Aww, how cute! England wants to come out and play. While I am happy to see that our mates from across the pond are getting themselves a nice little number cruncher - it is still little. NASA has a setup called Pleiades:
Total cores: 112,896 Total memory: 191 TB
But here's the real hard-to-fathom point. The sport two 11-dimension hypercube interconnect configurations using Infiniband QDR and DDR networking (mostly DDR). Now DDR is ~4GB/s and QDR is ~8GB/s, but Inifiniband is rarely singily-connected. Usually you multipath using four connections to the switch, which in this case bumps the transfer rate up to 16GB/s for DDR and 32GB/s for QDR. Peak theoretical speed for this system is ~240TB/s.
Oh, and it's running SUSE Linux. That off-the-shelf enough?
Last I checked, the system is running at 90% utilization. This is one heck of a cluster and it isn't just for show. Yet Pleiades only rates as #7 on the TOP500 list of supercomputers worldwide. The new list comes out in a few days. We'll see if they can keep that illustrious position.
Side note: The #1 supercomputer is running an interconnect called "Tofu". Since I'm an Infiniband guy, I'd like to know more. Right now, though, it rates very high on my silliness scale.
I recommend you have a conversation with your in-laws. Explain to them that you do not like visiting them as it takes you away from your gaming addiction.
Ahh, you sadly make a lot of assumptions that do you no justice. When my in-laws are around and not out doing the farm work, we generally do have very nice conversations. Yes, there are moments when I do not agree with their culture and way-of-life and they do not appreciate mine. The real issue is when they're not home, I generally have very little to occupy my time. This is where my gaming addiction (that's one assumption you made that I will shamefully admit) comes in handy, allowing me to pass the time while I wait for their return.
You may ask why don't I go out and help them. Well, I'm not familiar enough with riding horses to be useful with the cattle. I cannot run the heavy equipment they use to harvest their grain. Really, I am simply the chauffeur for my family so they can visit with Mom and Dad/Grandma and Grandpa. Once I'm there, I'm as useful as a bicycle to a fish.
It is really surprising that Blizzard haven't figured out a way for you to be able to use their game to properly get your feelings across to your relatives.
Perhaps they can provide a farm equipment simulator so that I can be more useful to my in-laws. I probably wouldn't buy it anyway, as I don't usually play the sim games. Besides, learning to drive a tractor via a sim game is much like learning to be a rock star by playing Guitar Hero. No one would take me seriously.
Perhaps you should consider why it is you must fill every waking moment with something that takes you away from human contact.
Perhaps because sometimes that human contact is not present, or because my very nature is to be socially inept and I have a very hard time overcoming that nature. As weak as they are, I have my excuses and I plan to stick to them.
Thankfully, though, Diablo III isn't the only game in the world. You should be fine playing it at home and finding an alternative method of shunning your in-laws with. I suggest you get a game you can play on your iPhone/Android device. This way you can sit right infront of them while playing, so your disdain for them can be made all the more obvious.
Again, you assume I find my in-law reprehensible. My level of respect for them exceed most people as they spend most of their lives out in the fields tending to their livelihood, plus they can serve a family meal that would feed a small nation. I would never avoid social contact during one of their meals. When I am around them we tend to argue politics and culture, but I understand them and they tolerate me. At times I need to step away from a conflict and cool down, which is one of the reasons I have Plants vs. Zombies on my tablet. Great diversionary tactic.
I'm sure you have a wonderful relationship with your in-laws. I just find you're overly defensive attitude a poor quality in a person.
Blizzard simply believes they are protecting the customer.
You're not actually naive enough to believe that, are you? Blizzard simply believes they are protecting their bottom line, and fuck their customers if they have a problem with it.
I believe the developers actually want to make a good product. This would include an auction system where everyone is treated fairly. This also includes a character system that cannot be abused and where the honest players do not have to live in fear of encountering overbearing cheaters.
Now, you seem to be speaking of the marketeers. Sure, they see customers as money factories and not as people who want to play a nice game. Perhaps I am naive to think the developers might get the upper hand. As I am a developer I'd like to imagine that someone in the world is able to write a bit of code that the customer wants to use.
Most developers I know want to write a game that they would play. Most marketeers simply want enough money to buy that Ferrari they have their eye on. I'm on the side of the devs.
Now the developer for Torchlight 2 has given a clear and measured response that I can literally buy in to. Blizzard simply believes they are protecting the customer. For most customers this may work just fine, but I apparently am not like "most customers." Regularly I make trips to the in-laws up in the most remote part of Idaho. My father-in-law still uses dialup for his infrequent E-bay purchases and cattle futures report. When I travel to my in-laws, this is precisely the environment where I need a long single-player campaign that does not need a constant on-line connection. The original Torchlight kept me sane and entertained for hours while I avoided conflict with "the other side" of the family. It seems this will also be true for Torchlight 2, thus I will very likely buy the game - simply to preserve what's left of my sanity.
Diablo 3, not so much. I'm not one to spend money on a second game when the first still needs to be thoroughly played.
Now, I'm pretty certain Blizzard does not care about my lonely little circumstance. That's fine by me, I don't care much about their game if it appears to be unusable to me. I just hope developers like Torchlight continue to provide an awesome alternative, otherwise my money will go unspent - at least until I am committed to the asylum. Then it will be spent for white coats and medication. O_o
Is it just me, but when looking the infrared video, it seems like europe is radiating heat like nothing else.
Actually, I found it much more fascinating to note the color differences between hot and cool regions. In the infrared-green-blue video, notice the bright orange color of central Australia, the Arabian peninsula and the Sahara region of northern Africa. This rather puts the other color regions (which often are such a dark red to almost be black) in perspective.
And for those that decry that the distance seems much too close to be useful, I would like you to remember that this is more for the purpose of improving our observations of other planets. Now we have better understanding of what to look for in a planet that can sustain life. Sure, astronomers are always looking at extra-solar objects through all the spectrum, but now we have seen the dramatic difference of viewing an inhabitable planet through a spectrum outside (albeit just barely) the visible.
How will this help? Perhaps it may not, but then again, it's another tool in the detection arsenal. Time will tell.
Plus, it gives the rabble like myself something pretty to look at.
Well, the reason why they want to wait for approval is because some big names are participating such as IBM and Novell. I really don't think they're too interested in a patent battle with Microsoft when Microsoft seems to have the upper hand. IBM, for one, does not like to lose in court.
This is also a sure-fire way to kill a format. Usually technology is promoted via word-of-mouth, and when the drive of the early adopters begin to fail, the word will spread that you can't trust either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
In short, AACS is doomed if it does, doomed if it doesn't.
The term pinch comes from the usual representation of a current flowing along the z-axis, parallel to the magnetic field. With a strong enough current, the plasma formed by the discharge electromagnetically pinches into a string of sausages, donuts and plasma instabilities, along the z-axis
Mmmm, sausages and donuts...
I've gotta stop reading Slashdot before breakfast!
Just last month my son had a VNS inserted. This was for epilepsy, and not for depression, and it was quite a trial to be approved for the device. But this was the last resort after years of drug therapy and before major brain surgery for the child. Here's a few observations that might help clarify the whole VNS system:
It is an automatic device that delivers a specific frequency, amplitude, peak duration and general duration of electric shock. There is a "always on" mode where the shock is delivered for 60 seconds, followed by 66 seconds off, repeated indefinately. There is also a mode that is activated with a magnet. This mode is usually programmed to deliver the same frequency and duration, but more amplitude to the shock. The setting of these attributes is done via a PDA and a "wand".
Hackable, I suppose. My curiosity had me wishing for a signal meter to find out the attribute-setting protocol (but dang if I left it at home). But will it solve depression? The only results I've seen are children 10 to 18 who have a life because of this little device. Other than helping regulate seizure behavior, the only obvious side-effect is a slight warbling of the vocal cords. If anything, my boy thinks it's cool that he's now a cyborg and shows off to his friends. He's happy so far, but the real results will come with time.
As was the case for my son, I feel there should be a real medical need before having the VNS surgically inserted. In the case of seizures, it is difficult to operate without some method of control. I have never liked the amount of medications my son needed to refrain from regular seizures, and this seems like a reasonable alternative to having chunks of his brain surgically removed.
If a subject has debilitating depression, then maybe the VNS would be worthwhile for them. But from my perspective, the VNS is a good thing.
So? Are you telling me that the nation's brightest and best (cos to be a geek, you practically have to be!) can't build a better Union? They've wiped the floor with proprietary software, overwhelmed and "Turned" many corporate giants, but can't even come up with a working system to govern their own lives?
Remember, you're talking about a group who, if it isn't their mother picking out their clothes, it's their wife. A group where governing their own lives means making sure the broadband bill is paid for fear of missing out on <InsertFavoriteMMPOGHere/>.
We're not here to make things organized. We're here to "scratch the itch" by writing a little code and boosting our egos on the mailing lists. Oh, yeah, and play <InsertFavoriteMMPOGHere/>.
I'll leave the organizing to my spouse. She's better at it.
And I really don't understand why anyone gives a shit what this ivory-tower sci-fi snob has to say on the subject.
Probably because, deep down inside, most of us actually agree with him. You don't have to like Card, or his books, but the facts show that Star Trek has run out of steam and does not have any realistic prospect of recovering soon.
Please bear in mind that I love Star Trek. We have family video from the early 90's of my new bride taunting me while I religiously watched ST:TNG. Heck, I had my infant son apoplectic with joy when he saw the opening title. It was a wonderful thing in our house when the show started.
Fast forward 10 years. My son is rapidly reaching his teenage years, and Star Trek hasn't been watched in our house for the last two years at least. I don't need to watch it because I watched almost all the episodes, and they have become a blur of sameness that causes my boredom flag to trigger. My son doesn't watch it because, "Star Trek is old and busted."
In short, you can hate OSCard all you want, but his words ring true: "There's just no need for "Star Trek" anymore."
Let's hope to God we can say the same thing about Star Wars after May 19th.
And the Earth is made whole again and no one's really dead and... ugh. It wasn't true to the spirit of the books, and it didn't even manage to be true to the letter in a lot of places.
Seems you've forgotten the major premise of "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish". It's clearly not my favorite book of the series (a bit too much sex for my like). But it nicely chronicals an interesting question. How in this mad universe did Arthur end up on Earth again? Oh, yeah, seems someone recreated the planet --- and the people with all their memories. OK, most of their memories.
My final analysis of the movie is not completely bleak. I agree, the romance was forced and made me uncomfortable, to say the least. But there is much to be very pleased with the movie. My boys (13 and 11) both picked up on the bit on Vogsphere regarding thinking (I will say no more). Now they go around slapping each other when one says, "Hey! I got an idea!"
I was roughly their age when I first picked up H2G2, and I think they enjoyed it as much as I did. One of them is begging me to let him read my leather-bound copy of the books, and I may just have to subject him to it, in spite of himself.
My personal opinion of the movie? I'll buy it when it comes out on video, watch it a couple more times and shelf it... just like I've done with my copies of Lord of the Rings;-)
...and when Anakin whacks Jar Jar's head off with a light saber, not only will all the adults in the room cheer with gusto, all the kids can finally say:
The HHGTTG movie sounds bad, but not that bad. I might catch a matinee... but I'll bring a towel to wrap around my head, just in case it's worse than I expect.
Unfortunately, wrapping your towel around your head may cause you to experience the nasty shock of actually seeing a bit of the possibly abhorrant movie. There is a better way, though. Just bring your Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses. With those, you can absent-mindedly be sucking at the butter-flavored end of your towel when any possible visual villany will be blocked from your view in a moments time.
Sadly, this doesn't help you with the audio. Perhaps a Babel Fish will be able to translate from Patently Unfunny Crap to your language of choice.
Stick with the basics, and you'll remain cool and froody.
1991 : Linux? A plaything for college students. It'll never work like *real* Unix. 1996 : Linux? So it makes a simple web server. It'll never scale as an enterprise server. 2001 : Linux? Yeah, it's nice for my enterprise servers, but it'll never give end-users any satisfaction. 2005 : Linux? So hackers have pretty desktop. Didja see the effort they had to go to make it work? It'll never be easy enough for our secretary Jane Typist.
Nope, Linux will never compete. Not even that Novell Linux Desktop that has proliferated our workplace and made every desktop look the same (but secure). It'll never happen.
The nifty thing about sharing links like this is you get fun mail, like this poem from a friend:
Now I will a rhyme construct By chosen words the youth instruct Cunningly devised endeavour Con it and remember ever Widths in circle, here you see Sketched out in strange obscurity
The work depicted in TFA seems awfully similar to the rod logic found in Neal Stephenson's book Diamond Age. This begs the question, is Neal a prophet? Has he foretold the future? Will I be getting my pizza in thirty minutes or else the Mafia comes and apologizes personally?
Only time will tell. Until then, I have to thank this lego-builder for making my life more interesting. Now I know what I'm gonna do for Christmas, play with Legos and make logic gates!
Slashdot Mirror
Aww, how cute! England wants to come out and play. While I am happy to see that our mates from across the pond are getting themselves a nice little number cruncher - it is still little. NASA has a setup called Pleiades:
Total cores: 112,896
Total memory: 191 TB
But here's the real hard-to-fathom point. The sport two 11-dimension hypercube interconnect configurations using Infiniband QDR and DDR networking (mostly DDR). Now DDR is ~4GB/s and QDR is ~8GB/s, but Inifiniband is rarely singily-connected. Usually you multipath using four connections to the switch, which in this case bumps the transfer rate up to 16GB/s for DDR and 32GB/s for QDR. Peak theoretical speed for this system is ~240TB/s.
Oh, and it's running SUSE Linux. That off-the-shelf enough?
Last I checked, the system is running at 90% utilization. This is one heck of a cluster and it isn't just for show. Yet Pleiades only rates as #7 on the TOP500 list of supercomputers worldwide. The new list comes out in a few days. We'll see if they can keep that illustrious position.
Side note: The #1 supercomputer is running an interconnect called "Tofu". Since I'm an Infiniband guy, I'd like to know more. Right now, though, it rates very high on my silliness scale.
I recommend you have a conversation with your in-laws. Explain to them that you do not like visiting them as it takes you away from your gaming addiction.
Ahh, you sadly make a lot of assumptions that do you no justice. When my in-laws are around and not out doing the farm work, we generally do have very nice conversations. Yes, there are moments when I do not agree with their culture and way-of-life and they do not appreciate mine. The real issue is when they're not home, I generally have very little to occupy my time. This is where my gaming addiction (that's one assumption you made that I will shamefully admit) comes in handy, allowing me to pass the time while I wait for their return.
You may ask why don't I go out and help them. Well, I'm not familiar enough with riding horses to be useful with the cattle. I cannot run the heavy equipment they use to harvest their grain. Really, I am simply the chauffeur for my family so they can visit with Mom and Dad/Grandma and Grandpa. Once I'm there, I'm as useful as a bicycle to a fish.
It is really surprising that Blizzard haven't figured out a way for you to be able to use their game to properly get your feelings across to your relatives.
Perhaps they can provide a farm equipment simulator so that I can be more useful to my in-laws. I probably wouldn't buy it anyway, as I don't usually play the sim games. Besides, learning to drive a tractor via a sim game is much like learning to be a rock star by playing Guitar Hero. No one would take me seriously.
Perhaps you should consider why it is you must fill every waking moment with something that takes you away from human contact.
Perhaps because sometimes that human contact is not present, or because my very nature is to be socially inept and I have a very hard time overcoming that nature. As weak as they are, I have my excuses and I plan to stick to them.
Thankfully, though, Diablo III isn't the only game in the world. You should be fine playing it at home and finding an alternative method of shunning your in-laws with. I suggest you get a game you can play on your iPhone/Android device. This way you can sit right infront of them while playing, so your disdain for them can be made all the more obvious.
Again, you assume I find my in-law reprehensible. My level of respect for them exceed most people as they spend most of their lives out in the fields tending to their livelihood, plus they can serve a family meal that would feed a small nation. I would never avoid social contact during one of their meals. When I am around them we tend to argue politics and culture, but I understand them and they tolerate me. At times I need to step away from a conflict and cool down, which is one of the reasons I have Plants vs. Zombies on my tablet. Great diversionary tactic.
I'm sure you have a wonderful relationship with your in-laws. I just find you're overly defensive attitude a poor quality in a person.
Blizzard simply believes they are protecting the customer.
You're not actually naive enough to believe that, are you? Blizzard simply believes they are protecting their bottom line, and fuck their customers if they have a problem with it.
I believe the developers actually want to make a good product. This would include an auction system where everyone is treated fairly. This also includes a character system that cannot be abused and where the honest players do not have to live in fear of encountering overbearing cheaters.
Now, you seem to be speaking of the marketeers. Sure, they see customers as money factories and not as people who want to play a nice game. Perhaps I am naive to think the developers might get the upper hand. As I am a developer I'd like to imagine that someone in the world is able to write a bit of code that the customer wants to use.
Most developers I know want to write a game that they would play. Most marketeers simply want enough money to buy that Ferrari they have their eye on. I'm on the side of the devs.
DNRTFA
Now the developer for Torchlight 2 has given a clear and measured response that I can literally buy in to. Blizzard simply believes they are protecting the customer. For most customers this may work just fine, but I apparently am not like "most customers." Regularly I make trips to the in-laws up in the most remote part of Idaho. My father-in-law still uses dialup for his infrequent E-bay purchases and cattle futures report. When I travel to my in-laws, this is precisely the environment where I need a long single-player campaign that does not need a constant on-line connection. The original Torchlight kept me sane and entertained for hours while I avoided conflict with "the other side" of the family. It seems this will also be true for Torchlight 2, thus I will very likely buy the game - simply to preserve what's left of my sanity.
Diablo 3, not so much. I'm not one to spend money on a second game when the first still needs to be thoroughly played.
Now, I'm pretty certain Blizzard does not care about my lonely little circumstance. That's fine by me, I don't care much about their game if it appears to be unusable to me. I just hope developers like Torchlight continue to provide an awesome alternative, otherwise my money will go unspent - at least until I am committed to the asylum. Then it will be spent for white coats and medication. O_o
H0ek
Is it just me, but when looking the infrared video, it seems like europe is radiating heat like nothing else.
Actually, I found it much more fascinating to note the color differences between hot and cool regions. In the infrared-green-blue video, notice the bright orange color of central Australia, the Arabian peninsula and the Sahara region of northern Africa. This rather puts the other color regions (which often are such a dark red to almost be black) in perspective.
And for those that decry that the distance seems much too close to be useful, I would like you to remember that this is more for the purpose of improving our observations of other planets. Now we have better understanding of what to look for in a planet that can sustain life. Sure, astronomers are always looking at extra-solar objects through all the spectrum, but now we have seen the dramatic difference of viewing an inhabitable planet through a spectrum outside (albeit just barely) the visible.
How will this help? Perhaps it may not, but then again, it's another tool in the detection arsenal. Time will tell.
Plus, it gives the rabble like myself something pretty to look at.
Can't decide what you want to play? No problem! Go here!
;-)
http://www.friv.com/
It wastes my time, it wastes the time of my boys, but we're such a happy family, now.
You get up to 1.7 billion digits of pi at The Pirate Bay.
Well, the reason why they want to wait for approval is because some big names are participating such as IBM and Novell. I really don't think they're too interested in a patent battle with Microsoft when Microsoft seems to have the upper hand. IBM, for one, does not like to lose in court.
This is also a sure-fire way to kill a format. Usually technology is promoted via word-of-mouth, and when the drive of the early adopters begin to fail, the word will spread that you can't trust either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
In short, AACS is doomed if it does, doomed if it doesn't.
Had me fooled.
Personally I'm fond of this one:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, give a man the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks!
I've gotta stop reading Slashdot before breakfast!
f6174179c90c0366b99d7a1d91cf6f4a
Which successfully performs the lookup for me.
Just last month my son had a VNS inserted. This was for epilepsy, and not for depression, and it was quite a trial to be approved for the device. But this was the last resort after years of drug therapy and before major brain surgery for the child. Here's a few observations that might help clarify the whole VNS system:
It is an automatic device that delivers a specific frequency, amplitude, peak duration and general duration of electric shock. There is a "always on" mode where the shock is delivered for 60 seconds, followed by 66 seconds off, repeated indefinately. There is also a mode that is activated with a magnet. This mode is usually programmed to deliver the same frequency and duration, but more amplitude to the shock. The setting of these attributes is done via a PDA and a "wand".
Hackable, I suppose. My curiosity had me wishing for a signal meter to find out the attribute-setting protocol (but dang if I left it at home). But will it solve depression? The only results I've seen are children 10 to 18 who have a life because of this little device. Other than helping regulate seizure behavior, the only obvious side-effect is a slight warbling of the vocal cords. If anything, my boy thinks it's cool that he's now a cyborg and shows off to his friends. He's happy so far, but the real results will come with time.
As was the case for my son, I feel there should be a real medical need before having the VNS surgically inserted. In the case of seizures, it is difficult to operate without some method of control. I have never liked the amount of medications my son needed to refrain from regular seizures, and this seems like a reasonable alternative to having chunks of his brain surgically removed.
If a subject has debilitating depression, then maybe the VNS would be worthwhile for them. But from my perspective, the VNS is a good thing.
We're not here to make things organized. We're here to "scratch the itch" by writing a little code and boosting our egos on the mailing lists. Oh, yeah, and play <InsertFavoriteMMPOGHere/>.
I'll leave the organizing to my spouse. She's better at it.
Holy Guacamole! Someone apologized on Slashdot!
I'm sure tickets are being sold for the whole Hell Freezing Over show. Wonder where I can get mine?
Please bear in mind that I love Star Trek. We have family video from the early 90's of my new bride taunting me while I religiously watched ST:TNG. Heck, I had my infant son apoplectic with joy when he saw the opening title. It was a wonderful thing in our house when the show started.
Fast forward 10 years. My son is rapidly reaching his teenage years, and Star Trek hasn't been watched in our house for the last two years at least. I don't need to watch it because I watched almost all the episodes, and they have become a blur of sameness that causes my boredom flag to trigger. My son doesn't watch it because, "Star Trek is old and busted."
In short, you can hate OSCard all you want, but his words ring true: "There's just no need for "Star Trek" anymore."
Let's hope to God we can say the same thing about Star Wars after May 19th.
My final analysis of the movie is not completely bleak. I agree, the romance was forced and made me uncomfortable, to say the least. But there is much to be very pleased with the movie. My boys (13 and 11) both picked up on the bit on Vogsphere regarding thinking (I will say no more). Now they go around slapping each other when one says, "Hey! I got an idea!"
I was roughly their age when I first picked up H2G2, and I think they enjoyed it as much as I did. One of them is begging me to let him read my leather-bound copy of the books, and I may just have to subject him to it, in spite of himself.
My personal opinion of the movie? I'll buy it when it comes out on video, watch it a couple more times and shelf it ... just like I've done with my copies of Lord of the Rings ;-)
...and when Anakin whacks Jar Jar's head off with a light saber, not only will all the adults in the room cheer with gusto, all the kids can finally say:
"Lucas! That bastard! He killed my childhood!"
Now that's art.
Sadly, this doesn't help you with the audio. Perhaps a Babel Fish will be able to translate from Patently Unfunny Crap to your language of choice.
Stick with the basics, and you'll remain cool and froody.
1991 : Linux? A plaything for college students. It'll never work like *real* Unix.
1996 : Linux? So it makes a simple web server. It'll never scale as an enterprise server.
2001 : Linux? Yeah, it's nice for my enterprise servers, but it'll never give end-users any satisfaction.
2005 : Linux? So hackers have pretty desktop. Didja see the effort they had to go to make it work? It'll never be easy enough for our secretary Jane Typist.
Nope, Linux will never compete. Not even that Novell Linux Desktop that has proliferated our workplace and made every desktop look the same (but secure). It'll never happen.
The nifty thing about sharing links like this is you get fun mail, like this poem from a friend:
;-)
Now I will a rhyme construct
By chosen words the youth instruct
Cunningly devised endeavour
Con it and remember ever
Widths in circle, here you see
Sketched out in strange obscurity
I might just have to memorize it.
Less than two hours after the posting of the article to the public it's hit 6 seeders. Let me present to you your BRICK.
This from a site on a 500MHz P3 sitting on a little cable modem on a public utility style ISP providing 100KB/s upload speed. I love BitTorrent.
The work depicted in TFA seems awfully similar to the rod logic found in Neal Stephenson's book Diamond Age. This begs the question, is Neal a prophet? Has he foretold the future? Will I be getting my pizza in thirty minutes or else the Mafia comes and apologizes personally?
Only time will tell. Until then, I have to thank this lego-builder for making my life more interesting. Now I know what I'm gonna do for Christmas, play with Legos and make logic gates!
Lord, I'm such a geek.