What intel needs to do is license IBM's Power5 technology and Sony/Toshiba/IBM's Cell to come up with a super Cell architecture. Of course, this would be economic suicide, as it would be an admission of deficient engineering, but wouldn't it be cool?
Re:On topic beowulf Windows cluster jokes?
on
Windows Cluster Edition
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You could set up a Beowulf cluster of linux boxes to automate that task. Or, if you feel like doing an infinite regress, set up a cluster of Windows for Clusters boxes to automate the process.
"When you buy a cluster, the price per node in the cluster is going to be reduced" compared to regular Windows, Theimer said in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum here. "We want to be competitive with something like Red Hat."
This is idiotic. One can download Redhat for free and use off the shelf software to set up a cluster very quickly. I don't think Microsoft is going to release TCO comparisons for this application any time soon.
There are several reasons why this isn't going to work on the battlefield:
(1) Setting up an enormous network of antennae and backbone to transmit the collected data is a monumental task.
(2) FFT is a high degree polynomial time algorithm. It's straightforward with a few sources of noise, but grows in complexity very quickly. By the time you have more than 100 or so tanks on the field, you can no longer do FFT in real time.
Something like a radar guided anti-tank missile will not have the luxury of the computational resources required to pull this off. Of course, radar guided missiles are likely a tank's least worry as far as bombardment goes, as laser guided missiles are a much bigger threat. This is another obvious use of the technology. In any event, radar "shrouding" (I won't use the term cloaking, since I'm sure you'll jump on me) would work much better on the ground, as the counter-measures don't scale well enough to deal with land assaults.
Please point out where I've said that stealth aircraft are invisible to radar. My point was that this sort of technology could be used to improve current stealth technology by increasing radar scattering on a much broader band than is currently possible.
Note that what you've said doesn't even disagree with what I've said. It's just irrelevant, though I'll concede, factually correct.
Planes are relatively small, and the sky is big. One really needs microwaves to detect a plane flying at high speed. Notice that I said radar invisible. It's well known that the stealth aircraft skins are very bumpy, with smaller bumps on the larger, to increase unidirectional scattering at various frequencies. Moreover, they use an anti-reflective coating. I suspect that this, if tuned to microwaves and built a few layers deep, would be used (if it isn't already) by the military, as it would effectively increase the bumpiness to microscopic levels.
This isn't as much of an issue as you might think. Imagine coating a stealth aircraft with very precisely made microscopic dust, and applying this technology to the particles. You'll end up with a macroscopic, radar invisible airplane.
I can think of a couple of obvious applications, especially if the technology can be adapted to scatter microwaves. Tanks and mechanized infantry are pretty obvious, but I think we want to avoid battleships unless we want a repeat of the Philadelpha Experiment and the crappy movie versions (though I loved the first one as a kid).
But what about non-military uses? Perhaps a "coat" of plasma on windows to reduce cooling bills in the summer? Or another coat of plasma on TV's to reduce glare? I can't think of anything particularly inspiring.
An F1 does not need to refule every two miles or so. F1's are some of the most efficient automobiles in the world right now. People think efficiency is about low gas milage, but it is really about wasting as little energy as possible. In a race, wasted energy corresponds to wasted time.
Think of it this way: When you're on a curvy race track, like the Monaco GP, you're constantly accelerating, trying to go as fast as you can, until you come to a turn and have to brake hard. (You want really good brakes too, so that you can stop quickly) Then you have to accelerate again. The more efficiently you convert chemical energy into forward motion, the faster you reach top speed and coast a bit before slowing down as quickly as possible.
George Soros is a philanthropic type? Sheesh, and here I thought he was a convicted felon and, in the words of a Thai source, "a kind of Dracula. He sucks blood from the people," after he attacked the Thai and Malaysian currencies.
I kind of wonder what sorts of vulnerabilities the scan bots were trying to exploit. I haven't heard of very many OS X vulnerabilities, and Apple is pretty good about getting fixes out within 2 weeks of even proof-of-concept stuff. I suspect the testing methodology used only counted pings and socket scans, and not actual attacks.
(1) Security through obscurity will always fail. If the TFA's security plans aren't robust enough to handle public scrutiny, they sure as hell aren't robust enough to handle determined terrorists. Of course, this does not mean that the TFA should post guard schedules, home addresses, incomes, etc. In fact, there is no need to even post anything but the general plan of action and the basics of the implementation so that the public can evaluate performance. This is essential. If the public cannot evaluate the performance of an agency, the public is robbed of its rights to effectively legislate. (Remember when Sen. Ted Kennedy found out he was on the secret no-fly list?)
(2) We are being held responsible for laws we didn't even have an opportunity to question before framing. These are unknown outside a small group -- a cabal, if you will. They are literally consolidating power and making it impossible for the public to take it back.
People say BSDs are better than Linux and Windows because of the It's-a-less-popular-OS-so-it-must-be-good-and-I-mu st-be-cool-for-using-it syndrome. The same thing goes for a lot (most) of Mac users. Face it. x86 and x86-based OSes are better than Mac and OS X. Linux is better than *BSD. And in some areas Windows is better than Linux.
Good troll! Thankfully, I think people say BSDs are better than linux because they fit their needs better. Same with OS X and windows. Nobody really cares which OS you're using anyways, outside of 12 year olds on usenet.
Statistically normal and random are not the same concepts. The sequence 123456789101112131415... is statistically normal (as any given digit is going to appear about 1/10th of the time), but obviously not random.
So? That's not pi.
How insightful of you. Of course it's not pi. But the digits in the sequence are clearly distributed normally. If you take issue with the comparision, I recommend you find a mathematical definition of random which excludes my sequence but includes pi.
I already said that pi and such numbers were useless for that. Just because something is "easy" or "hard" to calculate has no bearing on whether it is random.
The computational complexity of a given sequence does have a bearing on whether or not it's random. The sequences that cannot be computed on by a Turing machine are defined to be random. This includes sequences generated by coin flips, intermittent polling of some physical phenomenon, etc. Everything else is trivially not random. This isn't an issue of cryptographic intuition, but an issue of information density.
Statistically normal and random are not the same concepts. The sequence 123456789101112131415... is statistically normal (as any given digit is going to appear about 1/10th of the time), but obviously not random.
The current measure of randomness in mathematical circles depends on information density. Intuitively, the question answered is "How hard is it to write an algorithm that outputs this sequence?" A sequence is random if the size of the program that outputs the first n digits is at least as great (not counting implementation overhead) as the data required to store the first n digits.
The digits of pi fail spectacularly here. There are several closed for formula for calculating pi to any number of digits. But one can prove the existence of sequences of numbers that really are random. (Chaitin's omega is one of these)
Re:Sounds original...
on
Exultant
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Brain... melting...
Take a standard literary cliche, like taking a standard literary cliche and adding a twist, and add a twist. Clever. We've added two twists to a standard literary cliche. But we still end up with a standard literary cliche. By induction, standard literary cliches are closed under twists.
Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
Frankly, this assessment doesn't sound too far off to me. A major portion of understanding a field in depth is categorizing the raw data one has compiled in order to turn it into information. Blogs just aren't capable of doing something like this without sinking to the lowest common political bias.
A major strength of having access to a large library is actually having a librarian point out where to find a large body of information on the field you're interested in. But once you get there, the sheer volume of information precludes the possibility of a librarian introducing a political bias, though there might be a systematic bias in the publishing world.
Slashdot Mirror
What intel needs to do is license IBM's Power5 technology and Sony/Toshiba/IBM's Cell to come up with a super Cell architecture. Of course, this would be economic suicide, as it would be an admission of deficient engineering, but wouldn't it be cool?
You could set up a Beowulf cluster of linux boxes to automate that task. Or, if you feel like doing an infinite regress, set up a cluster of Windows for Clusters boxes to automate the process.
"When you buy a cluster, the price per node in the cluster is going to be reduced" compared to regular Windows, Theimer said in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum here. "We want to be competitive with something like Red Hat."
This is idiotic. One can download Redhat for free and use off the shelf software to set up a cluster very quickly. I don't think Microsoft is going to release TCO comparisons for this application any time soon.
Whoever modded me insightful is an idiot.
You can't have your cake and eat it.
Sure you can. That's what having your cake means.
Manslaughter, justifiable homicide, keeping a wife locked in her room, etc.
Oh, and hunting.
Funny, and here I thought microscopic particles suspended in some kind of paint-like substance were microscopic. ;-)
Seriously, this stuff is old news. There's lots of tech behind it already. Anyway, time for bed.
Sure, and yet utterly futile.
There are several reasons why this isn't going to work on the battlefield:
(1) Setting up an enormous network of antennae and backbone to transmit the collected data is a monumental task.
(2) FFT is a high degree polynomial time algorithm. It's straightforward with a few sources of noise, but grows in complexity very quickly. By the time you have more than 100 or so tanks on the field, you can no longer do FFT in real time.
Something like a radar guided anti-tank missile will not have the luxury of the computational resources required to pull this off. Of course, radar guided missiles are likely a tank's least worry as far as bombardment goes, as laser guided missiles are a much bigger threat. This is another obvious use of the technology. In any event, radar "shrouding" (I won't use the term cloaking, since I'm sure you'll jump on me) would work much better on the ground, as the counter-measures don't scale well enough to deal with land assaults.
Please point out where I've said that stealth aircraft are invisible to radar. My point was that this sort of technology could be used to improve current stealth technology by increasing radar scattering on a much broader band than is currently possible.
Note that what you've said doesn't even disagree with what I've said. It's just irrelevant, though I'll concede, factually correct.
Planes are relatively small, and the sky is big. One really needs microwaves to detect a plane flying at high speed. Notice that I said radar invisible. It's well known that the stealth aircraft skins are very bumpy, with smaller bumps on the larger, to increase unidirectional scattering at various frequencies. Moreover, they use an anti-reflective coating. I suspect that this, if tuned to microwaves and built a few layers deep, would be used (if it isn't already) by the military, as it would effectively increase the bumpiness to microscopic levels.
This isn't as much of an issue as you might think. Imagine coating a stealth aircraft with very precisely made microscopic dust, and applying this technology to the particles. You'll end up with a macroscopic, radar invisible airplane.
I can think of a couple of obvious applications, especially if the technology can be adapted to scatter microwaves. Tanks and mechanized infantry are pretty obvious, but I think we want to avoid battleships unless we want a repeat of the Philadelpha Experiment and the crappy movie versions (though I loved the first one as a kid).
But what about non-military uses? Perhaps a "coat" of plasma on windows to reduce cooling bills in the summer? Or another coat of plasma on TV's to reduce glare? I can't think of anything particularly inspiring.
OT: I like puppies, and I like acid!
An F1 does not need to refule every two miles or so. F1's are some of the most efficient automobiles in the world right now. People think efficiency is about low gas milage, but it is really about wasting as little energy as possible. In a race, wasted energy corresponds to wasted time.
Think of it this way: When you're on a curvy race track, like the Monaco GP, you're constantly accelerating, trying to go as fast as you can, until you come to a turn and have to brake hard. (You want really good brakes too, so that you can stop quickly) Then you have to accelerate again. The more efficiently you convert chemical energy into forward motion, the faster you reach top speed and coast a bit before slowing down as quickly as possible.
George Soros is a philanthropic type? Sheesh, and here I thought he was a convicted felon and, in the words of a Thai source, "a kind of Dracula. He sucks blood from the people," after he attacked the Thai and Malaysian currencies.
I kind of wonder what sorts of vulnerabilities the scan bots were trying to exploit. I haven't heard of very many OS X vulnerabilities, and Apple is pretty good about getting fixes out within 2 weeks of even proof-of-concept stuff. I suspect the testing methodology used only counted pings and socket scans, and not actual attacks.
Jesus christ on a flaming flag: let's not misuse mathematical (or geological) terminology just to make a political "point."
So how is this an outrage again?
Two reasons:
(1) Security through obscurity will always fail. If the TFA's security plans aren't robust enough to handle public scrutiny, they sure as hell aren't robust enough to handle determined terrorists. Of course, this does not mean that the TFA should post guard schedules, home addresses, incomes, etc. In fact, there is no need to even post anything but the general plan of action and the basics of the implementation so that the public can evaluate performance. This is essential. If the public cannot evaluate the performance of an agency, the public is robbed of its rights to effectively legislate. (Remember when Sen. Ted Kennedy found out he was on the secret no-fly list?)
(2) We are being held responsible for laws we didn't even have an opportunity to question before framing. These are unknown outside a small group -- a cabal, if you will. They are literally consolidating power and making it impossible for the public to take it back.
People say BSDs are better than Linux and Windows because of the It's-a-less-popular-OS-so-it-must-be-good-and-I-mu st-be-cool-for-using-it syndrome. The same thing goes for a lot (most) of Mac users. Face it. x86 and x86-based OSes are better than Mac and OS X. Linux is better than *BSD. And in some areas Windows is better than Linux.
Good troll! Thankfully, I think people say BSDs are better than linux because they fit their needs better. Same with OS X and windows. Nobody really cares which OS you're using anyways, outside of 12 year olds on usenet.
Statistically normal and random are not the same concepts. The sequence 123456789101112131415... is statistically normal (as any given digit is going to appear about 1/10th of the time), but obviously not random.
So? That's not pi.
How insightful of you. Of course it's not pi. But the digits in the sequence are clearly distributed normally. If you take issue with the comparision, I recommend you find a mathematical definition of random which excludes my sequence but includes pi.
I already said that pi and such numbers were useless for that. Just because something is "easy" or "hard" to calculate has no bearing on whether it is random.
The computational complexity of a given sequence does have a bearing on whether or not it's random. The sequences that cannot be computed on by a Turing machine are defined to be random. This includes sequences generated by coin flips, intermittent polling of some physical phenomenon, etc. Everything else is trivially not random. This isn't an issue of cryptographic intuition, but an issue of information density.
Statistically normal and random are not the same concepts. The sequence 123456789101112131415... is statistically normal (as any given digit is going to appear about 1/10th of the time), but obviously not random.
The current measure of randomness in mathematical circles depends on information density. Intuitively, the question answered is "How hard is it to write an algorithm that outputs this sequence?" A sequence is random if the size of the program that outputs the first n digits is at least as great (not counting implementation overhead) as the data required to store the first n digits.
The digits of pi fail spectacularly here. There are several closed for formula for calculating pi to any number of digits. But one can prove the existence of sequences of numbers that really are random. (Chaitin's omega is one of these)
Brain... melting...
Take a standard literary cliche, like taking a standard literary cliche and adding a twist, and add a twist. Clever. We've added two twists to a standard literary cliche. But we still end up with a standard literary cliche. By induction, standard literary cliches are closed under twists.
Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
Frankly, this assessment doesn't sound too far off to me. A major portion of understanding a field in depth is categorizing the raw data one has compiled in order to turn it into information. Blogs just aren't capable of doing something like this without sinking to the lowest common political bias.
A major strength of having access to a large library is actually having a librarian point out where to find a large body of information on the field you're interested in. But once you get there, the sheer volume of information precludes the possibility of a librarian introducing a political bias, though there might be a systematic bias in the publishing world.
Very insightful. Ahem, what's your point?
Idiot.
:-)
Of course, I'm kidding. I'm having too much trouble in that class to be a dick to anyone who puts themselves out there.