While technically not a "calculator", unless you run it in interactive mode, RPL/2 is one of the oldest
and most mature of any HP28/48/49/50 style UserRPL interpreters.
What makes it so awesome is its ability to interface with the OS via POSIX compliant commands -- it's almost like using your HP48 as a scripting
tool for Unix.Too bad they didn't mention it.
All this "climategate" bullshit is is really just the same-old-same-old quote mining from the "conservative"/neocon fundy anti-Science crowd and hyped up by their mouthpieces like Fox News.
If you want "close to the metal" POSIX API compatibility then there's Cygwin which is easier to use IMO and more actively developed but doesn't support the *full* POSIX spec or there is UWIN which supports most of the POSIX spec.
Combine this with OpenGL, OpenAL, the SDL and Cygwin/X, QT, a Java layer using the SWT from Eclipse, *shudder* GLUT *shudder*;) or IMNSHO preferably wxWindows/wxWidgets and you've got yourself a full cross-platform programming toolkit that can do just about anything.
This is probably one of the best and most comprehensive OS agnostic boot-CD/floppy general purpose PC hardware testing and burn-in tools I've come across IMHO.
In any case, I recommend plugging the ATX cable into a power supply tester that presents a non-trivial load as a first step in diagnosing any PC. You'd be surprised in what ways the problems caused by out-of-spec voltages can be manifested.
If it is essentially just a load-balancer, why can't it be done in software?
The article only mentions DirectX, no word about OpenGL, so it must be not a pure hardware solution. If all it does is re-routing of D3D calls, why CPU can't do it?
A software based solution to the problem of aggregating a heterogeneous collection of parallel OpenGL command streams into one, compositing the output of several graphics cards into one image, or both, has been available for years : It's called Chromium.
Although originally designed for a networked cluster with one gpu per machine, it can conceivably be adapted to one machine with multiple GPUs. Because Chromium's software based compositing would bog down a single processor system, a natural extension would be to build a PCI-E card, running some sort of embedded Unix with a dedicated high speed processor, which would handle compositing the output of multiple GPUs in parallel.
"Apparently Timothy doesn't understand how to use Google [google.com], "
If you're going to tell someone they don't know how to use google and then you link it, at least have the link go to the finished search, because with just the link going to google.com it looks like you don't know how to google either.
same goes for any search engine, including/.'s
So you're saying that because I didn't spoon-feed the reader a link, which any 10 year old who has Internet access could have found by typing 'somniloquy usb network [ENTER]' in the text input field on the Google home page, that demonstrates my incompetency?
Wow, either you've invented some new form of logic that is beyond the grasp of the rest of us or you just spewed out a non-sequitur which proves you're a lazy hypocrite. ( In the time it took you to write your reply one could have performed the aforementioned Google search 10 times over, with variations )
I've been a Linux user for several years and prior to that I was a Windows junkie. Back then, when I upgraded my hardware I never had to do a reinstall of the OS ( XP ) or applications. I don't know if that's what you intended but if not here's a tip :
Say your system files/data are stored on a single hard drive, ( this also applies to the multiple hard drives ) then, before you do anything with regards to a hardware upgrade, such as changing the mainboard, go into the device manager and replace all your system specific devices with the generic Microsoft equivalents. Now, after you've built the new system install your system drive and you should be able to boot up in a generic VESA display mode in which you can allow Windows to autodetect the new hardware and/or in which you can manually install the new system specific drivers.
I would recommend a board made by Digilent as they seem to have the greatest selection of add-ons and features plus their boards are high quality from my experience. As for the FPGA, I always recommend Xilinx because of the availability of free development tools, Linux support ( I currently have their WebPACK ISE running under Kubuntu 9.04 ) and the general superiority of their products, especially for projects that involve high speeds, a large number of gates and/or flip-flops eg. a microprocessor and even low power -- Xilinx' weakness has always been their relatively high standby/leakage current compared to other vendors, but they've significantly improved upon that with the Spartan-3A and the just released Spartan 6 chips.
As a Spartan 6 dev board is going to be expensive ( Xilinx' Spartan-6 FPGA SP601 Evaluation Kit is $295 and AFAIK it's the only entry level board currently available for that chip ) right now, I would recommend a Spartan 3A board. Specifically I would recommend Xilinx' Spartan-3A Starter Kit as it has the right amount of features for the price ( $189 ) and it's made by Digilent although if you're on a *really* tight budget you can get kits based off of this chip for as low as $49
Paint roofs white? With the efficiency increases in photo-electric technology, why not put solar panels on every roof? Not only would we reduce the amount of heat being re-radiated back into the atmosphere but, if done on a global scale, we'd eliminate one of the primary reasons for climate change in the first place : the burning of fossil fuels. And before you respond with "but it will cost too much and generate more CO2 than it eliminates" let me give you one word : Bootstrapping. That's right -- Use the power from the existing global infrastructure for solar energy capture to build more global infrastructure for solar energy capture; That way, you would generate a minimal amount of greenhouse gases in the manufacture of new solar panels while at the same time creating a self-sustaining positive feedback loop wherein the more energy we can capture, the more energy capture infrastructure we can build, resulting in our ability to capture more energy.
A regular expression is just a Finite Automaton ie. State Machine. In a regex, state transitions occur when an input character is read. While regexs are usually applied to a complete input string, the basic theory behind them, as well as any other FA, does not stipulate how the next input character is "read" -- all that is required is a stream of input characters.
So, in the case of the FA representing a form field validation regex, a character is "fed" into the the regex FA whenever a new character is entered, upon which it is checked whether the FA has transitioned to the "not accepted" state and if so the character corresponding to that transition is flagged as invalid.
If the user presses delete or backspace during entry, one method of avoiding revalidation of the current input string would be to save the state of the FA each time a character is read and associate it with that position in the currently entered text. One would then use this information, for example, when a user moves the cursor and presses backspace or delete, to restore the state of the FA associated with the character position just before any deleted characters and then re-run the FA on the characters entered past the point of deletion. If the user is allowed to insert characters at any point in the text input, then a similar scheme would be used in which the state of the FA associated with the character position just before the newly inserted character is restored and then the FA is re-run on all characters past that point.
It seems IBM's programmers and/or lawyers either failed or did not take any basic Theory of Computation classes when they received their education. Sorry for them, because they've made complete idiots out of themselves now, as every Computer Science professor, researcher and grad student on the Earth is probably laughing their asses off -- "Hey! Did you hear that IBM is trying to patent eighty-plus years of mathematical theory! No, it's true!"
You get get the rtmpdump v1.5a sourcehere, although this is not the latest version. AFAIK v1.6 was the last version to be released but it seems to have disappeared from the Web, even on non-sourceforge-affiliated sites.
And when the computer turns off, the Killer NIC does what, exactly?
When your computer turns off, as in power off, turn the power supply off, or unplug your power cord, the Killer Nic will of course cease to function, as will Microsoft's device.
Does it intercept the BitTorrent connections already running on, say Azureus on the host computer and keep those running?
No, but neither does the Somniloquy unless Azureus is recompiled to take advantage of the Somniloquy's network and program state transfer API and even then what you mention won't work unless a special stripped down ARM-Linux binary that duplicates some of Azureus' core functionality is written and installed on the device -- what Microsoft calls a "stub."
I know this is slashdot, but if you're going to try to sound so fantastically knowledgeable, at least RTFA a little bit.
And if you're going to try to sound so fantastically critical of people for not being %100 percent factually accurate with respect to the FA, then perhaps you should re-read it first before you go and make a fool of yourself by commiting the same error that you try to point out in other people.
The KillerNIC can not do this independently of the host like this device can.
Yes it can, or at least has the capability -- as long as it has a source of power. The whole point of the Killer NIC is to offload network packet processing from the main CPU to the Killer's on-board ARM chip. The "FNA" Linux apps that run on the card are certainly independent of the main CPU.
With Microsoft's prototype you can put your main computer to sleep (not off) and it continues to download.
As I said in another post, what great leap of imagination does it take to switch to an alternate power source when a change in the ACPI power state is detected? Microsoft's implementation has it easy as it runs off of the bus power supplied to the USB ports which is still present when the computer is in standby/S3-sleep.
The smart bit I see is the interaction: the take-over of the network state by the NIC from the main PC and vice versa, and the transfer of torrent files (this of course includes the downloaded bits and so), current connections, and whatnot. That is quite cool and afaik not done before.
True, but this is not necessary if the network state is already present on the NIC, as with the Killer. Plus you have to weigh the costs and benefits of having to recompile all applications that use the network so that they work with the Somniloquy's state transfer API against the costs and benefits of just running custom applications on the off board network processor. Basically the only thing Microsoft has added to what's already available is the ability for all applications that use the network to work seamlessly with their sleep-mode "stubs", which are basically the same as Killer "FNA" apps, the key innovation being the transfer of network and application state to the "stubs."
So this one for a change appears to be a real innovation by Microsoft. Good to see that those thousands of smart guys can now and then pull off something that at least on the surface is innovative. They should do that more, seriously. Maybe Microsoft should, like e.g. Google and Philip's Natlab of old, give all their research employees a day a week full freedom to work on their own pet projects.
While that may be true with current revisions, I see no reason why it couldn't continue to operate off of +5V standby power, or, failing that, a wall-wart. If my power supply is a typical example, then there's at least 15 watts available on the +5VSB rail when the computer is in S3 sleep. It takes no great leap of imagination to implement switching to an alternate power source when a change in the ACPI power state is observed. The only reason this "Somniloquy" is able to operate while the computer is in stanby/sleep-mode is the fact that there is still bus power supplied to the USB ports.
It's called the "Killer NIC". It's a PCI Express network card which offloads network packet processing to a custom embedded Linux distro running on a 400MHz ARM processor with 256MB of RAM, and oh, it works with Vista. As it's independent of the main CPU, it can run applications, such as a bittorrent client, while the main CPU attends to other tasks while still acting as a NIC for the main CPU even if one of the on-board applications is also network oriented -- they call this "Flexible Network Architecture" or "FNA apps." Oh, and did I mention that it has a USB port for storage of such applications and any associated data ( such as files downloaded via Bittorent ) on a USB flash drive?
Slashdot Mirror
While technically not a "calculator", unless you run it in interactive mode, RPL/2 is one of the oldest and most mature of any HP28/48/49/50 style UserRPL interpreters.
What makes it so awesome is its ability to interface with the OS via POSIX compliant commands -- it's almost like using your HP48 as a scripting tool for Unix.Too bad they didn't mention it.
jdb2
All this "climategate" bullshit is is really just the same-old-same-old quote mining from the "conservative"/neocon fundy anti-Science crowd and hyped up by their mouthpieces like Fox News.
To see the real absurdity of it all, watch this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY
jdb2
For those to lazy to multiply, that's a 10.8 degree Fahrenheit increase in the mean global temperature.
Sounds pretty alarming.
jdb2
If you want "close to the metal" POSIX API compatibility then there's Cygwin which is easier to use IMO and more actively developed but doesn't support the *full* POSIX spec or there is UWIN which supports most of the POSIX spec.
;) or IMNSHO preferably wxWindows/wxWidgets and you've got yourself a full cross-platform programming toolkit that can do just about anything.
Combine this with OpenGL, OpenAL, the SDL and Cygwin/X, QT, a Java layer using the SWT from Eclipse, *shudder* GLUT *shudder*
jdb2
This is probably one of the best and most comprehensive OS agnostic boot-CD/floppy general purpose PC hardware testing and burn-in tools I've come across IMHO.
Here's its web page : http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pc_check.htm
In any case, I recommend plugging the ATX cable into a power supply tester that presents a non-trivial load as a first step in diagnosing any PC. You'd be surprised in what ways the problems caused by out-of-spec voltages can be manifested.
jdb2
If it is essentially just a load-balancer, why can't it be done in software? The article only mentions DirectX, no word about OpenGL, so it must be not a pure hardware solution. If all it does is re-routing of D3D calls, why CPU can't do it?
See my post concerning Chromium.
jdb2
A software based solution to the problem of aggregating a heterogeneous collection of parallel OpenGL command streams into one, compositing the output of several graphics cards into one image, or both, has been available for years : It's called Chromium.
Although originally designed for a networked cluster with one gpu per machine, it can conceivably be adapted to one machine with multiple GPUs. Because Chromium's software based compositing would bog down a single processor system, a natural extension would be to build a PCI-E card, running some sort of embedded Unix with a dedicated high speed processor, which would handle compositing the output of multiple GPUs in parallel.
I'm surprised no one has done this yet for Linux.
jdb2
"Apparently Timothy doesn't understand how to use Google [google.com], " If you're going to tell someone they don't know how to use google and then you link it, at least have the link go to the finished search, because with just the link going to google.com it looks like you don't know how to google either. same goes for any search engine, including /.'s
So you're saying that because I didn't spoon-feed the reader a link, which any 10 year old who has Internet access could have found by typing 'somniloquy usb network [ENTER]' in the text input field on the Google home page, that demonstrates my incompetency?
Wow, either you've invented some new form of logic that is beyond the grasp of the rest of us or you just spewed out a non-sequitur which proves you're a lazy hypocrite. ( In the time it took you to write your reply one could have performed the aforementioned Google search 10 times over, with variations )
.....their incompetency once again.
.
Apparently Timothy doesn't understand how to use Google, or, dare I say, even the Slashdot "Old Stories" search
Almost the exact same story was posted on Monday, April 27
jdb2
I've been a Linux user for several years and prior to that I was a Windows junkie. Back then, when I upgraded my hardware I never had to do a reinstall of the OS ( XP ) or applications. I don't know if that's what you intended but if not here's a tip :
Say your system files/data are stored on a single hard drive, ( this also applies to the multiple hard drives ) then, before you do anything with regards to a hardware upgrade, such as changing the mainboard, go into the device manager and replace all your system specific devices with the generic Microsoft equivalents. Now, after you've built the new system install your system drive and you should be able to boot up in a generic VESA display mode in which you can allow Windows to autodetect the new hardware and/or in which you can manually install the new system specific drivers.
Always worked for me.
Cheers,
jdb2
Obviously someone can't take a joke.
jdb2
Seriously though, if you include Cooperative Linux then you get to include most of the Posix/Unix/Linux free-software universe.
:P ;)
But still, I say Wubi is the #1 piece of free software to be had on Windows -- har har har.
jdb2
I would recommend a board made by Digilent as they seem to have the greatest selection of add-ons and features plus their boards are high quality from my experience. As for the FPGA, I always recommend Xilinx because of the availability of free development tools, Linux support ( I currently have their WebPACK ISE running under Kubuntu 9.04 ) and the general superiority of their products, especially for projects that involve high speeds, a large number of gates and/or flip-flops eg. a microprocessor and even low power -- Xilinx' weakness has always been their relatively high standby/leakage current compared to other vendors, but they've significantly improved upon that with the Spartan-3A and the just released Spartan 6 chips.
As a Spartan 6 dev board is going to be expensive ( Xilinx' Spartan-6 FPGA SP601 Evaluation Kit is $295 and AFAIK it's the only entry level board currently available for that chip ) right now, I would recommend a Spartan 3A board. Specifically I would recommend Xilinx' Spartan-3A Starter Kit as it has the right amount of features for the price ( $189 ) and it's made by Digilent although if you're on a *really* tight budget you can get kits based off of this chip for as low as $49
jdb2
There was a story posted about fog capture for drinking water -- "fog nets" -- back in 2000 :
Fog Collection As Sustainable Water Source
jdb2
Paint roofs white? With the efficiency increases in photo-electric technology, why not put solar panels on every roof? Not only would we reduce the amount of heat being re-radiated back into the atmosphere but, if done on a global scale, we'd eliminate one of the primary reasons for climate change in the first place : the burning of fossil fuels. And before you respond with "but it will cost too much and generate more CO2 than it eliminates" let me give you one word : Bootstrapping. That's right -- Use the power from the existing global infrastructure for solar energy capture to build more global infrastructure for solar energy capture; That way, you would generate a minimal amount of greenhouse gases in the manufacture of new solar panels while at the same time creating a self-sustaining positive feedback loop wherein the more energy we can capture, the more energy capture infrastructure we can build, resulting in our ability to capture more energy.
I didn't RTFA but the summary sounds retarded.
jdb2
A regular expression is just a Finite Automaton ie. State Machine. In a regex, state transitions occur when an input character is read. While regexs are usually applied to a complete input string, the basic theory behind them, as well as any other FA, does not stipulate how the next input character is "read" -- all that is required is a stream of input characters.
So, in the case of the FA representing a form field validation regex, a character is "fed" into the the regex FA whenever a new character is entered, upon which it is checked whether the FA has transitioned to the "not accepted" state and if so the character corresponding to that transition is flagged as invalid.
If the user presses delete or backspace during entry, one method of avoiding revalidation of the current input string would be to save the state of the FA each time a character is read and associate it with that position in the currently entered text. One would then use this information, for example, when a user moves the cursor and presses backspace or delete, to restore the state of the FA associated with the character position just before any deleted characters and then re-run the FA on the characters entered past the point of deletion. If the user is allowed to insert characters at any point in the text input, then a similar scheme would be used in which the state of the FA associated with the character position just before the newly inserted character is restored and then the FA is re-run on all characters past that point.
It seems IBM's programmers and/or lawyers either failed or did not take any basic Theory of Computation classes when they received their education. Sorry for them, because they've made complete idiots out of themselves now, as every Computer Science professor, researcher and grad student on the Earth is probably laughing their asses off -- "Hey! Did you hear that IBM is trying to patent eighty-plus years of mathematical theory! No, it's true!"
jdb2
You get get the
"You can get the" that is. ;)
You get get the rtmpdump v1.5a source here, although this is not the latest version. AFAIK v1.6 was the last version to be released but it seems to have disappeared from the Web, even on non-sourceforge-affiliated sites.
jdb2
...Teacher's unions.
jdb2
It's called running XP in VMware under Linux.
( Also, is it just me or does the "XP" after "Super-Secure" look like a smiley representing someone laughing their guts out? )
jdb2
And when the computer turns off, the Killer NIC does what, exactly?
When your computer turns off, as in power off, turn the power supply off, or unplug your power cord, the Killer Nic will of course cease to function, as will Microsoft's device.
Does it intercept the BitTorrent connections already running on, say Azureus on the host computer and keep those running?
No, but neither does the Somniloquy unless Azureus is recompiled to take advantage of the Somniloquy's network and program state transfer API and even then what you mention won't work unless a special stripped down ARM-Linux binary that duplicates some of Azureus' core functionality is written and installed on the device -- what Microsoft calls a "stub."
I know this is slashdot, but if you're going to try to sound so fantastically knowledgeable, at least RTFA a little bit.
And if you're going to try to sound so fantastically critical of people for not being %100 percent factually accurate with respect to the FA, then perhaps you should re-read it first before you go and make a fool of yourself by commiting the same error that you try to point out in other people.
jdb2
The KillerNIC can not do this independently of the host like this device can.
Yes it can, or at least has the capability -- as long as it has a source of power. The whole point of the Killer NIC is to offload network packet processing from the main CPU to the Killer's on-board ARM chip. The "FNA" Linux apps that run on the card are certainly independent of the main CPU.
With Microsoft's prototype you can put your main computer to sleep (not off) and it continues to download.
As I said in another post, what great leap of imagination does it take to switch to an alternate power source when a change in the ACPI power state is detected? Microsoft's implementation has it easy as it runs off of the bus power supplied to the USB ports which is still present when the computer is in standby/S3-sleep.
The smart bit I see is the interaction: the take-over of the network state by the NIC from the main PC and vice versa, and the transfer of torrent files (this of course includes the downloaded bits and so), current connections, and whatnot. That is quite cool and afaik not done before.
True, but this is not necessary if the network state is already present on the NIC, as with the Killer. Plus you have to weigh the costs and benefits of having to recompile all applications that use the network so that they work with the Somniloquy's state transfer API against the costs and benefits of just running custom applications on the off board network processor. Basically the only thing Microsoft has added to what's already available is the ability for all applications that use the network to work seamlessly with their sleep-mode "stubs", which are basically the same as Killer "FNA" apps, the key innovation being the transfer of network and application state to the "stubs."
So this one for a change appears to be a real innovation by Microsoft. Good to see that those thousands of smart guys can now and then pull off something that at least on the surface is innovative. They should do that more, seriously. Maybe Microsoft should, like e.g. Google and Philip's Natlab of old, give all their research employees a day a week full freedom to work on their own pet projects.
jdb2
Yes, but there's no good reason why it couldn't be easily modified to do so, either via the +5VSB power supply rail or a wall-wart.
jdb2
While that may be true with current revisions, I see no reason why it couldn't continue to operate off of +5V standby power, or, failing that, a wall-wart. If my power supply is a typical example, then there's at least 15 watts available on the +5VSB rail when the computer is in S3 sleep. It takes no great leap of imagination to implement switching to an alternate power source when a change in the ACPI power state is observed. The only reason this "Somniloquy" is able to operate while the computer is in stanby/sleep-mode is the fact that there is still bus power supplied to the USB ports.
jdb2
It's called the "Killer NIC". It's a PCI Express network card which offloads network packet processing to a custom embedded Linux distro running on a 400MHz ARM processor with 256MB of RAM, and oh, it works with Vista. As it's independent of the main CPU, it can run applications, such as a bittorrent client, while the main CPU attends to other tasks while still acting as a NIC for the main CPU even if one of the on-board applications is also network oriented -- they call this "Flexible Network Architecture" or "FNA apps." Oh, and did I mention that it has a USB port for storage of such applications and any associated data ( such as files downloaded via Bittorent ) on a USB flash drive?
Another "great innovation" from Microsoft.
jdb2