while you are probably right that for most cases mosix will do just fine (I used it for a ~50 PC cluster at nights for DSP calcs), these machines are for super-computer calculations that require a lot of memory. If you even could run a 2GB process on mosix, it would be slowed down by the network, and these beasts can run 100GB processes at a 2GB/s interconnect !
I think O'Reilly is right, but it points to a very disturbing trend, especially if you are someone who makes a living writing code.
That was my first thought as well - will someone like me who wants to be the 'Chef' will be reduced to a person selling rice by the ton ?
However, I realized that the 'coders' workplace will be one of two:
1. Traditional software companies: until ASPs really catch on, although people will use more open-source software (like the google/yahoo/amazon exmples), the software that will sell more will still be taht traditional software making companies (like Microsoft). The fact that everybody is using air, doesn't mean that the the guys making the air ballons for divers doesn't exist - in fact, you could say they own 99% of the air market.
But, in case that ASPs do catch on -
2. The ASP companies will need us coders, and for us it doesn't really matter if we are coding for Windows or for a browser. And as for the creating-products-from-existing-components argument - we do it all the time...
Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip
The only people that would say that it's amazing are Slashdot users. Most of the people who buy PCs (especially those who buy macs) are not interested in this - all they want is to run Office/iLife/Internet software and they don't care what it is. In fact, I believe that a major part of Apple's success in the last few years is the fact that people don't need to run a special app they bought at the office, but rather create/read documents and surf the web - which can be done on all platforms.
While Apple might use AMD chips (for CPUs, or maybe for something else?) is not farfetched, but it WON'T be to emulate...
The current basic and EXTREMELY old computer architecture (which is CPU, memory, storage device, and IO devices) already solves this !
You store everything you need on the STORAGE DEVICE, and access stuff by copying it to MEMORY. If you what you need to access is big (like a database) - add more memory.
Actually, the only difference between MEMORY and STORAGE DEVICE is speed. If they were the same speed, we wouldn't have needed one of them. Shoving the memory away from the processor is like saying 'let's put a hard drive instead of memory - that way we'll have hundreds of GBs of memory !'.
To be fair, I'll add that it might help on 2 occasions:
1. Systems which are memory-limited - like my PC which is limited to 4GB. But I'm guessing that computer manufacturers will continue to expand this as needed (both for PCs and servers).
2. Loading-up such a system - reading those GBs from an HDD to the memory will take longer than loading it from memory.
But other than that, I think that stuffing the memory in the storage device and saying that you have a fast storage device might be true, but it's plain stupid !
In other news, Slashdot is reporting that the 'yuvtob' corporation also wishes to buy Universal Music. Spokesperson for yuvtob said: "at this point the company is only looking at the tires, and from a very long distance".
1. It sounds right to me that competition is the best driver for non-free software, while uniting effort is a good driver for free software.
2. Most developers might not see this, but companies and users often see open-source and free software as a single company... By this I mean two things: a) Once you've got burned, you are reluctant to try again; b) because of the huge selection you elect not to start looking for such a software - imagine if the company Microsoft had tens/hundreds of the same type of software, like company Free has...
3. Besides this, developers should remember that they are not developing for themseleves - if they were, they could do it via email or their own website, and not announce on Freshmeat.
There was - Space: Above and Beyond, which was an excellent show that was cancelled after one season. It was created by the Glen Morgan and James Wong (who wrote the good episodes on X-Files). The cool things about the show were:
1. Nobody saw the aliens
2. It started out as a bunch of newbie Marines that eventually turned out to be one of th efinest units
3. It had an excellent arc, that unfortunately didn't continue the amazing season ending.
4. It mostly told WWI and WWII stories and not 'we have a new technology' stories
...is because this seems like a pretty good test case: a relaively small amount of users, not too many hackers (or even power-users), and it's a very controlled environment -hardware/os/software, even codecs.
If I wanted to try something this risky - Apple would be my first choice.
acutally, where i worked it said in the contract that becuase 'the company could not determine the number of hours i was working each month' i am to be paid X as base salary plus Y for overtime each month, and that I cannot ask for more...
Didn't see anyone mention this (probably cause it's not that close to the TabletPC), but there's this product from Logitech called IO Personal Digital Pen which is 200$, and does something similar yet different. While it is not a computer - meaning you can't access information, or run applications - it is an input device for handwritten data.
The basic idea is that you write using a special pen that has a optical camera near it's tip, on special paper that has dots on it to tell it where it is. The pen records it's movements to memory, and later you can dump it on your computer. (I think it was also featured in a Wired edition about a year back).
Once again, while it doesn't replace a computer, and there is the drawback of carrying/buying special paper, but it seems an interesting product; While I am not a computer-on-the-go user, I believe that it is extremely useful to digitize-save-archive written data (notes, diagrams, equations) - and not just for students (which seems to be/. main choice for tablets). The only analogy I could think of is my sister's use of her digital camera: while at first I was looking at the resolution of the camera and my printer and calculating costs of each print, I later found out that she takes about a 100 pics per-month, and saves them on the disk and share over the internet, thereby changing my original thinking of a digital camera as a camera which you can develop your prints with...
"I may be a cold-blooded jelly-donut, but my timing is impeccable." -Oz
Slashdot Mirror
if you need to know in which '2-mile raidus' your keys are, you should invest in medication.
while you are probably right that for most cases mosix will do just fine (I used it for a ~50 PC cluster at nights for DSP calcs), these machines are for super-computer calculations that require a lot of memory. If you even could run a 2GB process on mosix, it would be slowed down by the network, and these beasts can run 100GB processes at a 2GB/s interconnect !
The anti-piracy clip...
The first thing I thought about after reading those words was 'then it was anti-piracy clips, now it's anti-clippy pirates'
I think O'Reilly is right, but it points to a very disturbing trend, especially if you are someone who makes a living writing code.
That was my first thought as well - will someone like me who wants to be the 'Chef' will be reduced to a person selling rice by the ton ?
However, I realized that the 'coders' workplace will be one of two:
1. Traditional software companies: until ASPs really catch on, although people will use more open-source software (like the google/yahoo/amazon exmples), the software that will sell more will still be taht traditional software making companies (like Microsoft). The fact that everybody is using air, doesn't mean that the the guys making the air ballons for divers doesn't exist - in fact, you could say they own 99% of the air market.
But, in case that ASPs do catch on -
2. The ASP companies will need us coders, and for us it doesn't really matter if we are coding for Windows or for a browser. And as for the creating-products-from-existing-components argument - we do it all the time...
Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip
The only people that would say that it's amazing are Slashdot users. Most of the people who buy PCs (especially those who buy macs) are not interested in this - all they want is to run Office/iLife/Internet software and they don't care what it is. In fact, I believe that a major part of Apple's success in the last few years is the fact that people don't need to run a special app they bought at the office, but rather create/read documents and surf the web - which can be done on all platforms.
While Apple might use AMD chips (for CPUs, or maybe for something else?) is not farfetched, but it WON'T be to emulate...
The current basic and EXTREMELY old computer architecture (which is CPU, memory, storage device, and IO devices) already solves this !
You store everything you need on the STORAGE DEVICE, and access stuff by copying it to MEMORY. If you what you need to access is big (like a database) - add more memory.
Actually, the only difference between MEMORY and STORAGE DEVICE is speed. If they were the same speed, we wouldn't have needed one of them. Shoving the memory away from the processor is like saying 'let's put a hard drive instead of memory - that way we'll have hundreds of GBs of memory !'.
To be fair, I'll add that it might help on 2 occasions:
1. Systems which are memory-limited - like my PC which is limited to 4GB. But I'm guessing that computer manufacturers will continue to expand this as needed (both for PCs and servers).
2. Loading-up such a system - reading those GBs from an HDD to the memory will take longer than loading it from memory.
But other than that, I think that stuffing the memory in the storage device and saying that you have a fast storage device might be true, but it's plain stupid !
In other news, Slashdot is reporting that the 'yuvtob' corporation also wishes to buy Universal Music. Spokesperson for yuvtob said: "at this point the company is only looking at the tires, and from a very long distance".
This McMaster University sounds like a cheap-deep-fried-fast degree-granting institution.
"Would you like a McMaster or a McBSc with that ?
Don't read this sig
"ribs, mix, burn" (from the goolge translation) - isn't that Apple's new slogan for it's chain of restaurants ?
1. It sounds right to me that competition is the best driver for non-free software, while uniting effort is a good driver for free software.
2. Most developers might not see this, but companies and users often see open-source and free software as a single company... By this I mean two things: a) Once you've got burned, you are reluctant to try again; b) because of the huge selection you elect not to start looking for such a software - imagine if the company Microsoft had tens/hundreds of the same type of software, like company Free has...
3. Besides this, developers should remember that they are not developing for themseleves - if they were, they could do it via email or their own website, and not announce on Freshmeat.
execSubmitLoop(-1, "Troll")
There was - Space: Above and Beyond, which was an excellent show that was cancelled after one season. It was created by the Glen Morgan and James Wong (who wrote the good episodes on X-Files). The cool things about the show were:
1. Nobody saw the aliens
2. It started out as a bunch of newbie Marines that eventually turned out to be one of th efinest units
3. It had an excellent arc, that unfortunately didn't continue the amazing season ending.
4. It mostly told WWI and WWII stories and not 'we have a new technology' stories
...is because this seems like a pretty good test case: a relaively small amount of users, not too many hackers (or even power-users), and it's a very controlled environment -hardware/os/software, even codecs.
If I wanted to try something this risky - Apple would be my first choice.
acutally, where i worked it said in the contract that becuase 'the company could not determine the number of hours i was working each month' i am to be paid X as base salary plus Y for overtime each month, and that I cannot ask for more...
Didn't see anyone mention this (probably cause it's not that close to the TabletPC), but there's this product from Logitech called IO Personal Digital Pen which is 200$, and does something similar yet different. While it is not a computer - meaning you can't access information, or run applications - it is an input device for handwritten data. /. main choice for tablets). The only analogy I could think of is my sister's use of her digital camera: while at first I was looking at the resolution of the camera and my printer and calculating costs of each print, I later found out that she takes about a 100 pics per-month, and saves them on the disk and share over the internet, thereby changing my original thinking of a digital camera as a camera which you can develop your prints with...
The basic idea is that you write using a special pen that has a optical camera near it's tip, on special paper that has dots on it to tell it where it is. The pen records it's movements to memory, and later you can dump it on your computer. (I think it was also featured in a Wired edition about a year back).
Once again, while it doesn't replace a computer, and there is the drawback of carrying/buying special paper, but it seems an interesting product; While I am not a computer-on-the-go user, I believe that it is extremely useful to digitize-save-archive written data (notes, diagrams, equations) - and not just for students (which seems to be
"I may be a cold-blooded jelly-donut, but my timing is impeccable." -Oz