TPC == Transaction Processing Performance Council (I know, there should be another P in there, but that's what it is). They do benchmarking and analysis for databases
Read everthing you ever wanted to know about it at their web site http://www.tpc.org/
I have no love for MS, quite the reverse, but see the discussion of the "challenge" in the OLAP Report
This very narrowly focused demonstration was in response to Larry Ellison's million dollar challenge, made at Comdex in mid November 1998, when he offered anyone in the audience $1m if they could run a specific (TPC-D query 5) query better than 100 times slower than Oracle 8i. Ellison's apparently casual challenge was nothing of the sort: Oracle was well aware that SQL Server 7.0 lacked a key feature (materialized views) that would allow it to handle this particular query in the same way that Oracle8i could, so Oracle was not actually risking the humiliation of paying Microsoft a $1m prize.
Hmm, would what would be the term for a group of Beowulf clusters? "A hall of Beowulfs"? (hopefully +1, Funny)
Anyone else concerned that some of these stories in YRO aren't being discussed or noticed...
Yup. I've had the same thought. I'm pretty poor at politics and publicity, so for that and other reasons I don't think it's my place to say more.
- The Boston Lunatic
Politics check - dirty tricks?
on
University Spam
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· Score: 1
Is it confirmed that the mailing was indeed sent by the Bush group? I'm not saying it wasn't, but this sounds like it would be a great "dirty trick" to pull to get people annoyed at the group.
FOI request for all usernames? ACK! Seems like a lot of work for information that could mostly be gathered programatically.
I've been working with IBM's Visual Age for Linux, and it's definitely worth a look. The preview is free, so check it out for download on IBM's site
- Seth Finkelstein
Re:SSN == Financal tracking (fraud, BAD CHECKS, et
on
Yahoo! Requires SSN?
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· Score: 1
I didn't say financial interconnections required SSNs, I said there was a financial tracking structure (including anti-fraud) which uses SSNs. And that's likely the big reason Yahoo wants your SSN even if they don't absolutely, positively, need to have it.
I-escrow is charging a very hefty fee, and so presumably incorporating the fraud-risk in that fee. Note they are also geared much more to low-level, plenty of time to clear, transactions than high-volume, high-speed financial payments.
Didn't I hear a big buzz about something like this more than a year ago?
In this heady age of rapid technological change, we all struggle to maintain our bearings. The developments that unfold each day in communications and computing can be thrilling and disorienting. One understandable reaction is to wonder: Are these changes good or bad? Should we welcome or fear them?
That's from the Technorealism web site. Whatever happened to that whole "movement" anyway?
- Seth Finkelstein
SSN == Financal tracking (fraud, BAD CHECKS, etc!)
on
Yahoo! Requires SSN?
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· Score: 2
Yahoo does not need your SSN to pay bills for you...
Well, technically, it doesn't NEED it, but not having it is going to exclude them from interconnecting to the whole financial tracking structure and bad-check tracing databases. That would be an absolutely insane thing to do when starting up any sort money-handling organization (cypherpunk black-market cryptoanarchists excepted). Forget targeting advertising, this is money flow we're talking about.
You don't put an SSN on a check to a credit-card company because the bank has your SSN and so does the credit-card company. The exchange is between two corporations both of which already know your SSN. In this case, Yahoo is being asked to act as an financial intermediary, and almost any such organization will want your SSN.
Which is not to say they won't use it for lots of other stuff, but there's MUCH more going on than advertising.
Reference:
Many banks send the names, addresses, and SSNs of people whose accounts have been closed for cause to a company called ChexSystem. ChexSystem keeps a database of people whose accounts have been terminated for fraud or chronic insufficient funds in the past 5 years.
It's very simple if you think in terms of ecological niches. No project can grow exponentially for an unlimted amount of time, otherwise it would soon overflow its environment. Thus, such exponential growth must cease at some point.
Some project have larger "habitats" - the excitement of Linux is that it's been able to jump from a niche of hobbyists to business applications and even some lower-level users. It has expanded its environment, thus has room for more rounds of exponential growth. The Internet itself saw this phenomenon when it jumped from only technical/professional users to ordinary people.
A specialized mail application does not have this potential (unless it somehow manages to become indispensable, a "killer app").
Thus exponential growth ceases fairly quickly for it.
One Idea I've thought of developing is that Open Source is not such a strange beast as people sometimes think. Rather, it's more akin to flying-wing or ultralight aircraft. It doesn't violate any "laws", but certain advances in technology were necessary before the fabrication and implementation became viable.
Just as advances in flight control and alloys allowed for these planes, so too did advances in communications technology allow for the Open Source software development model.
The proprietary model requires the entire value of the product to be amortized in a single fee. Where Open Source differs is that it enables the COMBINED values of each piece of the whole to be farmed out to people who find it valuable TO THEM. It's a kind of stone-soup, everyone contributes a piece and gets back a whole (which seems to be more than the sum of it's parts, though formally it isn't).
That sounds like a bad TV series, the adventures of a crew marooned in an intergalatic rest-stop. Too many traveling-salesman running jokes.
Note that if the space-hotel idea was intended as a publicity stunt, it's already worked to some extent. And they're getting more publicity out of the revelation that it was for publicity.
It's amusing to remember that the computer revolution was supposedly going to remove the need for paper at all. How's that for a backfire? - Seth Finkelstein
They're just too useful. Software-makers want to machine-lock their applications. Websites want to track people. Let's not even talk about what the government wants to do. I suspect soon a business without these sort of machines will be like one where no-one has credit cards. Not illegal by any stretch of the imagination, but very uncommon.
Milberg Weiss has offices in New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boca Raton and is active in major litigations pending in federal and state courts throughout the United States. Follow the links on the left for the mailing address and directions to each of our five offices.
When dealing with something that big, the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing isn't so crazy.
But their "Join A Class Action" web application form has to be seen to be believed. They really do have a page with I am interested in participating in an action against the following company:, and a long selection box.
Slowly, slowly... The following doesn't work everywhere, but it's a good strategy.
1) Get the camel's nose under the tent. This is the hardest part. Get Linux on your own machine. Either ask, mention it offhand, or just do it with the assurance it's hard to fire a good developer.
2) Be a light unto nations. One day one of your fellow-Dilberts will scream "Gates-ing Windows machine, it crashed on me again!!!". Then smoothly say "Hmm, my machine doesn't crash on me - would you like to try Linux?". Most programmers will try anything new, especially if it comes credibly endorsed as making their life easier. Now if all goes well you have converts.
3) Be aware of geeks bearing gifts. There will come a meeting where a manager will say "Should we get a web site?" or "How can we set up a server to do widget-processing". Volunteer. Implement it on your Linux box. Hopefully, the disciples you made in step 2 above will help. This establishes the beachhead before the wrong solution is foisted on you. Note - it may seem unpleasant to take on tasks, but trust me, you'll enjoy implementing the right-Linux-way in the first place a lot more than debugging the wrong-Microsoft-way later.
At this point, you should be well on your way to having Linux take over the world, or at least your portion of it.
Argh, NO! North was attached to the NSC, the National Security Council, not the NSA. There's a joke in this somewhere. ("I didn't order the agent to die today, I said go buy a Cray").
Trouble (oh we've got Trouble) Right here in NY City! (Right here in NY City!) With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pokemon That stands for Pokemon We've surely got Trouble! (We've surely got Trouble!) Right here in NY City! (Right here!) Gotta figure out a Way t'keep the young ones moral after School!
[amazing how little needs to be updated, and how much irony there...]
According to the August 11 San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles-based trial lawyer Henry Rossbacher has filed three class action lawsuits alleging that baseball card companies, by printing limited quantities of certain cards, are promoting gambling among children. Rossbacher says that by limiting the quantity of valuable "chase" cards, and by printing the odds of getting one of these cards on the outside of packs, card companies such as Upper Deck Co. and Pacific Trading Card Inc. have established the "functional equivalent of a lottery." His lawsuit seeks damage awards for all kids who have been lured into buying cards in the past four years.
"It's just like Joe Camel," says Rossbacher, "They're selling a dangerous product to kids."
This is a nonfiction book, written by an astronaut, describing all the minutiae of living on a space station. It deals with showering, shaving, sleeping, etc. There's a detailed explanation, with diagrams, of the space toilet. Nominally a kid's book, it doesn't say anything about sex. But it shows one of the station-beds, which looks something like a combination sleeping-bag and hammock. I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to use in the obvious way.
Plans call for the system to scale to peak performances of multiple tens of teraflops, many times faster than any supercomputer in existence today. One teraflop is equivalent to a trillion calculations per second.
So how many Linux'ed Pentiums networked with Beowulf would be needed to give it a run for the money?
Slashdot Mirror
(I know, there should be another P in there, but that's what it is). They do benchmarking and analysis for databases
Read everthing you ever wanted to know about it at their web site http://www.tpc.org/
- Seth Finkelstein
- Seth Finkelstein
(hopefully +1, Funny) Yup. I've had the same thought. I'm pretty poor at politics and publicity, so for that and other reasons I don't think it's my place to say more.
- The Boston Lunatic
FOI request for all usernames? ACK! Seems like a lot of work for information that could mostly be gathered programatically.
- The Boston Lunatic
- Seth Finkelstein
I-escrow is charging a very hefty fee, and so presumably incorporating the fraud-risk in that fee. Note they are also geared much more to low-level, plenty of time to clear, transactions than high-volume, high-speed financial payments.
- The Boston Lunatic
is the price of repression eternal surveillance?
- The Boston Lunatic
- Seth Finkelstein
You don't put an SSN on a check to a credit-card company because the bank has your SSN and so does the credit-card company. The exchange is between two corporations both of which already know your SSN. In this case, Yahoo is being asked to act as an financial intermediary, and almost any such organization will want your SSN.
Which is not to say they won't use it for lots of other stuff, but there's MUCH more going on than advertising.
Reference:
SSN FAQ: Private requests for your SSN- The Boston Lunatic
- Seth Finkelstein
Some project have larger "habitats" - the excitement of Linux is that it's been able to jump from a niche of hobbyists to business applications and even some lower-level users. It has expanded its environment, thus has room for more rounds of exponential growth. The Internet itself saw this phenomenon when it jumped from only technical/professional users to ordinary people.
A specialized mail application does not have this potential (unless it somehow manages to become indispensable, a "killer app").
Thus exponential growth ceases fairly quickly for it.
- Seth Finkelstein
Just as advances in flight control and alloys allowed for these planes, so too did advances in communications technology allow for the Open Source software development model.
The proprietary model requires the entire value of the product to be amortized in a single fee. Where Open Source differs is that it enables the COMBINED values of each piece of the whole to be farmed out to people who find it valuable TO THEM. It's a kind of stone-soup, everyone contributes a piece and gets back a whole (which seems to be more than the sum of it's parts, though formally it isn't).
- Seth Finkelstein
Note that if the space-hotel idea was intended as a publicity stunt, it's already worked to some extent. And they're getting more publicity out of the revelation that it was for publicity.
- Seth Finkelstein
It's amusing to remember that the computer revolution was supposedly going to remove the need for paper at all. How's that for a backfire? - Seth Finkelstein
They're just too useful. Software-makers want to machine-lock their applications. Websites want to track people. Let's not even talk about what the government wants to do. I suspect soon a business without these sort of machines will be like one where no-one has credit cards. Not illegal by any stretch of the imagination, but very uncommon.
Check out the specifications and press release
- Seth Finkelstein
Technical Debate over Patriot Performance in the Gulf War
The Patriot Missile. Performance in the Gulf War Reviewed
But their "Join A Class Action" web application form has to be seen to be believed. They really do have a page with I am interested in participating in an action against the following company:, and a long selection box.
1) Get the camel's nose under the tent. This is the hardest part. Get Linux on your own machine. Either ask, mention it offhand, or just do it with the assurance it's hard to fire a good developer.
2) Be a light unto nations. One day one of your fellow-Dilberts will scream "Gates-ing Windows machine, it crashed on me again!!!". Then smoothly say "Hmm, my machine doesn't crash on me - would you like to try Linux?". Most programmers will try anything new, especially if it comes credibly endorsed as making their life easier. Now if all goes well you have converts.
3) Be aware of geeks bearing gifts. There will come a meeting where a manager will say "Should we get a web site?" or "How can we set up a server to do widget-processing". Volunteer. Implement it on your Linux box. Hopefully, the disciples you made in step 2 above will help. This establishes the beachhead before the wrong solution is foisted on you. Note - it may seem unpleasant to take on tasks, but trust me, you'll enjoy implementing the right-Linux-way in the first place a lot more than debugging the wrong-Microsoft-way later.
At this point, you should be well on your way to having Linux take over the world, or at least your portion of it.
If all else fails, sacrifice a few penguins
-Seth Finkelstein
Another in the same vein I've heard recommended is Codebreakers : The Inside Story of Bletchley Park
Argh, NO! North was attached to the NSC, the National Security Council, not the NSA. There's a joke in this somewhere. ("I didn't order the agent to die today, I said go buy a Cray").
Trouble (oh we've got Trouble)
Right here in NY City!
(Right here in NY City!)
With a capital
T and that rhymes with
P and that stands for Pokemon
That stands for Pokemon
We've surely got Trouble!
(We've surely got Trouble!)
Right here in NY City! (Right here!)
Gotta figure out a Way
t'keep the young ones moral after School!
[amazing how little needs to be updated, and how much irony there ...]
September 11 1998
Trial Lawyers Swing for the Fences With Allegation that Baseball Cards are Dangerous to Kids
According to the August 11 San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles-based trial lawyer Henry Rossbacher has filed three class action lawsuits alleging that baseball card companies, by printing limited quantities of certain cards, are promoting gambling among children. Rossbacher says that by limiting the quantity of valuable "chase" cards, and by printing the odds of getting one of these cards on the outside of packs, card companies such as Upper Deck Co. and Pacific Trading Card Inc. have established the "functional equivalent of a lottery." His lawsuit seeks damage awards for all kids who have been lured into buying cards in the past four years.
"It's just like Joe Camel," says Rossbacher, "They're selling a dangerous product to kids."
This is a nonfiction book, written by an astronaut, describing all the minutiae of living on a space station. It deals with showering, shaving, sleeping, etc. There's a detailed explanation, with diagrams, of the space toilet. Nominally a kid's book, it doesn't say anything about sex. But it shows one of the station-beds, which looks something like a combination sleeping-bag and hammock. I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to use in the obvious way.
- Seth Finkelstein
So how many Linux'ed Pentiums networked with Beowulf would be needed to give it a run for the money?