The thing about scientific computing is that scientists like to write MPI and Fortran. They just love that shit. And they are traditionally really resistant to any new programming model. So when you tell them they need to start using XYZ instead of MPI so their programs can actually complete at exascale *before* hardware failure, they get unhappy and instead implement things like checkpoint/restore that takes 70% of the runtime.
Source: I work in HPC.
I don't know what a Beowolf cluster is either. I am, however, familiar with Beowulf clusters, an overly fancy name for "a bunch of commodity computers running MPI". MegaDroid is not a Beowulf cluster, nor does it run on a Beowulf cluster.
A "virtual android device" is an instance of Android-x86 running in a KVM virtual machine, which takes advantage of hardware virtualization instructions to give better performance. You could take the same software and install it on a desktop PC, assuming Android-x86 includes the appropriate drivers.
At least at my school, it was clearly (and frequently) explained what plagiarism is and exactly what happens if they find you pulling that kind of stuff. Now, maybe if you come in as a 3rd year or something like that you might be able to miss all the talks, but I think any school would be extremely remiss if they neglected to give that sort of orientation to incoming foreign students.
As a personal anecdote, semi-related, my girlfriend is from India. She has a cousin back home who is paying somebody to attend college for her, so she can get a teaching degree. It blew my mind that yes, it's considered acceptable to do this--her whole family knows, and at least the ones over there don't see any problem with it.
It should actually be easier than Android. MeeGo seems much more of a standard Linux system, and Inferno already supports Linux/arm systems. It's up to you to run Inferno as an app on top of the MeeGo graphical layers, or to strip things down to the kernel/utilities layer and build from there, like we did.
I have helped write non-trivial programs in Go. It's quite pleasant.
I think the big reason Google hasn't bothered to provide "adequate tooling" is the developers. That is, I think many of the creators and big users prefer to just work with a plain text editor rather than an IDE. There's a reasonably decent Emacs mode for Go, but it's readable enough without any syntax highlighting, and gofmt will fix your indentation and such for you. As for the debugger, well, there's http://blog.golang.org/2010/11/debugging-go-code-status-report.html (very old but even then they already had GDB support going), but as the first line says, "When it comes to debugging, nothing beats a few strategic print statements to inspect variables or a well-placed panic to obtain a stack trace", which is all I ever used to debug my Go code--and found it reasonably painless!
Oh, and regarding generics--I'm not sure they'll ever go in. It is proposed CONSTANTLY on the mailing list, and Pike et al always indicate that they're not interested.
When your customized system takes 2-3 times as long to boot as Windows on the same hardware, you probably have made a mistake. Maybe next time don't write it all in python.
Of interest in the "players set the rules" topic is LambdaMOO, where players actually sent in petitions which became ballots which were voted on and implemented. Frequently, a ballot to permanently shut down the game was submitted; luckily, they never passed. Other ballots would include changes in quota policy, new user policy, etc.
Compare the FAH systems to BlueGene/P. BlueGene is made up of System-on-Chip PowerPC computers, stuck on DIMM-like cards and then put into arrays, which go into racks, etc. Hugely power efficient, in part because each system doesn't maintain a disk and other crap.
On the other hand, your home computer is inefficient in terms of both heat, power, and space, because it has to run all the other hardware stuff you don't have in a proper supercomputer.
Real computer science students (and the computer engineering students who end up taking the classes too) are smart enough to pick up Unix as they work through the CS courses. It's a good idea to have one or two class sessions to talk about Unix, but having actual Unix courses seems rather silly.
So yeah, if they're teaching a full course on just using Unix, it's probably IT.
I spent a longer-than-is-healthy period of time trying to figure out to build a mostly safe EMP device to fry cars at stoplights with stereos that do that.
Well no, the PC crowd has decided that Nazis are bad, and pretty much nobody likes Nazis anyway, so you're free to say bad things about them as much as you want. Other ideologies, perhaps you should be more careful.
I expressed the same sentiments on the moronic video from yesterday; Slashdot is really about posting someone else's stuff, not your own. It also means that everyone gets that lovely "I've just been raped, but by whom?" thought when they see their server logs.
Just sign up for one of these (I suggest cctalk) and ask around. Maybe somebody can convert them for you, maybe somebody else has an entire Amstrad system that they'll let you have cheap.
Vintage Tech is run by a friend of mine; he has a HUGE warehouse full of various old computer systems here in Livermore, CA. I'd suggest sending an email; he'll probably get back to you within a few hours and could let you know if he can do it. I'd be amazed if he doesn't have an Amstrad system somewhere.
Who in the name of Zoroaster has a gaming laptop? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? You get all the power, ergonomics, upgradeability, and screen size of a laptop with the weight and power consumption of a desktop!
Perhaps if they had refrained from buying the big TV, paying for Internet access and premium satellite channels, and buying a big stack of new DVDs every payday, these people would have enough money to get some damn health service. But God knows people shouldn't give up their precious entertainment for health or food.
In high school, my best friend's family always had a big new TV, the most satellite channels, a huge rack of DVDs (and the even bigger shelf of VHS tapes they replaced), a giant stereo system, whatever. The problem? They lived in an ancient double-wide trailer, and food got pretty damn scarce the week before payday. So yeah, I've seen people just waste their money on unecessary crap, and it's a sad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing about scientific computing is that scientists like to write MPI and Fortran. They just love that shit. And they are traditionally really resistant to any new programming model. So when you tell them they need to start using XYZ instead of MPI so their programs can actually complete at exascale *before* hardware failure, they get unhappy and instead implement things like checkpoint/restore that takes 70% of the runtime. Source: I work in HPC.
I don't know what a Beowolf cluster is either. I am, however, familiar with Beowulf clusters, an overly fancy name for "a bunch of commodity computers running MPI". MegaDroid is not a Beowulf cluster, nor does it run on a Beowulf cluster.
A "virtual android device" is an instance of Android-x86 running in a KVM virtual machine, which takes advantage of hardware virtualization instructions to give better performance. You could take the same software and install it on a desktop PC, assuming Android-x86 includes the appropriate drivers.
Actually, each virtual machine has a VNC session running. And they run on 520 desktops with i7 processors and 12 GB of RAM each.
How many times are you going to post this exact thing in the thread?
As a personal anecdote, semi-related, my girlfriend is from India. She has a cousin back home who is paying somebody to attend college for her, so she can get a teaching degree. It blew my mind that yes, it's considered acceptable to do this--her whole family knows, and at least the ones over there don't see any problem with it.
It should actually be easier than Android. MeeGo seems much more of a standard Linux system, and Inferno already supports Linux/arm systems. It's up to you to run Inferno as an app on top of the MeeGo graphical layers, or to strip things down to the kernel/utilities layer and build from there, like we did.
It would be far better to just make a NAND. You can build any logical function out of NAND gates.
I have helped write non-trivial programs in Go. It's quite pleasant. I think the big reason Google hasn't bothered to provide "adequate tooling" is the developers. That is, I think many of the creators and big users prefer to just work with a plain text editor rather than an IDE. There's a reasonably decent Emacs mode for Go, but it's readable enough without any syntax highlighting, and gofmt will fix your indentation and such for you. As for the debugger, well, there's http://blog.golang.org/2010/11/debugging-go-code-status-report.html (very old but even then they already had GDB support going), but as the first line says, "When it comes to debugging, nothing beats a few strategic print statements to inspect variables or a well-placed panic to obtain a stack trace", which is all I ever used to debug my Go code--and found it reasonably painless! Oh, and regarding generics--I'm not sure they'll ever go in. It is proposed CONSTANTLY on the mailing list, and Pike et al always indicate that they're not interested.
Being on the new Sci-Fi Channel (sorry, SyFy) seems to make things into giant crocodile movies and professional wrestling.
When your customized system takes 2-3 times as long to boot as Windows on the same hardware, you probably have made a mistake. Maybe next time don't write it all in python.
Of interest in the "players set the rules" topic is LambdaMOO, where players actually sent in petitions which became ballots which were voted on and implemented. Frequently, a ballot to permanently shut down the game was submitted; luckily, they never passed. Other ballots would include changes in quota policy, new user policy, etc.
Compare the FAH systems to BlueGene/P. BlueGene is made up of System-on-Chip PowerPC computers, stuck on DIMM-like cards and then put into arrays, which go into racks, etc. Hugely power efficient, in part because each system doesn't maintain a disk and other crap.
On the other hand, your home computer is inefficient in terms of both heat, power, and space, because it has to run all the other hardware stuff you don't have in a proper supercomputer.
Replying for truth--every (mostly CS or supercomputing) conference I can think of wants PDF, with some accepting LaTeX or troff.
Real computer science students (and the computer engineering students who end up taking the classes too) are smart enough to pick up Unix as they work through the CS courses. It's a good idea to have one or two class sessions to talk about Unix, but having actual Unix courses seems rather silly.
So yeah, if they're teaching a full course on just using Unix, it's probably IT.
HERF gun.
Synthesizing FPGA designs (the given example) is not graphics-intensive.
Well no, the PC crowd has decided that Nazis are bad, and pretty much nobody likes Nazis anyway, so you're free to say bad things about them as much as you want. Other ideologies, perhaps you should be more careful.
"That Guy" being the guy who submits his own crap (youtube videos at that!) to Slashdot? Yeah, I hate That Guy.
I expressed the same sentiments on the moronic video from yesterday; Slashdot is really about posting someone else's stuff, not your own. It also means that everyone gets that lovely "I've just been raped, but by whom?" thought when they see their server logs.
I run Folding@home *because* it doesn't use BOINC. BOINC sucks really really bad
Just sign up for one of these (I suggest cctalk) and ask around. Maybe somebody can convert them for you, maybe somebody else has an entire Amstrad system that they'll let you have cheap.
Vintage Tech is run by a friend of mine; he has a HUGE warehouse full of various old computer systems here in Livermore, CA. I'd suggest sending an email; he'll probably get back to you within a few hours and could let you know if he can do it. I'd be amazed if he doesn't have an Amstrad system somewhere.
Who in the name of Zoroaster has a gaming laptop? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? You get all the power, ergonomics, upgradeability, and screen size of a laptop with the weight and power consumption of a desktop!
Perhaps if they had refrained from buying the big TV, paying for Internet access and premium satellite channels, and buying a big stack of new DVDs every payday, these people would have enough money to get some damn health service. But God knows people shouldn't give up their precious entertainment for health or food.
In high school, my best friend's family always had a big new TV, the most satellite channels, a huge rack of DVDs (and the even bigger shelf of VHS tapes they replaced), a giant stereo system, whatever. The problem? They lived in an ancient double-wide trailer, and food got pretty damn scarce the week before payday. So yeah, I've seen people just waste their money on unecessary crap, and it's a sad thing.