by a computer they currently being set up at Lawrence Livermore National Lab:
360 teraflops
The amazing thing about it is that it's built at a fraction of the cost/space/size as the Earth simulatior. If I remember correctly, I think they already have some of the systems in place for 36 teraflops. It's the same Blue Gene/L technology from IBM, just a larger scale.
I've owned a Sony Viao and I can't say they are of any better quality then Dell, Gateway, or Toshiba. The right hinge of my unit simply broke off from normal use (I didn't drop it or anything). Since it was well out of warranty, the cost to repair it would be about $300 so I decided to purchase a new one from Dell.
The one thing Apple has going for it is their software and operating system. Sure they may (just may) have slower hardware, but their software is generally much, much easier to use.
PC Manufactures, in contrast, seem to develop their own inhouse utilities and programs like media players, custom system utilities, which only seem to be clunky and thrown together.
Don't even bother with OS upgrades on laptops. Manufactures usually don't support new OS's very well so you are better off either leaving the current OS on it, or buying a new laptop.
I'm talking about home versions of Windows though:
Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, etc... It wasn't until Windows XP Home that they had anything resembling file permissions, and even then it's a sad implementation.
Not to mention, Windows ACL are more fined grained than what most Linux distributions offer. I'll agree with you there. Also much easier to use than chmod.
Are we talking about installing this Google Desktop Search software on Windows XP Home edition or Windows XP Pro? There is a huge difference between how these two operating systems handle user right assignments. Windows XP Home has a very stripped down version of the system whereby you can't easily change user permissions of individual folders. My guess is that most people will set up user accounts on the home version with "Administrator" rights as many programs simply don't work correctly in XP as a "User".
Because XP Pro is typically used in office environments, if you set up a user account and you log in, you will NOT be able to see the other users folders unless an Admin sets those permissions.
Of course, all this seems silly as linux has had proper file permission settings forever whereas Windows has just recently added that feature.
My guess is that if you attempted to install this peice of software without Administrator rights, it wouldn't have that capability. So no, I don't think thre is a flaw in the OS. If you install a peice of software as root/Admin then it automatically means it has access to all data on the drive. So, you shouldn't worry about someone else accessing your files unless they have Admin rights to your machine.
Actually, the performance percentages are much different. Although the 166 is probably close to 25% faster than the 133, the 3.8GHz P4 is not likely to be 25%. Probably closer to 2%-5% faster. Why's this? Because the bottleneck is the bus speed. All those clock cycles in the CPU go to waste when you are running at a very high multiple of the bus speed, whereas back when we had Pentium's that was much less of an issue.
Social Security may not provide the best investment return you're hoping for, but it has allowed millions of Americans the ability to retire with some sense of stability.
Social security is not an "investment" it's a pyramid scheme. Or if you want to be less harsh, you could think of it as a pension fund with 0% return, where distributions are outpacing funding. Why not give people the freedom to invest money how they choose is tax deductable funds? Heck, even government backed savings bond would be a better investment than social security. Just imagine all the elimination of overhead?
no matter what happens to my personal investments, I'll still have a nice income waiting for me when I retire.
Oh really? Are you so certain that social security will still be around when you retire? They continue raising the minimum retirement age. For me, I'm looking at 45+ years into the future! There is zero guarantee that anything even remotely resembling social security will exist by the year 2050.
I'd rather invest the money myself thank you. I'm responsibly enough that I understand risk and proper investment allocation. Social security (for retirement, and for people who make a certain $$ a year) is nothing but a safety net for people who are financially irresponsible.
If this discourages people from buying those silly comcorders that burn directly to mini DVD+RW, I think it's a good thing. Why do I dislike those? Because you lose a great deal of quality in order to fit it on the mini DVD+RW, whereas mini DV tapes are much better. Sure I guess you could say it is more convienient to record directly to DVDRW, but then how are you going to make copies for your friends without a computer? You would have been better off with mini DV.
Although I don't see a 30% cpu usage, I do notice that Gaim is currently consuming 19MB of memory. I'm almost certain that's due to some memory leak because it increases over time. That's ludicrous for a program who's purpose is to send TEXT messages.
I have almost considered helping them instead of complaining, but I have no idea where to get started on an open source project.
I'll still continue to use Gaim until another GPL/LGPL multiple IM client comes along.
Still, this 'feature' on google indicates several bugs in Mozilla:
The background image is not properly displayed under View -> Page info -> Media
You are unable to print the background that are in CSS tags.
Images/background images that are overlapped are difficult to select with a right click. Perhaps if you right click on overlapped images, a submenu should appear allowing you to choose which image you want to perform the right click action on.
My guess is that these bugs will eventually be fixed if enough people recognize it.
However, in Mozilla when you go to View->Page Info it doesn't let you see or save the background image. I'm guessing this is somehow a bug, as this should properly show all of the elements on the webpage, regardless of how they were loaded.
This effects the hobyist in no way. For one, about 95% (or more?) of all MCU are now surface mount components, meaning they are insanely difficult to solder yourself.
You are better off to buy a board that already has the MCU, some I/O terminals, display, etc. already attached. You'll probably pay about $50 or so for such a kit. The fact that the MCU is only a $3 component is pretty irrelevant unless you are buying these things in mass quantities.
For myself, I'm looking for a company that build a custom PCB AND do the necessary soldering of the surface mount components. I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred $$$ for a project I have in mind. Then I can spend my time writing the microcode for it, as it's not worth my time soldering microscopic components.
"Anyone who's still locked into AOL and hasn't left yet must obviously be very trusting of their brand."
And this is just so sad. I even know someone who has DSL who STILL has AOL to go with it. This just completely confuses me as I don't see what value, other than keeping the same e-mail address this gives.
I also have a few friends who are completely clueless about computers who use AOL dialup. I figure it's not worth my time to explain that for $8/month more they could get DSL without AOL as they would probably not understand the difference.
I know people are going to be annoyed at me saying this, but I just find that it isn't necessary for a good game to include both multiplayer and single player support. Given the amount of work it takes to release a good video game these days, I believe it's more important for game developers to now focus on either MP or SP play.
Take Doom 3 for example. It's a pretty good Single player game, but the multiplayer mode was really an afterthought. I'm really not going to consider playing multiplayer Doom 3 for a long period of time when there are so many other games out there that excel in that area. Likewise, Battlefield 1942 is a terrible single player game; no one expects it to be a good single player game. However, it's an excellent multiplayer game, because that's what the original design was focused on.
I believe the days of an awsome multiplayer and single player experience in one game package are over. It doesn't bother me at all.
The only weakness I see in today's games is lack of good co-op single player support.
If you are seeing that much of a difference you might want to learn how to adjust you LCD. So far, every single time I have seen an LCD look bad it has either been poorly auto-adjusted or is running at the wrong resolution.
I auto adjusted it using the test pattern in the NVIDIA control panel. The problem is probably just this particular model of LCD which is a bit cheap. I also have it hooked up to a KVM switch, so switiching between two VGA connections automatically made one at least one of the monitors blurry. I solved this by connecting one computer to VGA and the other to DVI.
I still don't like the idea of Digital->Analog->Digital. It's just a hack, a poor design meant to appease consumers that don't care. I bet you 80% of people with LCD monitors hook them up to VGA DESPITE the fact that they probably have both a DVI capable monitor and video card. Monitor manufactures don't make life any easier by only including a VGA cable.
In general, I find that online renting of movies still lacking. They charge you more per download than if you were to go to a store to rent it. Second the view period is usually only 24 hours. And if these two factors are not enough to turn you away from a pay to rent service, the video quality is severly lacking compared to the DVD version (I have a 3mbps internet connection, a 2GB version of a movie shouldn't be a problem).
There are also the questions of compatibility. Do you need special software for Windows? Will it play on a Mac, Linux? Probably not. I think this sums of the situation quite nicely:
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.
They are probably using some weird activeX components to launch a movie playing applicaiton.
Why else would people turn certain WiFi network cards into WAPs (perhaps on a Linux server)?
Because! It's fun editing configuration files, hunting for compatible drivers, and testing it over and over until you get the silly thing to work.
I once spent hours trying to setup a firewire on a linux box, but in retrospect, I probably would have save a great deal of agony just purchasing a hardware router/firewall.
Slashdot Mirror
The amazing thing about it is that it's built at a fraction of the cost/space/size as the Earth simulatior. If I remember correctly, I think they already have some of the systems in place for 36 teraflops. It's the same Blue Gene/L technology from IBM, just a larger scale.
Replace two-three weeks with "hours":
http://evan.quuxuum.org/bgnw.html
consumers are quietly ignoring the opening of Sony's new stores...
I've owned a Sony Viao and I can't say they are of any better quality then Dell, Gateway, or Toshiba. The right hinge of my unit simply broke off from normal use (I didn't drop it or anything). Since it was well out of warranty, the cost to repair it would be about $300 so I decided to purchase a new one from Dell.
The one thing Apple has going for it is their software and operating system. Sure they may (just may) have slower hardware, but their software is generally much, much easier to use.
PC Manufactures, in contrast, seem to develop their own inhouse utilities and programs like media players, custom system utilities, which only seem to be clunky and thrown together.
Don't even bother with OS upgrades on laptops. Manufactures usually don't support new OS's very well so you are better off either leaving the current OS on it, or buying a new laptop.
this? With Bemused, you could control your jukebox from anywhere in the house with your cellphone and view the placelist on your phone.
I'm talking about home versions of Windows though:
Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, etc...
It wasn't until Windows XP Home that they had anything resembling file permissions, and even then it's a sad implementation.
Not to mention, Windows ACL are more fined grained than what most Linux distributions offer.
I'll agree with you there. Also much easier to use than chmod.
Are we talking about installing this Google Desktop Search software on Windows XP Home edition or Windows XP Pro? There is a huge difference between how these two operating systems handle user right assignments. Windows XP Home has a very stripped down version of the system whereby you can't easily change user permissions of individual folders. My guess is that most people will set up user accounts on the home version with "Administrator" rights as many programs simply don't work correctly in XP as a "User".
Because XP Pro is typically used in office environments, if you set up a user account and you log in, you will NOT be able to see the other users folders unless an Admin sets those permissions.
Of course, all this seems silly as linux has had proper file permission settings forever whereas Windows has just recently added that feature.
My guess is that if you attempted to install this peice of software without Administrator rights, it wouldn't have that capability. So no, I don't think thre is a flaw in the OS. If you install a peice of software as root/Admin then it automatically means it has access to all data on the drive. So, you shouldn't worry about someone else accessing your files unless they have Admin rights to your machine.
Actually, the performance percentages are much different. Although the 166 is probably close to 25% faster than the 133, the 3.8GHz P4 is not likely to be 25%. Probably closer to 2%-5% faster. Why's this? Because the bottleneck is the bus speed. All those clock cycles in the CPU go to waste when you are running at a very high multiple of the bus speed, whereas back when we had Pentium's that was much less of an issue.
Social Security may not provide the best investment return you're hoping for, but it has allowed millions of Americans the ability to retire with some sense of stability.
Social security is not an "investment" it's a pyramid scheme. Or if you want to be less harsh, you could think of it as a pension fund with 0% return, where distributions are outpacing funding. Why not give people the freedom to invest money how they choose is tax deductable funds? Heck, even government backed savings bond would be a better investment than social security. Just imagine all the elimination of overhead?
no matter what happens to my personal investments, I'll still have a nice income waiting for me when I retire.
Oh really? Are you so certain that social security will still be around when you retire? They continue raising the minimum retirement age. For me, I'm looking at 45+ years into the future! There is zero guarantee that anything even remotely resembling social security will exist by the year 2050.
I'd rather invest the money myself thank you. I'm responsibly enough that I understand risk and proper investment allocation. Social security (for retirement, and for people who make a certain $$ a year) is nothing but a safety net for people who are financially irresponsible.
Noooooooooooo! You used the word "too" instead of "to"! More bad grammar ensues!
and a total of 0.0001% of the general population knows how to do this?
If this discourages people from buying those silly comcorders that burn directly to mini DVD+RW, I think it's a good thing. Why do I dislike those? Because you lose a great deal of quality in order to fit it on the mini DVD+RW, whereas mini DV tapes are much better. Sure I guess you could say it is more convienient to record directly to DVDRW, but then how are you going to make copies for your friends without a computer? You would have been better off with mini DV.
Although I don't see a 30% cpu usage, I do notice that Gaim is currently consuming 19MB of memory. I'm almost certain that's due to some memory leak because it increases over time. That's ludicrous for a program who's purpose is to send TEXT messages.
I have almost considered helping them instead of complaining, but I have no idea where to get started on an open source project.
I'll still continue to use Gaim until another GPL/LGPL multiple IM client comes along.
Why would I trust a fictional blog meant to increase sales of Halo 2? This is even worse than regular advertising.
I think this might be a much easier solution.
Works great with my cellphone, I can browse the play list on my cellphone, change tracks, adjust volume, all wirelessly.
The background image is not properly displayed under View -> Page info -> Media
You are unable to print the background that are in CSS tags.
Images/background images that are overlapped are difficult to select with a right click. Perhaps if you right click on overlapped images, a submenu should appear allowing you to choose which image you want to perform the right click action on.
My guess is that these bugs will eventually be fixed if enough people recognize it.
yep, this works very well.
However, in Mozilla when you go to View->Page Info it doesn't let you see or save the background image. I'm guessing this is somehow a bug, as this should properly show all of the elements on the webpage, regardless of how they were loaded.
This effects the hobyist in no way. For one, about 95% (or more?) of all MCU are now surface mount components, meaning they are insanely difficult to solder yourself.
You are better off to buy a board that already has the MCU, some I/O terminals, display, etc. already attached. You'll probably pay about $50 or so for such a kit. The fact that the MCU is only a $3 component is pretty irrelevant unless you are buying these things in mass quantities.
For myself, I'm looking for a company that build a custom PCB AND do the necessary soldering of the surface mount components. I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred $$$ for a project I have in mind. Then I can spend my time writing the microcode for it, as it's not worth my time soldering microscopic components.
"Anyone who's still locked into AOL and hasn't left yet must obviously be very trusting of their brand."
And this is just so sad. I even know someone who has DSL who STILL has AOL to go with it. This just completely confuses me as I don't see what value, other than keeping the same e-mail address this gives.
I also have a few friends who are completely clueless about computers who use AOL dialup. I figure it's not worth my time to explain that for $8/month more they could get DSL without AOL as they would probably not understand the difference.
I know people are going to be annoyed at me saying this, but I just find that it isn't necessary for a good game to include both multiplayer and single player support. Given the amount of work it takes to release a good video game these days, I believe it's more important for game developers to now focus on either MP or SP play.
Take Doom 3 for example. It's a pretty good Single player game, but the multiplayer mode was really an afterthought. I'm really not going to consider playing multiplayer Doom 3 for a long period of time when there are so many other games out there that excel in that area. Likewise, Battlefield 1942 is a terrible single player game; no one expects it to be a good single player game. However, it's an excellent multiplayer game, because that's what the original design was focused on.
I believe the days of an awsome multiplayer and single player experience in one game package are over. It doesn't bother me at all.
The only weakness I see in today's games is lack of good co-op single player support.
ack! It's another case of me thinking one word, and typing another. I should really stay away from slashdot at 1:00am in the morning. :P
If you are seeing that much of a difference you might want to learn how to adjust you LCD. So far, every single time I have seen an LCD look bad it has either been poorly auto-adjusted or is running at the wrong resolution.
I auto adjusted it using the test pattern in the NVIDIA control panel. The problem is probably just this particular model of LCD which is a bit cheap. I also have it hooked up to a KVM switch, so switiching between two VGA connections automatically made one at least one of the monitors blurry. I solved this by connecting one computer to VGA and the other to DVI.
I still don't like the idea of Digital->Analog->Digital. It's just a hack, a poor design meant to appease consumers that don't care. I bet you 80% of people with LCD monitors hook them up to VGA DESPITE the fact that they probably have both a DVI capable monitor and video card. Monitor manufactures don't make life any easier by only including a VGA cable.
In general, I find that online renting of movies still lacking. They charge you more per download than if you were to go to a store to rent it. Second the view period is usually only 24 hours. And if these two factors are not enough to turn you away from a pay to rent service, the video quality is severly lacking compared to the DVD version (I have a 3mbps internet connection, a 2GB version of a movie shouldn't be a problem).
There are also the questions of compatibility. Do you need special software for Windows? Will it play on a Mac, Linux? Probably not. I think this sums of the situation quite nicely:
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, which supports certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. Click here to get the latest version of Internet Explorer.
They are probably using some weird activeX components to launch a movie playing applicaiton.
Why else would people turn certain WiFi network cards into WAPs (perhaps on a Linux server)?
Because! It's fun editing configuration files, hunting for compatible drivers, and testing it over and over until you get the silly thing to work.
I once spent hours trying to setup a firewire on a linux box, but in retrospect, I probably would have save a great deal of agony just purchasing a hardware router/firewall.