Don't assume that a "low" version number means it's unusable. The project has commits going back to at least December 2009. Not all software is versioned with the assumption that 1.0 = finished.
Algorithms only work well if they fit well with the hardware they're targeting. You have to make certain assumptions, but depending on what your algorithm is, you should know which things you really need to think about (memory, branching, process communication, disk,...)
Algorithms that get synthesised into hardware will only work well if they're written in such a way that lends itself to synthesis. There's going to be a huge heap of stuff that doesn't fit well, or doesn't work at all. Writing things like Verilog and even System C is very different to writing a piece of software. And let's not even mention the backend stuff like layout - stuff that can have a big impact on performance of the thing you're spending a lot of money fabricating (oh, I guess I/did/ mention it...)
So, maybe a bit ambitious, but if they've solved even some of the problems and helped bring software development and hardware design closer together, well, that's a good thing.
Seeing as this is the British *Broadcasting* Company we're talking about here, they *must* be referring to RDF Television: http://www.rdftelevision.com/
So if such an incredible amount of effort went into getting the HCI/UI/UX right, then why does it look... awful, just awful? It's a shame really, for a site that's existed for so long.
The problem is not just generating the power... it's delivering it and consuming it without breaking/melting. And that's what they're getting at here - getting more FLOPS per watt... not finding out how to push more watts into a system. A silly amount of the energy going into a supercomputer comes out as heat... and a silly amount of energy is then used to remove that heat. Hopefully, by significantly improving the energy efficiency of chips and systems, we can make them a lot more powerful without them needing a whole lot more power. And I haven't even mentioned the mobile/embedded side of the spectrum where its about battery life and comfortable operating temperatures... the same energy efficiency goals apply.
This is the sort of thing we over the pond are very interested in too. Like for example *cough* the Microelectronics Research Group that I'm a part of.
My personal web site's home page is 2KB. It's HTML5, no CSS, no JS.
My research group site has a bit of all three plus a handful of images and comes in at 125KB.
Big website I sysadmin weighs in at 1.1MB.
A nice variety there. I think my personal site claims the crown as the fastest loading and quickest to render.
Perhaps across the board things aren't so good, but at the institution I graduated from (University of Bristol), most everyone from CS I've seen since I graduated 2 years ago has a decent job, or is now studying for a PhD.
For some services such as wifi there are instructions for various flavours of OS - Windows, Mac, Linux, Android. We have Enterprise WPA2 and the university requires you to install their certificate, but they've done a pretty decent job of documenting it for these OSes. Unfortunately some of the software they advocate is very Microsoft or Windows centric.
The Computer Science department goes quite a bit further - its lab machines run CentOS.
Up until a couple of years ago there were some old Sun machines knocking about somewhere in the Engineering Faculty.
On brief reflection, I realise this is a very personal response, and doesn't really work at a level where you're working in the capacity of sysop at a medium to large company. But the question is a bit ambiguous, and this is slashdot, so pleh!
10 years is not that long, but more to the point, if I am looking for a file on media that is so old, then it must be archived not backed up. A backup is something you keep if you want to safeguard against loss of data on whatever you use as an active data store. An archive is somewhere safe you keep something when you no longer have a regular need to access it, but may still need it in the future. The methods and media for backups and archives are often the same/similar, but in the case where you have something archived, one would assume there is no "live" copy and therefore the archive should itself be backed up.
Given the rate of storage capacity expansion and my comparatively pedestrian storage requirements, my archive policy is that it stays on my computer, and simply doesn't get accessed. That way it's always backed up using my most current backup regime (rsnapshot at the moment), my "archive" isn't really an archive at all, and I don't have to worry about the media getting old, because it's guaranteed to be on my most recent media - the media I use daily.
This is so far from a secret it's not even funny. Imagine if we'd only just discovered what those two pins on the connector did?
Hell, even the breakout board the guy (who's original, non full page ad-encumbered article can be found here) bought has the bloody serial pins labelled.
It's not remotely surprising that an embedded device has a UART on it. It's even less surprising that a device designed to interface with very simple dock devices has a UART exposed via its peripheral connector.
What is surprising is that the combination of breakout board and RS232 line driver somehow managed to be bigger than the phone.
This is true, but Verizon could operate with a certain sense of... decorum.
Plus, I doubt they lose that much money in early termination due to deceased individuals.
Perhaps now the overworked, underpaid developers who did this can get back to work on flash for 64-bit Linux.
And while I'm in a bitter mood... It still amazes me how flash can be so horribly inefficient even at video playback. Ancient VLC versions play back H264 with far less CPU usage than current Linux flash does. I do wonder how Adobe manages to achieve this disparity in performance.
He was the voice of Darth Maul. He also created the fantastically funny "science" show Look Around You, and has been involved in various comedies including Shaun of the Dead.
This is why we can't really use sixth-form qualifications in this area as an indicator of a candidate's ability to program - we have to assume they know nothing, and look to Maths & Science qualifications for indication of their skills.
I learnt Pascal and VB6 back when I was at sixth form. Then I went to uni, was taught C and thought to myself "why didn't they teach us this!? I know NOTHING".
That makes sense, given the risk of an IE update breaking the "IE collection" somehow. Luckily for me the versions work independently enough that it's sufficient for all my testing. If it wasn't I think I'd be doing exactly what you are.
That used to be the case, but I believe they have fixed that - I run IE6, IE7 and IE8 on a rig for development purposes, and the conditionals seem to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't assume that a "low" version number means it's unusable. The project has commits going back to at least December 2009. Not all software is versioned with the assumption that 1.0 = finished.
0xBABECAFE or 0xDEADBEEF are both slightly less controversial.
How many alpha particles are going to make it outside of the car?
Can it measure the marigolds?
Algorithms only work well if they fit well with the hardware they're targeting. You have to make certain assumptions, but depending on what your algorithm is, you should know which things you really need to think about (memory, branching, process communication, disk, ...)
Algorithms that get synthesised into hardware will only work well if they're written in such a way that lends itself to synthesis. There's going to be a huge heap of stuff that doesn't fit well, or doesn't work at all. Writing things like Verilog and even System C is very different to writing a piece of software. And let's not even mention the backend stuff like layout - stuff that can have a big impact on performance of the thing you're spending a lot of money fabricating (oh, I guess I /did/ mention it...)
So, maybe a bit ambitious, but if they've solved even some of the problems and helped bring software development and hardware design closer together, well, that's a good thing.
Indeed. That and the fact that I was taking the piss... which the GP doesn't seem to have noticed.
Except maybe they did, and I've just fallen into a trap...
Seeing as this is the British *Broadcasting* Company we're talking about here, they *must* be referring to RDF Television: http://www.rdftelevision.com/
So if such an incredible amount of effort went into getting the HCI/UI/UX right, then why does it look... awful, just awful? It's a shame really, for a site that's existed for so long.
The problem is not just generating the power... it's delivering it and consuming it without breaking/melting. And that's what they're getting at here - getting more FLOPS per watt... not finding out how to push more watts into a system. A silly amount of the energy going into a supercomputer comes out as heat... and a silly amount of energy is then used to remove that heat. Hopefully, by significantly improving the energy efficiency of chips and systems, we can make them a lot more powerful without them needing a whole lot more power. And I haven't even mentioned the mobile/embedded side of the spectrum where its about battery life and comfortable operating temperatures... the same energy efficiency goals apply.
This is the sort of thing we over the pond are very interested in too. Like for example *cough* the Microelectronics Research Group that I'm a part of.
My personal web site's home page is 2KB. It's HTML5, no CSS, no JS. My research group site has a bit of all three plus a handful of images and comes in at 125KB. Big website I sysadmin weighs in at 1.1MB. A nice variety there. I think my personal site claims the crown as the fastest loading and quickest to render.
Perhaps across the board things aren't so good, but at the institution I graduated from (University of Bristol), most everyone from CS I've seen since I graduated 2 years ago has a decent job, or is now studying for a PhD.
Endnote would be my primary example, but I use Mendeley instead.
For some services such as wifi there are instructions for various flavours of OS - Windows, Mac, Linux, Android. We have Enterprise WPA2 and the university requires you to install their certificate, but they've done a pretty decent job of documenting it for these OSes. Unfortunately some of the software they advocate is very Microsoft or Windows centric. The Computer Science department goes quite a bit further - its lab machines run CentOS. Up until a couple of years ago there were some old Sun machines knocking about somewhere in the Engineering Faculty.
On brief reflection, I realise this is a very personal response, and doesn't really work at a level where you're working in the capacity of sysop at a medium to large company. But the question is a bit ambiguous, and this is slashdot, so pleh!
10 years is not that long, but more to the point, if I am looking for a file on media that is so old, then it must be archived not backed up. A backup is something you keep if you want to safeguard against loss of data on whatever you use as an active data store. An archive is somewhere safe you keep something when you no longer have a regular need to access it, but may still need it in the future. The methods and media for backups and archives are often the same/similar, but in the case where you have something archived, one would assume there is no "live" copy and therefore the archive should itself be backed up.
Given the rate of storage capacity expansion and my comparatively pedestrian storage requirements, my archive policy is that it stays on my computer, and simply doesn't get accessed. That way it's always backed up using my most current backup regime (rsnapshot at the moment), my "archive" isn't really an archive at all, and I don't have to worry about the media getting old, because it's guaranteed to be on my most recent media - the media I use daily.
THANK YOU!
This is so far from a secret it's not even funny. Imagine if we'd only just discovered what those two pins on the connector did?
Hell, even the breakout board the guy (who's original, non full page ad-encumbered article can be found here) bought has the bloody serial pins labelled.
It's not remotely surprising that an embedded device has a UART on it. It's even less surprising that a device designed to interface with very simple dock devices has a UART exposed via its peripheral connector.
What is surprising is that the combination of breakout board and RS232 line driver somehow managed to be bigger than the phone.
This is true, but Verizon could operate with a certain sense of... decorum. Plus, I doubt they lose that much money in early termination due to deceased individuals.
Why would a corporation care about a grieving widow, unless there was some sort of bad publicity to arise out of... oh dear.
Perhaps now the overworked, underpaid developers who did this can get back to work on flash for 64-bit Linux.
And while I'm in a bitter mood... It still amazes me how flash can be so horribly inefficient even at video playback. Ancient VLC versions play back H264 with far less CPU usage than current Linux flash does. I do wonder how Adobe manages to achieve this disparity in performance.
I'm middle-endian, you insensitive clod.
He was the voice of Darth Maul. He also created the fantastically funny "science" show Look Around You, and has been involved in various comedies including Shaun of the Dead.
This is why we can't really use sixth-form qualifications in this area as an indicator of a candidate's ability to program - we have to assume they know nothing, and look to Maths & Science qualifications for indication of their skills.
I learnt Pascal and VB6 back when I was at sixth form. Then I went to uni, was taught C and thought to myself "why didn't they teach us this!? I know NOTHING".
That makes sense, given the risk of an IE update breaking the "IE collection" somehow. Luckily for me the versions work independently enough that it's sufficient for all my testing. If it wasn't I think I'd be doing exactly what you are.
That used to be the case, but I believe they have fixed that - I run IE6, IE7 and IE8 on a rig for development purposes, and the conditionals seem to work.
Yes, you can :)