Then call it the "New Big Iron" (which it still isn't). "Big Iron" refers to much more than a POPCs (Pile of PCs). Fault tollerance, hot swap capability, system monitoring, etc.
Cray is marketing Linux server clusters, you are exactly right. You are wrong if you think these are "Big Iron". The fact that the PO goes to Cray does not make it "Big Iron" and Cray is certainly capable of selling systems that do not classify as "Big Iron".
POPC Clusters may be the "Popular High Performance Computational Engines", I'll give you that, but they are not "Big Iron".
- Depends on the Xeons they are using. The 'old' Xeons are around the same cost as their AMD counterparts. The 'new' Xeons have large L3 caches (1M and 2M).
- The AMD SMP chipset is slow (memory bandwidth) compared to the newer Intel chipsets.
- IIRC, the P4s use less power than the Athlons, probably this is not as important but it is there.
I'd like to see a comparison of a newer dual Xeon machine vs. a good dual AMD to see the performance difference. I would suspect that the dual Xeon machine would be a bit faster.
A) I haven't seen a BSOD in around two years. My Windows boxes crash about as often as my Linux boxes.
B) I haven't called tech support ever. I don't know anyone who has. The closest I've come was filing support incidents on two bugs that I found.
C) I know how to change the colors of my desktop on both X and Windows. It's quite easy.
D) I discovered Un*x and clones before I discovered Windows (indeed, before there was such a thing as Windows).
"Religion - 1. n. The leading cause of war, death and complete idiocy in all of recorded history."
Yup... especially when things are taken in to be religion when they are tools. I've yet to hear anyone get as up in the air about a 9mm boxed end Craftsman vs. Snap-On wrench.
...and throw lots of tricks that modern processors use to improve speed out the window. Many are already mentioned in replies to this. In effect, you will lose more performance than you will gain.
You also potentially throw away deterministic behavior, which can be an especially bad thing in certain application realms.
IIRC... The i386SX had a 16-bit external data bus. The Motorola 68000 had a 16-bit external data bus as well (and 32-bit registers). The 68008 was a 68000 with an 8-bit external data bus. IIRC, the HP48 family of processors were 64-bit internally but 4-bit external data bus (to save power and space).
[sorry for the repost, but I had to put paragraph breaks in this before it made me insane]
Not only this... but if support for your OS solution dries up, and you are a small business which can't support hiring a programmer, you are out in the cold just as bad as before. The people who originally wrote the OS solution that you are using (and have invested lots of time/effort into integrating into your business) may have gotten disinterested with the code and gone off to do other things. Meanwhile, no one else really cares about the code either. THIS is one of the biggest fears of OSS and it CAN happen because all of the coding and fixes were done because someone cared about it. When they get bored/tired of it, they aren't contractually (or any otherwise way) obligued to support it. This leads to...
Looking for someone to support the OSS that you are now completely dependent upon. You first start searching for a programmer(s) to do the work for you. You will be lucky to be able to hire a programmer who already knows the source. That's the best solution, of course. HOPEFULLY you can hire someone you trust who can/will work remotely to solve your problems, but this isn't always guaranteed. If you can find such a programmer, you are gtg still. However....
You may not be able to find/hire a programmer with the required knowledge so now you must hire a programmer who will spend a month to learn the stuff, then for the next amount of time to actually fix the problem or add the new functionality. Contractors go for $90/hour (common price around here for keyboard jockeys). 1 month * 4 weeks/month * 40 hours/week = $14,400 BEFORE you get anything done to actually solve your problem. If you pay to train someone like that, you'll probably want/need to put them on retainer (probably cheapest way) or outright hire them. Now you are talking $100,000/year to support your OS software (this $100,000 is for the company, which includes benefits like insurance, tax contribution, etc... you cost your company a lot more than that number that is your salary). Now... you are into this "free" OSS solution at the rate of $90/hour (minimum 2 weeks cost per incident which is $7200) or $100,000/year. Some savings...
This is a fact of OSS that people very quickly try to sweep under the carpet:
Yes: - you have the source - you can do what you want (bugs/features)
what they leave out is what this MAY cost you when things aren't the rosey situation of there will always be some programmer(s) who are still interested in supporting your OSS solution. Your support relies on the whim (interest) of the programmers who originally wrote the code and the interest of any other programmers outside of that group who are interested in the code. If you can't find either one of those, your costs can skyrocket along with your risk. THIS is the thing that makes budget planning a pain and makes people hesitant about using OSS. As long as you use OSS that is exciting, fun, and interesting, you have low risk. As soon as you move into a niche type area, your risk goes up. Risk management is a large part of running a business or a business group.
Not only this... but if support for your OS solution dries up, and you are a small business which can't support hiring a programmer, you are out in the cold just as bad as before. The people who originally wrote the OS solution that you are using (and have invested lots of time/effort into integrating into your business) may have gotten disinterested with the code and gone off to do other things. Meanwhile, no one else really cares about the code either. THIS is one of the biggest fears of OSS and it CAN happen because all of the coding and fixes were done because someone cared about it. When they get bored/tired of it, they aren't contractually (or any otherwise way) obligued to support it. This leads to...
Looking for someone to support the OSS that you are now completely dependent upon. You first start searching for a programmer(s) to do the work for you. You will be lucky to be able to hire a programmer who already knows the source. That's the best solution, of course. HOPEFULLY you can hire someone you trust who can/will work remotely to solve your problems, but this isn't always guaranteed. If you can find such a programmer, you are gtg still. However....
You may not be able to find/hire a programmer with the required knowledge so now you must hire a programmer who will spend a month to learn the stuff, then for the next amount of time to actually fix the problem or add the new functionality. Contractors go for $90/hour (common price around here for keyboard jockeys). 1 month * 4 weeks/month * 40 hours/week = $14,400 BEFORE you get anything done to actually solve your problem. If you pay to train someone like that, you'll probably want/need to put them on retainer (probably cheapest way) or outright hire them. Now you are talking $100,000/year to support your OS software (this $100,000 is for the company, which includes benefits like insurance, tax contribution, etc... you cost your company a lot more than that number that is your salary). Now... you are into this "free" OSS solution at the rate of $90/hour (minimum 2 weeks cost per incident which is $7200) or $100,000/year. Some savings...
This is a fact of OSS that people very quickly try to sweep under the carpet:
Yes:
- you have the source
- you can do what you want (bugs/features)
what they leave out is what this MAY cost you when things aren't the rosey situation of there will always be some programmer(s) who are still interested in supporting your OSS solution. Your support relies on the whim (interest) of the programmers who originally wrote the code and the interest of any other programmers outside of that group who are interested in the code. If you can't find either one of those, your costs can skyrocket along with your risk. THIS is the thing that makes budget planning a pain and makes people hesitant about using OSS.
As long as you use OSS that is exciting, fun, and interesting, you have low risk. As soon as you move into a niche type area, your risk goes up. Risk management is a large part of running a business or a business group.
I think your points are out of order. #2 is probably much more important than #1, imo.
Re:Who Actually USES These Patterns?
on
Design Patterns
·
· Score: 1
Device drivers and operating systems in the past have typically been some of the most hacked up, ugly, unmaintainable, spaghetti code ever seen. Don't confuse device drivers and OS code with application software. The two are not even close to being the same.
Also, don't base your whole outlook on life (and coding) by the actions/example of one human. The only thing that Linus did that was truly remarkable was to give his OS source away free and encourage anyone in the world to dork with it. There have been *many* operating systems written, some (believe it or not) better, faster, and/or more stable than Linux.
Re:read the first chapter at the book store.
on
Design Patterns
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I wish you would have signed this so I would know to never hire you.
Something that you are most likely too young and inexperienced to understand yet is that you do not write code for yourself to maintain. A coder typically writes code and others will maintain it (because you left for another job, got promoted, the project was handed off to a maintenance crew, you got fired for your crappy work, or whatever). THEY have to make sense of your code to fix/maintain it.
If your code is cryptic and/or undocumented, it will cost your company/team lots of time (and time is money) and frustration to debug and/or modify it. Even if you are still in the group, someone else may need to go into the code that you wrote (notice that I did not say "your code" as it is not your code if you are working for a company or contributing to an open software project) to do something. If you routinely contribute such crap to open source projects, you will quickly be denied access to any further projects.
I wasn't trolling. I'm trying to understand why people feel they don't have a choice. The way I see it is that as long as there is a way to program a computer, that you will have a choice of what to run on your computer.
The Palladium stuff is worrisome - if after its release no computer in the world will ever be made without that embedded in it AND - if all software released after bullet #1 must pass the checking before it runs.
If those processors will continue to run code that does not have to pass those checks, you can still run whatever you want on them. I realize that the arguments are that 'this is the tip of the iceberg' and that 'the next step is to require that all software pass the Palladium checks'. This means that you have to have Palladium compilers which may be written only for certain OSs. For this to work, all other forms of processors will have to go away or also contain this functionality - that means the PowerPCs, the StrongARMs, the SPARCs, etc all have to disappear (or have the eventual Palladium-required functionality) and I just don't see that happening.
So.... let Microsoft go off and make an OS where everything has to be Palladium-OK to run on it. As long as there is hardware that doesn't require the Palladium-ized software to make it run, there will be choices in my opinion.
Thanks for answering... but that doesn't explain all the open hostility against Microsoft seen on this board. If you (as in anyone who has done this) have made the choice to switch to Linux, why must you berate me for my choice(s) in what OSs I run on computer hardware that I have purchased? I'm happy that you've found an OS that suits your needs and you can use efficiently. Why won't you leave me alone and let me make my choice for my own reasons?
According to the info I saw on the subject, it's pretty fuzzy about stealing vs whatever. I saw that several people in the project requested not allowing Jobs back on his second visit (with his team of programmers) because they knew that he was coming to take notes. The dissenters were overruled for some reason (I can't remember why exactly) but it seems that the PARC folks were showcasing their tech and they knew that Jobs was going to copy it, even over the objections of a number of PARC folks.
Regardless of whether it was given to Apple or not, the fact remains that even Apple did not come up with the idea (nor Microsoft who copied Apple, nor etc).
Hmmmm... hardware accelerated graphics and mouse... nope... can't say I've seen that one before... nor have I seen multi-cpu computers where any of the processors can handle UI stuff while the others work on user tasks.
.... except an OS and/or computers have nothing to do with the evolution of humans... It is more like a Pavlovian response... you ring a bell, the dog's mouth waters because he associates the bell's noise with food. On Slashdot, any mention of Microsoft invokes immediate flaming.
I personally use several OSs and like most of them. Unfortunately, most of the people on this board seem to want to deprive me of my choice to use an OS provided by Microsoft (and pretty much anything else that isn't Linux). This is the major issue I have with most/. participants... it's not enough for them to evangelise Linux... they seem to want to deny me of my choice to chose something other than Linux as well.
heh... todays GUIs are all ripoffs of other GUIs (back down the line to the original GUI at Xerox PARC that Apple stole) until one comes up with something other than the generic windowed looking GUI (like a 3D GUI or something).
Yup. Most of the people who read this board weren't around in the early 80s. It was a glorious time for computer nerds but it was horrid for anyone who actually wanted to use computers for small business. There were cases where if you wanted to use Application1 (which only ran on ComputerBrandX) AND Application2 (which only ran on ComputerBrandY) you had to either do without or buy multiple sets of hardware in addition to multiple sets of software. OR, you could force yourself to use whatever was available for one hardware platform, even if it meant using some *really* crappy software.
Another thing people fail to remember is that Microsoft was nowhere near a Monopoly back then (actually, they didn't really have anything at all). For some reason, people started using Microsoft products before Microsoft was a monopoly and could force their software on people.
I wonder how many people remember when graphics cards came out, you had software that worked in CrapGA OR it would work with VideoCard001 from CompanyY. (It wasn't that long ago when video games were developed for Glide/VGA - if you didn't have a 3dfx card, you had to live with slow/ugly graphics) Due to some forms of video card driver standardization, those things don't matter anymore when you go buy a game.
To some degree, people got tired of the incompatibilities and started going with 'standard' software and at some point, the computer became a common (if not required) tool (yup... tool, not religion) in the officeplace.
All in all, there is 'having fun' which was even bigger in the early 80s than today (there were some *cool* machines back then and selection/diversity was far, far wider than today). But back then, only hobbiests/enthusiasts and businesses who could afford machines really had computers. Today, large numbers of people have these tools (yup, not hobbies, not religions) to have fun and do work. To most people, they could care less what hardware/software is running on their machine as long as it interoperates with the majority of other people out there who also have computers. Heck, most people couldn't tell you what chipset they have in their machine or how many PCI slots either -- they simply don't care. It's a tool. As long as it works with everybody else's tool they are happy. If it doesn't work with everyone else's tool, then they are not happy.
If you were truly dedicated to your cause, you wouldn't run ANY Microsoft software at all... not even for your game. You ask people to abandon Microsoft software and yet, you have not done so yourself so why should they? Since you DO run Microsoft software (after an essay about why you shouldn't use it and such), you are basically a hypocrit and your essay has no credibility.
I find computing extremely fun. I use several OSs, languages, and products and almost every single day I write code, play games, find interesting things on the 'net, and keep in contact with friends. I still see (after almost 20 years of programming now - started when I was around 14) a world full of possibility and wonder in computers.
And as I said, it wasn't meant to be complete or even compilable... I'm guessing pseudocode is too advanced of a topic/shrug. Make whatever corrections you want and translate it into whatever language you like if that will get the sand out of your clam.
Well... for SETI, so far 100% of the WU have been "nothing interesting here" I would imagine (I haven't seen anything on CNN about big space ships or little green men). So... how do you know if the WU is "nothing interesting here" because there really is nothing interesting there or because it was faked?
It isn't an easy problem. If you digitally sign each WU, then you can tell if more than one machine is messing with it (by results coming back for the same signature from multiple machines) but this still doesn't protect against a machine simply returning "nothing interesting here" rather than actually computing for a while and determining the same thing. The crux of this problem is "how do you determine that the client really did any work at all, much less the 'right' work on this WU". You can't even count the number of clock cycles spent in computation because that count can be faked (just simply return some reasonable number). You'd have to have some serious smarts in a program to accurately estimate the number of iterations or clock cycles (very bad measure) that will be spent on a WU to make those types of checks.
Slashdot Mirror
Then call it the "New Big Iron" (which it still isn't). "Big Iron" refers to much more than a POPCs (Pile of PCs). Fault tollerance, hot swap capability, system monitoring, etc.
Cray is marketing Linux server clusters, you are exactly right. You are wrong if you think these are "Big Iron". The fact that the PO goes to Cray does not make it "Big Iron" and Cray is certainly capable of selling systems that do not classify as "Big Iron".
POPC Clusters may be the "Popular High Performance Computational Engines", I'll give you that, but they are not "Big Iron".
- Depends on the Xeons they are using. The 'old' Xeons are around the same cost as their AMD counterparts. The 'new' Xeons have large L3 caches (1M and 2M).
- The AMD SMP chipset is slow (memory bandwidth) compared to the newer Intel chipsets.
- IIRC, the P4s use less power than the Athlons, probably this is not as important but it is there.
I'd like to see a comparison of a newer dual Xeon machine vs. a good dual AMD to see the performance difference. I would suspect that the dual Xeon machine would be a bit faster.
A) I haven't seen a BSOD in around two years. My Windows boxes crash about as often as my Linux boxes.
B) I haven't called tech support ever. I don't know anyone who has. The closest I've come was filing support incidents on two bugs that I found.
C) I know how to change the colors of my desktop on both X and Windows. It's quite easy.
D) I discovered Un*x and clones before I discovered Windows (indeed, before there was such a thing as Windows).
"Religion - 1. n. The leading cause of war, death and complete idiocy in all of recorded history."
Yup... especially when things are taken in to be religion when they are tools. I've yet to hear anyone get as up in the air about a 9mm boxed end Craftsman vs. Snap-On wrench.
...and many have basically promoted their OS to become their religion...
Paraphrasing an old saying: There no more fanatical of a follower than one that was converted to your side.
...and throw lots of tricks that modern processors use to improve speed out the window. Many are already mentioned in replies to this. In effect, you will lose more performance than you will gain.
You also potentially throw away deterministic behavior, which can be an especially bad thing in certain application realms.
...or PDP-8 =)
IIRC... The i386SX had a 16-bit external data bus. The Motorola 68000 had a 16-bit external data bus as well (and 32-bit registers). The 68008 was a 68000 with an 8-bit external data bus. IIRC, the HP48 family of processors were 64-bit internally but 4-bit external data bus (to save power and space).
Old sayings about bandwidth:
- Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magnetic tape.
- What's the fastest way to get 1 TB of data from LA to NYC? FedEx.
We can translate that to modern terms but the idea is the same. Just because bandwidth is high, doesn't mean that the latency is low.
[sorry for the repost, but I had to put paragraph breaks in this before it made me insane]
Not only this... but if support for your OS solution dries up, and you are a small business which can't support hiring a programmer, you are out in the cold just as bad as before. The people who originally wrote the OS solution that you are using (and have invested lots of time/effort into integrating into your business) may have gotten disinterested with the code and gone off to do other things. Meanwhile, no one else really cares about the code either. THIS is one of the biggest fears of OSS and it CAN happen because all of the coding and fixes were done because someone cared about it. When they get bored/tired of it, they aren't contractually (or any otherwise way) obligued to support it. This leads to...
Looking for someone to support the OSS that you are now completely dependent upon. You first start searching for a programmer(s) to do the work for you. You will be lucky to be able to hire a programmer who already knows the source. That's the best solution, of course. HOPEFULLY you can hire someone you trust who can/will work remotely to solve your problems, but this isn't always guaranteed. If you can find such a programmer, you are gtg still. However....
You may not be able to find/hire a programmer with the required knowledge so now you must hire a programmer who will spend a month to learn the stuff, then for the next amount of time to actually fix the problem or add the new functionality. Contractors go for $90/hour (common price around here for keyboard jockeys). 1 month * 4 weeks/month * 40 hours/week = $14,400 BEFORE you get anything done to actually solve your problem. If you pay to train someone like that, you'll probably want/need to put them on retainer (probably cheapest way) or outright hire them. Now you are talking $100,000/year to support your OS software (this $100,000 is for the company, which includes benefits like insurance, tax contribution, etc... you cost your company a lot more than that number that is your salary). Now... you are into this "free" OSS solution at the rate of $90/hour (minimum 2 weeks cost per incident which is $7200) or $100,000/year. Some savings...
This is a fact of OSS that people very quickly try to sweep under the carpet:
Yes:
- you have the source
- you can do what you want (bugs/features)
what they leave out is what this MAY cost you when things aren't the rosey situation of there will always be some programmer(s) who are still interested in supporting your OSS solution. Your support relies on the whim (interest) of the programmers who originally wrote the code and the interest of any other programmers outside of that group who are interested in the code. If you can't find either one of those, your costs can skyrocket along with your risk. THIS is the thing that makes budget planning a pain and makes people hesitant about using OSS. As long as you use OSS that is exciting, fun, and interesting, you have low risk. As soon as you move into a niche type area, your risk goes up. Risk management is a large part of running a business or a business group.
Not only this... but if support for your OS solution dries up, and you are a small business which can't support hiring a programmer, you are out in the cold just as bad as before. The people who originally wrote the OS solution that you are using (and have invested lots of time/effort into integrating into your business) may have gotten disinterested with the code and gone off to do other things. Meanwhile, no one else really cares about the code either. THIS is one of the biggest fears of OSS and it CAN happen because all of the coding and fixes were done because someone cared about it. When they get bored/tired of it, they aren't contractually (or any otherwise way) obligued to support it. This leads to... Looking for someone to support the OSS that you are now completely dependent upon. You first start searching for a programmer(s) to do the work for you. You will be lucky to be able to hire a programmer who already knows the source. That's the best solution, of course. HOPEFULLY you can hire someone you trust who can/will work remotely to solve your problems, but this isn't always guaranteed. If you can find such a programmer, you are gtg still. However.... You may not be able to find/hire a programmer with the required knowledge so now you must hire a programmer who will spend a month to learn the stuff, then for the next amount of time to actually fix the problem or add the new functionality. Contractors go for $90/hour (common price around here for keyboard jockeys). 1 month * 4 weeks/month * 40 hours/week = $14,400 BEFORE you get anything done to actually solve your problem. If you pay to train someone like that, you'll probably want/need to put them on retainer (probably cheapest way) or outright hire them. Now you are talking $100,000/year to support your OS software (this $100,000 is for the company, which includes benefits like insurance, tax contribution, etc... you cost your company a lot more than that number that is your salary). Now... you are into this "free" OSS solution at the rate of $90/hour (minimum 2 weeks cost per incident which is $7200) or $100,000/year. Some savings... This is a fact of OSS that people very quickly try to sweep under the carpet: Yes: - you have the source - you can do what you want (bugs/features) what they leave out is what this MAY cost you when things aren't the rosey situation of there will always be some programmer(s) who are still interested in supporting your OSS solution. Your support relies on the whim (interest) of the programmers who originally wrote the code and the interest of any other programmers outside of that group who are interested in the code. If you can't find either one of those, your costs can skyrocket along with your risk. THIS is the thing that makes budget planning a pain and makes people hesitant about using OSS. As long as you use OSS that is exciting, fun, and interesting, you have low risk. As soon as you move into a niche type area, your risk goes up. Risk management is a large part of running a business or a business group.
I think your points are out of order. #2 is probably much more important than #1, imo.
Device drivers and operating systems in the past have typically been some of the most hacked up, ugly, unmaintainable, spaghetti code ever seen. Don't confuse device drivers and OS code with application software. The two are not even close to being the same.
Also, don't base your whole outlook on life (and coding) by the actions/example of one human. The only thing that Linus did that was truly remarkable was to give his OS source away free and encourage anyone in the world to dork with it. There have been *many* operating systems written, some (believe it or not) better, faster, and/or more stable than Linux.
I wish you would have signed this so I would know to never hire you.
Something that you are most likely too young and inexperienced to understand yet is that you do not write code for yourself to maintain. A coder typically writes code and others will maintain it (because you left for another job, got promoted, the project was handed off to a maintenance crew, you got fired for your crappy work, or whatever). THEY have to make sense of your code to fix/maintain it.
If your code is cryptic and/or undocumented, it will cost your company/team lots of time (and time is money) and frustration to debug and/or modify it. Even if you are still in the group, someone else may need to go into the code that you wrote (notice that I did not say "your code" as it is not your code if you are working for a company or contributing to an open software project) to do something. If you routinely contribute such crap to open source projects, you will quickly be denied access to any further projects.
I wasn't trolling. I'm trying to understand why people feel they don't have a choice. The way I see it is that as long as there is a way to program a computer, that you will have a choice of what to run on your computer.
The Palladium stuff is worrisome
- if after its release no computer in the world will ever be made without that embedded in it
AND
- if all software released after bullet #1 must pass the checking before it runs.
If those processors will continue to run code that does not have to pass those checks, you can still run whatever you want on them. I realize that the arguments are that 'this is the tip of the iceberg' and that 'the next step is to require that all software pass the Palladium checks'. This means that you have to have Palladium compilers which may be written only for certain OSs. For this to work, all other forms of processors will have to go away or also contain this functionality - that means the PowerPCs, the StrongARMs, the SPARCs, etc all have to disappear (or have the eventual Palladium-required functionality) and I just don't see that happening.
So.... let Microsoft go off and make an OS where everything has to be Palladium-OK to run on it. As long as there is hardware that doesn't require the Palladium-ized software to make it run, there will be choices in my opinion.
Thanks for answering... but that doesn't explain all the open hostility against Microsoft seen on this board. If you (as in anyone who has done this) have made the choice to switch to Linux, why must you berate me for my choice(s) in what OSs I run on computer hardware that I have purchased? I'm happy that you've found an OS that suits your needs and you can use efficiently. Why won't you leave me alone and let me make my choice for my own reasons?
According to the info I saw on the subject, it's pretty fuzzy about stealing vs whatever. I saw that several people in the project requested not allowing Jobs back on his second visit (with his team of programmers) because they knew that he was coming to take notes. The dissenters were overruled for some reason (I can't remember why exactly) but it seems that the PARC folks were showcasing their tech and they knew that Jobs was going to copy it, even over the objections of a number of PARC folks.
Regardless of whether it was given to Apple or not, the fact remains that even Apple did not come up with the idea (nor Microsoft who copied Apple, nor etc).
Hmmmm... hardware accelerated graphics and mouse... nope... can't say I've seen that one before... nor have I seen multi-cpu computers where any of the processors can handle UI stuff while the others work on user tasks.
Free puppy = free distro of Linux?
.... except an OS and/or computers have nothing to do with the evolution of humans... It is more like a Pavlovian response... you ring a bell, the dog's mouth waters because he associates the bell's noise with food. On Slashdot, any mention of Microsoft invokes immediate flaming. I personally use several OSs and like most of them. Unfortunately, most of the people on this board seem to want to deprive me of my choice to use an OS provided by Microsoft (and pretty much anything else that isn't Linux). This is the major issue I have with most /. participants... it's not enough for them to evangelise Linux... they seem to want to deny me of my choice to chose something other than Linux as well.
heh... todays GUIs are all ripoffs of other GUIs (back down the line to the original GUI at Xerox PARC that Apple stole) until one comes up with something other than the generic windowed looking GUI (like a 3D GUI or something).
... but you aren't/weren't embarrassed enough to not use it =)
Yup. Most of the people who read this board weren't around in the early 80s. It was a glorious time for computer nerds but it was horrid for anyone who actually wanted to use computers for small business. There were cases where if you wanted to use Application1 (which only ran on ComputerBrandX) AND Application2 (which only ran on ComputerBrandY) you had to either do without or buy multiple sets of hardware in addition to multiple sets of software. OR, you could force yourself to use whatever was available for one hardware platform, even if it meant using some *really* crappy software.
Another thing people fail to remember is that Microsoft was nowhere near a Monopoly back then (actually, they didn't really have anything at all). For some reason, people started using Microsoft products before Microsoft was a monopoly and could force their software on people.
I wonder how many people remember when graphics cards came out, you had software that worked in CrapGA OR it would work with VideoCard001 from CompanyY. (It wasn't that long ago when video games were developed for Glide/VGA - if you didn't have a 3dfx card, you had to live with slow/ugly graphics) Due to some forms of video card driver standardization, those things don't matter anymore when you go buy a game.
To some degree, people got tired of the incompatibilities and started going with 'standard' software and at some point, the computer became a common (if not required) tool (yup... tool, not religion) in the officeplace.
All in all, there is 'having fun' which was even bigger in the early 80s than today (there were some *cool* machines back then and selection/diversity was far, far wider than today). But back then, only hobbiests/enthusiasts and businesses who could afford machines really had computers. Today, large numbers of people have these tools (yup, not hobbies, not religions) to have fun and do work. To most people, they could care less what hardware/software is running on their machine as long as it interoperates with the majority of other people out there who also have computers. Heck, most people couldn't tell you what chipset they have in their machine or how many PCI slots either -- they simply don't care. It's a tool. As long as it works with everybody else's tool they are happy. If it doesn't work with everyone else's tool, then they are not happy.
Their != They're
If you were truly dedicated to your cause, you wouldn't run ANY Microsoft software at all... not even for your game. You ask people to abandon Microsoft software and yet, you have not done so yourself so why should they? Since you DO run Microsoft software (after an essay about why you shouldn't use it and such), you are basically a hypocrit and your essay has no credibility.
I find computing extremely fun. I use several OSs, languages, and products and almost every single day I write code, play games, find interesting things on the 'net, and keep in contact with friends. I still see (after almost 20 years of programming now - started when I was around 14) a world full of possibility and wonder in computers.
No... 384 bit!!111! (4 cpus x 3 x 32-bit paths)
And as I said, it wasn't meant to be complete or even compilable... I'm guessing pseudocode is too advanced of a topic /shrug. Make whatever corrections you want and translate it into whatever language you like if that will get the sand out of your clam.
Well... for SETI, so far 100% of the WU have been "nothing interesting here" I would imagine (I haven't seen anything on CNN about big space ships or little green men). So... how do you know if the WU is "nothing interesting here" because there really is nothing interesting there or because it was faked?
It isn't an easy problem. If you digitally sign each WU, then you can tell if more than one machine is messing with it (by results coming back for the same signature from multiple machines) but this still doesn't protect against a machine simply returning "nothing interesting here" rather than actually computing for a while and determining the same thing. The crux of this problem is "how do you determine that the client really did any work at all, much less the 'right' work on this WU". You can't even count the number of clock cycles spent in computation because that count can be faked (just simply return some reasonable number). You'd have to have some serious smarts in a program to accurately estimate the number of iterations or clock cycles (very bad measure) that will be spent on a WU to make those types of checks.