Yes, but it will be tied to their stock price, for very hard to explain technical reasons, so some days it will be called a negatronic brain. For the Trekkies out there, Data and Lore are really the same android, just in positronic and negatronic modes. Those scenes where they stand side-by-side...well, a wizard did it.
I would imagine that at such low voltage levels, induced current would require a damn near perfect level of alignment between the chip and the "socket".
Well, if they invent a very good self-aligning mounting socket, dirt can be dealt with just by being very careful and using one of those air-in-a-can dusters. This technology would be very expensive, initially, so you could even get one of Sun's guys to come out and do it for you.
That's a nice dream and all, but where the hell are you going to put it then?
I'd bet they put it nowhere. L2 and L3 caches are a kludge, and, if they really achieve huge chip-to-chip bandwidth, they just might not need the cache hierarchy. This is reminiscent of old CPUs, where the system RAM ran at an acceptably large fraction of the speed of the CPU, so there was no L2 cache at all.
What they need, instead is VioletTooth (wireless chip-to-chip communcations).
It would be amusing to open up a computer case to see miniature microwave transmission towers on each chip with little now-sterile gnats who got fried while resting on the dish.
OpenGL in an API, not a software package like the JDK. As far as implementations go, I suppose Mesa would be the "Java equivalent" in OpenGL-land, as it mainly does rendering in software -- just like the AWT. The fast OpenGL implementations out there are custom-tuned vendor-provided libraries which are very fast but technically cost real money to use (you buy OpenGL with the video card or commercial operating system).
Even with AWT/Swing, graphics is so sensitive to bandwidth of the graphics chip that true platform independence might be impossible. For good AWT/Swing performance, some econo-laptop chips are just inadequate (like I saw with a SiS630 once; it uses system memory for video RAM).
Re:I'm using a Sun Ray right now
on
Sun Rays For Linux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Overall, I think I would rather use a Sun ray simply because of the silence.
The fact that the SunRay server might be an SMP box with FibreChannel disks and gobs of RAM doesn't hurt either:) In fact, there is a distinct possibility that SunRay could actually be better than a local desktop (except for OpenGL work, of course).
Mono represents at least a moderate threat to Java/J2EE on non-windows platforms...
I disagree, because no one of the likes of BEA would create an "enterprise" version of.NET to compete head-to-head with J2EE..NET really is just Microsoft and Mono, and Sun might let Mono along for the ride if only to see what happens.
The first thing I thought about Sun+Novell is "Well, Sun already has a huge investment in GNOME...this just might work." Also, Sun needs to maintain Linux, especially the 64-bit version, for their Opteron servers and workstations.
Sun bumbled around early on with respect to Linux (the LX50 server, for one), but they are really settling out lately to Opteron+Solaris x86/Linux and UltraSPARC+Solaris as their product line. Seriously, with Opteron being the hottest all-purpose CPU around (along with the G5) and the UltraSPARC being so entrenched, their product line really isn't half bad right now.
But you will almost certainly fail out of school if you don't start picking up debugging basics immediately after you write your first line of code (bug).
Right. Just like those full-blown graduates I used to work with would take a week to write a Java text-processing program that could have been written in five minutes with Perl or sed. How about those database tables with things like "Email1" and "Email2"? What about choosing Oracle and Web Logic with full J2EE dressing for a site that has only a few dozen database tables and even fewer web pages?
Computer Science is fun and all, but a degree shows little more than an ability to pass the final exams (I should know, I have one and work with people claiming to have one, too). Worst of all are graduates from Microsoft-bought-and-certified schools or even people who so hooked by FOSS that everything, absolutely everything, has to be open source, even the tools that are a royal pain in the ass to configure and use but a well-chosen commercial package would pay for itself in just working.
The grandparent post was arguing that it is easier and more effective to get Libertarians in at lower ranks, in Congress and in state and local offices. Balances of power do the rest. For example, people worried about how "liberal" Kerry and Edwards are shouldn't forget about Congress.
The problem with the presidential election is that November will most likely be as close as in 2000, well within the margin of votes gathered by third-party canidates and well within the margin of error of elections, in general.
I have to agree with the argument for reform from the ground-up, not the top-down. Local officials have more impact in our day-to-day lives, anyway (schools, roads, water, sewer, etc.).
It isn't. Having your Solaris home directory mounted seamlessly as a network drive under Windows is pretty darn cool. Transferring files from a native Windows environment to a native Solaris environment has never been easier. SunPCi is perfect for day-to-day office productivity apps. SunPCi is a little weak in the 3D graphics department, but, then, that's what the Sun workstation is for.
Or maybe they don't want to take away disk space from the Solaris side of the show. Or maybe they're using a Windows app that doesn't like whatever trick the card uses to make itself believe that the Sun disk is NTFS.
SunPCi uses Solaris files as emulated virtual hard drives for Windows (Windows doesn't know any differently), and a few gigabytes out of 36 or 73GB really isn't that big of a hit. Windows compatibility is also very good (supporting 95, 98SE, 2000, and XP), since SunPCi cards are really Intel or AMD chips with standard chipsets (my older SunPCi has a Celeron plus SiS630 video/audio/USB -- even Linux can run on this card...with some extra effort that is).
Lockheed can still maintain a vendor relationship with Sun, if they want to. Sun released 1, 2, and 4-cpu Opteron hardware this month, running either Solaris or Linux. Sun is targetting the mid-to-higher end workstation market, with their high-end opteron workstation going for over $8,000 (professional graphics card, gigs of ram, ultra320 scsi, etc.).
Unlike nuclear weapons, chemical weapons are technically not weapons of mass destruction because only a nuclear reaction can destroy mass.
What about exothermic and endothermic chemical reactions? Where does the energy come from and go to? Is it all just about shifting electrons around or does a small amount of mass to energy conversion occur?
That's easy. SUVs are in. Big and ugly means manly. Really. It does.
Then explain the new Batmobile's tiny rocket engine...
I know rocket engines are powerful for their size, but this is a super-hero fiction movie. Put one of those Saturn 5 engines on the thing. 200,000lbf of thrust should be enough for good ol' Batman.
Porting Solaris to x86-64 should be easier for Sun, since SOLARIS IS ALREADY 64 BITS!!!.
Sun must agree, as they are putting the finishing touches on Solaris x86 for x86-64 as we speak. They will sell it on their new Opteron-based workstations they announced this week on their website.
Bash lets you get away with broken things like `export VAR value` that don't carry over to Bourne shell. On the other hand, Bash has a nice vi command-line mode, among other things.
So, from a UI point-of-view, Bash gets high marks. From the "embrace and extend" point-of-view, Bash needs to step back and re-think a few things.
Re:bash = "embrace and extend" proprietary crap
on
Bash 3.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Some random linux bozo makes a #!/bin/sh script thinking it will be portable,...
Probably the best way to write a portable sh script is to take the local man page and the POSIX description of sh and black-line out almost all of the local man page leaving the little snippets that are portable. I've done this before, and what's left over actually is useful and not too suffocating. Then, as the script gets bigger, you still have to do all the conditional mess for all the nice places in/etc or/var a particular file can go, but at least the script syntax is good.
Google supports multi-lingual searches. Not being multi-lingual myself, I still get a kick out of cutting and pasting non-roman alphabets into Google and getting real results back. Language barriers from a support point of view will always exist, so the same native-language mailing lists and web pages will go on as they always have.
Perhaps the best way to make sense of multi-lingual error messages is to alway have a numeric ID number with each message (programmers take note), meaning that the text is irrelevant as long as someone can look up the number itself. I hope no one takes this to the extreme, though, like old IBM PCs ("Error 58 occurred. Please give us your money to tell you what error 58 actually is!").
"GNU" might be best, because doesn't bash also run under Windows? Then, of course, Slashdot would make things confusing again by running an article on ksh...
Slashdot Mirror
I guess a positronic brain will be next.
Yes, but it will be tied to their stock price, for very hard to explain technical reasons, so some days it will be called a negatronic brain. For the Trekkies out there, Data and Lore are really the same android, just in positronic and negatronic modes. Those scenes where they stand side-by-side...well, a wizard did it.
I would imagine that at such low voltage levels, induced current would require a damn near perfect level of alignment between the chip and the "socket".
Well, if they invent a very good self-aligning mounting socket, dirt can be dealt with just by being very careful and using one of those air-in-a-can dusters. This technology would be very expensive, initially, so you could even get one of Sun's guys to come out and do it for you.
That's a nice dream and all, but where the hell are you going to put it then?
I'd bet they put it nowhere. L2 and L3 caches are a kludge, and, if they really achieve huge chip-to-chip bandwidth, they just might not need the cache hierarchy. This is reminiscent of old CPUs, where the system RAM ran at an acceptably large fraction of the speed of the CPU, so there was no L2 cache at all.
What they need, instead is VioletTooth (wireless chip-to-chip communcations).
It would be amusing to open up a computer case to see miniature microwave transmission towers on each chip with little now-sterile gnats who got fried while resting on the dish.
Since you can "upgrade" your cache by replacing a peer-chip, now you can pay-as-you-go.
Wow, were back to my old 386 PC!
Heat and vibration in this environment can cause chips to get out of the precise alignment needed for proximity communication.
My car just uses large screws and spacers to maintain alignment, I'm sure CPUs can use the same tried and true technology.
With so many chips so close together, they are certainly going to have heat problems.
It's still a 2-D plane (I think), so it's nothing that a long heatsink and case fans can't handle.
OpenGL in an API, not a software package like the JDK. As far as implementations go, I suppose Mesa would be the "Java equivalent" in OpenGL-land, as it mainly does rendering in software -- just like the AWT. The fast OpenGL implementations out there are custom-tuned vendor-provided libraries which are very fast but technically cost real money to use (you buy OpenGL with the video card or commercial operating system).
Even with AWT/Swing, graphics is so sensitive to bandwidth of the graphics chip that true platform independence might be impossible. For good AWT/Swing performance, some econo-laptop chips are just inadequate (like I saw with a SiS630 once; it uses system memory for video RAM).
Overall, I think I would rather use a Sun ray simply because of the silence.
:) In fact, there is a distinct possibility that SunRay could actually be better than a local desktop (except for OpenGL work, of course).
The fact that the SunRay server might be an SMP box with FibreChannel disks and gobs of RAM doesn't hurt either
Mono represents at least a moderate threat to Java/J2EE on non-windows platforms...
.NET to compete head-to-head with J2EE. .NET really is just Microsoft and Mono, and Sun might let Mono along for the ride if only to see what happens.
I disagree, because no one of the likes of BEA would create an "enterprise" version of
The first thing I thought about Sun+Novell is "Well, Sun already has a huge investment in GNOME...this just might work." Also, Sun needs to maintain Linux, especially the 64-bit version, for their Opteron servers and workstations.
Sun bumbled around early on with respect to Linux (the LX50 server, for one), but they are really settling out lately to Opteron+Solaris x86/Linux and UltraSPARC+Solaris as their product line. Seriously, with Opteron being the hottest all-purpose CPU around (along with the G5) and the UltraSPARC being so entrenched, their product line really isn't half bad right now.
Wow, a wrong AC post getting +5 informative on Slashdot...
Or IBM could buy Sun...
This is like putting two badgers into a sack to see if they can be friends.
But you will almost certainly fail out of school if you don't start picking up debugging basics immediately after you write your first line of code (bug).
Right. Just like those full-blown graduates I used to work with would take a week to write a Java text-processing program that could have been written in five minutes with Perl or sed. How about those database tables with things like "Email1" and "Email2"? What about choosing Oracle and Web Logic with full J2EE dressing for a site that has only a few dozen database tables and even fewer web pages?
Computer Science is fun and all, but a degree shows little more than an ability to pass the final exams (I should know, I have one and work with people claiming to have one, too). Worst of all are graduates from Microsoft-bought-and-certified schools or even people who so hooked by FOSS that everything, absolutely everything, has to be open source, even the tools that are a royal pain in the ass to configure and use but a well-chosen commercial package would pay for itself in just working.
The grandparent post was arguing that it is easier and more effective to get Libertarians in at lower ranks, in Congress and in state and local offices. Balances of power do the rest. For example, people worried about how "liberal" Kerry and Edwards are shouldn't forget about Congress.
The problem with the presidential election is that November will most likely be as close as in 2000, well within the margin of votes gathered by third-party canidates and well within the margin of error of elections, in general.
I have to agree with the argument for reform from the ground-up, not the top-down. Local officials have more impact in our day-to-day lives, anyway (schools, roads, water, sewer, etc.).
PC-in-your-PC is lame.
It isn't. Having your Solaris home directory mounted seamlessly as a network drive under Windows is pretty darn cool. Transferring files from a native Windows environment to a native Solaris environment has never been easier. SunPCi is perfect for day-to-day office productivity apps. SunPCi is a little weak in the 3D graphics department, but, then, that's what the Sun workstation is for.
Or maybe they don't want to take away disk space from the Solaris side of the show. Or maybe they're using a Windows app that doesn't like whatever trick the card uses to make itself believe that the Sun disk is NTFS.
SunPCi uses Solaris files as emulated virtual hard drives for Windows (Windows doesn't know any differently), and a few gigabytes out of 36 or 73GB really isn't that big of a hit. Windows compatibility is also very good (supporting 95, 98SE, 2000, and XP), since SunPCi cards are really Intel or AMD chips with standard chipsets (my older SunPCi has a Celeron plus SiS630 video/audio/USB -- even Linux can run on this card...with some extra effort that is).
Lockheed can still maintain a vendor relationship with Sun, if they want to. Sun released 1, 2, and 4-cpu Opteron hardware this month, running either Solaris or Linux. Sun is targetting the mid-to-higher end workstation market, with their high-end opteron workstation going for over $8,000 (professional graphics card, gigs of ram, ultra320 scsi, etc.).
Unlike nuclear weapons, chemical weapons are technically not weapons of mass destruction because only a nuclear reaction can destroy mass.
What about exothermic and endothermic chemical reactions? Where does the energy come from and go to? Is it all just about shifting electrons around or does a small amount of mass to energy conversion occur?
That's easy. SUVs are in. Big and ugly means manly. Really. It does.
Then explain the new Batmobile's tiny rocket engine...
I know rocket engines are powerful for their size, but this is a super-hero fiction movie. Put one of those Saturn 5 engines on the thing. 200,000lbf of thrust should be enough for good ol' Batman.
Porting Solaris to x86-64 should be easier for Sun, since SOLARIS IS ALREADY 64 BITS!!!.
Sun must agree, as they are putting the finishing touches on Solaris x86 for x86-64 as we speak. They will sell it on their new Opteron-based workstations they announced this week on their website.
Switch Slashdot to "light" mode in your user preferences, and the color scheme (and the UI clutter) goes away.
Bash lets you get away with broken things like `export VAR value` that don't carry over to Bourne shell. On the other hand, Bash has a nice vi command-line mode, among other things.
So, from a UI point-of-view, Bash gets high marks. From the "embrace and extend" point-of-view, Bash needs to step back and re-think a few things.
Some random linux bozo makes a #!/bin/sh script thinking it will be portable,...
/etc or /var a particular file can go, but at least the script syntax is good.
Probably the best way to write a portable sh script is to take the local man page and the POSIX description of sh and black-line out almost all of the local man page leaving the little snippets that are portable. I've done this before, and what's left over actually is useful and not too suffocating. Then, as the script gets bigger, you still have to do all the conditional mess for all the nice places in
Google supports multi-lingual searches. Not being multi-lingual myself, I still get a kick out of cutting and pasting non-roman alphabets into Google and getting real results back. Language barriers from a support point of view will always exist, so the same native-language mailing lists and web pages will go on as they always have.
Perhaps the best way to make sense of multi-lingual error messages is to alway have a numeric ID number with each message (programmers take note), meaning that the text is irrelevant as long as someone can look up the number itself. I hope no one takes this to the extreme, though, like old IBM PCs ("Error 58 occurred. Please give us your money to tell you what error 58 actually is!").
"GNU" might be best, because doesn't bash also run under Windows? Then, of course, Slashdot would make things confusing again by running an article on ksh...