Both Intel's x86[-64] offerings and AMD's x86[-64] offerings beat itanic in TDP, floating point performance per watt, FP perf per dollar
SGI's audience isn't efficiency-minded. They don't care about performace per watt, they just want the maximum performace. I'm not an itanium fan, but they've posted some seriously impressive FP scores (1GHz I2 ~ 3X a 2.4GHz Xeon). Note that an SGI I2 box is the #4 entry in the Top 500 List the highest-ranking non-IBM box on the list.
They effectively did this when they shed MIPS and the high-end graphics division. They may be designing their own system boards, but that's barely a shadow of what they used to do. They need to face up to the fact that they've lost whatever competitive advantages they had (workstations running their own high-end graphics hardware) and they can't compete against HP in the itanium server market.
I think their only hope would be to partner with nVidia and try to claw their way back into the visualization market, while they still have some reputation left. Some new high-end graphics hardware on a 2+2 itanium board might get them some attention, maybe enough to leverage a round of financing.
Ah, but if you read the complete article, you'd see that it is largely for show. The amp comes on immediately (no warm-up), and works whether the tube is installed or not. Apparently it does something, as they report that the sound changes whether it's in the socket or not, but it sounds like...err, appears that it's largely ornamental.
Agree with you re: the ready-made amp. Bare-board amps aren't that hard to find, and would have been more in keeping with the DIY nature.
In order to not miss any alerts, you could just leave it on all the time (hey, the government's paying for it, right?). The government could broadcast alerts or educational content (maybe some exercise shows?) and of course programs with patriotic themes. They could even make it interactive! Of course, there might be problems getting enough people to be "interactivity monitors", but I bet if they tried they could do it!
Probably not. Smaller size = less room for shielding = greater susceptibility to EMP. Pop a nuke high enough to make sure the EMP doesn't affect your terrestrial assets[0], and you're good to go. You'd need less precision than taking out a single target, and you could probably effectively clear a hemisphere with a half-dozen or so strikes.
[0] Presumably EMP-hardened military assets, anyway. Kiss those VHS archives of Blossom goodbye!
Most small businesses I've worked with have a hosting company for power, network and monitoring, but it's their own box there in the rack. That way they get guaranteed performance, instead of sharing a mid-size box with four or six other sites. And if your site doesn't perform, you just upgrade your own hardware for a one-time charge, instead of moving to a higher-priced service agreement. I did run into a place once that had their own box for the app server, but used the ISP's database server, but they were pretty strange in other ways too...
I second this recommendation. I haven't used it for a few years, but the first time I did I was blown away by the level of detail you could get. Very easy to drill down to just about any level of detail you could want. ISTR it also had breakpoints on garbage collection, so you could examine the heap before and after GC. Very handy for making sure that something you thought should be reclaimed actually was, and very easy to trace the errant references if it wasn't.
It seemed expensive at first, but in two days I was able to get a 30% speed improvement in the main body of our code, and found a nasty resource leak in the in-house framework we were using that I know they had spent several developer-weeks trying to track down.
I'm not sure who owns it now (I think it was JProbe Inc when we ordered it, but by the time it shipped it was already owned by someone else, and I'm sure it's been sold at least once since then), but it's definitely one worth checking out.
Yeah, cancer of the tentacle, maybe. And their solution to global warming? Dump all that excess heat out to the atmosphere! Keep the seas cool, and to hell with the heathen land-dwellers!
the first time you run into something the toolkit can't handle, the black box nature means your SOL.
This is exactly the reason I gave up on VB. Want to do something even mildly handy (say, check the amount of free space on a disk)? Better figure out the WinAPI call format and figure out how to cast your arguments to FAR_WPTR[1], 'cause VB itself is absolutely worthless for this. OK, so you're not totally SOL, but if you don't have some experience with cross-language subroutine calls, you'll be pulling your hair out for days.
[1] Not a real data type. Not that UINT8 is any better...
Do they need to retain a full and publically available source repository for every package in Ubuntu?
No, just the ones they distribute. Honestly, I don't understand why this is such a big deal. I mean, you had the source when you compiled the system, right? Once you get your release squared away, you do the release build, then zip up a copy of the sources and tuck it away somewhere. If someone wants the source, then you drag it out and make it available. Note that the GPL permits you to charge reasonable fees for making the source available, so go ahead and copy the source CD and ship it off. As long as it's not in some odd-wad format, you should be fine (legally speaking).
I'd imagine you can set up QoS guarantees for it, so you can ensure that you don't share more than (say) 50% of your bandwidth. Or that your traffic takes priority, so all you're selling/sharing is your excess.
You're missing the Big Picture: once there is a nationwide mesh network of these things, Google will light up their dark fiber backbone and link all of these babies up. Then, with their bandwith needs met, they'll drop their backbone connections and watch as AT&T et. al. flounder helplessly trying to flog their now-hopelessly-overprovisioned goods. Their share prices tank, executives commit suicide, then Google and Amazon swoop in and pick up the remains at fire-sale prices. They then shift back to the more-reliable landlines, but the routers remain, silently blinking, waiting for the next command from the Googleplex...
when you said "no one cares about" Kent you were talking from the viewpoint of someone on one of the coasts
Unlikely, since he mentioned he attended BGSU. I assumed his phrase "just another college in the Midwest that no one cares about" was a wry commentary on his own university experience.
you had something automated that determined where the files should go and moved them appropriately? It analyzed usage patterns?
Oh yeah. BITD, there was the archiver, a job that ran every night and moved files that hadn't been accessed in the last N time periods to tape. It left the VTOC entry (kind of like an inode), just marked it "archived" and the label of the tape. Then, the next time that file was accessed, a hook in the open() call would send a message to the console operator telling them to mount tape such-and-such. When the tape was mounted, the archiver would automatically copy the file back into place, the open() call would complete normally, and life was good. Basically transparent to the user (they'd look at their directory and all their files would be there), except for the fact that the file open would take two-three minutes. Then again, since they were paying for disk storage by the block-day, they were generally pretty happy to only pay for a fifty-cent tape mount every quarter instead of keeping that 1200-block file on-line for three months when they weren't using it.
When I first started working from home, I had a generic office chair. After a couple of weeks, I couldn't stand to stay in it for more than a half-hour or so. So I went to the local "ergonomic chair" dealer and got their top-of-the-line chair for waaaay much money. Took it back within a week, because it kind of locked me in one position and wouldn't let me shift around much. Then I got an Aeron chair (cheap at the height of the dot-bomb meltdown), and it's been great. I'd get another if anything happened to mine, and they're not terribly expensive anymore (I think they were >$1000 around 2000, they're like $600 now).
Re:Old schoolin'
on
Quake is 10
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Oh, metric floppies, yeah. 1.44 litres instead of the standard 1.2 quarts or something.
And last but not least, they recently came out with a patch for Quicktime that would effectively freeze your entire UI if you ran certain programs. When contacting AppleCare, they asked me which program did this, and I said "Unrar", "Graphviz" and "Adobe apps", to which his 'straight faced' reply was: we're sorry, Apple can not take responsability for third party software. Which is preposterous because it wasn't the third party software failing so much as the *entire* OS freezing up.
They later reissued a new patch that fixed this problem - but Apple *never* admitted that their initial fix was broken.
Well, that may or may not be the case. I haven't programmed on Macs since System 7 days, but it was fairly hellishly complicated making the GUI stuff work "properly" (like you had to call a routine to make the little "visual click" that was supposed to appear arount the pointer tip before you called the routine to reverse-image the close box before you called the routine to actually close the window). It could very well be that the programs you were using were doing something that Apple deprecated, and when Apple made it go away (or function properly), those programs began to misbehave. Then, enough people bitched that they made another fix to accomodate those programs that used the deprecated feature.
Not apologizing for Apple, it's just that the were one of few companies who weren't afraid to actually eliminate deprecated (or malfunctioning) routines in favor of introducing new ones. Better than M$, who would keep the old buggy routines around for external developers, and creating properly-functioning replacements which they left undocumented so only their developers could use them (timer routines, anyone?)
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It's not that it's unnamed, it's just that you need the Tengwar fonts to spell it...
SGI's audience isn't efficiency-minded. They don't care about performace per watt, they just want the maximum performace. I'm not an itanium fan, but they've posted some seriously impressive FP scores (1GHz I2 ~ 3X a 2.4GHz Xeon). Note that an SGI I2 box is the #4 entry in the Top 500 List the highest-ranking non-IBM box on the list.
They effectively did this when they shed MIPS and the high-end graphics division. They may be designing their own system boards, but that's barely a shadow of what they used to do. They need to face up to the fact that they've lost whatever competitive advantages they had (workstations running their own high-end graphics hardware) and they can't compete against HP in the itanium server market.
I think their only hope would be to partner with nVidia and try to claw their way back into the visualization market, while they still have some reputation left. Some new high-end graphics hardware on a 2+2 itanium board might get them some attention, maybe enough to leverage a round of financing.
Yes it is, IIRC.
Ah, but if you read the complete article, you'd see that it is largely for show. The amp comes on immediately (no warm-up), and works whether the tube is installed or not. Apparently it does something, as they report that the sound changes whether it's in the socket or not, but it sounds like...err, appears that it's largely ornamental.
Agree with you re: the ready-made amp. Bare-board amps aren't that hard to find, and would have been more in keeping with the DIY nature.
More like "You belong to all our base" -- so much catchier than "Greetings from your Local Draft Board"...
In order to not miss any alerts, you could just leave it on all the time (hey, the government's paying for it, right?). The government could broadcast alerts or educational content (maybe some exercise shows?) and of course programs with patriotic themes. They could even make it interactive! Of course, there might be problems getting enough people to be "interactivity monitors", but I bet if they tried they could do it!
"Tonight on Airstrip One Reports...."
Probably not. Smaller size = less room for shielding = greater susceptibility to EMP. Pop a nuke high enough to make sure the EMP doesn't affect your terrestrial assets[0], and you're good to go. You'd need less precision than taking out a single target, and you could probably effectively clear a hemisphere with a half-dozen or so strikes.
[0] Presumably EMP-hardened military assets, anyway. Kiss those VHS archives of Blossom goodbye!
Most small businesses I've worked with have a hosting company for power, network and monitoring, but it's their own box there in the rack. That way they get guaranteed performance, instead of sharing a mid-size box with four or six other sites. And if your site doesn't perform, you just upgrade your own hardware for a one-time charge, instead of moving to a higher-priced service agreement. I did run into a place once that had their own box for the app server, but used the ISP's database server, but they were pretty strange in other ways too...
I second this recommendation. I haven't used it for a few years, but the first time I did I was blown away by the level of detail you could get. Very easy to drill down to just about any level of detail you could want. ISTR it also had breakpoints on garbage collection, so you could examine the heap before and after GC. Very handy for making sure that something you thought should be reclaimed actually was, and very easy to trace the errant references if it wasn't.
It seemed expensive at first, but in two days I was able to get a 30% speed improvement in the main body of our code, and found a nasty resource leak in the in-house framework we were using that I know they had spent several developer-weeks trying to track down.
I'm not sure who owns it now (I think it was JProbe Inc when we ordered it, but by the time it shipped it was already owned by someone else, and I'm sure it's been sold at least once since then), but it's definitely one worth checking out.
Yeah, cancer of the tentacle, maybe. And their solution to global warming? Dump all that excess heat out to the atmosphere! Keep the seas cool, and to hell with the heathen land-dwellers!
If only they'd measure performance in FAPs, they'd be on top!
Gee, VB's changed since VB5 (when I gave up on it). Who'da thunkit?
This is exactly the reason I gave up on VB. Want to do something even mildly handy (say, check the amount of free space on a disk)? Better figure out the WinAPI call format and figure out how to cast your arguments to FAR_WPTR[1], 'cause VB itself is absolutely worthless for this. OK, so you're not totally SOL, but if you don't have some experience with cross-language subroutine calls, you'll be pulling your hair out for days.
[1] Not a real data type. Not that UINT8 is any better...
No, just the ones they distribute. Honestly, I don't understand why this is such a big deal. I mean, you had the source when you compiled the system, right? Once you get your release squared away, you do the release build, then zip up a copy of the sources and tuck it away somewhere. If someone wants the source, then you drag it out and make it available. Note that the GPL permits you to charge reasonable fees for making the source available, so go ahead and copy the source CD and ship it off. As long as it's not in some odd-wad format, you should be fine (legally speaking).
I'd imagine you can set up QoS guarantees for it, so you can ensure that you don't share more than (say) 50% of your bandwidth. Or that your traffic takes priority, so all you're selling/sharing is your excess.
You're missing the Big Picture: once there is a nationwide mesh network of these things, Google will light up their dark fiber backbone and link all of these babies up. Then, with their bandwith needs met, they'll drop their backbone connections and watch as AT&T et. al. flounder helplessly trying to flog their now-hopelessly-overprovisioned goods. Their share prices tank, executives commit suicide, then Google and Amazon swoop in and pick up the remains at fire-sale prices. They then shift back to the more-reliable landlines, but the routers remain, silently blinking, waiting for the next command from the Googleplex...
MAN, this is good coffee!
Unlikely, since he mentioned he attended BGSU. I assumed his phrase "just another college in the Midwest that no one cares about" was a wry commentary on his own university experience.
Oh yeah. BITD, there was the archiver, a job that ran every night and moved files that hadn't been accessed in the last N time periods to tape. It left the VTOC entry (kind of like an inode), just marked it "archived" and the label of the tape. Then, the next time that file was accessed, a hook in the open() call would send a message to the console operator telling them to mount tape such-and-such. When the tape was mounted, the archiver would automatically copy the file back into place, the open() call would complete normally, and life was good. Basically transparent to the user (they'd look at their directory and all their files would be there), except for the fact that the file open would take two-three minutes. Then again, since they were paying for disk storage by the block-day, they were generally pretty happy to only pay for a fifty-cent tape mount every quarter instead of keeping that 1200-block file on-line for three months when they weren't using it.
When I first started working from home, I had a generic office chair. After a couple of weeks, I couldn't stand to stay in it for more than a half-hour or so. So I went to the local "ergonomic chair" dealer and got their top-of-the-line chair for waaaay much money. Took it back within a week, because it kind of locked me in one position and wouldn't let me shift around much. Then I got an Aeron chair (cheap at the height of the dot-bomb meltdown), and it's been great. I'd get another if anything happened to mine, and they're not terribly expensive anymore (I think they were >$1000 around 2000, they're like $600 now).
Oh, metric floppies, yeah. 1.44 litres instead of the standard 1.2 quarts or something.
Well, that may or may not be the case. I haven't programmed on Macs since System 7 days, but it was fairly hellishly complicated making the GUI stuff work "properly" (like you had to call a routine to make the little "visual click" that was supposed to appear arount the pointer tip before you called the routine to reverse-image the close box before you called the routine to actually close the window). It could very well be that the programs you were using were doing something that Apple deprecated, and when Apple made it go away (or function properly), those programs began to misbehave. Then, enough people bitched that they made another fix to accomodate those programs that used the deprecated feature.
Not apologizing for Apple, it's just that the were one of few companies who weren't afraid to actually eliminate deprecated (or malfunctioning) routines in favor of introducing new ones. Better than M$, who would keep the old buggy routines around for external developers, and creating properly-functioning replacements which they left undocumented so only their developers could use them (timer routines, anyone?)
So I have a Cell Phone of +1 Lightning Damage?
Back off, bitch!
Digital music players, high-end graphics/visualization systems, search engines.