I entirely agree. That's the problem with science as practised by humans - it moves from one bandwagon to another. The work still gets done, of course, but it always needs to be dressed up in the flavour of the month to get the money and publicity.
There are dozens of parameter searching techniques that could be used to solve this problem. It may have been more useful to demonstrate these against the present algorithm to see how efficiently the space is examined and if the 'fitness' can be improved further. Who knows, perhaps someone with a better understanding or model of the optics could have derived a solution directly ?
AFAIK, the proposed electronic voting system in Ireland was going to have a paper trail. The voter would be given a printout which would be put in a ballot box and used for recounts.
We only just got the evoting system in Ireland and used it in the last election. It seems a shame to scrap it now. It's much faster and surely more accurate than counting by hand
The system was only piloted in a few areas during the last election
and even those pilots were flawed.
You should read the report before making any comments about the accuracy of the count. If the Commission don't think it is accurate, how can you suggest it is ?
I thought were weren't supposed to RTFA.
This is Slashdot - a write mostly medium.
Anyway, certainly he *mentions* memtest86 but he didn't say that he used it - wanting 'something more comprehensive'. I am suggesting that he
shouldn't be so dismissive given that experience suggests testing the memory properly is a good place to start.
Why he wants a costly, all-in-one package rather than a comprehensive set of free tools seems peculiar to me (and to other posters).
The most common problems I encounter with PCs are memory related.
The best tools for checking memory are
memtest86 and the follow-up
memtest86+.
Both of these are free to download and use. I usually leave them running for roughly 24hrs
for a reasonable level of confidence.
You should also burn-in the other major components too but memory is the best place to
start.
Slashdot is an edited medium - therefore the editors that permit the stories to be posted can exercise control.
Editors are people that edit. The clue is in their name. They can edit titles and content which may be incorrect, mispelt, misleading, duplicated etc. etc. The fact that they don't always do this does not relieve them of that responsibility.
If this was a one-off piece I'd be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but you can read for yourselves his previous pieces on the BBC website - they're almost without exception inane, badly-researched drivel.
Agreed. The BBC is poorly staffed in the Science and Technology sections - without exception they do not have anywhere near the calibre and understanding that their political colleagues have.
If they ever have a good clear-out, Bill should start the ball rolling.
Although it is very thin on details, we can ask a few questions. How much natural gas would be needed to produce a 3 kiloton explosion ? How easy is this to achieve given the air mix required ?
Is it likely that the Russians needed to steal software for controlling a pipeline ? What 'chips' were involved when it is claimed it was a software Trojan (firmware) ?
Nobody I've spoken to is even the least bit troubled by the skipping of Tom Bombadil's chapters
It really bothered me! I think those three chapters are brilliant and are what really gets me hooked into the (written) story.
The chapters clearly demonstrate the day-to-day dangers of Middle Earth - even *trees* can be a threat - and that mysterious, powerful characters are out there. These problems are unrelated to Sauron or the nature of the hobbit's quest.
Middle Earth is a very dangerous place for a bunch of hobbits to go wandering about.
There is also a deep sense of history - many great events have happened over time and Tom knows all about these and the Ring!
AFAIK, the 939 Socket will actually be for future FX chips and it won't be "just a pin less", but will allow for 4 layered PCBs, instead of expensive 6 layered ones.
An AMD engineer assured me that the Opteron
will also be going to 939 for the same reason.
The reality, though, is that I have never, ever upgraded just the chip on any motherboard,
As a systems administrator, I usually consider this possibility but it doesn't influence the actual buying decision. A drop-in upgrade with a faster CPU is obviously attractive but
no vendor will guarantee that over a sufficiently long period (although Intel have come close to long term stability with the Itanium package).
Having said that, the AMD switch to 939 did make me ponder delaying our Opteron roll-out but 1) we need them now and 2) by the time the last 940 comes out it'll still be significantly faster than our existing 1.8GHz 244's so there will be an 'easy' upgrade path.
In the past, I went from two generations of Slot1
CPU through to dual Slot1 (new motherboards, same CPUs) and saved a fortune but that's not likely to be repeated.
As for interconnect standards, one can usually rely on the longevity of the PCI(-X) standard to allow PCI cards to take the strain.
About 2 months ago in quantity. I have one running 64-bit SuSE with more to come in January.
Systemax, for example, are selling dual Opteron servers/workstations off-the-shelf and will tailor the equipment to your needs. Least they did for me. Was much cheaper than the equivalent dual Xeon too.
The NEC EarthSimulator has been top of the Top500 list since the June 2002 edition.
The main reason for its maintained top ranking is that it is a highly specialised, purpose-built machine. As far as I am aware, all the other listed machines come off a production line or are built from off-the-shelf, commodity parts. That's not to suggest one couldn't buy an EathSim off NEC if you made a suitable offer:-)
If my memory serves me, a similar, highly specialised machine, the Japanese 'Numerical Wind Tunnel', was top of the list for quite a while too. It
was also a vector processor based machine.
Slashdot Mirror
There are dozens of parameter searching techniques that could be used to solve this problem. It may have been more useful to demonstrate these against the present algorithm to see how efficiently the space is examined and if the 'fitness' can be improved further. Who knows, perhaps someone with a better understanding or model of the optics could have derived a solution directly ?
...is an alien so how does that help me ?
Really? So what do you make of this quote from the report;
"as the software version proposed for use at the forthcoming elections is not as yet finalised it is impossible for anyone to certify its accuracy"
Rather at odds with your claims for accuracy isn't it ?
Because he is in charge of election campaigns for the governing party.
That's not strictly the correct answer but it is shockingly true.
Wrong! How can you be so badly misinformed ?
Check out the ICTE for all you need to know.
The system was only piloted in a few areas during the last election and even those pilots were flawed.
You should read the report before making any comments about the accuracy of the count. If the Commission don't think it is accurate, how can you suggest it is ?
Without VVAT there is no known accuracy.
Anyway, certainly he *mentions* memtest86 but he didn't say that he used it - wanting 'something more comprehensive'. I am suggesting that he shouldn't be so dismissive given that experience suggests testing the memory properly is a good place to start.
Why he wants a costly, all-in-one package rather than a comprehensive set of free tools seems peculiar to me (and to other posters).
He didn't mention memtest86+ either.
The best tools for checking memory are memtest86 and the follow-up memtest86+.
Both of these are free to download and use. I usually leave them running for roughly 24hrs for a reasonable level of confidence. You should also burn-in the other major components too but memory is the best place to start.
Ok. How about Sun Volume Manager as bundled with Solaris 9 ?
Check out PCI-SIG.
You can even download the beta.
Editors are people that edit. The clue is in their name. They can edit titles and content which may be incorrect, mispelt, misleading, duplicated etc. etc. The fact that they don't always do this does not relieve them of that responsibility.
Agreed. The BBC is poorly staffed in the Science and Technology sections - without exception they do not have anywhere near the calibre and understanding that their political colleagues have.
If they ever have a good clear-out, Bill should start the ball rolling.
... *its* own ideas rather.
It's reporters might discuss the issues but the BBC itself is not putting forward any of it's own ideas.
Can't Slashdot distinguish the message from the messengers ?
Sounds like total and utter crap to me.
Although it is very thin on details, we can ask a few questions. How much natural gas would be needed to produce a 3 kiloton explosion ? How easy is this to achieve given the air mix required ? Is it likely that the Russians needed to steal software for controlling a pipeline ? What 'chips' were involved when it is claimed it was a software Trojan (firmware) ?
It really bothered me! I think those three chapters are brilliant and are what really gets me hooked into the (written) story.
The chapters clearly demonstrate the day-to-day dangers of Middle Earth - even *trees* can be a threat - and that mysterious, powerful characters are out there. These problems are unrelated to Sauron or the nature of the hobbit's quest. Middle Earth is a very dangerous place for a bunch of hobbits to go wandering about.
There is also a deep sense of history - many great events have happened over time and Tom knows all about these and the Ring!
It's fantasic stuff!
It just goes to show that not only do the the majority of Slashdotters not read the original article, they don't read the /. article either.
/. could just stick to pictures in future?
Perhaps
An AMD engineer assured me that the Opteron will also be going to 939 for the same reason.
As a systems administrator, I usually consider this possibility but it doesn't influence the actual buying decision. A drop-in upgrade with a faster CPU is obviously attractive but no vendor will guarantee that over a sufficiently long period (although Intel have come close to long term stability with the Itanium package).
Having said that, the AMD switch to 939 did make me ponder delaying our Opteron roll-out but 1) we need them now and 2) by the time the last 940 comes out it'll still be significantly faster than our existing 1.8GHz 244's so there will be an 'easy' upgrade path.
In the past, I went from two generations of Slot1 CPU through to dual Slot1 (new motherboards, same CPUs) and saved a fortune but that's not likely to be repeated. As for interconnect standards, one can usually rely on the longevity of the PCI(-X) standard to allow PCI cards to take the strain.
About 2 months ago in quantity. I have one running 64-bit SuSE with more to come in January.
Systemax, for example, are selling dual Opteron servers/workstations off-the-shelf and will tailor the equipment to your needs. Least they did for me. Was much cheaper than the equivalent dual Xeon too.
The NEC EarthSimulator has been top of the Top500 list since the June 2002 edition. The main reason for its maintained top ranking is that it is a highly specialised, purpose-built machine. As far as I am aware, all the other listed machines come off a production line or are built from off-the-shelf, commodity parts. That's not to suggest one couldn't buy an EathSim off NEC if you made a suitable offer :-)
If my memory serves me, a similar, highly specialised machine, the Japanese 'Numerical Wind Tunnel', was top of the list for quite a while too. It
was also a vector processor based machine.