Most Valuable Professional? Isn't "Professional" a euphamism for prostitute?
Not in this case, because prostitutes get paid. MVP's give it away for free.
As best I can tell, MS gives the title of MVP to people who do a lot of free tech support for MS - they post a lot in whatever forums MS runs answering questions and generally sticking up for MS's good name.
I am not sure why these people feel the need to give away their personal time and energy to help out MS's bottom line, but MS is smart enough to exploit these sycophants by giving them an "award" of the title MVP which costs MS close to nothing in return and the MVP's seem very proud of this recognition, often listing it in their sigs and whatnot. Like a badge of suckeritude.
I think the reason one MVP is complaining loudly and bitterly enough about another MVP so as to make the front page of slashdot is precisely because the stakes are so small. (to paraphrase a well known rat-fink)
So why does an app or a library have to care how many CPUs or cores the PC has? Surely that's the job of the OS?
The OS does not know what kind of interdependecies there are between threads and or even different processes. One of the most common performance issues is where thread-A needs to communicate with thread-B, but B is sleeping so A sits and waits for B to wake up (be scheduled) and respond. By that time, A may have been put to sleep (by the scheduler) so that when B finally responds, A isn't there to act on the response for another XX milliseconds. You get a bunch of those round-trips in your code and pretty soon it is running dog slow even though the system is close to 100% idle.
One way to fix that is with gang scheduling but that requires the app to tell the OS enough information about itself so that that the OS can "do the right" thing and schedule all the interdependent threads simultaneously.
However, just running everything across HyperTransport is an obviously worse approach for core-to-core communication than shared L2.
The real question is how important is core-to-core communication versus core-to-memory for "regular" workloads?
My gut says that for consumer-level workloads, memory is more important than inter-core communication because most consumer-level parallel processing is of the "embarassingly parallel" type - specifically codec processing - video, audio and "photoshop plugin" types.
My imagination may be lacking, but I can't think of any consumer-level compute-intensive workloads that are also fine-grained enough where inter-core communication is critical. Perhaps some of the distributed-processing/seti-at-home type jobs could make use of fine-grained parallelism within each "chunk" of processing, I don't know.
So, it is entirely possible that the downsides of shared-cache, like bus contention and false cache-line sharing, could be a hindrence in comparison to the sort-of "shared-nothing" approach that AMD has taken with their designs.
I think I am going to trust the cover that I provide.
It's already been reported here on slashdot that the cover has to be tightly closed in order to make a functional faraday cage. I believe that the experimental results were that leaving it open just 5-10mm was enough to negate the shielding effects.
So, make sure whatever cover you go with has a clasp.
I've always wondered if there were any "secret codes" left behind by the firmware developers for vending machines. I'm not up to messing with an ATM, but it sure would be cool to know how to get a free soda or candy bar the next time the damn machine eats my money.
Anyone got a line on those kinds of "default passwords?"
I don't care if you agree with it or not. "preserving freedom" by removing freedom is hypocritical of the FSF. What freedom goes next?
How about the freedom to distribute binaries without providing source code?
Where does the FSF get off removing my freedom to make binary-only proprietary distributions? That's not "preserving freedom" its just being hypocritical.
Figuring out the deadlines is the programmer's job. Code path analysis and worst-case execution time determination are a big part of it. It's all done before the system even boots, so yeah, it's free as far as performance goes.
Hardly free at all.
When you have to reinvent the wheel, who do you think is going to produce better average case performance? The guys who have had years to tinker with a variety of implementations of a variety of algorithms and have the flexibility to trade off the occasional pathalogical blip in exchange for improved average case performance, or the guy who has to come up with something in a few months and can't afford a timeline blip even once?
On one hand you have the design goal of "As fast as possible for as often as possible" and on the other you have a design goal of, "No slower than X, ever." No one has unlimited resources, so of course the results are going to mirror the goals.
But the originator of this post stated categorically that ALL LAWS, save the moral ones like murder and the like, are made for the exclusive benefit of moneyed interests.
That's a strawman. The OP said nothing about exclusive benefit, he said that all laws are designed to benefit the moneyed interests, but he did not say that no one else benefits too.
Here's the line:
If you look at ANY regulation that is passed, with the exception of regulation that is essentially already a social moor (such as laws against murder, rape, etc.), they are designed for the benfit of powerful economic interests.
Re:this reminds me of an interview with ... someon
on
What Is Real On YouTube?
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
There's a lot of noise there. Kraft, last I checked, doesn't make cigarettes.
Which is exactly why I said to look at the share price BEFORE they purchased Kraft and to compare it to the broader markets which lowers the noise floor substantially.
My interpretation of these events is that PM saw the writing out of the wall and started insulating itself from the increasingly less-profitable, more-exposed-to-liability tobacco industry by diversifying.
Of course they did. My point was that their acquiescence to those labeling and restricted advertising laws back in 1969 did not hurt business because they outperformed the market by a substantial margin for close to 20 years. They did not lose business, they did not just maintain business, they didn't even just keep up with the rest of big business, they grew substantially faster than the average - purely from tobacco sales. Furthermore, ALL legal liability for the effects of their products was avoided during that period too due in part to the warning labels being an excuse that smokers were fully informed of the risks.
If you want to pooh-pooh such clear-cut results, then you are just playing ostrich.
I just don't buy it.
And that's exactly why they continue to get away with it.
The list is too long: OSHA, emissions standards, environmental laws, it just goes on
As if I have time to run down every one of your items, how about you open your eyes and do the research yourself? Its your "hand-waving" away of straightforward results that is contradiction to occam's razor. Big Money dominates US federal law making and has done so blatantly since at least WWII. Follow the money, it ain't hard to do.
I will say that one of your examples, emissions standards, work the same way that safety standards do - ever wonder why SUVs don't have the same requirements that small cars do? That they have been almost unregulated? Because until just recently, the only large scale manufacturers of SUVs were American and there was no risk of losing marketshare to foreign manufacturers as there obviously was with small cars. Follow the money.
It seems counterintuitive that a decreasing smoker population would somehow lead to an increase in tobacco company profits.
If you look at the historical share price of philip morris (NYSE:MO) from circa 1970 to circa 1988 when they started to diversify by purchasing Kraft, they experienced a net increase of about 4500%, handly outperforming the DOW, S&P and NASDAQ. Some of that growth is attributable to overseas sales, but my point that the "dogooder" laws 'imposed' on the tobacco industry didn't hurt them still stands, they clearly did more than fine even after the laws were enacted.
However, you should note that a lack of television advertising and a mandatory label on the box are correlated factors, not causative. There are plenty of other non-law reasons to explain the declining population of smokers and thus any effect it might have on tobacco company profits.
I don't see how that affects my thesis, which is that the idea that all laws are made by and for the exclusive benefit of the rich is ridiculous.
You are assuming that the benefits must be direct and obvious. My thesis is that in cases where the direct and obvious effects seem to be counter to the interests of the powerful, the indirect benefits are just as, if not more, valuable.
Big Tobacco really doesn't at all mind not being able to advertise on TV and plastering their products with "WARNING: THIS PRODUCT WILL KILL YOU"?
Yes. The tobacco companies know that a warning won't stop an addict - if that was enough then no one would be addicted to cigarettes. It is called CYA and until one novel legal tactic was recently tried, it protected them against almost all legal liability for something like 30 years. One thing is for certain, such requirements haven't hurt their profits and that's all that matters.
the fight the auto companies put up against mandatory seat belts was somehow a ruse and they really wanted them all the time so that they could somehow use this to drive out smaller car companies?
They didn't fight it all that hard, just enough to make sure nothing really harmful to their business was written into law. And you sure haven't been paying attention if you haven't heard of all the foreign vehicles that never maket it to market in the USA due to the onerous "safety" mandates. One thing is for certain, such requirements haven't hurt their profits (bad management in other areas is clearly to blame) and that's all that matters.
I don't see how a rational person could view the situation otherwise, do you just choose to ignore the outcome of all these so called "do gooder" laws? Are you completely unaware of the phenomenon of "regulatory capture?"
There will always be "good legislators" who propose laws that benefit the little guy. But the only time they have an effect is when they allowed to by the guys with the real power. The powerful can pick and choose from the bills that the "good legislators" propose and permit only the ones that benefit them to make it through congress and become actual law.
Thus the situation you have described - some do-good laws that don't really harm the powerful are passed and often co-opted by the powerful, but the ones that might make a substantial difference in the power structure don't make it out of comittee with any hope of passage.
You are mixing up amplitude and frequency. When two waveforms interact, the interference pattern can boost or cancel out the amplitude, but it doesn't really affect the frequenciies.
Sure, there are hi-frequency tones that produce harmonincs with audible tones, but its not really as simple as summing up the frequencies.
I have to disagree about the audio changes. Prior to reading details of the new audio system I had no interest in even trying vista, even was actively against it. Now I am not so sure. The stuff they've put in there is roughly equivalent to a $10K TacT Audio room correction box. Sure the TacT box is over-priced, but it is still an amazingly cool technology.
Linux has a DRC package available, it is probably even more functional than what MS is providing, but it is orders of magnitude harder to use.
Of course no one cares if Linux bundles a Roxio or Nero competitor. Oh wait, its MS, so they can't do it because they are a monopoly, except that no one is forced to buy Windows. A monopoly is the old Ma Bell, where you really didn't have a choice. You have a choice of Linux or Mac or anything else right now.
There's always at least one ms apologist who shows up, makes up their own definition of monopoly, and then claims that MS doesn't fit it.
In the context of US federal anti-trust, which is what matters in the case of Microsoft, monopoly does not mean only one choice, it means only one common choice. For example, see the case of Standard Oil which was one of the defining cases of US anti-trust law - at the time the suit was filed in 1904, Standard controlled 91% of production and 85% of retail sales and by the time the suit was concluded and the company broken up - Standard's market share was down to 64% of retail sales.
Dunno, I have MBNA whom just bought or were bought by BoA, perhaps they will roll it out to the rest of BoA's customers. MBNA's name for the service is "shopsafe."
Unfortunately, 1080p @ 72Hz requires more bandwidth than a single DVI/HDMI link can provide. So any of those new sub $2K 1080p displays can't support 72Hz, never mind 120Hz. They could do 48Hz, but most manufacturers aren't smart enough to do that either.
Your sig: "Virii" isn't a word, you frigging morons.
Big deal.
spam laudromat blog quark prequel genocide meritocracy meme robotics infotainment
Just some of the thousands of "not words" that are now words - many of which replaced perfectly good phrases with the same meaning - just as "virii" is used to mean "computer viruses."
If everyone thought like your sig, language would quickly become to unwieldy to be of much use and we would all end up going mute.
For the short term, using a number that could be changed by the consumer (like a password) would go a long way towards solving the problem. Any identifier that is difficult to change is ripe for abuse once it's been revealed.
That is essentially how disposable credit card numbers work or controlled payment numbers as they have been trademarked. MBNA/BoA, Citi, Discover and Paypal all use disposable credit card numbers to let card holders make purchases online with vastly reduced the risk of fraud. It's a benefit to the card holder because the effort to use the disposable numbers is only trivially greater than using a real card and effectively eliminates having to worry about the security of an etailer's website. It's an even better deal for the issuing banks since they almost never have to worry about dealing with 3rd party fraud.
I own no shares in orbiscom, but I think their system is an/almost/ perfect solution to the problem of online credit card fraud and wish more banks would implement the same or similar systems. In fact, I wish it could be extended to the real world such that I could print out a card with a disposable number for use at specific B&M stores in the same way I use the electronic version online.
To put this another way, if everyone saturated their pipe, they would have to charge upwards of 10x for your cable or DSL connection as they currently do.
Too bad we don't have a competitive market for bandwidth to the home.
$30-$60/month merely for dial-up speeds plus the occasional high-speed burst sure doesn't seem like a good value.
If most people weren't restricted to 2 (and often just 1) high-speed provider, then we might have an idea what it would really cost for high-speed connectivity that wasn't oversold.
Slashdot Mirror
Most Valuable Professional? Isn't "Professional" a euphamism for prostitute?
Not in this case, because prostitutes get paid. MVP's give it away for free.
As best I can tell, MS gives the title of MVP to people who do a lot of free tech support for MS - they post a lot in whatever forums MS runs answering questions and generally sticking up for MS's good name.
I am not sure why these people feel the need to give away their personal time and energy to help out MS's bottom line, but MS is smart enough to exploit these sycophants by giving them an "award" of the title MVP which costs MS close to nothing in return and the MVP's seem very proud of this recognition, often listing it in their sigs and whatnot. Like a badge of suckeritude.
I think the reason one MVP is complaining loudly and bitterly enough about another MVP so as to make the front page of slashdot is precisely because the stakes are so small. (to paraphrase a well known rat-fink)
It claims that piracy is capable of running rampant down the street and reeking havoc everywhere.
Fart Havoc! - And let slip the pirate-dogs of war?
It claims that piracy is capable of running rampant down the street and reeking havoc everywhere.
Are you saying that IP law, by any other name, would smell as bad?
So why does an app or a library have to care how many CPUs or cores the PC has? Surely that's the job of the OS?
The OS does not know what kind of interdependecies there are between threads and or even different processes. One of the most common performance issues is where thread-A needs to communicate with thread-B, but B is sleeping so A sits and waits for B to wake up (be scheduled) and respond. By that time, A may have been put to sleep (by the scheduler) so that when B finally responds, A isn't there to act on the response for another XX milliseconds. You get a bunch of those round-trips in your code and pretty soon it is running dog slow even though the system is close to 100% idle.
One way to fix that is with gang scheduling but that requires the app to tell the OS enough information about itself so that that the OS can "do the right" thing and schedule all the interdependent threads simultaneously.
However, just running everything across HyperTransport is an obviously worse approach for core-to-core communication than shared L2.
The real question is how important is core-to-core communication versus core-to-memory for "regular" workloads?
My gut says that for consumer-level workloads, memory is more important than inter-core communication because most consumer-level parallel processing is of the "embarassingly parallel" type - specifically codec processing - video, audio and "photoshop plugin" types.
My imagination may be lacking, but I can't think of any consumer-level compute-intensive workloads that are also fine-grained enough where inter-core communication is critical. Perhaps some of the distributed-processing/seti-at-home type jobs could make use of fine-grained parallelism within each "chunk" of processing, I don't know.
So, it is entirely possible that the downsides of shared-cache, like bus contention and false cache-line sharing, could be a hindrence in comparison to the sort-of "shared-nothing" approach that AMD has taken with their designs.
I think I am going to trust the cover that I provide.
It's already been reported here on slashdot that the cover has to be tightly closed in order to make a functional faraday cage. I believe that the experimental results were that leaving it open just 5-10mm was enough to negate the shielding effects.
So, make sure whatever cover you go with has a clasp.
I've always wondered if there were any "secret codes" left behind by the firmware developers for vending machines. I'm not up to messing with an ATM, but it sure would be cool to know how to get a free soda or candy bar the next time the damn machine eats my money.
Anyone got a line on those kinds of "default passwords?"
I don't care if you agree with it or not. "preserving freedom" by removing freedom is hypocritical of the FSF. What freedom goes next?
How about the freedom to distribute binaries without providing source code?
Where does the FSF get off removing my freedom to make binary-only proprietary distributions? That's not "preserving freedom" its just being hypocritical.
Figuring out the deadlines is the programmer's job. Code path analysis and worst-case execution time determination are a big part of it. It's all done before the system even boots, so yeah, it's free as far as performance goes.
Hardly free at all.
When you have to reinvent the wheel, who do you think is going to produce better average case performance? The guys who have had years to tinker with a variety of implementations of a variety of algorithms and have the flexibility to trade off the occasional pathalogical blip in exchange for improved average case performance, or the guy who has to come up with something in a few months and can't afford a timeline blip even once?
On one hand you have the design goal of "As fast as possible for as often as possible" and on the other you have a design goal of, "No slower than X, ever." No one has unlimited resources, so of course the results are going to mirror the goals.
That's a strawman. The OP said nothing about exclusive benefit, he said that all laws are designed to benefit the moneyed interests, but he did not say that no one else benefits too.
Here's the line:
There's a lot of noise there. Kraft, last I checked, doesn't make cigarettes.
Which is exactly why I said to look at the share price BEFORE they purchased Kraft and to compare it to the broader markets which lowers the noise floor substantially.
My interpretation of these events is that PM saw the writing out of the wall and started insulating itself from the increasingly less-profitable, more-exposed-to-liability tobacco industry by diversifying.
Of course they did. My point was that their acquiescence to those labeling and restricted advertising laws back in 1969 did not hurt business because they outperformed the market by a substantial margin for close to 20 years. They did not lose business, they did not just maintain business, they didn't even just keep up with the rest of big business, they grew substantially faster than the average - purely from tobacco sales. Furthermore, ALL legal liability for the effects of their products was avoided during that period too due in part to the warning labels being an excuse that smokers were fully informed of the risks.
If you want to pooh-pooh such clear-cut results, then you are just playing ostrich.
I just don't buy it.
And that's exactly why they continue to get away with it.
The list is too long: OSHA, emissions standards, environmental laws, it just goes on
As if I have time to run down every one of your items, how about you open your eyes and do the research yourself? Its your "hand-waving" away of straightforward results that is contradiction to occam's razor. Big Money dominates US federal law making and has done so blatantly since at least WWII. Follow the money, it ain't hard to do.
I will say that one of your examples, emissions standards, work the same way that safety standards do - ever wonder why SUVs don't have the same requirements that small cars do? That they have been almost unregulated? Because until just recently, the only large scale manufacturers of SUVs were American and there was no risk of losing marketshare to foreign manufacturers as there obviously was with small cars. Follow the money.
It seems counterintuitive that a decreasing smoker population would somehow lead to an increase in tobacco company profits.
If you look at the historical share price of philip morris (NYSE:MO) from circa 1970 to circa 1988 when they started to diversify by purchasing Kraft, they experienced a net increase of about 4500%, handly outperforming the DOW, S&P and NASDAQ. Some of that growth is attributable to overseas sales, but my point that the "dogooder" laws 'imposed' on the tobacco industry didn't hurt them still stands, they clearly did more than fine even after the laws were enacted.
However, you should note that a lack of television advertising and a mandatory label on the box are correlated factors, not causative. There are plenty of other non-law reasons to explain the declining population of smokers and thus any effect it might have on tobacco company profits.
I don't see how that affects my thesis, which is that the idea that all laws are made by and for the exclusive benefit of the rich is ridiculous.
You are assuming that the benefits must be direct and obvious. My thesis is that in cases where the direct and obvious effects seem to be counter to the interests of the powerful, the indirect benefits are just as, if not more, valuable.
Big Tobacco really doesn't at all mind not being able to advertise on TV and plastering their products with "WARNING: THIS PRODUCT WILL KILL YOU"?
Yes. The tobacco companies know that a warning won't stop an addict - if that was enough then no one would be addicted to cigarettes. It is called CYA and until one novel legal tactic was recently tried, it protected them against almost all legal liability for something like 30 years. One thing is for certain, such requirements haven't hurt their profits and that's all that matters.
the fight the auto companies put up against mandatory seat belts was somehow a ruse and they really wanted them all the time so that they could somehow use this to drive out smaller car companies?
They didn't fight it all that hard, just enough to make sure nothing really harmful to their business was written into law. And you sure haven't been paying attention if you haven't heard of all the foreign vehicles that never maket it to market in the USA due to the onerous "safety" mandates. One thing is for certain, such requirements haven't hurt their profits (bad management in other areas is clearly to blame) and that's all that matters.
I don't see how a rational person could view the situation otherwise, do you just choose to ignore the outcome of all these so called "do gooder" laws? Are you completely unaware of the phenomenon of "regulatory capture?"
The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
There will always be "good legislators" who propose laws that benefit the little guy. But the only time they have an effect is when they allowed to by the guys with the real power. The powerful can pick and choose from the bills that the "good legislators" propose and permit only the ones that benefit them to make it through congress and become actual law.
Thus the situation you have described - some do-good laws that don't really harm the powerful are passed and often co-opted by the powerful, but the ones that might make a substantial difference in the power structure don't make it out of comittee with any hope of passage.
You are mixing up amplitude and frequency. When two waveforms interact, the interference pattern can boost or cancel out the amplitude, but it doesn't really affect the frequenciies.
Sure, there are hi-frequency tones that produce harmonincs with audible tones, but its not really as simple as summing up the frequencies.
I have to disagree about the audio changes. Prior to reading details of the new audio system I had no interest in even trying vista, even was actively against it. Now I am not so sure. The stuff they've put in there is roughly equivalent to a $10K TacT Audio room correction box. Sure the TacT box is over-priced, but it is still an amazingly cool technology.
Linux has a DRC package available, it is probably even more functional than what MS is providing, but it is orders of magnitude harder to use.
Of course no one cares if Linux bundles a Roxio or Nero competitor. Oh wait, its MS, so they can't do it because they are a monopoly, except that no one is forced to buy Windows. A monopoly is the old Ma Bell, where you really didn't have a choice. You have a choice of Linux or Mac or anything else right now.
There's always at least one ms apologist who shows up, makes up their own definition of monopoly, and then claims that MS doesn't fit it.
In the context of US federal anti-trust, which is what matters in the case of Microsoft, monopoly does not mean only one choice, it means only one common choice. For example, see the case of Standard Oil which was one of the defining cases of US anti-trust law - at the time the suit was filed in 1904, Standard controlled 91% of production and 85% of retail sales and by the time the suit was concluded and the company broken up - Standard's market share was down to 64% of retail sales.
I don't know where you live,
The question is more like, where do you live because your experience is not the common one.
Dunno, I have MBNA whom just bought or were bought by BoA, perhaps they will roll it out to the rest of BoA's customers. MBNA's name for the service is "shopsafe."
Unfortunately, 1080p @ 72Hz requires more bandwidth than a single DVI/HDMI link can provide. So any of those new sub $2K 1080p displays can't support 72Hz, never mind 120Hz. They could do 48Hz, but most manufacturers aren't smart enough to do that either.
Your sig: "Virii" isn't a word, you frigging morons.
Big deal.
spam
laudromat
blog
quark
prequel
genocide
meritocracy
meme
robotics
infotainment
Just some of the thousands of "not words" that are now words - many of which replaced perfectly good phrases with the same meaning - just as "virii" is used to mean "computer viruses."
If everyone thought like your sig, language would quickly become to unwieldy to be of much use and we would all end up going mute.
That is essentially how disposable credit card numbers work or controlled payment numbers as they have been trademarked. MBNA/BoA, Citi, Discover and Paypal all use disposable credit card numbers to let card holders make purchases online with vastly reduced the risk of fraud. It's a benefit to the card holder because the effort to use the disposable numbers is only trivially greater than using a real card and effectively eliminates having to worry about the security of an etailer's website. It's an even better deal for the issuing banks since they almost never have to worry about dealing with 3rd party fraud.
I own no shares in orbiscom, but I think their system is an
To put this another way, if everyone saturated their pipe, they would have to charge upwards of 10x for your cable or DSL connection as they currently do.
Too bad we don't have a competitive market for bandwidth to the home.
$30-$60/month merely for dial-up speeds plus the occasional high-speed burst sure doesn't seem like a good value.
If most people weren't restricted to 2 (and often just 1) high-speed provider, then we might have an idea what it would really cost for high-speed connectivity that wasn't oversold.