Next year, all the little known details [about the cluster] will be revealed in a new book. By that time we'll know what the project means for supercomputing and for Apple.
Sony's specialized parts ensured that Sony owned all of the rights. Sony's intimate knowledge of the parts and the manufacturing has allowed them to combine silicon, cutting down on overall size and costs. Likewise, the only profittaking is from Sony, and with fewer hands in the pot the margins can be shrunk. Unfortunately for Microsoft, using off-the-shelf parts from different manufacturers ensured that they needed the cooperation (and credits) from different companies. Nvidia, for example, gets a cut on the sales of the hardware, not from the software like ATI gets from Nintendo. Microsoft similarly needs to use faster hardware in their machines as they aren't exactly console-optimized. The 'Cube, again, can get away with running on much slower (read, cheaper) hardware, because it would be a terrible webserver. Say what you will about the XBox OS, it's hardware and interfaces were not originally developed with gaming in mind.
On the other hand, the success of the PS2 can probably be traced to GT3, GTA, Square, Metal Gear Solid 2, Onimusha, and a host of must-have games that were released before the Xbox hit its stride. People buy games and hardware to play those games, not hardware and games to play on that hardware.
Most schools have a usage policy to which all students must agree before using computer resources. The article doesn't state whether use of the "net send" command is permitted or not.
I know it's not hacking, but it can be seen (incorrectly, of course) as a subversive activity by paranoid faculty. Imagine if the student were Arab-American, and was sending "Hey!" in Middle East-speak. All hell might break loose.
Atwood's best? Maybe, but maybe not.
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Perhaps not. In terms of her use of language, form, depth of charaterisation etc. the 'The Blind Assassin' is technically Atwood's greatest novel so far.
But having read all her novels, I've got to say that 'Oryx and Crake' is my personal favourite. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book, how engrossed I was with every word, and how moving, shocking and disturbing I found it. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It's one of those books that, once you've finished the last page, stays with you, and when you're not reading it you're thinking of it.
And it's one of those books that, when you finally close it, you so wish that you could've put your name to it yourself. It's an immense work of imagination. I finished it well over a week ago and still think of it. I found it extraordinary. The way Atwood evokes her distopian futuristic world in every detail and makes it come alive and breathe is quite incredible. I was hooked.
I was hoping it would be good but it far exceeded my expectations. The book's nightmarish vision of the future makes 'The Handmaid's Tale' look like a picnic, and while you're reading Atwood makes you live in that world, makes you feel what Snowman is feeling. What horror. Frighteningly, plausibly, brilliant!
Several reasons for Japan's fast broadband growth are as follows:
As has been pointed out, broadband modems are being passed out on the street by yahoo bb, who's service is cheaper than the phone companies' service. They are doing this at a great loss to try to build volume. They also include VOIP functionality, with calls to the US being charged at 5 yen (about 4 cents) a minute.
Unfortunately Yahoo's availability is limited outside major cities. I live in a suburb of a prefectural capital and cannot get service. Another reason BB rates are rising, is that is is the only way to get flat rate internet access, as even local calls are charged per minute. Yes, ~$20.00 flat rate isps exist, but when the phone bill jumps $40, it is no longer a good deal.
Also, although the bandwidth seems high and the rates seem low, the study probably doesn't take into account the fact that you need to pay both the phone company and a seperate isp for most connections. That can easily push the cost up into the 40-60 dollar range, and outside the major areas (tokyo, kyoto, etc.) the bandwidth rates are much lower. My fastest transfer rate was on a RH iso, about 60k over my 12MB connection. The penetration rates and adverstised speeds only show a small part of the broadband picture in japan.
I would expect more than this from Wired, as there are several glaring inaccuracies.
"Make email addresses portable" - get your own domain name and move it from ISP to ISP as you please.
"Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move?" - my home directory, including public_html, is accessible from Samba. I can copy any file there and it is live on the web instantly.
"Big music, follow the money 8 of 9 adults beyond student age still pay for songs instead of ripping them." - ripping them? That has nothing to do with whether you paid for it.
"Replace servers with P2P Too many network services - domain names, Web servers, email - rely on the old client-server model, which is vulnerable to attack." - uhhh.... eeyeah.
Oh well. I guess they have to match the dumbed down state of their readers.
no, I'm a nineteen year old geek girl who wishes to god she'd started sooner
Sorry, you are not a "geek girl". If you were, you wouldn't be whining about how you're poor and drive 90 minutes to your job (here's a clue: nobody cares) on your lamo LiveJournal site. Instead, you would have coded your own CMS, shared the source with everyone, and talked about how you designed it.
I can't believe this kind of bullshit gets posted on Slashdot. For those who didn't read the article (and I know you're out there), the guy compared how long it takes to open his maildir file in Mutt on SCSI and then IDE.
Since it went faster on his SCSI drive, he concludes that SCSI is faster. Wow! How comprehensive!
If Slashdot keeps this up, I hope they start to get a reputation like Tomshardware.com (those people are full of shit as well).
They left out the part about "...to use the dorm network connection for illegal and improper uses."
Maybe this will actually ENCOURAGE responsible people to live in the dorms, now that they know network performance will actually be improved without P2P traffic wasting bandwidth
I don't believe this story for a second. Not a bit.
For decades I have been folowing solar cell technology, absolutely salivating at the promises that efficiency rating would soon rise above 15%, or that costs would no longer be prohibitively expensive or damaging to the environment (moreso than more conventional, polluting alternatives).
Well, I've given up. I've read shitty pie-in-the-sky stories like this almost every year for the last 25-years.
Now, if someone on Slashdot tells me that they bought these +50% efficient solar cells in Home Depot, that's when I'll get excited. Like I'll get excited when Chevrolet markets a flying car or my city puts a nuclear fusion power plant into service.
Do spammers like junk mail? Do garbagemen swim in their own trash?
We already hold these people to pretty low social standards, so I don't understand why we'd expect them to practice what they preach.
These companies need to get smart. These protocol changes are going to be reverse engineered. There's just too many people who are too smart and too willing to work in groups for lockout strategies to work. A protocol change won't chase away these guys; it makes them drool.
What lockouts do, however, is annoy the rest of the user base. Some people won't want to upgrade. Some people don't want to use Yahoo!'s software or can't. Most people don't want to be warned about impending protocol changes every time they login. Almost everyone wants to be able to talk to their friends, regardless of their friends' software choices. These lockouts hurt the people using the official client just as much as everyone else. The only way Yahoo!'s going to stay a step ahead of hackers is to kill their service: repeated protocol changes will do it.
What needs to happen is cooperation. IM providers can make life easier on developers by offering specs. These benefits trickle down to users, since they always have the latest and greatest. Developers can return the favor to the IM providers by agreeing to introduce branding. The IM provider benefits overall by not threatening its userbase with lockouts, in addition to the publicity (and credibility) boost among geeks and others. "Don't like our software? Yahoo! supports the Open Source and Free Software movements by providing protocol documentation for our popular services. Read more here!" Imagine that!
One has to wonder if AIM would be faring better had AOL committed to this strategy, rather than going only a quarter of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
The project leader, Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, will be speaking at a session entitled Building Virginia Tech's G5 Supercluster on Jan 28 at the upcoming O'Reilly Mac OS X conference.
He'll probably reveal some of the technical details, such as the version of Mac OS X used, at that session.
Also, according to a blog at O'Reilly:
Next year, all the little known details [about the cluster] will be revealed in a new book. By that time we'll know what the project means for supercomputing and for Apple.
And funny that it should happen after they've finally fully embraced open souce (OSX).
Wow, OS X is open source now! What will they do next?
Sony's specialized parts ensured that Sony owned all of the rights. Sony's intimate knowledge of the parts and the manufacturing has allowed them to combine silicon, cutting down on overall size and costs. Likewise, the only profittaking is from Sony, and with fewer hands in the pot the margins can be shrunk. Unfortunately for Microsoft, using off-the-shelf parts from different manufacturers ensured that they needed the cooperation (and credits) from different companies. Nvidia, for example, gets a cut on the sales of the hardware, not from the software like ATI gets from Nintendo. Microsoft similarly needs to use faster hardware in their machines as they aren't exactly console-optimized. The 'Cube, again, can get away with running on much slower (read, cheaper) hardware, because it would be a terrible webserver. Say what you will about the XBox OS, it's hardware and interfaces were not originally developed with gaming in mind.
On the other hand, the success of the PS2 can probably be traced to GT3, GTA, Square, Metal Gear Solid 2, Onimusha, and a host of must-have games that were released before the Xbox hit its stride. People buy games and hardware to play those games, not hardware and games to play on that hardware.
Most schools have a usage policy to which all students must agree before using computer resources. The article doesn't state whether use of the "net send" command is permitted or not.
I know it's not hacking, but it can be seen (incorrectly, of course) as a subversive activity by paranoid faculty. Imagine if the student were Arab-American, and was sending "Hey!" in Middle East-speak. All hell might break loose.
Perhaps not. In terms of her use of language, form, depth of charaterisation etc. the 'The Blind Assassin' is technically Atwood's greatest novel so far.
But having read all her novels, I've got to say that 'Oryx and Crake' is my personal favourite. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book, how engrossed I was with every word, and how moving, shocking and disturbing I found it. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It's one of those books that, once you've finished the last page, stays with you, and when you're not reading it you're thinking of it.
And it's one of those books that, when you finally close it, you so wish that you could've put your name to it yourself. It's an immense work of imagination. I finished it well over a week ago and still think of it. I found it extraordinary. The way Atwood evokes her distopian futuristic world in every detail and makes it come alive and breathe is quite incredible. I was hooked.
I was hoping it would be good but it far exceeded my expectations. The book's nightmarish vision of the future makes 'The Handmaid's Tale' look like a picnic, and while you're reading Atwood makes you live in that world, makes you feel what Snowman is feeling. What horror. Frighteningly, plausibly, brilliant!
The parent makes a great point. All the Slashbots were droning about how NASA sucks, the ESA made a cheap lander, etc., etc.
Now, theirs is toast, and we're on the planet transmitting the highest-res pics of another planet in history.
And yet, now the crowd is exclaiming "Why did we go here!! It's just barren! What kind of desktop background am I supposed to use from this!?"
Well, why was it OK when the ESA was attempting it then?
If you were a real nerd, you would know that the Humans, Klingons, Romulan/Vulcans, etc. discovered evidence of common origins in a DS9 episode.
If *YOU* were a real nerd, you would know that those races discovered evidence in a TNG episode, not DS9.
Several reasons for Japan's fast broadband growth are as follows:
As has been pointed out, broadband modems are being passed out on the street by yahoo bb, who's service is cheaper than the phone companies' service. They are doing this at a great loss to try to build volume. They also include VOIP functionality, with calls to the US being charged at 5 yen (about 4 cents) a minute.
Unfortunately Yahoo's availability is limited outside major cities. I live in a suburb of a prefectural capital and cannot get service. Another reason BB rates are rising, is that is is the only way to get flat rate internet access, as even local calls are charged per minute. Yes, ~$20.00 flat rate isps exist, but when the phone bill jumps $40, it is no longer a good deal.
Also, although the bandwidth seems high and the rates seem low, the study probably doesn't take into account the fact that you need to pay both the phone company and a seperate isp for most connections. That can easily push the cost up into the 40-60 dollar range, and outside the major areas (tokyo, kyoto, etc.) the bandwidth rates are much lower. My fastest transfer rate was on a RH iso, about 60k over my 12MB connection. The penetration rates and adverstised speeds only show a small part of the broadband picture in japan.
I would expect more than this from Wired, as there are several glaring inaccuracies.
"Make email addresses portable" - get your own domain name and move it from ISP to ISP as you please.
"Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move?" - my home directory, including public_html, is accessible from Samba. I can copy any file there and it is live on the web instantly.
"Big music, follow the money 8 of 9 adults beyond student age still pay for songs instead of ripping them." - ripping them? That has nothing to do with whether you paid for it.
"Replace servers with P2P Too many network services - domain names, Web servers, email - rely on the old client-server model, which is vulnerable to attack." - uhhh.... eeyeah.
Oh well. I guess they have to match the dumbed down state of their readers.
UNIX SysAdmin/International Man of Mystery seeking employ [yahoo.com]
"Incomplete degree."
Haha, like I'm going to hire some fucking college dropout.
The money is in improving 3D quality. 2D isn't important to the average end-user any more.
no, I'm a nineteen year old geek girl who wishes to god she'd started sooner
Sorry, you are not a "geek girl". If you were, you wouldn't be whining about how you're poor and drive 90 minutes to your job (here's a clue: nobody cares) on your lamo LiveJournal site. Instead, you would have coded your own CMS, shared the source with everyone, and talked about how you designed it.
Well, that might be a good idea, if we were all fucking losers like you with nothing better to do.
Oh yeah, look for some more reposts from me real soon, asswipe.
I have already thought of this and have the perfect solution, which I posted HERE - an officially-sanctioned SMTP relay whitelist.
Sorry, I don't think you get to dictate who runs a mail server. But thanks for playing.
That reminds me, I'm out of toothpaste. Better stop at Walgreens on the way home!
No, just some guy from Harlem.
And extra vitamins don't do any harm.
Not true. Enough Vitamin A will turn your skin orange.
Whether you consider that "harm", I suppose, is another matter entirely.
I can't believe this kind of bullshit gets posted on Slashdot. For those who didn't read the article (and I know you're out there), the guy compared how long it takes to open his maildir file in Mutt on SCSI and then IDE.
Since it went faster on his SCSI drive, he concludes that SCSI is faster. Wow! How comprehensive!
If Slashdot keeps this up, I hope they start to get a reputation like Tomshardware.com (those people are full of shit as well).
My nomination would be Metal Gear. "The truck have started to move!" "I feel asleep!" See this link for more fun dialogue.
They left out the part about "...to use the dorm network connection for illegal and improper uses."
Maybe this will actually ENCOURAGE responsible people to live in the dorms, now that they know network performance will actually be improved without P2P traffic wasting bandwidth
I just want to spend some quality time in the Holodeck.
It would be funny if Wil Wheaton (who does read this site) replied and said "Hey! That's my mom you're talking about!"
How is this insightful? He didn't even RTFA. The article states that the solar cells are targeted to have a 10% efficiency.
Sorry. I was so enraged by the story's claims that I may have lost my objectivism. Please consider it to be hyperbole.
I don't believe this story for a second. Not a bit.
For decades I have been folowing solar cell technology, absolutely salivating at the promises that efficiency rating would soon rise above 15%, or that costs would no longer be prohibitively expensive or damaging to the environment (moreso than more conventional, polluting alternatives).
Well, I've given up. I've read shitty pie-in-the-sky stories like this almost every year for the last 25-years.
Now, if someone on Slashdot tells me that they bought these +50% efficient solar cells in Home Depot, that's when I'll get excited. Like I'll get excited when Chevrolet markets a flying car or my city puts a nuclear fusion power plant into service.
Do spammers like junk mail? Do garbagemen swim in their own trash? We already hold these people to pretty low social standards, so I don't understand why we'd expect them to practice what they preach.
What lockouts do, however, is annoy the rest of the user base. Some people won't want to upgrade. Some people don't want to use Yahoo!'s software or can't. Most people don't want to be warned about impending protocol changes every time they login. Almost everyone wants to be able to talk to their friends, regardless of their friends' software choices. These lockouts hurt the people using the official client just as much as everyone else. The only way Yahoo!'s going to stay a step ahead of hackers is to kill their service: repeated protocol changes will do it.
What needs to happen is cooperation. IM providers can make life easier on developers by offering specs. These benefits trickle down to users, since they always have the latest and greatest. Developers can return the favor to the IM providers by agreeing to introduce branding. The IM provider benefits overall by not threatening its userbase with lockouts, in addition to the publicity (and credibility) boost among geeks and others. "Don't like our software? Yahoo! supports the Open Source and Free Software movements by providing protocol documentation for our popular services. Read more here!" Imagine that!
One has to wonder if AIM would be faring better had AOL committed to this strategy, rather than going only a quarter of the way.