Re:They have built an amazing system using Linux..
on
How does Google do it?
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· Score: 1
Why did I read "tech" as "hardware"? I assume you refer to the people... oh well.
I guess it would be nice for google to work some its technology/people into the community. Maybe someday they will.
Re:They have built an amazing system using Linux..
on
How does Google do it?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
As far as I can tell there is no better way for that hardware to have come "back into the community."
The service is free, and they're really good at what they do. I would say I'd be lost without google on the internet, but really this compliment goes for lots of search engines - I'm really very grateful this sort of service still exists for free (well, with ads.)
Unless you want to talk about cures for diseases through protien folding simulations, I can't think of a better way for this hardware to be used, such that it begets a greater net benefit.
This is why I keep debating whether I should tell everyone I know about it, and hope the company uses the extra revenue for better servers/more bandwidth, or just keep it to myself and hope no one else finds out about it.
Since it mentioned that the OS is keeping "per-process statistics on whether there will be another dependent read 'soon'", I really doubt the drive controller would even be able to do that, much less want to.
Almost as easy as RPM? I'm a portage user and I love it, its way easier to have it figure out my dependencies for me and go get them too from a centralized source, than to have to go out and search for them on rpmfind or whatever.
I remember back when I used redhat, I tried updating RPM via RPM, then it didnt work and left my RPM system pretty much borked. And given my limited knowledge of linux at the time, I was left with nothing to do but reinstall. I have never had a problem with portage however, and I don't think I know of anyone who has, other than the it can be tricky to insert a stub for a program that you don't want the newer version of.
Oh, and I do like the "unmerge" feature as well, I try out a lot of software that I decide I don't like later, and it leaves my system clean and happy.
1. Learn to master music, or if you already know how great.
2. Tell these bands that you can master their cd's for them, and they will sound better than what they've got, and thus will sell more albums.
3. Profit
You are right, can't make everything a recursive object, but many things you can - especially when you are talking about a natural environment.
Lots of plant life can be fractal, in fact tons can, as well as landscapes (though two different clients in a multiplayer game shouldnt be interacting on top of different landscapes because of it.)
But yeah, it will be overall slower than just using objects defined by a set of points, because reading an array describing a set of points is going to be inherently faster than computing a bunch of points recursively.
it's a lot harder to 'stumble across' completely unexpected stuff,br>
And _that_ is why I read slashdot - despite the worthlessness of the front page articles these days, I find the best links and discussion in the comments.
For a second I thought you actually had sex on top of an AS/400. I mean, apart from my being incredibly stupid, thats pretty funny to think about. Those things aren't cheap.
I think it was Xerox-PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, as usual), and the first one was little more than a wooden box with rollers and a button. I could be wrong there, its been a while since I read about it.
Why not joysticks? I remember back in the day on my cousins Mac you could use the joystick as the mouse for movement. Worked ok, but was pretty tricky to get it positioned where you wanted it. Mice just work and do the job well.
Note - I've got a Thinkpad with a little red button on it that does about the same as a joystick, so the idea is workable if you play with the speeds and such. I use it because its convenient, not because its easy/fun to use though.
I find it interesting how people are quick to dismiss TIA et. al. and quick to accept google doing very nearly the same thing.
Now, granted these government programs will go out and get physical records from Libraries/Companies, etc., but they did make the claim that those records are freely available to one who wants to do the work. And as everything moves online due to ease of use, it will be very easy for a search engine to do the same thing. The differences become less. It seems we may be dealing with very thing lines on what is actually "acceptable."
Personally, I don't really like information about myself, personal or not, to be available on the web unless I explicitly put it there. And while I don't like these programs and search engines, I have to admit that they are using information that I at one time or another freely gave out. Bah - I should've never gotten that library card.
Yeah, my prof did say something about doing soft shadows via taking the point the ray hit, and sending out some random rays from that to get an idea of how indirectly illuminated it was, and by what colors, and adjusting the color at that point accordingly. I thought it neat, but never really got around to actually implementing it.
Ok, its in java, because that was the only language I knew at the time (and still the only language I can do graphical stuff in), and that is what our university (NMU) teaches as intro stuff. And it lends itsenf very nicely to graphical work, even if it is god-awful slow. The big pic (~131000 objects) took 45 minutes to render on my laptop.
I might check out that book you mentioned. Not to try and get you to oversimplify your grad work (ok, maybe a little), but what are some of the deficiencies you mentioned with "reverse" raytracing, such as I am doing?
We wrote a raytracer in graphics class. We shot the rays from where the observer was, just one for each pixel (or whatever resolution you wanted). That way you aren't "shooting them all over the place." If the object is shiny when the ray hits it, move the eye to the point where it hit, figure out the angle of reflection (using quite a bit of mathy stuff) and continue from there.
Here is my ratracer written for class, and here is the majority of the source for it. Also, we did a raytracer using some previous code my prof had, and I was able to add antialiasing and using a grid of objects to render, as seen here. Warning, its a 136 k jpg.
Actually, I think it's been my favorite class so far. Lots of applied programming, math, and neat pics to look at afterward.
They're been relying more and more on trojan'd XP machines as well, they'll probably just stick to this method because they can have more machines than they ever wanted, and they can be sure it works (for some time at least.)
It makes me sort of sad. I'm in a unix sysadmin class, and we had a guest speaker in from a major ISP the other day, and to quote him "we've seen our email traffic quadruple over the last year, all spam" "spam is killing the internet."
Doubt if its as bad as all that, but again, the internet would be a heck of a lot better without it.
I tend to agree, though I think overall this will have some pretty good ramifications. It furthers the increase in user-available computing power, cost and size wise I'm sure. I think because of this we'll see "real" advances in user level computing, not like this photon-light based computer stuff or this quantum computer stuff (which may be a hoax for all I know...:-)
Anyway, I'm sure someone once questioned the purpose of "desktop" computers. Who needs those? Besides, we might need a computer just like this to run Office 2007 someday.
I would say peer to peer does have legitimate uses; its more than just "getting around the central authority." For one thing, it allows people to distrubute content (whatever it is) and alleviates the bandwidth costs across the whole population of sharers (and sometimes nonsharers too unfortunatly.) BitTorrent is a perfect example of this.
Ok, its going to get a little offtopic here. I would like to disagree on the premise that the primary functions of guns are for killing people. It may have been the case in the past, and was certainly the reason they were invented, but it is no longer the case. I've shot dozens of guns, thousands of times, and killed... well less than five people anyway.;-)
The point is, both P2P and guns have more than just "theoretical" legitimate uses. I used P2P to get that Star Wars Kid Movie. I shoot trap. I refuse to be treated like lesser member of society for these actions.
A good installer for a vanilla desktop user would take advantage of all the hardware on their system.
I fully agree, though I must say I love it when all my stuff works for the installer, but then when I go to reboot off of my hard drive half of it doesn't work anymore.
The biggest interest I've seen in linux has been in response to someone seeing me run something on linux that they can't get on Windows. Be it Evolution, the gimp, Xaos, a game, or an Xscreensaver, there are some cool apps for linux that are only for linux.
"Hey, where can I get that?"
"Linux only, sorry."
"Huh. Maybe I'll have to check that out sometime."
Slashdot Mirror
Why did I read "tech" as "hardware"? I assume you refer to the people... oh well.
I guess it would be nice for google to work some its technology/people into the community. Maybe someday they will.
As far as I can tell there is no better way for that hardware to have come "back into the community."
The service is free, and they're really good at what they do. I would say I'd be lost without google on the internet, but really this compliment goes for lots of search engines - I'm really very grateful this sort of service still exists for free (well, with ads.)
Unless you want to talk about cures for diseases through protien folding simulations, I can't think of a better way for this hardware to be used, such that it begets a greater net benefit.
Actually, this is sadly true...
This is why I keep debating whether I should tell everyone I know about it, and hope the company uses the extra revenue for better servers/more bandwidth, or just keep it to myself and hope no one else finds out about it.
Since it mentioned that the OS is keeping "per-process statistics on whether there will be another dependent read 'soon'", I really doubt the drive controller would even be able to do that, much less want to.
Almost as easy as RPM? I'm a portage user and I love it, its way easier to have it figure out my dependencies for me and go get them too from a centralized source, than to have to go out and search for them on rpmfind or whatever.
I remember back when I used redhat, I tried updating RPM via RPM, then it didnt work and left my RPM system pretty much borked. And given my limited knowledge of linux at the time, I was left with nothing to do but reinstall. I have never had a problem with portage however, and I don't think I know of anyone who has, other than the it can be tricky to insert a stub for a program that you don't want the newer version of.
Oh, and I do like the "unmerge" feature as well, I try out a lot of software that I decide I don't like later, and it leaves my system clean and happy.
Local band concerts huh?
1. Learn to master music, or if you already know how great.
2. Tell these bands that you can master their cd's for them, and they will sound better than what they've got, and thus will sell more albums.
3. Profit
You are right, can't make everything a recursive object, but many things you can - especially when you are talking about a natural environment.
Lots of plant life can be fractal, in fact tons can, as well as landscapes (though two different clients in a multiplayer game shouldnt be interacting on top of different landscapes because of it.)
But yeah, it will be overall slower than just using objects defined by a set of points, because reading an array describing a set of points is going to be inherently faster than computing a bunch of points recursively.
it's a lot harder to 'stumble across' completely unexpected stuff,br>
And _that_ is why I read slashdot - despite the worthlessness of the front page articles these days, I find the best links and discussion in the comments.
For a second I thought you actually had sex on top of an AS/400. I mean, apart from my being incredibly stupid, thats pretty funny to think about. Those things aren't cheap.
I do the same job at my University, where every student is leased an official IBM thinkpad (tm).
Our current record is 2111. My personal record for viruses is 7 unique (that is counting varients unique.)
I think it was Xerox-PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, as usual), and the first one was little more than a wooden box with rollers and a button. I could be wrong there, its been a while since I read about it.
Why not joysticks? I remember back in the day on my cousins Mac you could use the joystick as the mouse for movement. Worked ok, but was pretty tricky to get it positioned where you wanted it. Mice just work and do the job well.
Note - I've got a Thinkpad with a little red button on it that does about the same as a joystick, so the idea is workable if you play with the speeds and such. I use it because its convenient, not because its easy/fun to use though.
I think I may have been born that dad.
Maybe thats why I haven't got any friends...
I find it interesting how people are quick to dismiss TIA et. al. and quick to accept google doing very nearly the same thing.
Now, granted these government programs will go out and get physical records from Libraries/Companies, etc., but they did make the claim that those records are freely available to one who wants to do the work. And as everything moves online due to ease of use, it will be very easy for a search engine to do the same thing. The differences become less. It seems we may be dealing with very thing lines on what is actually "acceptable."
Personally, I don't really like information about myself, personal or not, to be available on the web unless I explicitly put it there. And while I don't like these programs and search engines, I have to admit that they are using information that I at one time or another freely gave out. Bah - I should've never gotten that library card.
Wow, could you imagine if someone wanted to run a webserver over this thing? If it got slashdotted,that would be truly something to see.
Does it run linux?
What, you think just because a guy writes children's books he can't kick some a**?!?
Seriously though, I googled a bit and couldn't find any links to any of his stuff in digital form, some good links maybe?
Yeah, my prof did say something about doing soft shadows via taking the point the ray hit, and sending out some random rays from that to get an idea of how indirectly illuminated it was, and by what colors, and adjusting the color at that point accordingly. I thought it neat, but never really got around to actually implementing it.
Ok, its in java, because that was the only language I knew at the time (and still the only language I can do graphical stuff in), and that is what our university (NMU) teaches as intro stuff. And it lends itsenf very nicely to graphical work, even if it is god-awful slow. The big pic (~131000 objects) took 45 minutes to render on my laptop.
I might check out that book you mentioned. Not to try and get you to oversimplify your grad work (ok, maybe a little), but what are some of the deficiencies you mentioned with "reverse" raytracing, such as I am doing?
We wrote a raytracer in graphics class. We shot the rays from where the observer was, just one for each pixel (or whatever resolution you wanted). That way you aren't "shooting them all over the place." If the object is shiny when the ray hits it, move the eye to the point where it hit, figure out the angle of reflection (using quite a bit of mathy stuff) and continue from there.
Here is my ratracer written for class, and here is the majority of the source for it. Also, we did a raytracer using some previous code my prof had, and I was able to add antialiasing and using a grid of objects to render, as seen here. Warning, its a 136 k jpg.
Actually, I think it's been my favorite class so far. Lots of applied programming, math, and neat pics to look at afterward.
I can sympathise with the "autopilot" thing. I was _this_ close to clicking on that windows update through an email virus, and I use linux!
They're been relying more and more on trojan'd XP machines as well, they'll probably just stick to this method because they can have more machines than they ever wanted, and they can be sure it works (for some time at least.)
It makes me sort of sad. I'm in a unix sysadmin class, and we had a guest speaker in from a major ISP the other day, and to quote him "we've seen our email traffic quadruple over the last year, all spam" "spam is killing the internet."
Doubt if its as bad as all that, but again, the internet would be a heck of a lot better without it.
Sounds like you wanted "genetic algorithm" there. And while I haven't actually studied them (yet), I bet this would be a good problem for one.
I tend to agree, though I think overall this will have some pretty good ramifications. It furthers the increase in user-available computing power, cost and size wise I'm sure. I think because of this we'll see "real" advances in user level computing, not like this photon-light based computer stuff or this quantum computer stuff (which may be a hoax for all I know... :-)
Anyway, I'm sure someone once questioned the purpose of "desktop" computers. Who needs those? Besides, we might need a computer just like this to run Office 2007 someday.
I would say peer to peer does have legitimate uses; its more than just "getting around the central authority." For one thing, it allows people to distrubute content (whatever it is) and alleviates the bandwidth costs across the whole population of sharers (and sometimes nonsharers too unfortunatly.) BitTorrent is a perfect example of this.
;-)
Ok, its going to get a little offtopic here. I would like to disagree on the premise that the primary functions of guns are for killing people. It may have been the case in the past, and was certainly the reason they were invented, but it is no longer the case. I've shot dozens of guns, thousands of times, and killed... well less than five people anyway.
The point is, both P2P and guns have more than just "theoretical" legitimate uses. I used P2P to get that Star Wars Kid Movie. I shoot trap. I refuse to be treated like lesser member of society for these actions.
A good installer for a vanilla desktop user would take advantage of all the hardware on their system.
I fully agree, though I must say I love it when all my stuff works for the installer, but then when I go to reboot off of my hard drive half of it doesn't work anymore.
The biggest interest I've seen in linux has been in response to someone seeing me run something on linux that they can't get on Windows. Be it Evolution, the gimp, Xaos, a game, or an Xscreensaver, there are some cool apps for linux that are only for linux.
"Hey, where can I get that?" "Linux only, sorry." "Huh. Maybe I'll have to check that out sometime."
At this point a knoppix cd comes in handy.