Yeah I have a good Nikon camera at home which I will never use again because it uses film. I feel bad about it but the sad fact is I can get better bang for my buck by buying a new DSLR.
Not sure that this is right but if you imagine a small number of photons arriving on your detector then reconstructing the image will depend in part on the resolution of the detector. The resolution helps you turn an indistinct blob into a real image.
Or as Julia Sawalha says in a fake Australian accent on Time Please Gentlemen: It's fucking shocking! People in Australia don't really say that, do they?
I would say Bloody awful or possibly Fucking shit house.
But the main thing is that not all programs are multi-threaded, and a program with a single thread can only run on one processor. So yeah, GHz are still useful. Maybe for large single-thread batch processing - which is the kind of thing a mainframe would do.
I'm betting the code used on these z196 systems is multi-threaded. Shit, if you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU you can afford some top notch programmers.
Actually I think this mainframe is for getting the last little bit of performance out of thirty year old cobol code. And the original top notch programmers are long dead.
IBM defines the z196 as one of the few remaining CISC chips, which allows for bulky, large programs that can require much more memory to execute in than RISC chips, including the PowerPC and ARM embeddded processors, among others.
For CISC you need more bytes per instruction, because there are more instructions. With RISC your executable has more instructions but they each use less storage.
I am not sure I believe their implication that CISC is better for humungus commercial applications. Sounds like marketing speak to management to me.
Well it seems like Australia actually has some of the most draconian laws in the "western" world concerning things like the internet, anonymity, porn, censorship and so on. And yes, I know Australia isn't in the west.
I find it unsettling how obsolete technologies are left in place in rail and air transport.
I work in aviation and it is an enormously complex field. In fact I have spent the last two months working on an interface specification and despite frankly the complexity is such that individuals can only work on very small chunks. The industry moto is if it ain't broke, don't fix it and for good reason. Everything connects to everything else. Interfaces have to work the same in the first world and the third world. There are lots of things which need changing all the time and engineering resources are dedicated to dealing with the resulting changes. The stuff which needs to get done will get done, and proposals like logging more information to ACARS (yay for ASN.1!) are a good way forward.
I meant Apollo including the Saturn V. Apollo included a 4 km/s velocity budget to get on to and off the moon. Thats easily enough to get to and from a near earth asteroid.
if 90% of the traffic was motorcycles, we would simply divide the lanes up with a secondary stripe for the "bike" lanes.
However you divide it up there will always be somebody who will accept less safety than me in return for getting to their destination one minute earlier. In the process of doing that they will compromise my safety.
and fewer of those around would make the roads a lot safer for those of us on two wheels anyway
Bicycle commuter here. To be honest I am not sure it would be safer. Cars (and trucks, etc) keep people driving in lanes. With fewer cars on the road there will be more vehicles behaving like a swarm, and less safety over all. I know its a behavioral issue and it should be addressed with education and enforcement, but I would hate to see the roads I ride on turn into the roads I see in Asia.
Go find a big chuck of uranium floating around out there and put the energy debate to bed once and for all.
Its unlikely to happen though. Uranium will be everywhere but chunks of it will be found in strong gravitational fields. This is because gravity concentrates heavy elements into small volumes.
It would work if we were going to commit to a colony somewhere like Titan or Mars, but there would have to be continuous expenditure. An unmanned supply every year and new man power every ten years, perhaps. It would be interesting how many qualified people you would find. You need people who have no interest in having children. who don't want to live on Earth (be able to go for a walk in the bush, etc) and who are not interested in the social aspects of living in a large community.
Once you selected people who satisfy those criteria, would your candidates be mentally healthy enough to trust them with the mission?
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Yeah I have a good Nikon camera at home which I will never use again because it uses film. I feel bad about it but the sad fact is I can get better bang for my buck by buying a new DSLR.
Not sure that this is right but if you imagine a small number of photons arriving on your detector then reconstructing the image will depend in part on the resolution of the detector. The resolution helps you turn an indistinct blob into a real image.
Yeah if this is cheaper than comparable CCDs it could be very good for amateur astronomers.
Or as Julia Sawalha says in a fake Australian accent on Time Please Gentlemen: It's fucking shocking!
People in Australia don't really say that, do they?
I would say Bloody awful or possibly Fucking shit house.
Can't even imagine writing in assembly code for this monster. I miss dinking around with a nice 6502 system.
Yeah the 6502 is nice and friendly. I taught myself how to hand assemble on the 6502 when I was 12 or 13.
But the main thing is that not all programs are multi-threaded, and a program with a single thread can only run on one processor. So yeah, GHz are still useful. Maybe for large single-thread batch processing - which is the kind of thing a mainframe would do.
I'm betting the code used on these z196 systems is multi-threaded. Shit, if you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU you can afford some top notch programmers.
Actually I think this mainframe is for getting the last little bit of performance out of thirty year old cobol code. And the original top notch programmers are long dead.
IBM defines the z196 as one of the few remaining CISC chips, which allows for bulky, large programs that can require much more memory to execute in than RISC chips, including the PowerPC and ARM embeddded processors, among others.
For CISC you need more bytes per instruction, because there are more instructions. With RISC your executable has more instructions but they each use less storage.
I am not sure I believe their implication that CISC is better for humungus commercial applications. Sounds like marketing speak to management to me.
Is there any reason, if people will SILL live in California despite anything you can dig out?
Setting aside parser errors I suppose California is only dangerous if you choose to live under an unstable pile of rocks.
Well it seems like Australia actually has some of the most draconian laws in the "western" world concerning things like the internet, anonymity, porn, censorship and so on. And yes, I know Australia isn't in the west.
We have our moments
the hong kong office of my company as 80 people in it' IT department. no lie, 50+ of them have the same name.
I think Chinese names are a little bit more diverse than that.
I wonder if Governments will start to clamp down on anonymous use of public phones, by requiring credit cards or pre paid cards with ID.
"Friends, I am in work closet with workers here
In the midst of this, these employees are sending email, and texting!
well, at least they weren't *sexting* !
Especially not if they are in the closet, with co-workers no less.
Now that Julian has revealed his secret weapon nobody will go up against wikileaks.
Apart from pretty girls of course.
I find it unsettling how obsolete technologies are left in place in rail and air transport.
I work in aviation and it is an enormously complex field. In fact I have spent the last two months working on an interface specification and despite frankly the complexity is such that individuals can only work on very small chunks. The industry moto is if it ain't broke, don't fix it and for good reason. Everything connects to everything else. Interfaces have to work the same in the first world and the third world. There are lots of things which need changing all the time and engineering resources are dedicated to dealing with the resulting changes. The stuff which needs to get done will get done, and proposals like logging more information to ACARS (yay for ASN.1!) are a good way forward.
All we ever see is a drop in the price of USB sticks in the shop, but under the surface the duck is paddling as hard as ever.
Microsoft's attitude to OSS is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until they can find a rock.
I meant Apollo including the Saturn V. Apollo included a 4 km/s velocity budget to get on to and off the moon. Thats easily enough to get to and from a near earth asteroid.
Or free software when you've already paid.
if 90% of the traffic was motorcycles, we would simply divide the lanes up with a secondary stripe for the "bike" lanes.
However you divide it up there will always be somebody who will accept less safety than me in return for getting to their destination one minute earlier. In the process of doing that they will compromise my safety.
Only because you are used to thinking in terms of distance / fuel volume.
Fair enough, but it doesn't answer the fact that the math with GPM is easier.
Do you mean this bit?
With gal/100mi, it's more complicated to figure out how much gas you need to go X miles
If I want to go 200 km and my car uses 10 litre/100km then I need 20 litre. Seems simple to me.
and fewer of those around would make the roads a lot safer for those of us on two wheels anyway
Bicycle commuter here. To be honest I am not sure it would be safer. Cars (and trucks, etc) keep people driving in lanes. With fewer cars on the road there will be more vehicles behaving like a swarm, and less safety over all. I know its a behavioral issue and it should be addressed with education and enforcement, but I would hate to see the roads I ride on turn into the roads I see in Asia.
A might need 2.5 gallons/100mi and Car B needs 3 gallons/100mi, but that tells you less about the actual mileage (40 vs. 33.33).
Only because you are used to thinking in terms of distance / fuel volume.
The EPA gathered together some focus group of yokels and found that they didn't know what a kilowatt hour was
But they know what a dollar is so vehicles should be ranked on cost per unit distance.
Go find a big chuck of uranium floating around out there and put the energy debate to bed once and for all.
Its unlikely to happen though. Uranium will be everywhere but chunks of it will be found in strong gravitational fields. This is because gravity concentrates heavy elements into small volumes.
It would work if we were going to commit to a colony somewhere like Titan or Mars, but there would have to be continuous expenditure. An unmanned supply every year and new man power every ten years, perhaps. It would be interesting how many qualified people you would find. You need people who have no interest in having children. who don't want to live on Earth (be able to go for a walk in the bush, etc) and who are not interested in the social aspects of living in a large community.
Once you selected people who satisfy those criteria, would your candidates be mentally healthy enough to trust them with the mission?