Most important: GPUs are predominately massive FPGAs with a highly specialized IO ring (at least they were when I was in the field). The driver essentially loads the array when the card boots. Opening that portion of the driver opend your design to the competitor. Similar things in some chipsets. I personally would be happy with a well supported binary driver over a half assed open one. -nB
30 mi round trip in the rather rapidly growing city of Sacramento (more properly the outlying area). I've done the math and when the engine on this thing dies I'm going to borrow a friends truck for hauling, and be a single car family for a few months while I convert it to electric**. I'd then get "free gas" at my employer, the whole system would pay for its self within 3-5 years depending on how much I took advantage of charging at my place of work. -nB
** Please note that an electric conversion is _not_ to be environmentally friendly, it is to feed my inner geek.
I haul alfalfa, grain, pellets, and pine shavings, two kids, a wife, and sometimes friends. I can not afford a second vehicle to drive to work and back, so tough I drive what I use. Cheers, -nB
More important, if you do not agree to the EULA (but you had to open the package and load the software to see it) then what? I purchased a piece of software once and teh paper EULA referred to the install EULA. When I went to install the software, it turned out that one of the required "helper apps" (DRM) would kill my other tools, I thus did not install this application and attempted to return it, only to be told that the software was opened and "no dice". I pointed out the issue and the fact that the software's execution was protected by a dongle, which was present and that even if I had loaded it on my PC it was now worthless (nevermind soft ice). They still refused to refund my card, so I left the software on the service counter in the managers presence and left the store, follwed by a call to VISA and a chargeback. VISA had no problem with my argument and gave me my refund. -nB
"We hear of people driving into things on wet grass at 5 mph because the brakes would not come on."
I slid/rolled (slowly) down a 300 foot long incline on wet soft dirt & gravel because my antilocks freaked out. I applied the e-brake, which nicely locked up the back wheels, but since the back wheels had no load (pickup) I kept rolling. Didn't have the guts to throw it into park and kill the engine (and thus the anti-lock) as that is a one-way path, and I wanted my steering to avoid the fenceposts. -nB
They have killer pricing on their house brand cables and such. My brother worked there, and right before he quit we wiped them out of three port firewire cards and cables, built a TCP/IP over Firewire mesh network. Thing rocked! Cables were under $2 each. -nB
Buy the extended warrenty, the one that even covers the laptop screen. proceed to use laptop in a cavileer manner till death occours, drop it to be sure. swap for a new model. -nB
that is not commission, it is a *spiff* that way they can say they are non-commissioned. Also you may receive incentive pay for selling certain models of equipment (not sure about this one at BB). -nB
Bah, I forgot to ask: Has the vehicle dev team talked with the launch team about whether they are using imperial tons or metric tonnes? I can see it now: Lauch team: metric, Vehicle team: imperial. "Sir, we don't seem to ahve enough fuel to reach the moon, best we can do is put the bullet in a LEO and wait for someone who we really want to shoot to come by."
What is the cost per pound for GEO lift? (this will need at least that much), and how much does this highly scientific bullet weigh? Certainly a fleet of mars style rovers (which have proven their mettle) would cost no more to lift and produce tons more science?
"Surely if the research was put into new instruments that could be attached to the current design, rather than redesigning from scratch, that would be a better use of the money."
That and maybe little tweaks that would improve performance. Kind of like Rover 1.0 (current model), 1.1 (Improved Flash memory). Treat this as a test platform and attach whatever modules you want to it. Send it off to anywhere on mars or the moon (asteroid belt?) where there is enough sunlight and explore the hell out of it. -nB
So what you need is a so-so dba who has a passionate hobby of biology to hack something together, then the real dba's can tune it and the biologists can hack it and then you will have speciation withing the code (AKA a fork) and everything will be as it was.
That really bugs me. I have started ripping all movies and streaming them over my home network to my TV just because of the 10-15 min of forced trailers you have to watch. Then I discovered a bug that is a feature in my cheapy DVD player: Insert disk and wait for the forced previews to start. Push [stop] [stop] [play] Watch feature start right up:-) -nB
In a way this is not so incremental. The fact that the entire system is encrypted, with the exception of the output device and in-CPU communication, electronic wiretapping can be made inpractable. Yes the crypto can be broken, but if the crypto holds up for either the statute of limitations &&|| the perps lifetime then you might as well not wiretapped at all.
Yes you can still get at teh output device, but if that device is a digital earphone (or better yet a bone conduction transducer) that decrypts at the output point, then you are SOL. Same goes for video, if it is one of those laser scanning thingies that "writes to the eyeball", then you can not intercept the signal in plaintext anywhere. -nB
Something like that. I had some twit in germany try to hack my server while I was sitting at it doing some work. I turned around and rooted his box, dropped a phone home trojan on it and proceeded to map to his printer. I then printed a message about what I thought of him 999 times. One print submission per page, spaced about 5 seconds apart, and only when he was on-line. The 1000'th page said I was done and reminded him to remove the trojan (with instructions). Never saw that box try to hack me again (hopefully scared the patns off him, and I'm sure his dad whacked him a couple times).
That's how I dealt with hack attempts before I moved my server into a managed host environment. -nB
The massive pipelines work great, just not on things with lots of branches. This was a known issue to Intel, and was considered to be a worthwhile risk, as the expectation was that the CPU would scale to the high GHz. That the processor tops out at ~4GHz means that your gain to loss ratio of what the popeline depth gets you has changed (or more accurately failed to improve as anticipated).
All that said, there are several applications where the Intel Archecture whips AMDs, the top two being: MS Office and similar applications Compression Algos
Both these applications have very few branches, and thus do not pay the price for instruction misses. Games OTOH, are essentially nothing but a decision tree, one who has never been trimmed, and thus punishes the IA like nothing else.
Generally the thought is that if you have something to hide, don't use e-mail. If by chance something ungood comes in as clear, then you can wipe it before a subpoena is issued, waiting to do so till afterwards is no good. -nB
Slashdot Mirror
Most important:
GPUs are predominately massive FPGAs with a highly specialized IO ring (at least they were when I was in the field). The driver essentially loads the array when the card boots. Opening that portion of the driver opend your design to the competitor. Similar things in some chipsets.
I personally would be happy with a well supported binary driver over a half assed open one.
-nB
30 mi round trip in the rather rapidly growing city of Sacramento (more properly the outlying area).
I've done the math and when the engine on this thing dies I'm going to borrow a friends truck for hauling, and be a single car family for a few months while I convert it to electric**. I'd then get "free gas" at my employer, the whole system would pay for its self within 3-5 years depending on how much I took advantage of charging at my place of work.
-nB
** Please note that an electric conversion is _not_ to be environmentally friendly, it is to feed my inner geek.
OK, Who let the sales droid in?
You! Stop right there! you are hereby mandated to exchange your geek badge for a marketspeek tie.
-nB
I haul alfalfa, grain, pellets, and pine shavings, two kids, a wife, and sometimes friends.
I can not afford a second vehicle to drive to work and back, so tough I drive what I use.
Cheers,
-nB
It should, and almost is worth the analog limitation.
-nB
More important, if you do not agree to the EULA (but you had to open the package and load the software to see it) then what?
I purchased a piece of software once and teh paper EULA referred to the install EULA. When I went to install the software, it turned out that one of the required "helper apps" (DRM) would kill my other tools, I thus did not install this application and attempted to return it, only to be told that the software was opened and "no dice". I pointed out the issue and the fact that the software's execution was protected by a dongle, which was present and that even if I had loaded it on my PC it was now worthless (nevermind soft ice). They still refused to refund my card, so I left the software on the service counter in the managers presence and left the store, follwed by a call to VISA and a chargeback. VISA had no problem with my argument and gave me my refund.
-nB
"We hear of people driving into things on wet grass at 5 mph because the brakes would not come on."
I slid/rolled (slowly) down a 300 foot long incline on wet soft dirt & gravel because my antilocks freaked out. I applied the e-brake, which nicely locked up the back wheels, but since the back wheels had no load (pickup) I kept rolling. Didn't have the guts to throw it into park and kill the engine (and thus the anti-lock) as that is a one-way path, and I wanted my steering to avoid the fenceposts.
-nB
They have killer pricing on their house brand cables and such.
My brother worked there, and right before he quit we wiped them out of three port firewire cards and cables, built a TCP/IP over Firewire mesh network. Thing rocked! Cables were under $2 each.
-nB
Buy the extended warrenty, the one that even covers the laptop screen.
proceed to use laptop in a cavileer manner till death occours, drop it to be sure.
swap for a new model.
-nB
that is not commission, it is a *spiff* that way they can say they are non-commissioned.
Also you may receive incentive pay for selling certain models of equipment (not sure about this one at BB).
-nB
Yahoo runs my ISP's mail servers. Explains the shitty QOS I've been getting.
-nB
Internally (at network engineering, the old PacBell folks) call them Sodomized By Cowboys.
-nB
Bah, I forgot to ask:
Has the vehicle dev team talked with the launch team about whether they are using imperial tons or metric tonnes?
I can see it now: Lauch team: metric, Vehicle team: imperial.
"Sir, we don't seem to ahve enough fuel to reach the moon, best we can do is put the bullet in a LEO and wait for someone who we really want to shoot to come by."
-nB
Yes, but:
What is the cost per pound for GEO lift? (this will need at least that much), and how much does this highly scientific bullet weigh?
Certainly a fleet of mars style rovers (which have proven their mettle) would cost no more to lift and produce tons more science?
Just a thought.
-nB
"I'm not a complete asshole."
:-)
But I am
-nB
"Surely if the research was put into new instruments that could be attached to the current design, rather than redesigning from scratch, that would be a better use of the money."
That and maybe little tweaks that would improve performance. Kind of like Rover 1.0 (current model), 1.1 (Improved Flash memory). Treat this as a test platform and attach whatever modules you want to it. Send it off to anywhere on mars or the moon (asteroid belt?) where there is enough sunlight and explore the hell out of it.
-nB
I really can not believe that the rovers are still running at all.
NASA did a bang up job on these. Build more and recover the economies of scale!
-nB
So what you need is a so-so dba who has a passionate hobby of biology to hack something together, then the real dba's can tune it and the biologists can hack it and then you will have speciation withing the code (AKA a fork) and everything will be as it was.
Balence, restored.
-nB
That really bugs me. :-)
I have started ripping all movies and streaming them over my home network to my TV just because of the 10-15 min of forced trailers you have to watch. Then I discovered a bug that is a feature in my cheapy DVD player:
Insert disk and wait for the forced previews to start.
Push [stop] [stop] [play]
Watch feature start right up
-nB
In a way this is not so incremental.
The fact that the entire system is encrypted, with the exception of the output device and in-CPU communication, electronic wiretapping can be made inpractable. Yes the crypto can be broken, but if the crypto holds up for either the statute of limitations &&|| the perps lifetime then you might as well not wiretapped at all.
Yes you can still get at teh output device, but if that device is a digital earphone (or better yet a bone conduction transducer) that decrypts at the output point, then you are SOL. Same goes for video, if it is one of those laser scanning thingies that "writes to the eyeball", then you can not intercept the signal in plaintext anywhere.
-nB
Something like that.
I had some twit in germany try to hack my server while I was sitting at it doing some work. I turned around and rooted his box, dropped a phone home trojan on it and proceeded to map to his printer. I then printed a message about what I thought of him 999 times. One print submission per page, spaced about 5 seconds apart, and only when he was on-line. The 1000'th page said I was done and reminded him to remove the trojan (with instructions).
Never saw that box try to hack me again (hopefully scared the patns off him, and I'm sure his dad whacked him a couple times).
That's how I dealt with hack attempts before I moved my server into a managed host environment.
-nB
I wish I had points, that's awesome :)
-nB
The massive pipelines work great, just not on things with lots of branches. This was a known issue to Intel, and was considered to be a worthwhile risk, as the expectation was that the CPU would scale to the high GHz. That the processor tops out at ~4GHz means that your gain to loss ratio of what the popeline depth gets you has changed (or more accurately failed to improve as anticipated).
All that said, there are several applications where the Intel Archecture whips AMDs, the top two being:
MS Office and similar applications
Compression Algos
Both these applications have very few branches, and thus do not pay the price for instruction misses.
Games OTOH, are essentially nothing but a decision tree, one who has never been trimmed, and thus punishes the IA like nothing else.
Cheers,
-nB
Generally the thought is that if you have something to hide, don't use e-mail. If by chance something ungood comes in as clear, then you can wipe it before a subpoena is issued, waiting to do so till afterwards is no good.
-nB
Tagged as unholy