I AIM-ed teh story over to him (using TiK) and this was his response:
00:14:13 [name deleted]: lol 00:14:18...: that's sick! 00:14:23...: they actualy do that? 00:14:32...: if you have linux, you don't need direction 00:14:33...: s
I thought this was a bit enlightening, perhaps of some interest...
Good point. I assumed they would be using 600 MHz Athalons.
A 100-box Alpha setup would of course be much more powerful, but also much more costly; I wonder if the added expense would be better used by just buying more, but cheaper x86 machines?
Now, there are so many possibilities for people looking for power setups. We've got Athalons, G4s, Pentium IIIs, Alphas, Transmeta mystery chips, and those are just the CPU choices. I can't wait to see what will win the price/performance war once multiprocessor, multicore and cluster technology really go mainstream.
From the article it is hard to tell exactly what this money was for. Was it a $500,000 payment for a Beowulf cluster, for Bartol to run the cluster, or for Bartol to build and run the cluster?
If they are purchasing hardware for that amount, they're getting ripped, because I'm thinking all the needed hardware, including the boxes and the networking equipment, can be had for under $150,000 (they could get a nice bulk order discount).
My figure wouldn't include costs like assembly/setup labour and the OS (heh) but half the work is opening the boxes...
Seriously, once the system is going and the scientists have their apps setup, all you need to do is make sure it doesn't overheat. (We are talking about a massive number of x86 systems, here).
Disclaimer: I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about in this post. If someone could inform us what it costs to maintain a project like this, please post.
Your points are reasonably justifiable, but we need to remember who we are dealing with.
>> Nope, not in this age. We'll just express >> outrage today then vote the same people into >> office because they belong to the party that >> once held the ideals we believed in.
I'm guessing you are talking about the (Congressional) Republicans.
Its the Executive branch thats running the NSA bullshit. That's a branch run by non-elected bureaucrats. It was designed to be overseed by Congress. Sadly, the quality of oversight from Congress has been poor in the last 30 or so years (except when they've been trying to pin scandal directly to Clinton). No president really has control of what goes on very far below the cabinet level, and most probably don't care.
Besides, the office of the President is pretty much a national popularity contest. Presidents can be passionate about issues, but usually only pay attention to the really
I am personally very proud of Republicans because of their persistance on this issue. The issue is still only at the subcommittee level, though, and the NSA will probably adopt a strategy of doing just enough to keep from REALLY pissing Congress off.
I generally favor Democratic policy, but I don't know what they think about this. Members of Congress won't speak publicly about this, at least not until the public demands them to take a stand, so I guess its time for me to get out the stationary and write.
So where does this go? I can see some members of Congress attempting shutting down the NSA. It certainly has the power. It would be interesting but disheartening to see a power-play reaction from the NSA, that could result in Constitutional crisis (!).
I think the bureaucrat-politician distinction should be made. According to the Constitution, politicians run Congress and bureaucrats do what the politicians say their job is. What's happened now is the NSA has become independent of the process. They get to pass secret budgets, and they get to ignore Congress' questions, both of which are apparently unConstitutional.
The way to abort this orchestration of bureaucracy is to remind the politicians what their job is. I think many will be more than willing to stir up and demagogue an issue as valid as this. More power to them...
everyone's begging for an answer without regard for validity the searching never ends it goes on and on and on for eternity.
There's a contest of D.C. celebrities on C-SPAN, to see which one is funniest. Pretty good so far, lots of Monica jokes, lots of people making fools of selves. Senator Lieberman will be on in a few... [he's sadly one of the pro-censorship guys on Capitol Hill]
by the way I do feel for these people, and I have a friend who couldn't contact family over there for days after the first round. scary shit, those quakes are.
While Roblimo's heart is in a good place, I'm losing more sleep over the victims of bad governance/the resulting revolution in places like Columbia and Sierra Leon than the people affected by post-industrial Taiwan, which is coping well and will surely rebuild. On the other hand, alot of good innovation goes on over there, and they are our Brothers of technology in a sense... so many Americans didn't realize how dependent we are on all the high-tech components they produce until they started to be in short supply. Most of us wrongfully equate Taiwan with cheap plastic toys.
Politics is local. Presidents are often not elected so much themselves, but get carried by US Reps who get constituents thinking about direction.
Clinton was an exception. The conservative candidates did a great job in getting middle-aged and/or rich white guys excited enough to get elected, but Americans had a hard time getting enthused with four more years of Reagan government.
Its a good thing too because now our government has been in stalemate for several years. One party in control, and out of control can screw a country for years.
This is an excellent and timely piece, especially because of the coming RHAT IPO. Bruce is one lawyer I will brake for.
That last question depressed me a bit, considering all the millions (billions even?) of lines of code that will be lost, as time marches on. This reminds me of the library book CmdrTaco had that was out of print yet still locked up in a copyright. The book was of great importance to his work, but photocopying it would have been illegal, and hogging it it would have been to the detriment of others in his community who might have needed it.
The loss of IP is a great travesty of modern humanity. Imagine the great works of this century's intellectual and technical minds. Once these materials are gone, forget it. However well-written legislation that can protect both profitable business and the consumer might be a solution. But it needs to be executed concurrently in N. America and the E.U., and thats almost a meta-physical impossibility:)
But I have hope, and I'm pulling out my stationary pad right now.
1. The government is NOT involved in motion picture ratings. The MPAA runs that game, at least in the US.
2. Arguable, but if one drives another to insanity, who is responsible? In a just and moral world, should not the sick induviduals who tortured another to the edge be equally responsible?
heh, true, once, but I just got Communicator 4.61 for my Debian box and its both solid and handy.
before I got it I used the Mozilla browser included with version 2.1 of the distro. what a piece of crap! I'll take Communicator any day, I don't care how much Mozilla has grown up, the version I was stuck with was so buggy it never should have seen the light of day, or a "stable" Debian release.
but the topic today is Microsoft, and I have to be amused at how almost all of the MS defenders are posting anonymously. Every time a story about them comes up. Of course I would assume someone at HQ is going to read this, and tell them all to start logging in before posting for Bill's causes...
on the issue of cDc, all I will say is they certainly have a certain flair for style:D
I don't know if anyone else picked up and posted on this, but at http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html it states the iBook has "Built-in 2D/3D graphics acceleration through an integrated ATI RAGE Moblilty graphics controller with 2X AGP". This is fairly big news for the future of gaming on Macintosh hardware, because it will most likely be followed with a transition to the adoption of AGP in the new Sawtooth-chipset based models, set to debut in the fall according to rumour. This will finally bring the MacOS up to speed with Wintel in 3D gaming, at least in one department (the current Mac ATI offerings for the advanced PCI slot just don't cut it anymore, with the TNT 2 and whatnot).
I don't know about that, I think a fast G3 running OS X Server is a formidable setup. That hardware may not be cheap, or the software fully featured yet, but at least we know both of those factors will improve before W2K even ships! Apparently the author can only see hype, and all else he is blind to.
And if that doesn't work as an ideal solution, you can always keep the hardware and install a variety of OSS OSes on it.
Slashdot Mirror
I AIM-ed teh story over to him (using TiK) and this was his response:
...: that's sick! ...: they actualy do that? ...: if you have linux, you don't need direction ...: s
00:14:13 [name deleted]: lol
00:14:18
00:14:23
00:14:32
00:14:33
I thought this was a bit enlightening, perhaps of some interest...
Good point. I assumed they would be using 600 MHz Athalons.
A 100-box Alpha setup would of course be much more powerful, but also much more costly; I wonder if the added expense would be better used by just buying more, but cheaper x86 machines?
Now, there are so many possibilities for people looking for power setups. We've got Athalons, G4s, Pentium IIIs, Alphas, Transmeta mystery chips, and those are just the CPU choices. I can't wait to see what will win the price/performance war once multiprocessor, multicore and cluster technology really go mainstream.
From the article it is hard to tell exactly what this money was for. Was it a $500,000 payment for a Beowulf cluster, for Bartol to run the cluster, or for Bartol to build and run the cluster?
If they are purchasing hardware for that amount, they're getting ripped, because I'm thinking all the needed hardware, including the boxes and the networking equipment, can be had for under $150,000 (they could get a nice bulk order discount).
My figure wouldn't include costs like assembly/setup labour and the OS (heh) but half the work is opening the boxes...
Seriously, once the system is going and the scientists have their apps setup, all you need to do is make sure it doesn't overheat. (We are talking about a massive number of x86 systems, here).
Disclaimer: I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about in this post. If someone could inform us what it costs to maintain a project like this, please post.
Your points are reasonably justifiable, but we need to remember who we are dealing with.
>> Nope, not in this age. We'll just express
>> outrage today then vote the same people into
>> office because they belong to the party that
>> once held the ideals we believed in.
I'm guessing you are talking about the (Congressional) Republicans.
Its the Executive branch thats running the NSA bullshit. That's a branch run by non-elected bureaucrats. It was designed to be overseed by Congress. Sadly, the quality of oversight from Congress has been poor in the last 30 or so years (except when they've been trying to pin scandal directly to Clinton). No president really has control of what goes on very far below the cabinet level, and most probably don't care.
Besides, the office of the President is pretty much a national popularity contest. Presidents can be passionate about issues, but usually only pay attention to the really
I am personally very proud of Republicans because of their persistance on this issue. The issue is still only at the subcommittee level, though, and the NSA will probably adopt a strategy of doing just enough to keep from REALLY pissing Congress off.
I generally favor Democratic policy, but I don't know what they think about this. Members of Congress won't speak publicly about this, at least not until the public demands them to take a stand, so I guess its time for me to get out the stationary and write.
So where does this go? I can see some members of Congress attempting shutting down the NSA. It certainly has the power. It would be interesting but disheartening to see a power-play reaction from the NSA, that could result in Constitutional crisis (!).
I think the bureaucrat-politician distinction should be made. According to the Constitution, politicians run Congress and bureaucrats do what the politicians say their job is. What's happened now is the NSA has become independent of the process. They get to pass secret budgets, and they get to ignore Congress' questions, both of which are apparently unConstitutional.
The way to abort this orchestration of bureaucracy is to remind the politicians what their job is. I think many will be more than willing to stir up and demagogue an issue as valid as this. More power to them...
everyone's begging for an answer
without regard for validity
the searching never ends
it goes on and on and on for eternity.
He said not much's on tonight, but I disagree.
There's a contest of D.C. celebrities on C-SPAN, to see which one is funniest. Pretty good so far, lots of Monica jokes, lots of people making fools of selves. Senator Lieberman will be on in a few... [he's sadly one of the pro-censorship guys on Capitol Hill]
by the way I do feel for these people, and I have a friend who couldn't contact family over there for days after the first round. scary shit, those quakes are.
While Roblimo's heart is in a good place, I'm losing more sleep over the victims of bad governance/the resulting revolution in places like Columbia and Sierra Leon than the people affected by post-industrial Taiwan, which is coping well and will surely rebuild. On the other hand, alot of good innovation goes on over there, and they are our Brothers of technology in a sense... so many Americans didn't realize how dependent we are on all the high-tech components they produce until they started to be in short supply. Most of us wrongfully equate Taiwan with cheap plastic toys.
Because if the u.S. abandoned the nation-state, Canada would come down and sweep up the good states.
NO!
Politics is local. Presidents are often not elected so much themselves, but get carried by US Reps who get constituents thinking about direction.
Clinton was an exception. The conservative candidates did a great job in getting middle-aged and/or rich white guys excited enough to get elected, but Americans had a hard time getting enthused with four more years of Reagan government.
Its a good thing too because now our government has been in stalemate for several years. One party in control, and out of control can screw a country for years.
This is an excellent and timely piece, especially because of the coming RHAT IPO. Bruce is one lawyer I will brake for.
:)
That last question depressed me a bit, considering all the millions (billions even?) of lines of code that will be lost, as time marches on. This reminds me of the library book CmdrTaco had that was out of print yet still locked up in a copyright. The book was of great importance to his work, but photocopying it would have been illegal, and hogging it it would have been to the detriment of others in his community who might have needed it.
The loss of IP is a great travesty of modern humanity. Imagine the great works of this century's intellectual and technical minds. Once these materials are gone, forget it. However well-written legislation that can protect both profitable business and the consumer might be a solution. But it needs to be executed concurrently in N. America and the E.U., and thats almost a meta-physical impossibility
But I have hope, and I'm pulling out my stationary pad right now.
/usr/games/fortune -m lawyer|less
Okay. You are wrong :)
1. The government is NOT involved in motion picture ratings. The MPAA runs that game, at least in the US.
2. Arguable, but if one drives another to insanity, who is responsible? In a just and moral world, should not the sick induviduals who tortured another to the edge be equally responsible?
That question needs to be addressed.
heh, true, once, but I just got Communicator 4.61 for my Debian box and its both solid and handy.
:D
before I got it I used the Mozilla browser included with version 2.1 of the distro. what a piece of crap! I'll take Communicator any day, I don't care how much Mozilla has grown up, the version I was stuck with was so buggy it never should have seen the light of day, or a "stable" Debian release.
but the topic today is Microsoft, and I have to be amused at how almost all of the MS defenders are posting anonymously. Every time a story about them comes up. Of course I would assume someone at HQ is going to read this, and tell them all to start logging in before posting for Bill's causes...
on the issue of cDc, all I will say is they certainly have a certain flair for style
They have sold just over one million iMacs.
I don't know if anyone else picked up and posted on this, but at http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html it states the iBook has "Built-in 2D/3D graphics acceleration through an integrated ATI RAGE Moblilty graphics controller with 2X AGP". This is fairly big news for the future of gaming on Macintosh hardware, because it will most likely be followed with a transition to the adoption of AGP in the new Sawtooth-chipset based models, set to debut in the fall according to rumour. This will finally bring the MacOS up to speed with Wintel in 3D gaming, at least in one department (the current Mac ATI offerings for the advanced PCI slot just don't cut it anymore, with the TNT 2 and whatnot).
I don't know about that, I think a fast G3 running OS X Server is a formidable setup. That hardware may not be cheap, or the software fully featured yet, but at least we know both of those factors will improve before W2K even ships! Apparently the author can only see hype, and all else he is blind to.
And if that doesn't work as an ideal solution, you can always keep the hardware and install a variety of OSS OSes on it.