OK, I give them credit for the following: They needed a fast computer and they built one. They had a limited budget and worked within the limits it imposed. They intend to use it, for illustration purposes, to get young kids interested in computer science.
That's commendable. Great.
However, as others have said, this is nothing more than simple beowulf cluster with 8 cores on 4 commodity boards using gigabit ethernet in a home-made frame. It's been done. And with the rate of growth in processor performance being what it is; next month I'll be able to go out and build a more powerful machine, for less money.
I don't see why everyone makes this an issue. They're attacking and killing livestock. They've killed the dogs. They're destroying the crops. They're threatening the people physically and by destroying the crops they risk casuing a famine.
People > monkey.
They are at best a nuisance and at worst a danger to the population there. If the people built a village inside a wildlife preserve and are where they should not be, move the people. Otherwise, go in with tranq. guns, capture all (or most) of the monkeys and relocate them to where they will do no harm. Or, if you prefer use real guns and put an end to it.
I think you might be misreading old promises from World of Disney as actual predictions. Too true. I'm now honestly expecting it to take at another hundred years or more before we have a permanent, self sustaining (almost) presence on another planet -- Mars. Yeah, we might send someone there, to visit, in my lifetime. The point was it has to be self sustaining. At that, I expect there will still be some things that have to be shipped from Earth, items which require some industrial capacity and difficult to obtain resources. It's a very hard problem which few people appreciate.
Travelling to another star, long long LONG time from now. Assuming we don't kill ourselves off.
So, I go to the student bookstore, and I find with my student discount MS Office Standard is $149, WordPerfect Office is $89, Adobe is... well it's expensive. Oh, and Works is $40. I know better -- I would (do) use OpenOffice. That doesn't mean a student or the parent of a student might not make the wrong choice. Again, the question is who'd use it... I'm telling you where I see it used.
Yes, OpenOffice is free... But a lot of people would be willing to pay $40 for Works, people who might not know about OpenOffice. When someone walks into a store to buy a piece of software, they are not going to find OpenOffice on the shelf. They might however see MS Office and MS Works (and maybe WordPerfect). Given the price differential, a person (like a student) who's on a budget is likely to pick Works.
Yes, I use Open Office on my personal machines. The question was "Who would use Works anyway?" I've answered that.
That's not to say support for the 21-year-old PATA standard is going to vanish overnight; similar to how ISA slots were available long after most of us had ditched our old ISA peripherals." I'm still using a MFM drive with an ISA controller in an 8MHz AT!
You get the same kind of Google imagery from the naval base in Norfolk Virginia, or anywhere else for that matter. If you know where the ports are, it's a trivial matter to google them. So, they just happened to catch the new sub in port. There are probably much better images of it, while it was in the shipyard under construction, sitting in a (non-Chinese) government buildings somewhere.
As someone who lived less about a mile from a coal plant as a child... I think a wind farm would look much nicer than a cluster of smokestacks; and, would be considerably quieter too (we routinely heard the steam releases when they powered down a turbine). It would also allow people to make a lot better use of the 1/2 mile or so of river front property where the plant is located, which is off limits as part of the "buffer zone."
Don't get me started wrt the neighboring oil refinery...
It would be cable. The anchors are cable, not tube. The tube is only long enough to have enough buoyancy and ballast weight to keep the thing floating upright and at the correct attitude.
My honest answer: I sure as hell hope so. I like to call myself an optimistic pessimist though. I'm pretty sure we'll screw up a few times before then. Even so, from a human perspective, that's a long time.
The biggest question to ask would be why it would vanish.
Well, assuming a large asteroid doesn't smack into the planet, killing everything... We could easily wipe ourselves off the face of the planet with either a massive launch of nuclear weapons or by releasing a nasty virulent and particularly lethal bug. Even if there were a few survivors, our civilization would likely fall.
Actually we only have around 1 billion years. Yeah, sure, the Sun won't expand into it's red giant phase and incinerate the Earth for around 4 or 5 billion years; but, it is slowly expanding now... In about 1 billion year it's projected to be hot enough here on Earth to boil the oceans.
As a manufacturing engineer who has to deal with everything from "as easy as soldering gets" to ball grid arrays and direct wire bonding, I stand by my statement. You might know what you're doing; but, I've seen too many burned boards, boards damaged by flux, boards physically damaged, mis-wired boards, etc. And that's all on "as easy as solder gets" type work.
Then we get into the whole, is it lead free solder (RoHS compliant) or not issue.
Which they started including because too many (read as most) people are disoriented and act confused after a major accident (a "feature" of shock). They have the wherewithall to find their cell phone and dial 911; but, can NOT tell the operator where they are. Many communities can also use cell tower triangulation if the phone doesn't have built in GPS.
Hmmm. Mine typically cost $800 and last 4 years. Of course that doesn't count the two 6 year old computers I just resurrected to use a test platform and automation server.
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OK, I give them credit for the following:
They needed a fast computer and they built one.
They had a limited budget and worked within the limits it imposed.
They intend to use it, for illustration purposes, to get young kids interested in computer science.
That's commendable. Great.
However, as others have said, this is nothing more than simple beowulf cluster with 8 cores on 4 commodity boards using gigabit ethernet in a home-made frame. It's been done. And with the rate of growth in processor performance being what it is; next month I'll be able to go out and build a more powerful machine, for less money.
I don't see why everyone makes this an issue. They're attacking and killing livestock. They've killed the dogs. They're destroying the crops. They're threatening the people physically and by destroying the crops they risk casuing a famine.
People > monkey.
They are at best a nuisance and at worst a danger to the population there. If the people built a village inside a wildlife preserve and are where they should not be, move the people. Otherwise, go in with tranq. guns, capture all (or most) of the monkeys and relocate them to where they will do no harm. Or, if you prefer use real guns and put an end to it.
One does not want to hear of alcohol being allowed to evaporate... One wants to drink the alcohol.
(Let us assume it is ethanol, for argument sake.)
Too true. I'm now honestly expecting it to take at another hundred years or more before we have a permanent, self sustaining (almost) presence on another planet -- Mars. Yeah, we might send someone there, to visit, in my lifetime. The point was it has to be self sustaining. At that, I expect there will still be some things that have to be shipped from Earth, items which require some industrial capacity and difficult to obtain resources. It's a very hard problem which few people appreciate.
Travelling to another star, long long LONG time from now. Assuming we don't kill ourselves off.
Ahhh, but it's the whole solar system. In order for this to be effective, we'd have to colonize planets around other stars...
So, I go to the student bookstore, and I find with my student discount MS Office Standard is $149, WordPerfect Office is $89, Adobe is... well it's expensive. Oh, and Works is $40. I know better -- I would (do) use OpenOffice. That doesn't mean a student or the parent of a student might not make the wrong choice. Again, the question is who'd use it... I'm telling you where I see it used.
Yes, OpenOffice is free... But a lot of people would be willing to pay $40 for Works, people who might not know about OpenOffice. When someone walks into a store to buy a piece of software, they are not going to find OpenOffice on the shelf. They might however see MS Office and MS Works (and maybe WordPerfect). Given the price differential, a person (like a student) who's on a budget is likely to pick Works.
Yes, I use Open Office on my personal machines. The question was "Who would use Works anyway?" I've answered that.
not to use Microsoft products. I run Open Office on all my personal machines.
Why? because it costs 1/10 what Office costs. If you're a student and only need basic functionality, it's enough
It's actually in a product test stand. Scary, no?
I'm still using a MFM drive with an ISA controller in an 8MHz AT!
"Daylight" bulbs, check.
Come on instantly, check
Achieve full brightness instantly, Not.
CFL's take a minute or two to reach full brightness.
You get the same kind of Google imagery from the naval base in Norfolk Virginia, or anywhere else for that matter. If you know where the ports are, it's a trivial matter to google them. So, they just happened to catch the new sub in port. There are probably much better images of it, while it was in the shipyard under construction, sitting in a (non-Chinese) government buildings somewhere.
What would be really cool is if they set them up so they can tow them back into a deep water port for repair.
As someone who lived less about a mile from a coal plant as a child... I think a wind farm would look much nicer than a cluster of smokestacks; and, would be considerably quieter too (we routinely heard the steam releases when they powered down a turbine). It would also allow people to make a lot better use of the 1/2 mile or so of river front property where the plant is located, which is off limits as part of the "buffer zone."
Don't get me started wrt the neighboring oil refinery...
It would be cable. The anchors are cable, not tube. The tube is only long enough to have enough buoyancy and ballast weight to keep the thing floating upright and at the correct attitude.
That's why the project died in 2002. This is old news. Anything fired from a rifle at close range is likely to have some lethal characteristics.
My honest answer: I sure as hell hope so. I like to call myself an optimistic pessimist though. I'm pretty sure we'll screw up a few times before then. Even so, from a human perspective, that's a long time.
Well, assuming a large asteroid doesn't smack into the planet, killing everything... We could easily wipe ourselves off the face of the planet with either a massive launch of nuclear weapons or by releasing a nasty virulent and particularly lethal bug. Even if there were a few survivors, our civilization would likely fall.
Actually we only have around 1 billion years. Yeah, sure, the Sun won't expand into it's red giant phase and incinerate the Earth for around 4 or 5 billion years; but, it is slowly expanding now... In about 1 billion year it's projected to be hot enough here on Earth to boil the oceans.
As a manufacturing engineer who has to deal with everything from "as easy as soldering gets" to ball grid arrays and direct wire bonding, I stand by my statement. You might know what you're doing; but, I've seen too many burned boards, boards damaged by flux, boards physically damaged, mis-wired boards, etc. And that's all on "as easy as solder gets" type work.
Then we get into the whole, is it lead free solder (RoHS compliant) or not issue.
Which they started including because too many (read as most) people are disoriented and act confused after a major accident (a "feature" of shock). They have the wherewithall to find their cell phone and dial 911; but, can NOT tell the operator where they are. Many communities can also use cell tower triangulation if the phone doesn't have built in GPS.
He's probably referring to the TPM chip.
Given that the children of the future are likely to be cyborgs, this makes sense.
Hmmm. Mine typically cost $800 and last 4 years. Of course that doesn't count the two 6 year old computers I just resurrected to use a test platform and automation server.