made by TI for a long time. Sun doesn't have to pay for a fab, and TI gets to show of their equipment so when intel or amd want to build a fab, they might choose TI equipment.
That's excactly the point. Every single person won't change their site. Since that is the case, lots of sites will participate de facto. More ads are sold this way. They are being jerks, but they know how to make money at it. Let's see what can be done to end them.
yeah.. I kinda doubt 'cool' tech is going to be an issue for very many people here. That's why that clause has the words "perhaps" and "might". However, the keeping existing nurses healthy enough to work still applies. Moreover, it could extend careers.
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My understanding is that SGI has been losing market share fairly steadily. What's wrong here?
"Huh? I understand that the nation's air traffic controllers may need updated equipment in light of the existing crisis, but how hard can scheduling be? I could see a use for a massively parallel monster like this in, say, flow-through or structural analysis or something, but scheduling? "
What your missing is that this isn't a matter of airtraffic control. This is a matter of determining which planes and crews to fly to which locations at what times to maximize revenue. This is a classic, big, nasty travelling salesman problem. The bigger of a beast of a machine you get, the closer you get to an optimized solution. I.E. Most passengers willing to pay this most money with the least use of resources. It's a huge problem that needs massive computational power.
There are major campaigns to get everyone fingerprinted from the get-go already. Why? To help locate missing children. The idea is to create a registry of children's fingerprints. And no, I wouldn't have a problem with the governement having my fingerprint. A camera in my house is a bit nasty, but the impression my finger makes in dirt just doesn't bother me.
This is essentially a card which links your Social security number to your fingerprint, and sticks a picture of your face on the front for good measure. While I think having to use this in order to get into a resturaunt would be a bad thing, using it to get into airport shouldn't be bad. It would be fairly tough to forge. On the other hand, we can't legislate that the British and everyone else on the planet would have to have the same thing. Without that, any foriegner would be exempt from this sort of thing within US borders and the advantages of the added security would be minimal. This is worth taking a look at, but it better be a long, hard look that weighs the pros and cons very carefully.
Right on man. There are certain things you do out of respect. For radio stations, it is watching what you play. For baseball, it's taking a few days off and not playing games. For the far left wing, its taking a few days off from saying "Global trade is bad and the U.S. should stop doing X and Y and Z." For Congress its being civil to one another. What we see and hear changes for a short while. Not because of censorship, which is a bad thing, but because of a desire to be respectful and decent which of course is a good thing.
From what I've read, it looks like Sun is just trying to sell some servers. If that's the goal, they are pretty likely to play nice and try to get the software that makes their server more useful in as many hands as possible.
Industry interests like IBM couldn't afford to see Linux go under. The needed changes would be provided in one form or another.
HP is not a huge company that makes a variety of computers as their main business. An absurd amount of their profit comes from sales of printer cartridges. Actual printers are a decent business as well. Considering that Compaq computers often sell with a Compaq printer (OEMed from Lexmark I believe), I have to ask if this isn't as much about hurting a rising competitor in the printer industry as much as anything else?
Moreover, considering how weak HP's computer business has been - both desktop and server - for the company, aquiring Compaq might be a good idea since Compaq is more comfortable in this segment. Overall though, I don't think either of these companies alone had what it took to survive in the server market against IBM and Sun or in the desktop market against Dell. I'm not sure the new company will have the capabilites, but it might.
Oftentimes the science fiction that resonates best with the audience and is well read relates to the problems that future science could bring. Most normal people would refuse to listen to a long intellectual commentary on what could go wrong (or right) with most science. Science fiction offers a way for the common person to explore some of these issues in an entertaining way.
Interestingly enough. I think what will make this difficult, is the large number of old I.E. browsers out there (not to mention the 5-10% of users who use other browsers). These browsers won't have the capability to do what I.E. 6 supports. Who I feel really bad for are designers of web pages who are caught in the middle.
Moreover, what's most impressive about this goes back to why Microsoft entered the browser war. Netscape + Java was a device that allowed programs to be run on a Windows machine that were not designed exclusively for Windows. Now, Microsoft is in position to control the delivery of these programs to Windows machines. This means they once again control the barrier to entry that they were worried would erode 6 years ago.
Near perfect execution by Microsoft - too bad for the rest of us.
Sorry, I should have quoted the guy I was responding to. He said that it would be bad if Linux came to gain huge market share. His reasoning was that it would put a whole bunch of MCSE's who didn't have other skills out of work. I responded to this by trying to explain that if "magically" ...and only now do I realize that I'm responding to an Anonymous Coward with Score 0.. oh well.
I believe I read recently that only something like 30% of google's income came from advertising. The rest came from selling it's searching capabilities to other search engines. I know I've read that Yahoo works to maintain there own categories while using Google for its web page matches.
I'm sorry, but in the tech industry, if you can't add to your skill set in a hurry, you're likely to get screwed. If you're MSCE, you need to stay current. If magically the whole world moves to Linux and you're MSCE, it isn't time to cry, it's time to go get those skills that work in Linux land.
It's a $53 million($US) project. Using about a thousand CPUs at say, $1000($US) each, you have an expense of $1million. Clearly, the cost of the CPUs is not going to be where the project will be limited. It's the cost of integration. More processors which are cheaper individually will likely have a higher integration cost and therefore be more expensive, not less. The real question is why they choose Itanium which is really an unproven technology.
My gut instinct is that IBM has done some tweaking to the OS. IBM knows about as much as anyone else how to make really, really big systems work. I'm not a huge fan of them, but they have always had a decent portion of their team devoted to big iron.
Some of these stick with Netscape because they believe in branded products and have a deep hatred of Microsoft. I've seen this a few times, it's kind of funny really.
What if instead of releasing a virus, you made a program which waited for probes from infected machines and responded to those probes by exploiting the hole to close the hole?
1) Jato
2) Northpoint
3) Covad...
I kinda feel bad for them, but life goes on. BTW, I wasn't fired despite my 'skill' at choosing. At least this time it looks like Covad will continue to provide service to their DSL folks.
thnx, I get to the point where I type like I talk. Thanks for keeping me honest.
I doubt home users or IT departments, by enlarge, will cooperate with an unenthusiastic recall from Microsoft. The products won't be defective (well.. more than normal) and would be a pain to uninstall. Recalls are generally reserved for when a company ships a dangerous or unacceptably defective product and folks would want their money back. So perhaps, 'can't' was too strong, but I think 'won't' is appropriate.
I'm willing to bet that Mircrosoft will appeal this to the Supremem Court, if only to slow down the process. Microsoft won the browser with the tactics no being declared illegal and is looking to win instant messanging, multimedia delivery and a few other items this way as well. WinXP is the key to this, and it has to ship soon, and with all the 'features' in place. Microsoft is just playing the game to prevent the gov. from stopping the release of XP. Once XP is out there, it can't be taken back. If Mircrosoft is forced to play fairly only after XP is released, it's more bad news for the rest of us.
Everyone seems to assume that a basic Sun workstation will set them back 5-10K. I just checked the website and you can get an entry level system for about a $1000(US). Sun is a bit server-centric though.
I think Sun's chips have been made by TI for a long time. Sun doesn't have to pay for a fab, and TI gets to show of their equipment so when intel or amd want to build a fab, they might choose TI equipment.
That's excactly the point. Every single person won't change their site. Since that is the case, lots of sites will participate de facto. More ads are sold this way. They are being jerks, but they know how to make money at it. Let's see what can be done to end them.
yeah.. I kinda doubt 'cool' tech is going to be an issue for very many people here. That's why that clause has the words "perhaps" and "might". However, the keeping existing nurses healthy enough to work still applies. Moreover, it could extend careers.