Not at all, once you have an existing programmable system you can build a cross compiler, how do you think they did it:) (well apart from the nuts that programmed directly in machine code).
Anyway, I'm sure building a PL/I compiler to output GE-645 machine code wouldn't be a hard problem, maybe an interesting comp/sci project. The source code for the PL/I compiler could probably be bastardized to be compiled and run on another machine (via a native PL/I compiler) which would save you a lot of time.
Take a look at the apout project some time ( http://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/software/apout/ ), something similar could be implemented which emulates only the minimum required to run a single executable (in apouts case, it uses native syscalls instead of the unix vX/bsd2.11 kernel).
Sounds better than what we have, in the UK i've never seen armed guards and most datacentre's I've been too seem fairly innocent looking when it comes to security other than to pass through two physically separate & locked areas before getting to the server...
However, there's a place called "The Bunker" in Kent: "Our secure Colocation solutions are delivered from 30 metres beneath ground level, within armoured, military grade, nuclear-proof facilities that are situated outside the perimeter of the M25."
Compare that to C I Hosts' ghetto datacentre, the bunker is on a whole different level.
When you can buy fertiliser, sugar and petrolium by the tonne.
Oh noes, their going to blow up an air plain with some iron filings, potassium permanganate and some magnesium! Or use the test tubes to start up a methamphetamine lab!
Do you know why I cringe when I hear these stories? Because their going after the wrong thing with the wrong tactics, chemistry sets have long been a way to inspire kids about the stuff, some just don't get it, but others get an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have to kickstart the process and get the interested and passionate about physics/chemistry at an early age.
Personally I'd rather see biochemistry sets/guides for kids, grow your own bacteria and such (I found it much more interesting than chemistry), but with the "threat" of anthrax breaking out any minute now I don't think they'd be politically correct (just as it seems limiting chemistry sets is "politically correct" in the US).
The sorry thing is, it's going to take you a long time to get these implicit rights back after the initial knee-jerk reaction.
The example you've used, 16 2.4ghz cores vs 64 600mhz cores is a pretty typical example.
If you go on mhz alone, the 16 core machine should process work units at the same speed as the 64 core machine (1/4th the number of processors, but 4x faster cpus, vs 4x more processors and 1/4th speed cpus). But that's not taking into account faster bus speeds, better architecture, improved floating point performance etc.
However, a 96 core machine at 600mhz would process far more units of work than the opteron machine, but that's not the point. Today it's all about what's cheapest now that can do the job, the power draw per server and how many you can fit in a rack and how many units of work you can process per $$$.
But, if you took the same 64 core server from yesteryear and re-vamped it with the latest technology, wattage goes down, chip size goes down, more chips per rack etc. It's just not possible to compare hardware from 5 years ago with what's available today will always be 2-4x as powerful as what was available then.
The MHz wars are still here, but with an added dimension - MHz per square foot:) IMO they'll keep rising with Moore's law for atleast another decade or so before the next tech revolution happens, IBM Power6 processors have become the new Alpha and hopefully it'll spur the rest of the industry on:D
My point was more centered around the fact that bigger focus on community support can help non-technical people with most of the issues that can arrise when people migrate over to Linux. Your comments are taken on board though.
Tbh I'm not an "uber geek" like you describe, I love technical stuff, but at the same time I don't mind helping people getting started - but was implying that "free" phone support was too far, but within the funds of the big names promoting Ubuntu and such or through community sponsorship it would be possible to financially help those providing such a service (which would no doubt be benificial if it were widely publicised, printed on the back of Ubuntu cds etc.).
Oh sorry, I didn't realize you had to have a even the slightest bit of technical sense to be able to do something slightly technical on a frikkin' computer!
You do realise that support channels (forums, irc etc.) exist, and personally I've helped more than a handful of people through similar issues just because they asked nicely and could follow basic instructions depending on their degree of ability.
If a big company chipped in and donated money to people that spent their time supporting a distribution, you might be able to get volunteers to do it over the phone (for those situations where your computer only hosed and all your have is a telephone). Until then there will be small problems which come up, but after all - they are computers!
Now take the Windows situation, you have to search the internet for drivers.. hold on, my modem or network card isn't working because Vista doesn't come with compatible drivers for it and I'm stuck in 800x600 in 16 colours.. I'll just call the Windows support line and get this sorted out...
I've never heard of a Windows support line that doesn't cost the same per minute as your average phone sex line.
My point is that when people are stuck, support is available to them for free if they ask when they use Ubuntu, and less so for Windows. Downloading and configuring drivers is as complex as editing a single line in a text file for non-technical people, but with the right guideance, I'd say the former is easier due to Linux's support for an inherantly larger set of hardware.
Personally, I'd rather have a clueless aunt or uncle call me about Ubuntu than Windows, simply because it's easier to support and more predictable.
I've been waiting for updated ATI drivers for non-x86 platforms (e.g. PPC) for a while now due to problems with the open-source existing DRI drivers being pretty crap on my specific card (iMac G3 with Rage 128).
Does anybody know if it's likely that i'll be able to get these working, or is all the GL stuff wrapped up in proprietary x86 only code?
Even if it isn't as bad as what the Islamics do, I don't think that the US government holding that behavior up as something to do it'self is a good thing. We are supposed to be FIGHTING this behavior, not emulating it.
I've had it time and time again, sending my resume out to recruiters as PDF because it's as good as electronic paper - looks the same everywhere and is often around the same size or smaller than an equivilent.doc or.odt file.
But - I get a response back asking for me to send it in the "original".doc format because their automagic system can't handle it.
What happens though when my whole document workflow consists of vim, firefox/opera and html2pdf? They don't seem to grasp the idea that I don't use MS Office or OpenOffice and haven't really needed to for quite a while because so far everybody else has been OK with either HTML or PDF.
I've just tried this using Photoshop's twirl plugin, and with a little tinkering arout I could get a fairly good descrambled picture in only 10 minutes.
With more time and higher quality images, I'm sure it wouldn't be any trouble at all, it just needed the initial insight to use the "swirl in opposite direction" idea.
Traditionally with satellite internet systems you'd have a modem uplink with the download handled by a satellite reciever. However there are relatively new two-way systems (which I used when ADSL was not available in my area), but their prohibatively expensive most of the time (1000-3000 GBP in hardware & setup costs, plus ~100 GBP per month).
I don't have any experience of what internet access is like in Burma, but in Cambodia it's expensive even before you take into account the average wage and satellite definately wouldn't be possible or feasable. These are static systems and probably wouldn't be very appropriate.
However, almost all the large news agencies I know of have portable satellite phones just for this purpose - but I wouldn't want to be the person called to fly down to Burma considering the current stance on foreign media (the traditional stance on control, their public statements this week and the "incident" where a Japanese photographer was killed).
Most of the >1kW PSUs I've seen haven't made it into the consumer market yet, but those already in there claiming to be >1kW often aren't able to pull that much due to cheap/bad electronic setups (both inside and outside of the unit).
I'd definately recommend ISDN as I've had it at two properties where broadband was no option other than the expensive satellite option.
A 128k (dual channel ISDN) connection is great for every day stuff and low enough latency for a spot of gaming, but big downloads and anything that's not normal (e.g. video, big flash pages) still hurt if you've ever gotten used to faster connections before.
When I finally needed a faster I got satellite, but was stung by the stupid "2gb prioritised bandwidth per month", I finally moved away because it was imposisble to get any sort of technical work there. Ironicly I'm averaging about 20-30gb downloading at full speed from home which is a far cry compared to the 28k dialup connection I was on just 5 or 6 years ago, and now I don't think I could ever go back unless I approached life with a considerable amount of zen wisdom.
Yeah, anyway my suggestion is to: move house or get some sort of microwave/wimax link setup from the top of the hill if you can't get ISDN.
Ahaha no, I've since aquired the development & business skills to take an idea like that off the ground, but back then I was all ideas and no substance (and my parents weren't convinced enough to help me develop it further).
Basically when you're under about 16 you're relying mostly on your parents to help you with anything you do, in this kids case his parents are out there pushing the idea as far as they can. In my opinion this kid is probably just like any other (and how I was when I was the same age) and has little to no clue about the business or tech side of things, but the parents are seeing the dollar signs and doing the groundwork for him in return for whatever they want.
The irony of this is that the company I work for probably provides the 0870 number I called them on.
Either way, their abusing the TPS by following the guidelines but presuming that people won't go to the hassle of reporting them or mailing in to get themselfs removed from the list.
I really can't be bothered to go through the trouble of taking this to court, when they'll probably prove that I have a "technical" prior relationship with them through some sister company (any company I've entered my telephone number with in the past 6 months, like my bank or my co-lo company etc.) and that my claim isn't valid.
I got bored with winding up telemarketers that called me and started getting angry instead, maybe I'll start winding them up again and play the "how long can I keep them on the line" game, passing them through to a never-ending "please wait while we transfer you" call queue that's usually reserved for difficult customers:)
Yes, because EVERY widely-used OS must be a Unix variant, after all, Unix is the be-all and end-all of OSes, designed by God himself.
Absolutely correct.
Don't you know the 10 commandments?
I am/unix, thine operating system, which have brought thee forth out of thy bondage to machine code, out of the days of the front panel; thou shalt run no other operating system above me, beneath me, or beside me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven core image in binary, nor in octal, nor in hexadecimal; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor program in them, for my kernel is a jealous kernel, visiting the core dumps of the parent process upon the third and fourth gener- ations of them that defile my system calls, but shew- ing mercy unto thousands of them who love lint and read my man pages.
Thou shalt not take the name of superuser in vain: for/unix will not hold him guiltless that invoketh super- user's name in vain.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep me wholly archived. Six days shalt thou edit, and do all thy compiles; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the system admini- strator, who shall earn time and a half therefor: In it, thou shalt suspend all user processes, and create my weekly tar dumps.
Honor thy parent process and thy process group, that thy connect time may be prolonged, and that thine exit status may be zero.
Thou shalt not kill init.
Thou shalt not adulterate my system files.
Thou shalt not steal any material proprietary to, or under license or sublicense by, or protected by copy- right or trademark of, Unix System Laboratories or the vendor of thine implementation.
Thou shalt not bear false witness on thy local host by running setuid programs across the network.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors workstation, thou shalt not covet thy neighbors doc set, nor his uid, nor his gid, nor any hardware nor software that is thy neighbors.
I had a call today from a company trying to offer me a loan, did the usual stuff asking them to remove me from whatever list I was on and to stop calling - they said to call back on a number (national rate, about 10p a min) only to get transferred to the "customer relations" department which never picked up.
Then 3 hours later I get an advertisment SMS from the same company, call back up, get transferred again, and the "customer relations" department never picked up - again.
I've been on the UK TPS (Telephone Preference Service, the UK do not call list) for several years, but still get these stupid companies calling up that I have no idea who they are (so obviously they cant have a previous "relationship" with me).
I finally got through to the customer relations department after 20 minutes on hold, explained to them that they can be fined upto £5000 for every offence only to be told I have to write in to their marketing department to get it removed.
I mean seriously, WTF! I've spent about £5 on phone calls today just trying to sort it out with this asshole company, only to be flogged off with a standard excuse and a PObox address.
£20,000 per camera + network & associated operating fees?
In reality these are relatively high quality cameras (640x480 full colour) with zoom & rotation running over fiber to a central control centre, the picture quality is good consindering weather/sun/dark (usually being located on or near street lamps) and can be zoomed in if required to get an accurate picture of anybody required.
These are a far cry from the grainy pictures you see on TV from static cameras in corner shops & banks which are usually badly positioned and unmanned (e.g. there's nobody on the other end looking for possible problems and directly looking for issues).
Take the casino industry as a good example, but on a much much larger and budget constrained scale.
Some of the arguments are that these are replacing police on the street as the watching eye - but on a much less personal level (from memory, a camera operator may be watching 50 to 100 cameras at a time across a wide area, but can also track individuals over the area using different cameras if their local knowledge of camera placement is good enough).
I've yet to meet a 12 year old that was able to manage anything real-world, like a company involving millions of dollars of VC.
I was around the same age during (first) the.com bubble and came up with a few good ideas (some very web 2.0 ideas, like automatic bookmark uploading, sharing & sorting to keep your bookmarks online and share them with your friends or subscribe to other people's bookmarks or topics). However I never got any of them off the ground because 1) I didn't have any sense of business 2) I wasn't capable of running a company 3) I didn't have the development skills myself to get a prototype up and running.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all, once you have an existing programmable system you can build a cross compiler, how do you think they did it :) (well apart from the nuts that programmed directly in machine code).
Anyway, I'm sure building a PL/I compiler to output GE-645 machine code wouldn't be a hard problem, maybe an interesting comp/sci project. The source code for the PL/I compiler could probably be bastardized to be compiled and run on another machine (via a native PL/I compiler) which would save you a lot of time.
Take a look at the apout project some time ( http://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/software/apout/ ), something similar could be implemented which emulates only the minimum required to run a single executable (in apouts case, it uses native syscalls instead of the unix vX/bsd2.11 kernel).
Vendetta is a poor and shallow game compared to EVE, one of my flatmates was an EVE Online addict (and quite successful EVE hacker)
Sounds better than what we have, in the UK i've never seen armed guards and most datacentre's I've been too seem fairly innocent looking when it comes to security other than to pass through two physically separate & locked areas before getting to the server...
However, there's a place called "The Bunker" in Kent: "Our secure Colocation solutions are delivered from 30 metres beneath ground level, within armoured, military grade, nuclear-proof facilities that are situated outside the perimeter of the M25."
Compare that to C I Hosts' ghetto datacentre, the bunker is on a whole different level.
When you can buy fertiliser, sugar and petrolium by the tonne.
Oh noes, their going to blow up an air plain with some iron filings, potassium permanganate and some magnesium! Or use the test tubes to start up a methamphetamine lab!
Do you know why I cringe when I hear these stories? Because their going after the wrong thing with the wrong tactics, chemistry sets have long been a way to inspire kids about the stuff, some just don't get it, but others get an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have to kickstart the process and get the interested and passionate about physics/chemistry at an early age.
Personally I'd rather see biochemistry sets/guides for kids, grow your own bacteria and such (I found it much more interesting than chemistry), but with the "threat" of anthrax breaking out any minute now I don't think they'd be politically correct (just as it seems limiting chemistry sets is "politically correct" in the US).
The sorry thing is, it's going to take you a long time to get these implicit rights back after the initial knee-jerk reaction.
The example you've used, 16 2.4ghz cores vs 64 600mhz cores is a pretty typical example.
:) IMO they'll keep rising with Moore's law for atleast another decade or so before the next tech revolution happens, IBM Power6 processors have become the new Alpha and hopefully it'll spur the rest of the industry on :D
If you go on mhz alone, the 16 core machine should process work units at the same speed as the 64 core machine (1/4th the number of processors, but 4x faster cpus, vs 4x more processors and 1/4th speed cpus). But that's not taking into account faster bus speeds, better architecture, improved floating point performance etc.
However, a 96 core machine at 600mhz would process far more units of work than the opteron machine, but that's not the point. Today it's all about what's cheapest now that can do the job, the power draw per server and how many you can fit in a rack and how many units of work you can process per $$$.
But, if you took the same 64 core server from yesteryear and re-vamped it with the latest technology, wattage goes down, chip size goes down, more chips per rack etc. It's just not possible to compare hardware from 5 years ago with what's available today will always be 2-4x as powerful as what was available then.
The MHz wars are still here, but with an added dimension - MHz per square foot
It compiles! Quick ship the release candidate :D
My point was more centered around the fact that bigger focus on community support can help non-technical people with most of the issues that can arrise when people migrate over to Linux. Your comments are taken on board though.
Tbh I'm not an "uber geek" like you describe, I love technical stuff, but at the same time I don't mind helping people getting started - but was implying that "free" phone support was too far, but within the funds of the big names promoting Ubuntu and such or through community sponsorship it would be possible to financially help those providing such a service (which would no doubt be benificial if it were widely publicised, printed on the back of Ubuntu cds etc.).
Oh sorry, I didn't realize you had to have a even the slightest bit of technical sense to be able to do something slightly technical on a frikkin' computer!
You do realise that support channels (forums, irc etc.) exist, and personally I've helped more than a handful of people through similar issues just because they asked nicely and could follow basic instructions depending on their degree of ability.
If a big company chipped in and donated money to people that spent their time supporting a distribution, you might be able to get volunteers to do it over the phone (for those situations where your computer only hosed and all your have is a telephone). Until then there will be small problems which come up, but after all - they are computers!
Now take the Windows situation, you have to search the internet for drivers.. hold on, my modem or network card isn't working because Vista doesn't come with compatible drivers for it and I'm stuck in 800x600 in 16 colours.. I'll just call the Windows support line and get this sorted out...
I've never heard of a Windows support line that doesn't cost the same per minute as your average phone sex line.
My point is that when people are stuck, support is available to them for free if they ask when they use Ubuntu, and less so for Windows. Downloading and configuring drivers is as complex as editing a single line in a text file for non-technical people, but with the right guideance, I'd say the former is easier due to Linux's support for an inherantly larger set of hardware.
Personally, I'd rather have a clueless aunt or uncle call me about Ubuntu than Windows, simply because it's easier to support and more predictable.
I've been waiting for updated ATI drivers for non-x86 platforms (e.g. PPC) for a while now due to problems with the open-source existing DRI drivers being pretty crap on my specific card (iMac G3 with Rage 128).
Does anybody know if it's likely that i'll be able to get these working, or is all the GL stuff wrapped up in proprietary x86 only code?
"Muslims", thank you.
uh!
.doc or .odt file.
.doc format because their automagic system can't handle it.
I've had it time and time again, sending my resume out to recruiters as PDF because it's as good as electronic paper - looks the same everywhere and is often around the same size or smaller than an equivilent
But - I get a response back asking for me to send it in the "original"
What happens though when my whole document workflow consists of vim, firefox/opera and html2pdf? They don't seem to grasp the idea that I don't use MS Office or OpenOffice and haven't really needed to for quite a while because so far everybody else has been OK with either HTML or PDF.
Because it's like saying: "If you drive 4x4 on gravel it's wheels fall off, so you just stop people from driven on gravel".
Yeah, bad analogy, but the problem is with a Microsoft product's bad handling, not with Kaspercy.
I've just tried this using Photoshop's twirl plugin, and with a little tinkering arout I could get a fairly good descrambled picture in only 10 minutes.
With more time and higher quality images, I'm sure it wouldn't be any trouble at all, it just needed the initial insight to use the "swirl in opposite direction" idea.
It's a shame their internet's down because they won't be able to get access to this: http://paultan.org/archives/2004/11/29/rfc1149-cpip/
Traditionally with satellite internet systems you'd have a modem uplink with the download handled by a satellite reciever. However there are relatively new two-way systems (which I used when ADSL was not available in my area), but their prohibatively expensive most of the time (1000-3000 GBP in hardware & setup costs, plus ~100 GBP per month).
I don't have any experience of what internet access is like in Burma, but in Cambodia it's expensive even before you take into account the average wage and satellite definately wouldn't be possible or feasable. These are static systems and probably wouldn't be very appropriate.
However, almost all the large news agencies I know of have portable satellite phones just for this purpose - but I wouldn't want to be the person called to fly down to Burma considering the current stance on foreign media (the traditional stance on control, their public statements this week and the "incident" where a Japanese photographer was killed).
Most of the >1kW PSUs I've seen haven't made it into the consumer market yet, but those already in there claiming to be >1kW often aren't able to pull that much due to cheap/bad electronic setups (both inside and outside of the unit).
Then... what am I going to do with this quad processor machine with dual Geforce 8800 GTX SLI cards and a few TB of storage?
I know, i'll trade it in for 50 of these laptops and build a beowulf cluster, super!
Ahahaha. Oh you were serious?
I'd definately recommend ISDN as I've had it at two properties where broadband was no option other than the expensive satellite option.
A 128k (dual channel ISDN) connection is great for every day stuff and low enough latency for a spot of gaming, but big downloads and anything that's not normal (e.g. video, big flash pages) still hurt if you've ever gotten used to faster connections before.
When I finally needed a faster I got satellite, but was stung by the stupid "2gb prioritised bandwidth per month", I finally moved away because it was imposisble to get any sort of technical work there. Ironicly I'm averaging about 20-30gb downloading at full speed from home which is a far cry compared to the 28k dialup connection I was on just 5 or 6 years ago, and now I don't think I could ever go back unless I approached life with a considerable amount of zen wisdom.
Yeah, anyway my suggestion is to: move house or get some sort of microwave/wimax link setup from the top of the hill if you can't get ISDN.
Ahaha no, I've since aquired the development & business skills to take an idea like that off the ground, but back then I was all ideas and no substance (and my parents weren't convinced enough to help me develop it further).
Basically when you're under about 16 you're relying mostly on your parents to help you with anything you do, in this kids case his parents are out there pushing the idea as far as they can. In my opinion this kid is probably just like any other (and how I was when I was the same age) and has little to no clue about the business or tech side of things, but the parents are seeing the dollar signs and doing the groundwork for him in return for whatever they want.
The irony of this is that the company I work for probably provides the 0870 number I called them on.
:)
Either way, their abusing the TPS by following the guidelines but presuming that people won't go to the hassle of reporting them or mailing in to get themselfs removed from the list.
I really can't be bothered to go through the trouble of taking this to court, when they'll probably prove that I have a "technical" prior relationship with them through some sister company (any company I've entered my telephone number with in the past 6 months, like my bank or my co-lo company etc.) and that my claim isn't valid.
I got bored with winding up telemarketers that called me and started getting angry instead, maybe I'll start winding them up again and play the "how long can I keep them on the line" game, passing them through to a never-ending "please wait while we transfer you" call queue that's usually reserved for difficult customers
Yes, because EVERY widely-used OS must be a Unix variant, after all, Unix is the be-all and end-all of OSes, designed by God himself.
Absolutely correct.
Don't you know the 10 commandments?
I had a call today from a company trying to offer me a loan, did the usual stuff asking them to remove me from whatever list I was on and to stop calling - they said to call back on a number (national rate, about 10p a min) only to get transferred to the "customer relations" department which never picked up.
Then 3 hours later I get an advertisment SMS from the same company, call back up, get transferred again, and the "customer relations" department never picked up - again.
I've been on the UK TPS (Telephone Preference Service, the UK do not call list) for several years, but still get these stupid companies calling up that I have no idea who they are (so obviously they cant have a previous "relationship" with me).
I finally got through to the customer relations department after 20 minutes on hold, explained to them that they can be fined upto £5000 for every offence only to be told I have to write in to their marketing department to get it removed.
I mean seriously, WTF! I've spent about £5 on phone calls today just trying to sort it out with this asshole company, only to be flogged off with a standard excuse and a PObox address.
£20,000 per camera + network & associated operating fees?
In reality these are relatively high quality cameras (640x480 full colour) with zoom & rotation running over fiber to a central control centre, the picture quality is good consindering weather/sun/dark (usually being located on or near street lamps) and can be zoomed in if required to get an accurate picture of anybody required.
These are a far cry from the grainy pictures you see on TV from static cameras in corner shops & banks which are usually badly positioned and unmanned (e.g. there's nobody on the other end looking for possible problems and directly looking for issues).
Take the casino industry as a good example, but on a much much larger and budget constrained scale.
Some of the arguments are that these are replacing police on the street as the watching eye - but on a much less personal level (from memory, a camera operator may be watching 50 to 100 cameras at a time across a wide area, but can also track individuals over the area using different cameras if their local knowledge of camera placement is good enough).
I've yet to meet a 12 year old that was able to manage anything real-world, like a company involving millions of dollars of VC.
.com bubble and came up with a few good ideas (some very web 2.0 ideas, like automatic bookmark uploading, sharing & sorting to keep your bookmarks online and share them with your friends or subscribe to other people's bookmarks or topics). However I never got any of them off the ground because 1) I didn't have any sense of business 2) I wasn't capable of running a company 3) I didn't have the development skills myself to get a prototype up and running.
I was around the same age during (first) the
I'd bet you're the kinda person who sees a steaming pile of shit and goes "Oh goody, I'll make hundereds selling it off as compost".
Tough luck with the SCO stock though, not sure why the steaming pile of shit analogy came to mind there though!