My experience as a cyclist on streets with frequent 4-way stops is that every intersection becomes more dangerous. Right-of-way becomes more complicated, and generally it isn't safe to assume everyone knows who has the right of way. Furthermore, cars seem to gun the engine when departing from frequent stops as they try to improve their average speed.
Things are especially bad when one of the streets obviously should not have had stop signs at every intersection, i.e. should have been an arterial.
Bicyclists who are foolish enough to ride on sidewalks often ride far beyond safe speeds. The only safe bicycle speed on a sidewalk is walking speed, and even then it's better if the bicyclist dismounts and walks. Joggers are fine on sidewalks because they generally act like pedestrians, unlike sidewalk-cyclists.
I figure people who ride Segways will be as bad as sidewalk-bicyclists. You certainly should not ride a segway in traffic, by the sound of things, so you'll always be on a sidewalk. It seems unlikely that they'll act like joggers. Unless a segway rider can bunny-hop onto the road and back up, or cut through gravel and grass while passing someone, they'll have to slow down to walking speed whenever they encounter a pedestrian. On the sidewalks around here, that would mean they might as well walk beside their segway (does this work?), in which case they wasted a lot of money.
As a cyclist and driver, I claim that bicycles belong on the road because bicyclists most often don't act like pedestrians. As a driver, you need to treat a bicyclist on the sidewalk as another lane of traffic because bicycles can move fairly fast (as opposed to pedestrians, who *can* stop on a dime;-). This "extra lane" is dangerous because it is unmarked, unofficial, and often forgotten. Even worse are bicyclists on the sidewalk who want to turn left across traffic. There are also problems with pedestrians sharing a sidewalk with bicycles, because of the often wide difference in speed.
A cyclist in traffic behaves much more like a car, and is easy to predict. As a driver and a bicyclist, I have no problem with a bicycle slowing traffic down. It's much safer and less stressful for everyone.
Looking at the photo of a mailman on one here, I'd say this thing looks to be wider than a normal human's shoulders. In fact, it looks a bit like a running stroller. Props to jimmcq, who posted the Popular Science article I linked.
I don't even have a personal machine on campus, much less is one of the Alphas I tend one of my personal machines. =-) These machines come from big grants awarded to multiple CS and AstroPhys profs. Myself (and now two others, thankfully) are the sysadmins and chief bottle washers. Sometimes I have enough time left over to do some research using one of the Alphas.;-)
Heh, and all this time I thought you were a lawyer!;-)
We do lot's of big-memory data-mining type stuff, to be somewhat crass about it. Even with byte addressing, 32 bits is too small. Our favorite machine is a Compaq ES-40 Model II, which has 32 dimm sockets. With educational pricing, it starts at a reasonable $20K; with third party memory at about $2K for a 4G kit, you can fill it up at a total cost of $36K.
A station in Spokane, WA did this when I was in High School. The used the Official Rock Song of Washington State, "Louie Louie". I almost understood the words by the time they stopped.;-) Did you know there's a heavy-metal version? And several other versions, too.
The radio announcments were pretty funny. Having played Louie Louie 24x7 for 5 days straight, they led into the weekend with something like "Starting at 5pm Friday, a 24-hour Louie Louie weekend!" as if it were something new.
The good thing was that you always knew at least one radio station would be playing a song you liked (well, at least at the beginning of the week you felt that way). While I was driving, a friend set all 24 FM presets on the radio to the Louie Louie station. That was good for a laugh.
I think the answer is already in: it is enough to buy one federal governmnent and several state governments. However, they seem to have come up short with the remaining state governments. Considering the mailed-in results, they came up short when buying citizen's, too, only being able to purchase 1/3 of them outright.;-)
I've been working with Alphas for scientific computation. I'm not really aware that their 64-bitness has helped us in any way besides the huge address space. That said, other aspects of the Alpha are wonderful and glorius.
Actually, there is another benefit to 64 bit cpus: punishing programmers who make *stupid* assumptions about pointers =-).
One doesn't compete with Microsoft by hiring programmers. One competes with Microsoft by creating the best Marketing department the world has ever seen. AMD knows nothing about that.
In fact, the only marketing leg-up for GNU/Linux over Windows is the cute Penguin. Everybody loves my Linux Fund credit card, regardless of what they (don't) know about GNU/Linux. =-)
They are alternately booed and cheered by different people. At least, that's the explanation that keeps me sane. I'm among the people who are still booing.
I wouldn't think it would be a platform of choice for renderfarms. 1000 OS X licenses would increase costs, with little or no benefit for renderfarms.
Of course the desktop is a different issue. It is very interesting that Dreamworks turned down OS X and Win2K and went with GNU/Linux instead. Especially given that they new they would have to do some work to get their GNU/Linux desktops working properly.
Besides the poorly defined specs for the hardware, there is another hardware-related problem that prevents easy installation: vendor support. Until a vendor cares that their product is supported in GNU/Linux systems, device-driver writers and kernel hackers will always play catch-up with this vendor's products. That means the install programs for linux distros won't support this vendor's most recent hardware.
There was a Linux Journal article last August which discussed Dreamwork's transition to GNU/Linux. To answer your question about productivity, one animator claimed she was moving twice as fast as before the switch. I expect this is mostly because of updated hardware, and not some GNU/Linux-Zen thing.
Sorcerer and Lunar don't really have many defaults to speak of. At least I don't really remember any. As such, I was including them because they offer ext3 in their setup program. If anything, I think they're pushing XFS more than ext3, and might include XFS support in their default kernel config.
I'm really not sure about Rock.
Mainly, I wanted to raise awareness of the *number* of source-based linux distrobutions. I think this is a great thing. Now if only I could choose one instead of trying them all...;-)
I believe that HP worked with Pixar on one of the professional cards, maybe the FireGL but I'm fairly sure not any NVidia product, and I believe the resulting driver source was made available. I expect that Pixar went into this with their eyes open, and wouldn't accept half-assed drivers. But then, maybe Pixar is a half-baked company run by monkies that has just gotten lucky.;-)
I don't mean to start a flame-war between ATI and NVidia (clearly I'm too late to *start* one anyway;-). I simply expect that the professionals using accellerated OpenGL + Linux for animation or flight simulation (or other apps I haven't heard of) are not using consumer level cards with internal accuracy less than or equal to a C float. From that supposition, I concluded that there are 3D cards with accelleration under Linux which have high-quality OpenGL drivers.
Are the NVidia drivers really the highest quality, without question? What about FireGL, and other "professional" cards? I expect the highest-quality OpenGL implementations for linux happen on cards with more precision than any of the consumer cards offer (though the Kyro II has more internal precision than most). NVidia's binary-only drivers are probably pretty good for gaming, for those people who don't mind "tainting" their kernel.
I'll stick with ATI, who has provided information and money for linux driver development. I have a Radeon DDR AIW, Radeon DDR 64, and a Radeon 8500 (still waiting for 3D on the 8500, but it appears to be coming). I'd stick with them even if they only provided the information.
I remember. A friend had a blazing fast (and rare) 486 DX50, and I convinced him (which wasn't hard) to try linux with X on it. My 386 SX20 was too slow, and probably too incompatible since it was from Packard Bell. There was an application called Xroach which put lots of beetles on your screen that scurried for the shelter of your windows. When you closed a window, they'd scurry somewhere else. We were really impressed at the number of small but nifty apps available. As computers got faster, the beetles of Xroach turned into blurry streaks of black; I don't think anyone ever bothered slowing it down, and I haven't seen it since.
I have an Infomagic CD collection with a 1995 copyright which contains a very small leaflet outlining slackware installation. Section 9 is titled
X11 Configuration Cookbook -- How to Get X
Running Under Linux (without calling the fire
department)
Later they go on to say "Thus it is possible to overdrive the horizontal synch. of most monitors and cause *damage* or even *fire*. (Yes, they WILL burst into flames...it has happened!)".
If the RIAA had been associated with published works that would receive an A grade, I don't think their sales would be slumping. And they wouldn't need a scapegoat, either. The analogy should have been
'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an D? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an D too? Would that bug you?'
And of course, the answer would be no, I wouldn't care if someone shared my pathetic performance. Maybe if it became average, I'd get a C instead! Which somewhat accurately describes how the RIAA has survived all along!
How about the ability to opt-out of a particular company's ads (like X10)? I suggest this because I don't want to lose *all* the advertisements, just the ones that I find useless, obnoxious, or offensive (like X10).
Slashdot Mirror
My experience as a cyclist on streets with frequent 4-way stops is that every intersection becomes more dangerous. Right-of-way becomes more complicated, and generally it isn't safe to assume everyone knows who has the right of way. Furthermore, cars seem to gun the engine when departing from frequent stops as they try to improve their average speed.
Things are especially bad when one of the streets obviously should not have had stop signs at every intersection, i.e. should have been an arterial.
-Paul Komarek
Bicyclists who are foolish enough to ride on sidewalks often ride far beyond safe speeds. The only safe bicycle speed on a sidewalk is walking speed, and even then it's better if the bicyclist dismounts and walks. Joggers are fine on sidewalks because they generally act like pedestrians, unlike sidewalk-cyclists.
I figure people who ride Segways will be as bad as sidewalk-bicyclists. You certainly should not ride a segway in traffic, by the sound of things, so you'll always be on a sidewalk. It seems unlikely that they'll act like joggers. Unless a segway rider can bunny-hop onto the road and back up, or cut through gravel and grass while passing someone, they'll have to slow down to walking speed whenever they encounter a pedestrian. On the sidewalks around here, that would mean they might as well walk beside their segway (does this work?), in which case they wasted a lot of money.
-Paul Komarek
As a cyclist and driver, I claim that bicycles belong on the road because bicyclists most often don't act like pedestrians. As a driver, you need to treat a bicyclist on the sidewalk as another lane of traffic because bicycles can move fairly fast (as opposed to pedestrians, who *can* stop on a dime ;-). This "extra lane" is dangerous because it is unmarked, unofficial, and often forgotten. Even worse are bicyclists on the sidewalk who want to turn left across traffic. There are also problems with pedestrians sharing a sidewalk with bicycles, because of the often wide difference in speed.
A cyclist in traffic behaves much more like a car, and is easy to predict. As a driver and a bicyclist, I have no problem with a bicycle slowing traffic down. It's much safer and less stressful for everyone.
-Paul Komarek
Looking at the photo of a mailman on one here, I'd say this thing looks to be wider than a normal human's shoulders. In fact, it looks a bit like a running stroller. Props to jimmcq, who posted the Popular Science article I linked.
-Paul Komarek
That's really depressing. If I were to ever visit PSU, I alone would nearly double the total (laptop and iPAQ). ;-)
-Paul Komarek (at CMU)
I don't even have a personal machine on campus, much less is one of the Alphas I tend one of my personal machines. =-) These machines come from big grants awarded to multiple CS and AstroPhys profs. Myself (and now two others, thankfully) are the sysadmins and chief bottle washers. Sometimes I have enough time left over to do some research using one of the Alphas. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
Heh, and all this time I thought you were a lawyer! ;-)
We do lot's of big-memory data-mining type stuff, to be somewhat crass about it. Even with byte addressing, 32 bits is too small. Our favorite machine is a Compaq ES-40 Model II, which has 32 dimm sockets. With educational pricing, it starts at a reasonable $20K; with third party memory at about $2K for a 4G kit, you can fill it up at a total cost of $36K.
-Paul Komarek
A station in Spokane, WA did this when I was in High School. The used the Official Rock Song of Washington State, "Louie Louie". I almost understood the words by the time they stopped. ;-) Did you know there's a heavy-metal version? And several other versions, too.
The radio announcments were pretty funny. Having played Louie Louie 24x7 for 5 days straight, they led into the weekend with something like "Starting at 5pm Friday, a 24-hour Louie Louie weekend!" as if it were something new.
The good thing was that you always knew at least one radio station would be playing a song you liked (well, at least at the beginning of the week you felt that way). While I was driving, a friend set all 24 FM presets on the radio to the Louie Louie station. That was good for a laugh.
-Paul Komarek
I think the answer is already in: it is enough to buy one federal governmnent and several state governments. However, they seem to have come up short with the remaining state governments. Considering the mailed-in results, they came up short when buying citizen's, too, only being able to purchase 1/3 of them outright. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
I've been working with Alphas for scientific computation. I'm not really aware that their 64-bitness has helped us in any way besides the huge address space. That said, other aspects of the Alpha are wonderful and glorius.
Actually, there is another benefit to 64 bit cpus: punishing programmers who make *stupid* assumptions about pointers =-).
-Paul Komarek
One doesn't compete with Microsoft by hiring programmers. One competes with Microsoft by creating the best Marketing department the world has ever seen. AMD knows nothing about that.
In fact, the only marketing leg-up for GNU/Linux over Windows is the cute Penguin. Everybody loves my Linux Fund credit card, regardless of what they (don't) know about GNU/Linux. =-)
-Paul Komarek
If G was for Gatesberg, I might have believed you. ;-). However, G is in fact for David Geffen.
-Paul Komarek
They are alternately booed and cheered by different people. At least, that's the explanation that keeps me sane. I'm among the people who are still booing.
-Paul Komarek
I wouldn't think it would be a platform of choice for renderfarms. 1000 OS X licenses would increase costs, with little or no benefit for renderfarms.
Of course the desktop is a different issue. It is very interesting that Dreamworks turned down OS X and Win2K and went with GNU/Linux instead. Especially given that they new they would have to do some work to get their GNU/Linux desktops working properly.
-Paul Komarek
Besides the poorly defined specs for the hardware, there is another hardware-related problem that prevents easy installation: vendor support. Until a vendor cares that their product is supported in GNU/Linux systems, device-driver writers and kernel hackers will always play catch-up with this vendor's products. That means the install programs for linux distros won't support this vendor's most recent hardware.
-Paul
There was a Linux Journal article last August which discussed Dreamwork's transition to GNU/Linux. To answer your question about productivity, one animator claimed she was moving twice as fast as before the switch. I expect this is mostly because of updated hardware, and not some GNU/Linux-Zen thing.
You can find the article here.
-Paul Komarek
Oops, my bad. s/pixar/dreamworks/.
-Paul Komarek
Sorcerer and Lunar don't really have many defaults to speak of. At least I don't really remember any. As such, I was including them because they offer ext3 in their setup program. If anything, I think they're pushing XFS more than ext3, and might include XFS support in their default kernel config.
;-)
I'm really not sure about Rock.
Mainly, I wanted to raise awareness of the *number* of source-based linux distrobutions. I think this is a great thing. Now if only I could choose one instead of trying them all...
-Paul Komarek
I believe that HP worked with Pixar on one of the professional cards, maybe the FireGL but I'm fairly sure not any NVidia product, and I believe the resulting driver source was made available. I expect that Pixar went into this with their eyes open, and wouldn't accept half-assed drivers. But then, maybe Pixar is a half-baked company run by monkies that has just gotten lucky. ;-)
;-). I simply expect that the professionals using accellerated OpenGL + Linux for animation or flight simulation (or other apps I haven't heard of) are not using consumer level cards with internal accuracy less than or equal to a C float. From that supposition, I concluded that there are 3D cards with accelleration under Linux which have high-quality OpenGL drivers.
I don't mean to start a flame-war between ATI and NVidia (clearly I'm too late to *start* one anyway
-Paul Komarek
Are the NVidia drivers really the highest quality, without question? What about FireGL, and other "professional" cards? I expect the highest-quality OpenGL implementations for linux happen on cards with more precision than any of the consumer cards offer (though the Kyro II has more internal precision than most). NVidia's binary-only drivers are probably pretty good for gaming, for those people who don't mind "tainting" their kernel.
I'll stick with ATI, who has provided information and money for linux driver development. I have a Radeon DDR AIW, Radeon DDR 64, and a Radeon 8500 (still waiting for 3D on the 8500, but it appears to be coming). I'd stick with them even if they only provided the information.
-Paul Komarek
Wow, thanks for the good news! Do they have a selectable speed, or otherwise move at some reasonable rate?
-Paul Komarek
I remember. A friend had a blazing fast (and rare) 486 DX50, and I convinced him (which wasn't hard) to try linux with X on it. My 386 SX20 was too slow, and probably too incompatible since it was from Packard Bell. There was an application called Xroach which put lots of beetles on your screen that scurried for the shelter of your windows. When you closed a window, they'd scurry somewhere else. We were really impressed at the number of small but nifty apps available. As computers got faster, the beetles of Xroach turned into blurry streaks of black; I don't think anyone ever bothered slowing it down, and I haven't seen it since.
I have an Infomagic CD collection with a 1995 copyright which contains a very small leaflet outlining slackware installation. Section 9 is titled
X11 Configuration Cookbook -- How to Get X
Running Under Linux (without calling the fire
department)
Later they go on to say "Thus it is possible to overdrive the horizontal synch. of most monitors and cause *damage* or even *fire*. (Yes, they WILL burst into flames...it has happened!)".
I was truly and eternally impressed. =-)
-Paul Komarek
If that really works, it would be the coolest IP hack I've seen since reading through CMU's giant host file. What a great idea!
-Paul Komarek
If the RIAA had been associated with published works that would receive an A grade, I don't think their sales would be slumping. And they wouldn't need a scapegoat, either. The analogy should have been
'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an D? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an D too? Would that bug you?'
And of course, the answer would be no, I wouldn't care if someone shared my pathetic performance. Maybe if it became average, I'd get a C instead! Which somewhat accurately describes how the RIAA has survived all along!
-Paul Komarek
How about the ability to opt-out of a particular company's ads (like X10)? I suggest this because I don't want to lose *all* the advertisements, just the ones that I find useless, obnoxious, or offensive (like X10).
-Paul Komarek