With tens of millions of nodes data logistics pretty much always is a problem, even for supposedly embarrassingly parallel problems. Either the nodes communicate with only a few neighbours, in which case you have to carefully design the layout of the computations to make sure every node can communicate efficiently with its neighbours, and there probably is also some kind of global clock that has to be maintained. Alternatively you have some kind of farmer-worker setup where each worker node is happily chomping on an problem on its own. Even then you have to have farmer nodes that keep all those millions of little chompers busy. That is usually a headache on its own, because they will need some data to get started, they'll report back some data, and that's a lot of data if you deal with so many nodes.
If all those millions of nodes need to consult some kind of global data, even if it is rarely, that's another data logistics headache. And those are the best-case scenarios, and that's ignoring any fault-tolerance issues, which with tens of millions of nodes is already far into the `happy fool' area.
So yes, it is extremely hard to program for such an architecture. The only alternative is to use a middleware such as Hadoop where you try to fit your problem into a certain computation pattern (`skeleton' was a popular term for this for a while), and let the authors of the middleware worry about all the headaches I mention above. That doesn't mean the problems aren't there any more, it is just that the middleware authors are trying to hide the issues from you as well as they can.
Since polls of their users indicate that both Obamacare and the related websites are nowadays an overwhelming success, I would say: absolutely not.
They would be able to get a functioning system up and running (after a few false starts). I think it is far better to let the usual UK IT contractors set it up; that way you're guaranteed the system will never be operational.
concentration of power corrupts their [socialist] political structure
Are you trying to imply it is not a flaw of the capitalist system?
I can think of a couple of pretty convincing capitalist examples of said corruption, and don't see why socialism is more susceptible to it than the capitalist system.
Wind energy is not a `very expensive' technology, it is comparable in cost to conventional energy, and so is solar. Yes, for now conventional energy sources are used for baseload power in many countries, but energy storage is a solvable problem. There are many ideas for this, from using worn-out battery packs of electric cars to pumping back water into water reservoirs, and some of them are already used in practice.
No country is planning to decommission conventional power generators just to be green, although in some countries decommissioning for economical reasons is being considered.
Reducing CO2 emissions can also be accomplished by reduced energy consumption. Most European countries are well aware of that, and have worked hard to stimulate this, but I strongly suspect that in the USA with its enormous per-capita consumption a lot can be gained here. And no, that does not mean that you have to sit shivering in the dark under the light of a single LED lamp, it just means that by investing a bit in better isolation of buildings, more efficient light sources, and more efficient heating and cooling, you reduce your energy bill. And these investments usually pay themselves off, although it may take a decade or so.
For the statement you ascribe to Freeman Dyson I think a citation is in order. I'm very sceptical that he said what you claim he said.
Why do you think that changing to renewable energy will have such a bad impact on the (presumably US) economy? Sure, some sectors will be reduced, but others will be stimulated. That's how it goes in a flexible economy. There is no reason to assume that there will be the disasters you are sketching.
I'm not going to dissect that `there has been no global warming for about 18 years' myth for the twenty-zillionth time; it has been debunked so often that it's almost a/. meme.
And if a country (again I'm assuming you're talking about the USA here) has so many people living in such precarious circumstances, perhaps it is wise to think about giving them more social support? Higher minimum wages? More affordable healthcare? Perhaps even a more inclusive foodstamp program? Such poverty is not healthy for a society.
So your claim that Mac OS X has significantly weaker security than other operating systems is entirely justified by a few news items on/.?
You're completely ignoring any selection bias of/., you're completely ignoring the accuracy of these reports, you're ignoring the whole `the plural of anecdote is not proof' issue, and you're blindly assuming that security issues that these Pwn-to-Own events uncover are indicative of real-life security of the operating system.
Except Macs routinely are first to fall at the Pwn to Own competitions, so no, that's bullshit.
Sounds implausible. Not because Macs are perfectly secure, but because the competition is far from perfect. So a citation for that claim would be nice.
More importantly, are there any significant botnets with Macs in them? (And what about Linux?)
What's the difference between Muslims and Christians? Two things, first Christians don't believe that all people are Christian or born as such. Islam dictates that all people are.
Islam wants all people to be Muslims, and considers Muslims superior. But then, Christianity wants all people to be Christians, and considers Christians superior. Neither religion believes all people are born as such, neither religion dictates that all people are. The mainstream religion, that is. If you search long enough you can find loons that believe anything, including that the earth is flat or the sky is green. It is not so hard to find loons that want to shoot all those dangerous lefty atheists.
Second, Christianity has had a reformation(several actually), Islam has had none.
Islam has evolved a lot over the centuries, and mixed with local religions all over the world. Many people in for example Iran and Saudi Arabia would like their religious leaders to lighten up, but then there are plenty of Christian flavours that should stop their bible thumping as well.
Also, your "dangerous holy crusades" were in response to Muslims. More so the out-right slaughter, rape, murder, and forced conversion of Christians in Spain...that had been on-going for nearly 100 years by that time.
Whereas the Spanish inquisition only used comfy chairs. They're famous for it. And the crusaders were never guilty of out-right slaughter, rape, murder, and forced conversion.
Considering that this kind of policy is common throughout the world as a pretty uncontroversial part of government, I would say that the burden of proof of that statement is on you.
You can debate whether this particular tourism policy or the subsidy to the ark is effective, but there is nothing wrong with the general idea
Yes, the general idea for government to pick winners and losers in the market place is wrong because it doesn't work.
You're denying that by using some community money tourism can be stimulated? Huh?
It is not clear to me why `picking winners and losers in the market place' is supposed to wrong. The government is a player in the marketplace with its own motivations. That's not good or bad, that's just a fact of life. Even buying the pencils for the pencil pushers at the cheapest place is picking a winner. And sometimes the government decides that giving some money to some organisation is the best way to stimulate tourism. That's just another act in the marketplace.
unless you are a libertarian fundamentalist.
I'm sorry, is that supposed to be some lame attempt at an insult? Or what?
What's the point of insulting someone? No, it was a (failed) attempt to make you think about your position.
Repeat after me: taking tax dollars and shoving them into the hands of private developers is not a proper function of government.
That is only an opinion, and a minority opinion at that. If the government considers it in the common interest to help out some private enterprises it makes sense to do so. In this case the purpose of the shoving is clear: by spending some public money Kentucky is hoping to attract more tourists. You can debate whether this particular tourism policy or the subsidy to the ark is effective, but there is nothing wrong with the general idea unless you are a libertarian fundamentalist.
Apart from that, the pencil pushers in government will also have to buy their pencils from private companies, and will therefore have to shove some tax dollars into the hands of private enterprise.
I'm pretty sure building a replica of that big yellow thing is more expensive than a coal-fired plant.
I have a better idea, why not use the energy of the existing one!? We could build some kind of antenna that collects the energy. In fact, we could build lots them all over the world! Sure, there are some practical issues, but I'm not sure they are harder to solve than building a working fusion reactor.
A lot of the risk mitigation is not really that expensive. Isolating buildings properly to require less heating and cooling is often a good investment anyway. Solar and wind energy are roughly competitive nowadays so why not encourage people to use it? Investing in public transport is wise for many other reasons than just CO2 emissions, and so on.
Investing some public money in research for alternative energy is not that expensive either. One or two dollars/euros (or the equivalent in the local currency) per person per month would already help a lot, and would allow further research in energy storage, more efficient production of alternative energy, upscaling research results, etc.
Finally, some risk assessment and mitigation in coastal areas is also important, but again that doesn't have to bankrupt any economy.
Is this enough if all the AGW predictions are correct? Probably not, but why not get started with the easy things while we learn more?
Even if the AGW deniers were right after all, most of the above measures are a wise investment anyway, so why would anyone be against this?
You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.
Then why are you asking questions on/.?
I don't think the people here at/. are doing such a bad job explaining climate science, but you can always ask your money back and go find answers from real climate scientists.
The Japanese solution is to have your luggage shipped door to door by a freight company. A very good idea, but I must assume that Japanese freight companies ask a far more decent price for this service than in the rest of the world.
I'm sorry, but I can't get exited about two days to fix one vulnerability (Major Linux distributions) versus five days to fix most, if not all known vulnerabilities (Apple). The fix is there, and I'm glad they took the time to do some additional testing, especially
because bash on Mac OS X is something that a large majority of users will not even run, and those that do will mostly only use it for their command line handling.
Remote exploitation is just not possible with the default settings, so I don't care that Apple is a little slower.
Similarly, I am glad that there was a quick fix for my Debian box, because there the vulnerability was critical, and I have seen in the log files that people were trying to exploit it.
This neatly demonstrates that the statistics you mention are meaningless. The tradeoff between quick and solid is always there, and it is likely that Microsoft more often had to deal with bugs that required urgent fixes; they still have a lot of legacy to deal with.
In general, I don't see any signs that Apple is lax about security. They may be a little slow, but usually the fix is worth the wait, and they're also pretty good at avoiding problems in the first place.
I disagree that using shell CGI scripts should be considered security hole any more than using CGI scripts written in any other language (snip)
Shells are notoriously difficult to use securely. So much so that for example suid is often not honoured on shell scripts. And that's because of the documented behaviour of the shells. The newly discovered bug in the Bourne shell makes it particularly easy to write an exploit, but even based on just the documented behaviour you're either a fool or a genius if you think you can write secure shell scripts.
It may be true that it is perfectly safe to cross the Niagara over a steel cable if you're trained well enough, but normal people are nevertheless advised to just use the bridge.
But one has to be ordained as a climate scientist first. Not many of their seminaries are going to graduate non-believers.
If you have complaints about the way climate science is evaluated, you will have to be more specific than this. Abstract references to religious institutions are insufficiently clear to discuss and address such complaints.
Slashdot Mirror
With tens of millions of nodes data logistics pretty much always is a problem, even for supposedly embarrassingly parallel problems. Either the nodes communicate with only a few neighbours, in which case you have to carefully design the layout of the computations to make sure every node can communicate efficiently with its neighbours, and there probably is also some kind of global clock that has to be maintained. Alternatively you have some kind of farmer-worker setup where each worker node is happily chomping on an problem on its own. Even then you have to have farmer nodes that keep all those millions of little chompers busy. That is usually a headache on its own, because they will need some data to get started, they'll report back some data, and that's a lot of data if you deal with so many nodes.
If all those millions of nodes need to consult some kind of global data, even if it is rarely, that's another data logistics headache. And those are the best-case scenarios, and that's ignoring any fault-tolerance issues, which with tens of millions of nodes is already far into the `happy fool' area.
So yes, it is extremely hard to program for such an architecture. The only alternative is to use a middleware such as Hadoop where you try to fit your problem into a certain computation pattern (`skeleton' was a popular term for this for a while), and let the authors of the middleware worry about all the headaches I mention above. That doesn't mean the problems aren't there any more, it is just that the middleware authors are trying to hide the issues from you as well as they can.
Japan has now put 100 passengers on a Maglev train doing over 500kph.
Were they volunteers?
They were the lucky winners of a lottery, with odds of less than 1%. See http://ajw.asahi.com/article/b...
Since polls of their users indicate that both Obamacare and the related websites are nowadays an overwhelming success, I would say: absolutely not.
They would be able to get a functioning system up and running (after a few false starts). I think it is far better to let the usual UK IT contractors set it up; that way you're guaranteed the system will never be operational.
concentration of power corrupts their [socialist] political structure
Are you trying to imply it is not a flaw of the capitalist system?
I can think of a couple of pretty convincing capitalist examples of said corruption, and don't see why socialism is more susceptible to it than the capitalist system.
Wind energy is not a `very expensive' technology, it is comparable in cost to conventional energy, and so is solar. Yes, for now conventional energy sources are used for baseload power in many countries, but energy storage is a solvable problem. There are many ideas for this, from using worn-out battery packs of electric cars to pumping back water into water reservoirs, and some of them are already used in practice.
No country is planning to decommission conventional power generators just to be green, although in some countries decommissioning for economical reasons is being considered.
Reducing CO2 emissions can also be accomplished by reduced energy consumption. Most European countries are well aware of that, and have worked hard to stimulate this, but I strongly suspect that in the USA with its enormous per-capita consumption a lot can be gained here. And no, that does not mean that you have to sit shivering in the dark under the light of a single LED lamp, it just means that by investing a bit in better isolation of buildings, more efficient light sources, and more efficient heating and cooling, you reduce your energy bill. And these investments usually pay themselves off, although it may take a decade or so.
For the statement you ascribe to Freeman Dyson I think a citation is in order. I'm very sceptical that he said what you claim he said.
Why do you think that changing to renewable energy will have such a bad impact on the (presumably US) economy? Sure, some sectors will be reduced, but others will be stimulated. That's how it goes in a flexible economy. There is no reason to assume that there will be the disasters you are sketching.
I'm not going to dissect that `there has been no global warming for about 18 years' myth for the twenty-zillionth time; it has been debunked so often that it's almost a /. meme.
And if a country (again I'm assuming you're talking about the USA here) has so many people living in such precarious circumstances, perhaps it is wise to think about giving them more social support? Higher minimum wages? More affordable healthcare? Perhaps even a more inclusive foodstamp program? Such poverty is not healthy for a society.
It's not about "moral choices"
No? Why not? Eating other sentient beings or not is a moral choice. And not an easy choice if you are sensitive to these issues.
it's about conformity to a non-mainstream ideal so as to set oneself apart and produce a feeling of independence.
BINGO!!! You hit all the words on my psycho-babble bingo card!! What do I win?
So your claim that Mac OS X has significantly weaker security than other operating systems is entirely justified by a few news items on /.?
You're completely ignoring any selection bias of /., you're completely ignoring the accuracy of these reports, you're ignoring the whole `the plural of anecdote is not proof' issue, and you're blindly assuming that security issues that these Pwn-to-Own events uncover are indicative of real-life security of the operating system.
That justification is, err, somewhat flawed.
Except Macs routinely are first to fall at the Pwn to Own competitions, so no, that's bullshit.
Sounds implausible. Not because Macs are perfectly secure, but because the competition is far from perfect. So a citation for that claim would be nice.
More importantly, are there any significant botnets with Macs in them? (And what about Linux?)
What's the difference between Muslims and Christians? Two things, first Christians don't believe that all people are Christian or born as such. Islam dictates that all people are.
Islam wants all people to be Muslims, and considers Muslims superior. But then, Christianity wants all people to be Christians, and considers Christians superior. Neither religion believes all people are born as such, neither religion dictates that all people are. The mainstream religion, that is. If you search long enough you can find loons that believe anything, including that the earth is flat or the sky is green. It is not so hard to find loons that want to shoot all those dangerous lefty atheists.
Second, Christianity has had a reformation(several actually), Islam has had none.
Islam has evolved a lot over the centuries, and mixed with local religions all over the world. Many people in for example Iran and Saudi Arabia would like their religious leaders to lighten up, but then there are plenty of Christian flavours that should stop their bible thumping as well.
Also, your "dangerous holy crusades" were in response to Muslims. More so the out-right slaughter, rape, murder, and forced conversion of Christians in Spain...that had been on-going for nearly 100 years by that time.
Whereas the Spanish inquisition only used comfy chairs. They're famous for it. And the crusaders were never guilty of out-right slaughter, rape, murder, and forced conversion.
... he took so much, he is having trouble spending it all before he dies.
Uhm, isn't this what he's doing?
We call these opinions "values".
If you like. It's a minority value then.
Actually, it's a majority opinion.
Considering that this kind of policy is common throughout the world as a pretty uncontroversial part of government, I would say that the burden of proof of that statement is on you.
You can debate whether this particular tourism policy or the subsidy to the ark is effective, but there is nothing wrong with the general idea
Yes, the general idea for government to pick winners and losers in the market place is wrong because it doesn't work.
You're denying that by using some community money tourism can be stimulated? Huh?
It is not clear to me why `picking winners and losers in the market place' is supposed to wrong. The government is a player in the marketplace with its own motivations. That's not good or bad, that's just a fact of life. Even buying the pencils for the pencil pushers at the cheapest place is picking a winner. And sometimes the government decides that giving some money to some organisation is the best way to stimulate tourism. That's just another act in the marketplace.
unless you are a libertarian fundamentalist.
I'm sorry, is that supposed to be some lame attempt at an insult? Or what?
What's the point of insulting someone? No, it was a (failed) attempt to make you think about your position.
Repeat after me: taking tax dollars and shoving them into the hands of private developers is not a proper function of government.
That is only an opinion, and a minority opinion at that. If the government considers it in the common interest to help out some private enterprises it makes sense to do so. In this case the purpose of the shoving is clear: by spending some public money Kentucky is hoping to attract more tourists. You can debate whether this particular tourism policy or the subsidy to the ark is effective, but there is nothing wrong with the general idea unless you are a libertarian fundamentalist.
Apart from that, the pencil pushers in government will also have to buy their pencils from private companies, and will therefore have to shove some tax dollars into the hands of private enterprise.
Down time is highly predictable. Compared to building our own fusion reactor this is a trivial problem to solve.
I'm pretty sure building a replica of that big yellow thing is more expensive than a coal-fired plant.
I have a better idea, why not use the energy of the existing one!? We could build some kind of antenna that collects the energy. In fact, we could build lots them all over the world! Sure, there are some practical issues, but I'm not sure they are harder to solve than building a working fusion reactor.
A lot of the risk mitigation is not really that expensive. Isolating buildings properly to require less heating and cooling is often a good investment anyway. Solar and wind energy are roughly competitive nowadays so why not encourage people to use it? Investing in public transport is wise for many other reasons than just CO2 emissions, and so on. Investing some public money in research for alternative energy is not that expensive either. One or two dollars/euros (or the equivalent in the local currency) per person per month would already help a lot, and would allow further research in energy storage, more efficient production of alternative energy, upscaling research results, etc. Finally, some risk assessment and mitigation in coastal areas is also important, but again that doesn't have to bankrupt any economy.
Is this enough if all the AGW predictions are correct? Probably not, but why not get started with the easy things while we learn more? Even if the AGW deniers were right after all, most of the above measures are a wise investment anyway, so why would anyone be against this?
You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.
Then why are you asking questions on /.?
I don't think the people here at /. are doing such a bad job explaining climate science, but you can always ask your money back and go find answers from real climate scientists.
Yes, something has changed, same as with the climate. Some parts of the climate is man-made too nowadays.
... is a whole class of words ...
The Japanese solution is to have your luggage shipped door to door by a freight company. A very good idea, but I must assume that Japanese freight companies ask a far more decent price for this service than in the rest of the world.
I'm sorry, but I can't get exited about two days to fix one vulnerability (Major Linux distributions) versus five days to fix most, if not all known vulnerabilities (Apple). The fix is there, and I'm glad they took the time to do some additional testing, especially because bash on Mac OS X is something that a large majority of users will not even run, and those that do will mostly only use it for their command line handling. Remote exploitation is just not possible with the default settings, so I don't care that Apple is a little slower.
Similarly, I am glad that there was a quick fix for my Debian box, because there the vulnerability was critical, and I have seen in the log files that people were trying to exploit it.
This neatly demonstrates that the statistics you mention are meaningless. The tradeoff between quick and solid is always there, and it is likely that Microsoft more often had to deal with bugs that required urgent fixes; they still have a lot of legacy to deal with.
In general, I don't see any signs that Apple is lax about security. They may be a little slow, but usually the fix is worth the wait, and they're also pretty good at avoiding problems in the first place.
Who is lax about security? Apple? Why do you think so?
I disagree that using shell CGI scripts should be considered security hole any more than using CGI scripts written in any other language (snip)
Shells are notoriously difficult to use securely. So much so that for example suid is often not honoured on shell scripts. And that's because of the documented behaviour of the shells. The newly discovered bug in the Bourne shell makes it particularly easy to write an exploit, but even based on just the documented behaviour you're either a fool or a genius if you think you can write secure shell scripts.
It may be true that it is perfectly safe to cross the Niagara over a steel cable if you're trained well enough, but normal people are nevertheless advised to just use the bridge.
"Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, declared a war on whistleblowers virtually as soon as they assumed office," says Kiriakou.
Obama is certainly not any better than his predecessors, but I have to wonder if he is any worse. Valery Plame was on G. W. Bush's watch, for example.
have a good career as a climate scientist.
But one has to be ordained as a climate scientist first. Not many of their seminaries are going to graduate non-believers.
If you have complaints about the way climate science is evaluated, you will have to be more specific than this. Abstract references to religious institutions are insufficiently clear to discuss and address such complaints.