The winner is... I think DSLs are going to radically change the way that people code. DSLs potentially provide the meta-prgramming ccapabilities of LISP with the transparency and idiot-proofing of a language like Java. We may even see a hierarchy of software engineeringh develop, with one type of hihg-level coder deveoping DSLs and others able to use these languages easily within their own areas of expertise. For more, check the following links:
Hmmm..hadn't considered that. I have Dish now and they don't require a landline at all. Thats the problem w/ the integrated units. And remembering now I think the only way to get HD Tivo is to use the combo DirectTV unit.
I have had 100% uptime -- e.g. I have never not had a dialtone when I picked up and to my knowledge have never been droppped. And quality is hugely better than my POTS line was.
But the best thing has been cost. I am paying $14.95 a month for better service than the $60+ a month I was paying to my local telco and MCI. And my local bell "wants me back". Uh, keep dreaming guys...
I live in a semi-rural community and had used fixed wireless for a couple of years. I was getting >1mbs and pretty good service quality *when it was working well*. I also had no problem getting vpn working and latency was pretty low for gaming.
I just switched to Cable even though I hated to -- the wireless guys were there when the big companies weren't and I wanted to be loyal to local companies. But the servicee just wasn't there and I was getting too many losses -- my vpn was dropping all the time, which meant I had to restart all my console sessions, etc.. And cable is giving me 7 Mbs. Yummy!
Still, it is a totally viable solution. I would be happy to respond with more about what to look for in a provider, horror stories, etc.. if anyone is interested..
Huh? I run on Opterons all day long and have not run into a problem at all -- never even had to think about it actually. These are apps that are tens of thousands of lines long. So I am wondering how or why you would make a such a statemnet -- how about some details? What things "more complicated than HellowWorld" have you tried that haven't worked?
Drepper is right about build and configuration being the fundamental issues. This is where Java is the clear winner. I know others have pointed out the advantage of Java (or gasp, C#) here, but I have to say that advantage is real and growing, even if as others have pointed out there are legitimate issues with GUI. I will grant that some issues still exist with GUIs, but a) They aren't as bad as people make out. I have used and developed many apps that work fine under all 3 major platforms, perhaps not with all of the finer distinguishing platform features intact, but quite functional and not fugly. b) So much of what is developed has no GUI component at all. And note that there are non-Java GUI solutions that work very well with Java.
But ulitimitly the reason that Java works is that there are strong, simple common build solutions such as Ant that make configuration and build easy and, critically, transparant. I have had much experience with make and much more with Java tools like Maven and Ant, and I would pick a Java based solution any day based on that. Typically with Java, the build just works, and if it doesn't it is very easy to scan the ant.xml and figure out why.
OTOH, when make fails there are nearly always odd dependency issues, switches that need to be discovered, etc. etc. And this is where I disagree a bit with Drepper -- often these are not because of obscure platform issues but have to do with use of different very common distros, slight differences in lib version and so on. And these problems do reach expontential complexity very quickly
I will certainly not claim to be a *nix expert but for me and I think many other developers this all makes Java a joy to work with -- at the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, "it just works".
"I have to say, that's a pretty good indication the man is on the right side."
Bizarre logic, that. "Lots of people disagree vehemently with Stallman [or more likely, his persona], therefore he must be right." And this gem is moderated as "insightful". Wow, talk about a closed-world.
Thank you. I mean I could care less about/. karma, but I think its pretty telling how things are moderated around here. Not that my orignal post was any great shakes, and I know that the/. folks have tried many things to fix it but there is no doubt that moderation is politicized and broken.
Well, I wish he wouldn't.:D
In the spirit of absolutly over-the-top militaristic crazed-libertarian analogies, its like Tim McVeigh being picked as official spokesperson for the ACLU.
Now, that was flame-bait. The foregoing was just expressing honest annoyance, a sentiment which - if other posts are any clue - is not unique to me. I mean if a guy doesn't sit well with most of the OS community, how do you think he sounds to outsiders?
I ask because this is one other solution we looked at -- acutally, we dropped Orion almost immediatly -- of you add up the power of all of those Celerons, its still not a very good deal.:) But I liked the Rocketcalc very much for a personal cluster. 2-way, 8 nodes all in one package, single power-on, etc.
From your description and what we've gone through, the advantages you list for Penguin -- esp. configured setup before shipping and decent support -- are key issues as you can spend a *lot* of time getting everything setup.
We wanted to set up a small 4-8 node cluster mostly for testing and as a compute resource. For various political reasons we were looking at an IBM solution. At my uirging we went for dual Opterons in the 1U format. And the price seemed right. Here's where it gets wierd *after* the OBM sales people step in. Going thourgh it peice by piece I thought I could put a decent system together - with our substantial IBM discount -- for $14k. By the time we got the quote with all of the crap they thought we needed it was 34k! Just to give the flavor, the rack and assorted pieces was 4k. But thats not the funny part. We were like,
"well for this much money, we assume you are putting it together for us."
"Um no...didn't you see the services quote that went along with this?"
We hadn't -- with the services/support quote came in at $60k!
So at this point we asked, can't we just buy the individual pieces we need and put it together ourselves.
"Well, yes, but then it won't be an IBM e1350 cluster 'solution'..."
"Yea, well, we don't really care what its called, it'll be just as fast and 75% cheaper..."
At that time they were getting rid of their 325 servers for way cheap and we actually put that system together for as cheap as a whitebox and probably as cheap as if we'd tried to put it together ourselves.
The moral I guess is that if you have to deal with the big vendors, have a very sharp pencil handy!
I just got it -- only through the prologue so far. I look forward to working through this over the next say, year or so. I'm thinking this is like GT4, I spent $40 on it and I'll spend a lot more time with it then anything else I could have bought.
I can believe it -- good organization is orthogonal at best to intelligence or value -- just think back to the last marketting presentation you had to sit through; I'll bet it was super-well-organized.
Derrida gave notoriously rambling talks among others..
He has a fascinating description of a far-future city that has been constructed by machines...and then things go very very wrong...
Best hard-SF/space opera writer out there right now, IMHO.
At least up to a week ago, you could buy a 'refurb' 512M dual 2.0 direct form Apple for $2,399. They're trying top move these guys along as it looks like the 90nm chips are on their way...
Slashdot Mirror
The winner is...
b ench.html
I think DSLs are going to radically change the way that people code. DSLs potentially provide the meta-prgramming ccapabilities of LISP with the transparency and idiot-proofing of a language like Java. We may even see a hierarchy of software engineeringh develop, with one type of hihg-level coder deveoping DSLs and others able to use these languages easily within their own areas of expertise. For more, check the following links:
http://www.jetbrains.com/mps//
http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/languageWork
http://intentsoft.com/
Hmm...yes, I often pick up the phone just to see if it has a dialtone and then don't make a call, I'm OCD like that... not. LOL
Hmmm..hadn't considered that. I have Dish now and they don't require a landline at all. Thats the problem w/ the integrated units. And remembering now I think the only way to get HD Tivo is to use the combo DirectTV unit.
I have had 100% uptime -- e.g. I have never not had a dialtone when I picked up and to my knowledge have never been droppped. And quality is hugely better than my POTS line was.
But the best thing has been cost. I am paying $14.95 a month for better service than the $60+ a month I was paying to my local telco and MCI. And my local bell "wants me back". Uh, keep dreaming guys...
Tivo can connect through network..I have both of my \boxes set up from wireless hub. Or is this only an issue for some reason w/ HD Tivo?
I live in a semi-rural community and had used fixed wireless for a couple of years. I was getting >1mbs and pretty good service quality *when it was working well*. I also had no problem getting vpn working and latency was pretty low for gaming. I just switched to Cable even though I hated to -- the wireless guys were there when the big companies weren't and I wanted to be loyal to local companies. But the servicee just wasn't there and I was getting too many losses -- my vpn was dropping all the time, which meant I had to restart all my console sessions, etc.. And cable is giving me 7 Mbs. Yummy! Still, it is a totally viable solution. I would be happy to respond with more about what to look for in a provider, horror stories, etc.. if anyone is interested..
Huh? I run on Opterons all day long and have not run into a problem at all -- never even had to think about it actually. These are apps that are tens of thousands of lines long.
So I am wondering how or why you would make a such a statemnet -- how about some details? What things "more complicated than HellowWorld" have you tried that haven't worked?
Drepper is right about build and configuration being the fundamental issues. This is where Java is the clear winner. I know others have pointed out the advantage of Java (or gasp, C#) here, but I have to say that advantage is real and growing, even if as others have pointed out there are legitimate issues with GUI. I will grant that some issues still exist with GUIs, but
.xml and figure out why.
a) They aren't as bad as people make out. I have used and developed many apps that work fine under all 3 major platforms, perhaps not with all of the finer distinguishing platform features intact, but quite functional and not fugly.
b) So much of what is developed has no GUI component at all. And note that there are non-Java GUI solutions that work very well with Java.
But ulitimitly the reason that Java works is that there are strong, simple common build solutions such as Ant that make configuration and build easy and, critically, transparant. I have had much experience with make and much more with Java tools like Maven and Ant, and I would pick a Java based solution any day based on that. Typically with Java, the build just works, and if it doesn't it is very easy to scan the ant
OTOH, when make fails there are nearly always odd dependency issues, switches that need to be discovered, etc. etc. And this is where I disagree a bit with Drepper -- often these are not because of obscure platform issues but have to do with use of different very common distros, slight differences in lib version and so on. And these problems do reach expontential complexity very quickly
I will certainly not claim to be a *nix expert but for me and I think many other developers this all makes Java a joy to work with -- at the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, "it just works".
Bizarre logic, that. "Lots of people disagree vehemently with Stallman [or more likely, his persona], therefore he must be right." And this gem is moderated as "insightful". Wow, talk about a closed-world.
Thank you. I mean I could care less about /. karma, but I think its pretty telling how things are moderated around here. Not that my orignal post was any great shakes, and I know that the /. folks have tried many things to fix it but there is no doubt that moderation is politicized and broken.
Well, I wish he wouldn't.
In the spirit of absolutly over-the-top militaristic crazed-libertarian analogies, its like Tim McVeigh being picked as official spokesperson for the ACLU.
Now, that was flame-bait. The foregoing was just expressing honest annoyance, a sentiment which - if other posts are any clue - is not unique to me. I mean if a guy doesn't sit well with most of the OS community, how do you think he sounds to outsiders?
I ask because this is one other solution we looked at -- acutally, we dropped Orion almost immediatly -- of you add up the power of all of those Celerons, its still not a very good deal. :) But I liked the Rocketcalc very much for a personal cluster. 2-way, 8 nodes all in one package, single power-on, etc.
From your description and what we've gone through, the advantages you list for Penguin -- esp. configured setup before shipping and decent support -- are key issues as you can spend a *lot* of time getting everything setup.
...after posting I realized that the 34 and 60k quotes were before discount (I think). SO the actual price descrepncy was "only" 62%.
We wanted to set up a small 4-8 node cluster mostly for testing and as a compute resource. For various political reasons we were looking at an IBM solution. At my uirging we went for dual Opterons in the 1U format. And the price seemed right. Here's where it gets wierd *after* the OBM sales people step in. Going thourgh it peice by piece I thought I could put a decent system together - with our substantial IBM discount -- for $14k. By the time we got the quote with all of the crap they thought we needed it was 34k! Just to give the flavor, the rack and assorted pieces was 4k. But thats not the funny part. We were like, "well for this much money, we assume you are putting it together for us." "Um no...didn't you see the services quote that went along with this?" We hadn't -- with the services/support quote came in at $60k! So at this point we asked, can't we just buy the individual pieces we need and put it together ourselves. "Well, yes, but then it won't be an IBM e1350 cluster 'solution'..." "Yea, well, we don't really care what its called, it'll be just as fast and 75% cheaper..." At that time they were getting rid of their 325 servers for way cheap and we actually put that system together for as cheap as a whitebox and probably as cheap as if we'd tried to put it together ourselves. The moral I guess is that if you have to deal with the big vendors, have a very sharp pencil handy!
Bizactly. Thanks AC!
I just got it -- only through the prologue so far. I look forward to working through this over the next say, year or so. I'm thinking this is like GT4, I spent $40 on it and I'll spend a lot more time with it then anything else I could have bought.
I can believe it -- good organization is orthogonal at best to intelligence or value -- just think back to the last marketting presentation you had to sit through; I'll bet it was super-well-organized. Derrida gave notoriously rambling talks among others..
He has a fascinating description of a far-future city that has been constructed by machines...and then things go very very wrong...
Best hard-SF/space opera writer out there right now, IMHO.
...I wonder if it drives him nuts when people call him Mark instead of Marc...
Please post orignal if you have it. Referred site is /.'d
At least up to a week ago, you could buy a 'refurb' 512M dual 2.0 direct form Apple for $2,399. They're trying top move these guys along as it looks like the 90nm chips are on their way...
To be clear, a new buckle, not a new bag.
And here's a better link.