The books are also available at HTML and PDF, so you could always print them out. However, I've had Accelerando sitting on my (OSX) desktop for about two weeks and plan to buy the hardcover as soon as I decide if it's worth it. As you pointed out, there just isn't anything else with the feel of a paper book.
It would be acceptable -- and expected -- for icc to not optimize specifically for AMD processors. However it appears that icc is going the extra step and intentionally producing poor code when it detects "Genuine AMD."
I can understand why Intel would do such a thing (a processor is useless without a decent compiler -- just look at Itanium), but it will not win them any good will.
small businesses can either adapt (which is an option! Despite what some small business owners seem to think) or find a customer-base that isn't reliant upon the big chains (such as a small town).
Ah, Walmart focuses on small towns.
The only way small stores can survive is by focusing on some small niche that the big stores are not interested in. Unfortunately, the reason that the big stores are not interested in such a market is because... there's not much money in it. Often not enough to survive.
No, the real reason that the big stores are killing off everything else is because the sheeple would much rather save a few percent and get a bland homogeneous superstore with absolutely no customer service. The few who care are enough of a niche... see above.
The Sonos sounds more like what I had hoped the AirPortExpress would be: awesome looking remote control and multiple zones. Although Apple's product is much cheaper...
Jobs has hinted at a remote control feature for AirportExpress, but nothing has materialized so far.
I was lucky enough to witness an SR71 flying overhead at ~80,000 ft. You could certainly hear the double shock, although it obviously wasn't as loud as the supersonic F15 flyby at much lower (1000 ft?!) altitude.
Much work has been done to reduce shock strength (by varying the aircraft profile), so it is possible that a newer plane would have an acceptable noise profile during cruise.
When students first learn of Newton's third law, "for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction", teachers often give as an example that when you push against a wall, the wall pushes against you. That gives the idea to students that there must be something to push back against you (don't feel bad, some early rocket scientists thought the same thing). That is, however, not true. You don't need something to push against, you just need to exert a force in one direction, and there will be a a force in the opposite direction.
Because of this misconception, it was originally thought that rockets wouldn't work in space, because the exhaust they put out wouldn't be able to push against the atmosphere. But hey, they do!
Uhmm... rockets work due to conservation of momentum, not because of some mysterious reaction force.
Re:Why such extreme lens flare in Hubble images?
on
A Star of Space and Film
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· Score: 3, Informative
IIRC, the "flare" is diffraction from the secondary mirror supports, with the "shape" determined by the shape of the support (I think a cross in this case). A very long exposure makes it more obvious.
It's been a long time since optics, and not long enough since coffee.
i.e. using a typewriter as a computer keyboard (which some responses discuss) has been done before, and discussed here. The ElectriClerk is quite a sight BTW, and well worth looking at for inspiration with the current topic.
Since the re-election of Bush, I have lost all respect and self-restraint from the critism of all things "American".
OT, but...
Don't forget that 49% of Americans are as upset as you are. More so: we live here!
And Bush talks about "healing the divide" -- yea sure. Division, derision, hate, fear, uncertainty and doubt are his "moral values." I'm curious who wrote his Bible.
A related question, how does this (and the speed of orbital rockets) compare to the fastest man-made object (whatever that may be)?
I thought the fastest man-made object was Pioneer or Viking at around 45k mph. However, a quick Google indicates that Helios supposedly traveled at 150,000 mph.
I'm positing that the particles in particle accelerators are not "man-made" in this context.
For those who didn't RTFA, the guy is talking about an FPGA, not an ASIC. Reasonable 3D is a pipe dream. OTOH, everything would be open spec: BIOS, card layout, and everything. As an FPGA it would be completely reprogramable.
I think it'd be great to hack around on, but considering the price of perhaps $100 I don't see this selling in quantity.
People have already been making supercomputer clusters for the Mac, including Virginia Tech's third-fastest supercomputer in the world, but InfiniBand is supposed to make the latency drop.
Note that V.T.'s cluster already uses InfiniBand, courtesy of Mellanox.
The desired MTBF of the system is at least 10 days.
With 65k processors it makes sense that the MTBF would be small, but wow. Of course, IBM has accounted for this in the design: the system is able to automatically recover from a failed node etc.
but in my (admittedly short) trial of arch I ran into a few show-stopping issues:
no reliable cvs--tla converter (cscvs is under development)
no GUI yet (necessary for some developers)
doesn't install on AIX 4.3.3 (ugh...)
These are all known issues under development (I wish I had time to help resolve them), and I'll try arch again in a while.
As is frequently pointed out, arch is also very different than CVS.
Unfortunately, some problems are particularly unsuitable for clusters of commercial computers, and really benefit from specialized architectures such as shared memory or vector processors.
A while ago it was decided by the US government to essentially abandon such specializations, and buy COTS. It is certainly cheaper, but not necessarily effective.
Slashdot Mirror
The books are also available at HTML and PDF, so you could always print them out. However, I've had Accelerando sitting on my (OSX) desktop for about two weeks and plan to buy the hardcover as soon as I decide if it's worth it. As you pointed out, there just isn't anything else with the feel of a paper book.
It would be acceptable -- and expected -- for icc to not optimize specifically for AMD processors. However it appears that icc is going the extra step and intentionally producing poor code when it detects "Genuine AMD."
I can understand why Intel would do such a thing (a processor is useless without a decent compiler -- just look at Itanium), but it will not win them any good will.
small businesses can either adapt (which is an option! Despite what some small business owners seem to think) or find a customer-base that isn't reliant upon the big chains (such as a small town).
... there's not much money in it. Often not enough to survive.
... see above.
Ah, Walmart focuses on small towns.
The only way small stores can survive is by focusing on some small niche that the big stores are not interested in. Unfortunately, the reason that the big stores are not interested in such a market is because
No, the real reason that the big stores are killing off everything else is because the sheeple would much rather save a few percent and get a bland homogeneous superstore with absolutely no customer service. The few who care are enough of a niche
does anybody know if satan is still buying souls?
Nope, not after getting W's.
BTW, Satan prefers to be called Rove these days.
The Sonos sounds more like what I had hoped the AirPortExpress would be: awesome looking remote control and multiple zones. Although Apple's product is much cheaper...
Jobs has hinted at a remote control feature for AirportExpress, but nothing has materialized so far.
I was lucky enough to witness an SR71 flying overhead at ~80,000 ft. You could certainly hear the double shock, although it obviously wasn't as loud as the supersonic F15 flyby at much lower (1000 ft?!) altitude.
Much work has been done to reduce shock strength (by varying the aircraft profile), so it is possible that a newer plane would have an acceptable noise profile during cruise.
Acroread renders better than xpdf, and has much better document navigation features to boot.
Yes, xpdf is somewhat faster (although acroread7 feels faster to me than crappy old 5.x).
Good thing everyone can have both!
Anyone had it crash yet? Acroread 5.0.1 thru 5.0.6 (or so) crashed regularly for me...
Uhmm
Sort of like bluejacking?
IIRC, the "flare" is diffraction from the secondary mirror supports, with the "shape" determined by the shape of the support (I think a cross in this case). A very long exposure makes it more obvious.
It's been a long time since optics, and not long enough since coffee.
How many iPods do you figure Apple gives to it's administrative assistants?
Actually, Apple supposedly is going to give an iPod Shuffle to every single employee. Apple Store employees get them first -- good advertising.
Apple-provided PHP is currently vulnerable
Thankfully Apple just patched that.
The probe was built by ESA, but at least one of the instruments (the UV interferometer?) was built in the USA by my former co-workers.
i.e. using a typewriter as a computer keyboard (which some responses discuss) has been done before, and discussed here.
The ElectriClerk is quite a sight BTW, and well worth looking at for inspiration with the current topic.
Since the re-election of Bush, I have lost all respect and self-restraint from the critism of all things "American".
OT, but...
Don't forget that 49% of Americans are as upset as you are. More so: we live here!
And Bush talks about "healing the divide" -- yea sure. Division, derision, hate, fear, uncertainty and doubt are his "moral values." I'm curious who wrote his Bible.
Doh! Pioneer or _Voyager_ -- and less than 45k mph.
A related question, how does this (and the speed of orbital rockets) compare to the fastest man-made object (whatever that may be)?
I thought the fastest man-made object was Pioneer or Viking at around 45k mph. However, a quick Google indicates that Helios supposedly traveled at 150,000 mph.
I'm positing that the particles in particle accelerators are not "man-made" in this context.
I don't know much about FPGAs -- what will $30 get you?
Blah blah blah blah lameness? blah blah blah!
For those who didn't RTFA, the guy is talking about an FPGA, not an ASIC. Reasonable 3D is a pipe dream. OTOH, everything would be open spec: BIOS, card layout, and everything. As an FPGA it would be completely reprogramable.
I think it'd be great to hack around on, but considering the price of perhaps $100 I don't see this selling in quantity.
People have already been making supercomputer clusters for the Mac, including Virginia Tech's third-fastest supercomputer in the world, but InfiniBand is supposed to make the latency drop.
Note that V.T.'s cluster already uses InfiniBand, courtesy of Mellanox.
It's mentioned at V.T.'s pages.
> In less than 10 years they went from a political
> non-entity to a political-powerhouse.
Amazing what $50 billion can do, isn't it? Democracy at work...
With 65k processors it makes sense that the MTBF would be small, but wow. Of course, IBM has accounted for this in the design: the system is able to automatically recover from a failed node etc.
These are all known issues under development (I wish I had time to help resolve them), and I'll try arch again in a while.
As is frequently pointed out, arch is also very different than CVS.
The new one will be even more: "NIF will generate up to 750 trillion watts of laser light."
Dang! That's definitely not fitting in my trunk.
Have you seen NIF? It's larger than most sports stadiums.
a mesh of nodes on a network will do just as well
In some cases.
Unfortunately, some problems are particularly unsuitable for clusters of commercial computers, and really benefit from specialized architectures such as shared memory or vector processors.
A while ago it was decided by the US government to essentially abandon such specializations, and buy COTS. It is certainly cheaper, but not necessarily effective.