You must not be a resident of the United Kingdom. I find it interesting that any country's government or military would rely on a foreign proprietary piece of software to reach mission critical goals.
Pfew - that's not even the biggest problem. In the Falklands war, the UK lost a war ship to weaponry bought by their enemy (Argentina) from a ally (France). Super Etendard / Exocet, anyone ?
Software from another ally is just one of the problems...
Lawrence Livermoore is part of the Department of Energy. Why talk about military use - it already *has* its use: it's burning through energy all by itself.
So let me see, if Debian has a three year release cycle the world is coming to an end, but when Microsoft has a five year release cycle, we should evaluate the results ?
No way, Jose.
Debian testing can be upgraded with the frequency *you* want, at a convenient time to *you*.
I'm doing this now for about six years.
Of course, me going back wouldn't be to Microsoft Windows, but to NeXTStep.
> 1. If the U.S. founders and revolutionary army had put their fate in the hands of protest > songs and peaceful sit-ins rather than armed rebellion, we might very well today still be > paying our taxes to the U.K.
> Maybe they should try comparing open- and closed-source software that's actually trying > to solve the same problem? That'd be a bit more valid of a comparison...
The obvious thing is to compare compilers. Throw random input at them and see how they cope.
Since I joined the Fortran Standardisation Committee in 1999, I flew about 15 times to the continent on the Left Side of the Atlantic, and I consider myself an *in*frequent flyer.
As one of the people involved in the EGCS/GCC fork, I can attest that the following are prerequisites for a successful fork:
1. A commonly (and I mean *commonly*, not just by a few insiders) perceived problem. 2. A massive switch of developers (in this case, article writers) to the new kid in
town, in a short time (days).
> The results will help establish predictable routes for typhoons and identify areas > that are recurring targets for heavy rains, abundant snow, high waves, heavy winds, > scorching heat or crop-threatening droughts.
In other words: What are probable areas where these phenomena occur and what are the most probable paths for those phenomena that are moving.
The reason they take a 30 year period is not that they want to predict the weather 30 years in advance (that's ridiculous), but that they want realistic weather patterns over a 30 year period to match the standard World Meteorological Organization's 30 year period for defining "climate".
E.g., the current "climate" knowledge of the WMO is (the average of) what happened between 1971 and 2000.
"We take it for granted now, but I remember when the first laws came out forcing the old machines off the highways and limiting travel to automatics. Lord, what a fuss. They called it everything from communism to fascism, but it emptied the highways and stopped the killing,..."
I desperately need a big endian machine for compiler development. Little endian just hides too many programmer errors.
When I bought a G4 PowerBook 3.5 years ago (wiped OS X and installed Debian), it immediately enabled me to find errors in the g77 I/O library that only came to light on a big endian machine (before that I had a Pentium II Compaq Armada).
I hope IBM will deliver a PowerPC 64 based Linux laptop within a year, otherwise I'll have to switch to a SPARC one, which Sun undoubtly will tout as "one more sale of Solaris" (ugh).
> Well, how do you compare the popularity of a > blog to the job of a reporter? A reporter is > not a blogger. The reporter's job is to report > news. The reporter's focus should not be on > winning a popularity contest but on making sure > that they are reporting the facts and the news > accurately.
Exactly, Mr. Fuat. And that's why we go to Groklaw, and not one of your outlets.
Slashdot Mirror
Software from another ally is just one of the problems ...
Lawrence Livermoore is part of the Department of Energy. Why talk about military use - it already *has* its use: it's burning through energy all by itself.
> These focus more on insulting Windows based PCs.
No, they insult fat middle aged men like me.
I don't care - I use Linux (whether on a Mac or a PC).
So let me see, if Debian has a three year release cycle the world is coming to an end, but when Microsoft has a five year release cycle, we should evaluate the results ?
No way, Jose.
Debian testing can be upgraded with the frequency *you* want, at a convenient time to *you*.
I'm doing this now for about six years.
Of course, me going back wouldn't be to Microsoft Windows, but to NeXTStep.
You'd think that in a pure physics environment (like a weather forecasting institute) it wouldn't matter.
Think again.
Verification of weather models, monitoring of weather satellites, calibration of weather measurement instruments is all based on statistics.
Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and Rumors.
You know, perhaps I really should switch to work on GCC full time. At least integer arithmetic is amenable to mathematical proofs.
Toon Moene (physicist at large and a maintainer of GNU Fortran).
> 1. If the U.S. founders and revolutionary army had put their fate in the hands of protest
> songs and peaceful sit-ins rather than armed rebellion, we might very well today still be
> paying our taxes to the U.K.
Oh ? You mean, just like India does, today ?
> My eyeballs are not for sale!
I tell you what - I *have* only one eyeball (the other one is a glass prothese).
Hey, that means I'm pirating this stuff, because I'm only half worth what they think I am !
ARRR, Matey !
... I most certainly am not interested in women shooting up other people, period.
> Maybe they should try comparing open- and closed-source software that's actually trying
> to solve the same problem? That'd be a bit more valid of a comparison...
The obvious thing is to compare compilers. Throw random input at them and see how they cope.
Since I joined the Fortran Standardisation Committee in 1999, I flew about 15 times to the continent on the Left Side of the Atlantic, and I consider myself an *in*frequent flyer.
As one of the people involved in the EGCS/GCC fork, I can attest that the following are prerequisites for a successful fork:
1. A commonly (and I mean *commonly*, not just by a few insiders) perceived problem.
2. A massive switch of developers (in this case, article writers) to the new kid in
town, in a short time (days).
In our case, the following was also important:
3. Keep the door open for reconciliation.
Secretary Day, no ?
> The results will help establish predictable routes for typhoons and identify areas
> that are recurring targets for heavy rains, abundant snow, high waves, heavy winds,
> scorching heat or crop-threatening droughts.
In other words: What are probable areas where these phenomena occur and what are the most probable paths for those phenomena that are moving.
The reason they take a 30 year period is not that they want to predict the weather 30 years in advance (that's ridiculous), but that they want realistic weather patterns over a 30 year period to match the standard World Meteorological Organization's 30 year period for defining "climate".
E.g., the current "climate" knowledge of the WMO is (the average of) what happened between 1971 and 2000.
Hope this helps,
We (The Dutch Weather Service) bought an Altix in April.
Their hardware rocks. The software - though complex, on three racks using a common file system - works.
I never believed in Itaniums, but for our code (heavy vectorizable, large memory models) they fly.
In short, if SGI collapses, in our market the loss will be quite noticeable.
> The ads represent a young cool looking man (Mac) and a white collar in
> his 40's (not cool, PC).
White collar - Check.
in his 40's - Check (for at least another 5 months).
Using a PC - Check (AMD powered, of course).
Running Debian GNU/Linux AMD64 - Priceless (oops, wrong commercial).
"We take it for granted now, but I remember when the first laws came out forcing the old machines off the highways and limiting travel to automatics. Lord, what a fuss. They called it everything from communism to fascism, but it emptied the highways and stopped the killing, ..."
Isaac Asimov (1953).
> I can easily see the wests motivation for this meeting.
> 1 billion+ consumers.
As they say over here: "Im Westen Nichts Neues".
Too Late. Asimov already thought about this in 1983 ("The Robots of Dawn"). Next suggestion ...
I desperately need a big endian machine for compiler development. Little endian just hides too many programmer errors.
When I bought a G4 PowerBook 3.5 years ago (wiped OS X and installed Debian), it immediately enabled me to find errors in the g77 I/O library that only came to light on a big endian machine (before that I had a Pentium II Compaq Armada).
I hope IBM will deliver a PowerPC 64 based Linux laptop within a year, otherwise I'll have to switch to a SPARC one, which Sun undoubtly will tout as "one more sale of Solaris" (ugh).
> Well, how do you compare the popularity of a
> blog to the job of a reporter? A reporter is
> not a blogger. The reporter's job is to report
> news. The reporter's focus should not be on
> winning a popularity contest but on making sure
> that they are reporting the facts and the news
> accurately.
Exactly, Mr. Fuat. And that's why we go to Groklaw, and not one of your outlets.
Toon Moene (physicist at large)
These people are so obnoxious (violating international law and codes of ethics among journalists), there's only one way out: They should be nixed.
Toon Moene (physicist at large).