Super Micro Computer, B.V.
Het Sterrenbeeld 28, 5215 ML,
's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
Tel: +31-73-640-0390
Fax: +31-73-641-6525
General Info: Sales@Supermicro.nl
Tech Support: Support@Supermicro.nl
Supermicro uses Xeons in all their current workstations. You'd have to ask for a custom job to get Opterons in a pedestal build. Nothing says you can't just run http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/2U/2042/AS-2042G-6RF.cfm on its side, except it's going to sound awful in an office. If you're curious how one of those could/would spec out filling all bays and memory slots (without converting currencies),
1 x SUPERMICRO AS-2042G-6RF 2U Rackmount Server Barebone Quad Socket G34 AMD SR5690/SR5670 DDR3 1333/1066/800 Item #: N82E16816101321 $1,899.99
6 x Western Digital RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Item #: N82E16822136697 $449.94 ($74.99 each)
32 x Kingston 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC Registered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3D4R9S/8G Item #: N82E16820139140 $3,103.68 ($96.99 each)
4 x AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server Processor OS6128WKT8EGOWOF
Item #: N82E16819105266 $999.96 ($249.99 each)
Subtotal: $6,453.57 which is about the total budget.
The biggest problem with Opteron 6100's is the next faster proc costs 2x as much. I'm not suggesting this exact config, just an example. And YMWV with exchange rates and the hike to costs when importing stuff to your lil island. The UK gets hosed on hardware prices.
buy your own hardware and take advantage of the services provided by your institution.
Your points are great. Something I didn't think to mention in a long post a few minutes ago. IF this is a university project and since the budget is so small, the grad student (I'm assuming) could look into building and sharing a cluster with another similarly sized research group of other grad students.
Then something is wrong in the configuration, either hardware or software. Virtualization by itself should not reduce performance by ~66%. Your hit should more likely be 5-10%. If you're taking a huge hit, it's most likely because you're sharing resources. Don't blame virtualization for that.
To be honest, £4000 isn't going to buy a lot of processing power. Does that amount also cover operational costs such as power? I'd ask about bandwidth, but with the scale possible with this budget, colocation of the servers doesn't make sense. Have you considered BOINC? Are you 100% certain OpenCL and GPGPU won't help? Atom, while cheap, even on a small budget is probably a bad solution. Remember that CPU always ends up being less than 100% of the cost of a node. Increasing the cost per node by 10-25% to have a node that's 400-800% faster makes perfect sense, and the fewer nodes she has to run, the cheaper your network will be. Unless Bulldozer brings incredible performance, Sandy Bridge based CPUs will provide the best bang for the buck if she's buying new. Clock per clock, they're the fastest available cheaply and their energy consumption is excellent. I suggest looking at i5-2300/2400/2500 or Xeon E3-1220. Depends if she wants ECC mostly. She may have enough budget for 6-10 nodes using these CPUs. Reduce the complexity of a node to Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and Power Supply. Go with quality PSUs, but remember there's no need to go overboard on wattage for machines that won't be running a GPU (I'm saying 250-300 watts is optimal if you can find quality in that size). Also, DDR3 is dirt cheap right now, so if there's a possibility 8GB will make a difference at some point over 2GB or 4GB during the life of the nodes, it makes sense to just start with that much.
PXE boot from a head node that contains all the storage... which btw, you (serviscope_minor) didn't mention how much raw storage she's going to need which will eat a good portion of a small budget. You also didn't mention how hard her problem is on a network. Is simple gigabit enough? The closest serviscope_minor came to describing the problem was to use the term "CPU bound" somewhat ambiguously.
Again, I would bring up BOINC. She would accept hardware donations right? How about just asking for them on a worldwide scale? If this is a non-profit venture (her degree doesn't count as a profit if this is a University project as many have assumed) and isn't intensively time-sensitive, you'd be surprised how many people will freely contribute processing power.
there is a reason they do not update them as regularly as you might like after all.
Most of my textbooks were updated more often/regularly than necessary. No new info added. No better explanations. In many editions the only thing that changed were the numbers in end of chapter problems. That way they could make the old editions, which were available used for more reasonable prices, obsolete. I have an EE (Circuits) textbook that was over US$200 but the class was taught entirely with a chalkboard and notes. The book was only ever used less than a dozen times for assigned homework. I essentially paid $5-10 per page used. My copy of that text is an 8th edition, so they run the scam pretty regularly.
I have other books that I never should have purchased at all because they were never even opened outside of class. Those classes were taught entirely, and I should add poorly, with PowerPoint slides and assignments e-mailed in pdf/doc format.
If you're indeed looking for entry level people that have never done the job before, it's a valid question to ask if they have or have not. The difference is that "No." is the correct answer toward getting the job instead of "Yes. I have X years experience." which should actually get them shown the door. You shouldn't assume either way.
This is like asking "You're stuck in the desert at a gas station, gas/petrol is $10/gal and water is $10/gal. You only have $10 on you, which do you buy?" Neither you nor the cashier can figure out how to make change for a purchase less than $10? You can't pour half the water into the car's reservoir while drinking the other half? Technically, if the designers of the vehicle planned for that product to be used in a low or zero water environment, it would capture and reuse the fuel cell's output, so you shouldn't have to ever make this choice. However, most of the world is not desert, thus few designs would incorporate this as it would just add cost. Why waste the money on that design in places where water literally falls out of the sky? At most it could save weight which will be much less concern when cars can reliably utilize a renewable energy source.
If you think Slack made a big jump, how about Gentoo?
They went from 1.4.1 to 2004.0 with quarterly releases adding.1 three times regardless of how much changed. Then got lazy and seemed to lose most calendar years. Then from 2008.0 to weekly stuffs to 10.0 on its 10th year anniversary, and the current "distro release" is versioned 11.2. I don't know what I'm running anymore.
Oh, wait, yeah I do. System uname: Linux-2.6.37.2-x86_64-AMD_Phenom-tm-_II_X4_940_Processor-with-gentoo-2.0.3 when there actually never was a 2.0 distro release.
This may be of some interest to you. http://wtf.hijacked.us/wiki/index.php/Rocket.txt It's unfortunately not a full comparison of every major GCC version, but there are a few comparisons showing exactly what you suggest. Obviously it isn't scientific. Just a friend's site where I have a few boxes recorded and had the link quickly available.
I'd like to see that too. Slowest machine I think I have anymore is a Pentium 1. Now, if only it weren't the sole machine around here with a floppy drive for making boot disks.:/ But it's plenty slow. Last time I tried, it took about 2 hours just to compile a kernel on the box.
Depends on the problem(s) and the processor design, which is entirely the point of why a 1k core CPU is a big deal. If you can have enough independent problems or programs running all the time and design a system that lessens contention and fighting for resources, Amdahl's Law can be avoided almost indefinitely. It won't last forever of course.
A $3 Million MRI machine can't afford to have 10 $100 redundant backup GPUs inside it? Of course commodity hardware isn't medical grade. Anyone trying to shove an off the shelf GTX 580 WTF FTW suck-my-balls-off edition card into such an expensive device is cutting some huge corners instead of requesting industrial/medical grade units from any of the potential manufacturers. So what if that part costs $50k and is equivalently powerful as a $50 card at Best Buy.
In uber simple terms that even AC should be able to understand, inflation means there are more dollars out there, but each one is worth 1/3 what it used to be.
I don't think that AC would understand a scarcity of resources discussion. Better off to just tell them money wears out over time and becomes worth less.
The 3x number is correct enough. The 178.52% number is an "of" or "by" increase. 281.50% is a "to" increase. It's the same as doubling something by increasing the amount to 200% or by 100% the original. The "increase to" numbers make calculations easier or at least less mistake prone. The sentence "In fact, using inflationdata, the rate between then and now is 178.52%." is ambiguous. Both Russ Nelson and Chris Mattern are correct. The AC claiming tickets are more expensive was expressing poor math skills by dividing the 1980 number by 3 instead of multiplying it by 3. Inflation causes money to be worth less. The correct comparison is to take a $1000 ticket in 1980 dollars, convert the $1000 into 2009 dollars by multiplying by 2.815 (because 2009 dollars are LESS powerful) and then comparing that $2815 1980 ticket against a $450 2009 ticket. From there, 2815 / 450 = 6.25, showing that Chris was indeed correct in stating "That's less than *one-sixth* the former price."
Ever seen an inflation adjusted graph of gas prices? Please do remember that the Department of Energy was created in 1977 and that's when Carter officially set us onto the path of "energy independence" from our insane importation of 1/3 of our oil to our current of almost 2/3.
The price of crude is set outside the US. We could only even attempt to force the price down by lowering our consumption. We could do that by choice or through regulation which would lead to shortages and fuel lines. We actually tried that already in 1979-80 because we got pissy with Iran. The only outcome was inconveniencing our own citizenry while Russia happily bought oil from Iran and sold them fighter jets since we stopped selling them ours.
You ever waited 4 hours in line just to buy gas? Gas and electricity are dirt cheap in the US, and we forget how good we have it.
Enron took advantage of stupid regulations to screw over consumers. Had prices been allowed to fluctuate, citizens would have gotten pissed and cried for their heads much sooner.
They charge the consumer or tax payer if it's subsidized. It varies by area, but there is no monolithic grid for the entire country or even medium sized cities. Parts can be switched in and out almost on the fly. Anyone from a small company to a large company or from a city to state or the federal government can own parts of our entire US grid. Companies routinely buy power from each other and resell it daily. You do get a service from all the layers of a complicated onion such as electrical service. The benefits are quite large actually. I doubt you'd want a fossil plant 2 miles from your house which would be the most simple place to locate the power generation you'll use. I've worked in one, so I KNOW you wouldn't want that. Another benefit is the logistics the middle-men provide, ie. the shit "just works" and you're paying for their expertise for that to happen.
After re-reading your question, I'm somewhat confused by what you're asking and what you mean by "for access to their grid". Large electrical companies generally own their own grids and power plants. They're a localized and heavily regulated semi-monopoly. I say semi because there are legitimate alternatives to being "on the grid", so as long as they keep their prices competitive with personal solar, wind, etc. devices they will keep their customers. They bought the land, erected towers, and pulled hundreds of miles of expensive transmission cables to reach from the generation source to redundant main distribution points to smaller distribution substations that lead to businesses and neighborhoods. All that didn't happen for free and doesn't upkeep itself, so they have every right and need to charge access to their system. General upkeep is needed due to storms and the increasing need for expansion, so they either make money or else they, and thus the towns they support, cannot grow.
"How do you like the fact that the internet purchases are not taxed?"
Just because you're evading the taxes doesn't mean those taxes don't exist. You as the consumer are responsible for paying those taxes to your home state (little s) not the State (big s, federal level).
The federal government doesn't collect sales taxes. They derive their revenue through the IRS on the other end when the money comes into the hands of the eventual consumer. Then they again get another portion of the income, not revenue, of whatever business sold you its goods or services. Basically, you're delusional if you don't think the federal government is getting its share of every purchase multiple times over.
Indeed... Yes, you can steal something they're supposed to have by depriving them of it.
Whether they're 'supposed' to have it or not is irrelevant. The point is that they don't have it, and they never have. You can't steal something that doesn't exist.
How are the law and the rights of the author irrelevant?
As do I.
I make no claims that the system will certainly work or fail, just that we should try. Imagine where we would be if people didn't take risks or try something new. Nothing, and I mean nothing, would ever improve.
Apply a liberal amount of common sense to it first before simply trying or imposing though.
At no point did they ever own it.
The artist owns every copy, even data, of their intellectual ideas as property until they are compensated for that copy. What's your stance on plagiarism?
not overly abundant and enough to provide free for all.
It depends on the resource (the amount of it available). Everyone couldn't go around wearing diamonds, for instance. The problem of food scarcity could be somewhat solved through science (such as in vitro meat). That will likely happen anyway, not just in the system I'm proposing.
Who are you to say who can and who cannot wear diamonds? Who is to say? The problem of food scarcity could also be solved by governments getting the hell out of the way. You should look into Communist China of 1958-1962, the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, bread and cheese lines in Soviet Russia, and the responses to the Great Depression in the US. Generally people cite WWII as the cause of the end of the latter and they're right. WWII ended Hoover and FDR's New Deal policies of meddling with everything and allowed markets to correct themselves. Since you're mentioning food, did you know one of the causes of the Great Depression was too much food which drove prices down to the point many farmers went broke which in turn caused massive bank troubles. One of FDR's solutions was to have thousands of pigs slaughtered to raise pork prices. Their plan worked so well that pork prices rose so much no one could afford it. Government created artificial scarcity.
It is if they're warring over pointless profit, killing animals for profit, and wasting resources.. for profit. Etcetera.
We kill animals so that we can eat them. Very few animals are killed to be sold so that people can hang them on their walls and huge profits be made.
2, resources are not wasted or used up but only temporarily employed to serve a function.
Seems like a good idea to many in government and environmentalist groups. Maybe you heard of the Cash for Clunkers program? Most people would call it a smart business idea, but I do see your point. There are ways around most of their methods though. Rarely products simply self detonate and stop working completely the moment the warranty runs out forcing you to buy a new one. It could be said though that the customer is generally better off buying the new product over continuing to use the old one.
There just isn't enough for everyone to have everything.
As I said, not of every resource. We aren't talking about building mansions made out of diamonds for everyone. We're talking about solving overpopulation and providing the basic necessities (the limiting factor there is food, but that can be solved with scientific advancement). To say that future technological advancements will never happen or are impossible is insane.
Preventing the seller of the benefits of the transaction while the receiver is allowed to utilized the benefits is wrong.
Ah, all this proves to me is that humans are more illogical than I suspected. You can't steal (as in take) something that someone doesn't have.
Indeed... Yes, you can steal something they're supposed to have by depriving them of it.
Sure, sounds great on paper like many things, but resources are not overly abundant. They are limited and would become more so after a short time in any society they describe. Quite quickly the people would decide to implement forced rationing.
Resources are not abundant? That depends on which ones you are speaking of.
No, it does not depend which we're speaking of, resources are limited. Open any economics textbook.
It won't.
I wish I could see into the future like you can.
As do I.
Do I really need to? No one else would even ask that I prove why it's illogical to expect everyone everywhere to be obligated to buy every product.
I don't expect them to. I was asking why you think it should be illegal to pirate something (and according to you, deprive the artist of potential profit) but not illegal to choose not to buy something (which has the same implications--it deprives the artist of potential profit).
"When you produce something, no one has an obligation to purchase it."
"Apparently they do" Looks like you expect them to. It comes down to intentions and possibilities. The intention to buy the game or not. The intention to play the game or not. The random person on any street that has no intention of playing the game has almost 0 possibility of buying the game, but the pirate in question that has every intention of playing the game is a much greater possibility of a sale that they subvert directly by their own actions. Telling a friend the game sucks is not the same in any means.
I'm trying to be realistic as well.
Really?
Really.
I'm commenting on your "no harm" argument which is silly. Not you refusing to understand what "deprive" means.
Even if you're correct on the definition, that does not just my point that nothing in existence is being taken.
It does exist. The $50 in the pirate's pocket they would have lost if they'd purchased the game is certainly real.
Things still have inherent value without the existence of money, those values just become more complicated to represent and somewhat ambiguous. Money is nothing more or less than a convenient representation of value, usually your time.
Not if the necessary resources are in abundance and overpopulation is quelled.
Resources are limited. Overpopulation isn't a problem. Anyone wanting to "quell" anyone's reproductive rights I oppose on a moral grounds. If you want to live in a country that shoots you in the head for not wearing a condom when you were told to, go right ahead.
You should tell your environmentalist friends that. You know, the ones that like to claim the earth is overpopulated even though we're using less than 10% of it.
Apparently you don't understand the real consequences of overpopulation. The real consequence is not space, it's resources, food, and available shelter. This capitalistic society only worsens that through its inefficient use of all three of those.
Ah, finally you agree with me that resources are limited, not overly abundant and enough to provide free for all. Capitalism is the most efficient system for providing all of those things. Tyrannical regimes don't have obese societies. Over regulatio
You want to work from a different definition than the rest of society.
No, I want to work from the actual definition. How can you take away (deprive) someone of something that they do not even have?
I gave an actual definition. "deprive, tr v, 2. To keep from possessing or enjoying; deny:" Preventing the seller of the benefits of the transaction while the receiver is allowed to utilized the benefits is wrong.
Sure, sounds great on paper like many things, but resources are not overly abundant. They are limited and would become more so after a short time in any society they describe. Quite quickly the people would decide to implement forced rationing.
They would invent an artificial currency.
Not if it worked properly.
It won't.
I think you're the only one that would make that argument, illogically
I especially like how you state that it's illogical but you don't say why. Why? How is that not a loss of a potential sale or potential profit when piracy somehow is?
Do I really need to? No one else would even ask that I prove why it's illogical to expect everyone everywhere to be obligated to buy every product.
because you're trying to support your ideology.
The funny thing is, so are you. Isn't that the point of an argument?
I'm trying to be realistic as well.
Ok, so by that logic, that no harm has occurred, one could argue that stealing money from any of the hyper-rich billionaires should be legal because it doesn't hurt them.
No, you couldn't. Why? They already have the money, and in that scenario, you take it from them. You have directly stolen something that they previously had. It's gone. They no longer have it due to your actions of stealing it right now.
I would think that someone on Slashdot would know what copying is and how no one was deprived of physical property.
I'm commenting on your "no harm" argument which is silly. Not you refusing to understand what "deprive" means.
Having it in the first place is, as I've already noted, is a minor distinction.
No, it's not. As I said above, saying it's possible to steal things that only exist in the future
It exists the moment the torrent is downloaded... it being the received goods along with the obligation to pay for those goods.
Bribery would continue without money.
But not with a system where the majority have far more power than they do now. Bribery would be useless, then, if it still even existed.
Unless you can see into the future, I would not make such statements.
Things still have inherent value without the existence of money, those values just become more complicated to represent and somewhat ambiguous. Money is nothing more or less than a convenient representation of value, usually your time.
Wars will still be fought, even for profit.
Apparently you missed the part about having no money.
Again, things other than money have value, and with that profit if the net gain is positive. Think land and increased territory.
Land is real property and is not artificially scarce.
Humans don't need to fight over land, there's plenty. Sorry to say, but people wouldn't all be living in huge mansions and own large sections of land. The 'need' for that would be rooted out.
But, one side getting a free benefit doesn't deprive the author of anything that they previously had. The author was not harmed in the least.
The author is deprived a potential sale.
If you've truly read my other comments, you'd see that I didn't avoid the question about what is broken. Here's one thing that's broken.
I've seen and read some of them and in all of those you've dodged the question.
Supposedly, in order for artists of digital media (perhaps other media, too) to make a profit in the current system, they must introduce artificial scarcity
I'll read that tomorrow and possibly get back with a response if I remember.:)
Currently I assume you're bitching about a highly regulated capitalist model as being insufficient to get you and others free stuff.
You neglected to mention the almost infinite amount of other ideas that haven't even been thought of yet. Reducing that amount to a choice between two different systems is illogical.
No, it's ignorance. As I said, those are the only 2 I can think of that will net you free stuff. Since you've refused (unless it's in that link) to give alternatives, I'm ignorant to what they might be. If you can name or describe any of those almost infinite ideas, please do.
In a system that doesn't utilize artificial currency, people would be motivated by the love of their profession, not by their desire to get more money at all costs. Gone would be the people who only work for money. The people that work for money now only because they have to, however, would not be gone.
Very few people are, will be, or can be motivated simply by love of their profession. Most people hate their jobs and hate working period. Until you can guarantee with absolute certainty that there will be just enough or an excess of farmers, road builders, factory workers, etc. to provide the basics for modern human society, you can keep your utopia far away from me. If all those things can be created in abundance only by people that love their jobs, why would the people that only work because they have to still be around? There's a breakdown in your logic. The majority of increases in efficiency have arisen by people trying to increase their profits, by lowering their costs not gouging their customers. The ultimate manifestation of the desire to make more money "at all costs" has been lowered prices and thus more widespread availability of goods and services to those of a lower economic status.
Humans as a general rule are not altruistic creatures. Many say they are but do not put their energy into any such task unless they're certain they can be seen doing it. That's simply vanity, not compassion.
The broken system is capitalism. Again, my inability to think of a viable alternative does not make my criticism of the current system moot. I only know that it is broken.
No, but it does make the discussion quite pointless. If you can't find a better solution to even a highly specific detail, it's hard to support an argument for or against it. You're basically just saying "this sucks" over and over and somewhat moving on. Actually what you have said over and over is "no harm", "harm no one", etc. and it becomes tiresome. The harm is in the violation of the authors rights. Whether you can see that harm or not makes it no less real.
Everyone who decided not to buy a product or not to give someone else money. Everyone who told others not to buy a product.
That's not a logical argument at all. When you produce something, no one has an obligation to purchase it. There's also no expectation of that when the developer created it, but there should be a good faith expectation (think before rampant piracy) by t
Heh, for you free speech argument, it seems these developers have the perfect solution for your scenario. Let's say a person buys the game and is disappointed with the purchase. They can give or possibly sell their copy of the game to their friend since "owners will be able to install it as many times as they like on any number of computers." As long as they stop playing the game, and thus no longer receive the benefits from the product, the transfer would appear to fall under fair use and the spirit of selling software without DRM. In that scenario there is truly no harm being performed and no loss being made as there is still 1 copy of the game sold and 1 copy of the game being played. Do you really see 1 copy sold and 1 million copies being played as an ethical and proper situation?
Merely existing doesn't, but "making available" can be seen as "interfering with their flow of profit." Using bittorrent contributes to the availability of the pirated software even while just downloading "your" copy.
Slashdot Mirror
European Branch
Super Micro Computer, B.V.
Het Sterrenbeeld 28, 5215 ML,
's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
Tel: +31-73-640-0390
Fax: +31-73-641-6525
General Info: Sales@Supermicro.nl
Tech Support: Support@Supermicro.nl
Supermicro uses Xeons in all their current workstations. You'd have to ask for a custom job to get Opterons in a pedestal build. Nothing says you can't just run http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/2U/2042/AS-2042G-6RF.cfm on its side, except it's going to sound awful in an office. If you're curious how one of those could/would spec out filling all bays and memory slots (without converting currencies),
1 x SUPERMICRO AS-2042G-6RF 2U Rackmount Server Barebone Quad Socket G34 AMD SR5690/SR5670 DDR3 1333/1066/800 Item #: N82E16816101321 $1,899.99
6 x Western Digital RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Item #: N82E16822136697 $449.94 ($74.99 each)
32 x Kingston 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC Registered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3D4R9S/8G Item #: N82E16820139140 $3,103.68 ($96.99 each)
4 x AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server Processor OS6128WKT8EGOWOF Item #: N82E16819105266 $999.96 ($249.99 each)
Subtotal: $6,453.57 which is about the total budget.
The biggest problem with Opteron 6100's is the next faster proc costs 2x as much. I'm not suggesting this exact config, just an example. And YMWV with exchange rates and the hike to costs when importing stuff to your lil island. The UK gets hosed on hardware prices.
buy your own hardware and take advantage of the services provided by your institution.
Your points are great. Something I didn't think to mention in a long post a few minutes ago. IF this is a university project and since the budget is so small, the grad student (I'm assuming) could look into building and sharing a cluster with another similarly sized research group of other grad students.
Then something is wrong in the configuration, either hardware or software. Virtualization by itself should not reduce performance by ~66%. Your hit should more likely be 5-10%. If you're taking a huge hit, it's most likely because you're sharing resources. Don't blame virtualization for that.
To be honest, £4000 isn't going to buy a lot of processing power. Does that amount also cover operational costs such as power? I'd ask about bandwidth, but with the scale possible with this budget, colocation of the servers doesn't make sense. Have you considered BOINC? Are you 100% certain OpenCL and GPGPU won't help? Atom, while cheap, even on a small budget is probably a bad solution. Remember that CPU always ends up being less than 100% of the cost of a node. Increasing the cost per node by 10-25% to have a node that's 400-800% faster makes perfect sense, and the fewer nodes she has to run, the cheaper your network will be. Unless Bulldozer brings incredible performance, Sandy Bridge based CPUs will provide the best bang for the buck if she's buying new. Clock per clock, they're the fastest available cheaply and their energy consumption is excellent. I suggest looking at i5-2300/2400/2500 or Xeon E3-1220. Depends if she wants ECC mostly. She may have enough budget for 6-10 nodes using these CPUs. Reduce the complexity of a node to Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and Power Supply. Go with quality PSUs, but remember there's no need to go overboard on wattage for machines that won't be running a GPU (I'm saying 250-300 watts is optimal if you can find quality in that size). Also, DDR3 is dirt cheap right now, so if there's a possibility 8GB will make a difference at some point over 2GB or 4GB during the life of the nodes, it makes sense to just start with that much.
PXE boot from a head node that contains all the storage... which btw, you (serviscope_minor) didn't mention how much raw storage she's going to need which will eat a good portion of a small budget. You also didn't mention how hard her problem is on a network. Is simple gigabit enough? The closest serviscope_minor came to describing the problem was to use the term "CPU bound" somewhat ambiguously.
Again, I would bring up BOINC. She would accept hardware donations right? How about just asking for them on a worldwide scale? If this is a non-profit venture (her degree doesn't count as a profit if this is a University project as many have assumed) and isn't intensively time-sensitive, you'd be surprised how many people will freely contribute processing power.
there is a reason they do not update them as regularly as you might like after all.
Most of my textbooks were updated more often/regularly than necessary. No new info added. No better explanations. In many editions the only thing that changed were the numbers in end of chapter problems. That way they could make the old editions, which were available used for more reasonable prices, obsolete. I have an EE (Circuits) textbook that was over US$200 but the class was taught entirely with a chalkboard and notes. The book was only ever used less than a dozen times for assigned homework. I essentially paid $5-10 per page used. My copy of that text is an 8th edition, so they run the scam pretty regularly.
I have other books that I never should have purchased at all because they were never even opened outside of class. Those classes were taught entirely, and I should add poorly, with PowerPoint slides and assignments e-mailed in pdf/doc format.
If you're indeed looking for entry level people that have never done the job before, it's a valid question to ask if they have or have not. The difference is that "No." is the correct answer toward getting the job instead of "Yes. I have X years experience." which should actually get them shown the door. You shouldn't assume either way.
Yeah, it could then be used as a desalination device with free electricity from the fuel cell being a bi-product.
This is like asking "You're stuck in the desert at a gas station, gas/petrol is $10/gal and water is $10/gal. You only have $10 on you, which do you buy?" Neither you nor the cashier can figure out how to make change for a purchase less than $10? You can't pour half the water into the car's reservoir while drinking the other half? Technically, if the designers of the vehicle planned for that product to be used in a low or zero water environment, it would capture and reuse the fuel cell's output, so you shouldn't have to ever make this choice. However, most of the world is not desert, thus few designs would incorporate this as it would just add cost. Why waste the money on that design in places where water literally falls out of the sky? At most it could save weight which will be much less concern when cars can reliably utilize a renewable energy source.
If you think Slack made a big jump, how about Gentoo?
.1 three times regardless of how much changed. Then got lazy and seemed to lose most calendar years. Then from 2008.0 to weekly stuffs to 10.0 on its 10th year anniversary, and the current "distro release" is versioned 11.2. I don't know what I'm running anymore.
They went from 1.4.1 to 2004.0 with quarterly releases adding
Oh, wait, yeah I do. System uname: Linux-2.6.37.2-x86_64-AMD_Phenom-tm-_II_X4_940_Processor-with-gentoo-2.0.3 when there actually never was a 2.0 distro release.
This may be of some interest to you. http://wtf.hijacked.us/wiki/index.php/Rocket.txt It's unfortunately not a full comparison of every major GCC version, but there are a few comparisons showing exactly what you suggest. Obviously it isn't scientific. Just a friend's site where I have a few boxes recorded and had the link quickly available.
:/ But it's plenty slow. Last time I tried, it took about 2 hours just to compile a kernel on the box.
I'd like to see that too. Slowest machine I think I have anymore is a Pentium 1. Now, if only it weren't the sole machine around here with a floppy drive for making boot disks.
Depends on the problem(s) and the processor design, which is entirely the point of why a 1k core CPU is a big deal. If you can have enough independent problems or programs running all the time and design a system that lessens contention and fighting for resources, Amdahl's Law can be avoided almost indefinitely. It won't last forever of course.
A $3 Million MRI machine can't afford to have 10 $100 redundant backup GPUs inside it? Of course commodity hardware isn't medical grade. Anyone trying to shove an off the shelf GTX 580 WTF FTW suck-my-balls-off edition card into such an expensive device is cutting some huge corners instead of requesting industrial/medical grade units from any of the potential manufacturers. So what if that part costs $50k and is equivalently powerful as a $50 card at Best Buy.
In uber simple terms that even AC should be able to understand, inflation means there are more dollars out there, but each one is worth 1/3 what it used to be.
I don't think that AC would understand a scarcity of resources discussion. Better off to just tell them money wears out over time and becomes worth less.
The 3x number is correct enough. The 178.52% number is an "of" or "by" increase. 281.50% is a "to" increase. It's the same as doubling something by increasing the amount to 200% or by 100% the original. The "increase to" numbers make calculations easier or at least less mistake prone. The sentence "In fact, using inflationdata, the rate between then and now is 178.52%." is ambiguous. Both Russ Nelson and Chris Mattern are correct. The AC claiming tickets are more expensive was expressing poor math skills by dividing the 1980 number by 3 instead of multiplying it by 3. Inflation causes money to be worth less. The correct comparison is to take a $1000 ticket in 1980 dollars, convert the $1000 into 2009 dollars by multiplying by 2.815 (because 2009 dollars are LESS powerful) and then comparing that $2815 1980 ticket against a $450 2009 ticket. From there, 2815 / 450 = 6.25, showing that Chris was indeed correct in stating "That's less than *one-sixth* the former price."
Ever seen an inflation adjusted graph of gas prices? Please do remember that the Department of Energy was created in 1977 and that's when Carter officially set us onto the path of "energy independence" from our insane importation of 1/3 of our oil to our current of almost 2/3.
http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm
The price of crude is set outside the US. We could only even attempt to force the price down by lowering our consumption. We could do that by choice or through regulation which would lead to shortages and fuel lines. We actually tried that already in 1979-80 because we got pissy with Iran. The only outcome was inconveniencing our own citizenry while Russia happily bought oil from Iran and sold them fighter jets since we stopped selling them ours.
You ever waited 4 hours in line just to buy gas? Gas and electricity are dirt cheap in the US, and we forget how good we have it.
Enron took advantage of stupid regulations to screw over consumers. Had prices been allowed to fluctuate, citizens would have gotten pissed and cried for their heads much sooner.
They charge the consumer or tax payer if it's subsidized. It varies by area, but there is no monolithic grid for the entire country or even medium sized cities. Parts can be switched in and out almost on the fly. Anyone from a small company to a large company or from a city to state or the federal government can own parts of our entire US grid. Companies routinely buy power from each other and resell it daily. You do get a service from all the layers of a complicated onion such as electrical service. The benefits are quite large actually. I doubt you'd want a fossil plant 2 miles from your house which would be the most simple place to locate the power generation you'll use. I've worked in one, so I KNOW you wouldn't want that. Another benefit is the logistics the middle-men provide, ie. the shit "just works" and you're paying for their expertise for that to happen.
After re-reading your question, I'm somewhat confused by what you're asking and what you mean by "for access to their grid". Large electrical companies generally own their own grids and power plants. They're a localized and heavily regulated semi-monopoly. I say semi because there are legitimate alternatives to being "on the grid", so as long as they keep their prices competitive with personal solar, wind, etc. devices they will keep their customers. They bought the land, erected towers, and pulled hundreds of miles of expensive transmission cables to reach from the generation source to redundant main distribution points to smaller distribution substations that lead to businesses and neighborhoods. All that didn't happen for free and doesn't upkeep itself, so they have every right and need to charge access to their system. General upkeep is needed due to storms and the increasing need for expansion, so they either make money or else they, and thus the towns they support, cannot grow.
Or NFS, sshfs, or even Samba/CIFS if he must have a GUI for diff. In /etc it makes sense.
Proposed to be changed.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gbLR9rd2uUzbSFy6SMkIYJZ2y7PA?docId=ccc0ce3ccf8146c48ea9a496ce852576
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112401239.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/11/24/ap-exclusive-color-coded-terror-alerts-end/
Couldn't get a non-google link for the AP story.
"How do you like the fact that the internet purchases are not taxed?"
Just because you're evading the taxes doesn't mean those taxes don't exist. You as the consumer are responsible for paying those taxes to your home state (little s) not the State (big s, federal level).
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29919.html
The federal government doesn't collect sales taxes. They derive their revenue through the IRS on the other end when the money comes into the hands of the eventual consumer. Then they again get another portion of the income, not revenue, of whatever business sold you its goods or services. Basically, you're delusional if you don't think the federal government is getting its share of every purchase multiple times over.
Indeed... Yes, you can steal something they're supposed to have by depriving them of it.
Whether they're 'supposed' to have it or not is irrelevant. The point is that they don't have it, and they never have. You can't steal something that doesn't exist.
How are the law and the rights of the author irrelevant?
As do I.
I make no claims that the system will certainly work or fail, just that we should try. Imagine where we would be if people didn't take risks or try something new. Nothing, and I mean nothing, would ever improve.
Apply a liberal amount of common sense to it first before simply trying or imposing though.
At no point did they ever own it.
The artist owns every copy, even data, of their intellectual ideas as property until they are compensated for that copy. What's your stance on plagiarism?
not overly abundant and enough to provide free for all.
It depends on the resource (the amount of it available). Everyone couldn't go around wearing diamonds, for instance. The problem of food scarcity could be somewhat solved through science (such as in vitro meat). That will likely happen anyway, not just in the system I'm proposing.
Who are you to say who can and who cannot wear diamonds? Who is to say? The problem of food scarcity could also be solved by governments getting the hell out of the way. You should look into Communist China of 1958-1962, the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, bread and cheese lines in Soviet Russia, and the responses to the Great Depression in the US. Generally people cite WWII as the cause of the end of the latter and they're right. WWII ended Hoover and FDR's New Deal policies of meddling with everything and allowed markets to correct themselves. Since you're mentioning food, did you know one of the causes of the Great Depression was too much food which drove prices down to the point many farmers went broke which in turn caused massive bank troubles. One of FDR's solutions was to have thousands of pigs slaughtered to raise pork prices. Their plan worked so well that pork prices rose so much no one could afford it. Government created artificial scarcity.
It is if they're warring over pointless profit, killing animals for profit, and wasting resources.. for profit. Etcetera.
We kill animals so that we can eat them. Very few animals are killed to be sold so that people can hang them on their walls and huge profits be made.
2, resources are not wasted or used up but only temporarily employed to serve a function.
Really? You don't think this is a waste? If they made goods that lasted forever, they wouldn't need to be replaced.
Seems like a good idea to many in government and environmentalist groups. Maybe you heard of the Cash for Clunkers program? Most people would call it a smart business idea, but I do see your point. There are ways around most of their methods though. Rarely products simply self detonate and stop working completely the moment the warranty runs out forcing you to buy a new one. It could be said though that the customer is generally better off buying the new product over continuing to use the old one.
There just isn't enough for everyone to have everything.
As I said, not of every resource. We aren't talking about building mansions made out of diamonds for everyone. We're talking about solving overpopulation and providing the basic necessities (the limiting factor there is food, but that can be solved with scientific advancement). To say that future technological advancements will never happen or are impossible is insane.
So if everyone can't have
Preventing the seller of the benefits of the transaction while the receiver is allowed to utilized the benefits is wrong.
Ah, all this proves to me is that humans are more illogical than I suspected. You can't steal (as in take) something that someone doesn't have.
Indeed... Yes, you can steal something they're supposed to have by depriving them of it.
Sure, sounds great on paper like many things, but resources are not overly abundant. They are limited and would become more so after a short time in any society they describe. Quite quickly the people would decide to implement forced rationing.
Resources are not abundant? That depends on which ones you are speaking of.
No, it does not depend which we're speaking of, resources are limited. Open any economics textbook.
It won't.
I wish I could see into the future like you can.
As do I.
Do I really need to? No one else would even ask that I prove why it's illogical to expect everyone everywhere to be obligated to buy every product.
I don't expect them to. I was asking why you think it should be illegal to pirate something (and according to you, deprive the artist of potential profit) but not illegal to choose not to buy something (which has the same implications--it deprives the artist of potential profit).
"When you produce something, no one has an obligation to purchase it." "Apparently they do" Looks like you expect them to. It comes down to intentions and possibilities. The intention to buy the game or not. The intention to play the game or not. The random person on any street that has no intention of playing the game has almost 0 possibility of buying the game, but the pirate in question that has every intention of playing the game is a much greater possibility of a sale that they subvert directly by their own actions. Telling a friend the game sucks is not the same in any means.
I'm trying to be realistic as well.
Really?
Really.
I'm commenting on your "no harm" argument which is silly. Not you refusing to understand what "deprive" means.
Even if you're correct on the definition, that does not just my point that nothing in existence is being taken.
It does exist. The $50 in the pirate's pocket they would have lost if they'd purchased the game is certainly real.
Things still have inherent value without the existence of money, those values just become more complicated to represent and somewhat ambiguous. Money is nothing more or less than a convenient representation of value, usually your time.
Not if the necessary resources are in abundance and overpopulation is quelled.
Resources are limited. Overpopulation isn't a problem. Anyone wanting to "quell" anyone's reproductive rights I oppose on a moral grounds. If you want to live in a country that shoots you in the head for not wearing a condom when you were told to, go right ahead.
You should tell your environmentalist friends that. You know, the ones that like to claim the earth is overpopulated even though we're using less than 10% of it.
Apparently you don't understand the real consequences of overpopulation. The real consequence is not space, it's resources, food, and available shelter. This capitalistic society only worsens that through its inefficient use of all three of those.
Ah, finally you agree with me that resources are limited, not overly abundant and enough to provide free for all. Capitalism is the most efficient system for providing all of those things. Tyrannical regimes don't have obese societies. Over regulatio
You want to work from a different definition than the rest of society.
No, I want to work from the actual definition. How can you take away (deprive) someone of something that they do not even have?
I gave an actual definition. "deprive, tr v, 2. To keep from possessing or enjoying; deny:" Preventing the seller of the benefits of the transaction while the receiver is allowed to utilized the benefits is wrong.
http://thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project-introduction/faq
Apparently, there is an idea after all.
Sure, sounds great on paper like many things, but resources are not overly abundant. They are limited and would become more so after a short time in any society they describe. Quite quickly the people would decide to implement forced rationing.
They would invent an artificial currency.
Not if it worked properly.
It won't.
I think you're the only one that would make that argument, illogically
I especially like how you state that it's illogical but you don't say why. Why? How is that not a loss of a potential sale or potential profit when piracy somehow is?
Do I really need to? No one else would even ask that I prove why it's illogical to expect everyone everywhere to be obligated to buy every product.
because you're trying to support your ideology.
The funny thing is, so are you. Isn't that the point of an argument?
I'm trying to be realistic as well.
Ok, so by that logic, that no harm has occurred, one could argue that stealing money from any of the hyper-rich billionaires should be legal because it doesn't hurt them.
No, you couldn't. Why? They already have the money, and in that scenario, you take it from them. You have directly stolen something that they previously had. It's gone. They no longer have it due to your actions of stealing it right now.
I would think that someone on Slashdot would know what copying is and how no one was deprived of physical property.
I'm commenting on your "no harm" argument which is silly. Not you refusing to understand what "deprive" means.
Having it in the first place is, as I've already noted, is a minor distinction.
No, it's not. As I said above, saying it's possible to steal things that only exist in the future
It exists the moment the torrent is downloaded... it being the received goods along with the obligation to pay for those goods.
Bribery would continue without money.
But not with a system where the majority have far more power than they do now. Bribery would be useless, then, if it still even existed.
Unless you can see into the future, I would not make such statements.
Things still have inherent value without the existence of money, those values just become more complicated to represent and somewhat ambiguous. Money is nothing more or less than a convenient representation of value, usually your time.
Wars will still be fought, even for profit.
Apparently you missed the part about having no money.
Again, things other than money have value, and with that profit if the net gain is positive. Think land and increased territory.
Land is real property and is not artificially scarce.
Humans don't need to fight over land, there's plenty. Sorry to say, but people wouldn't all be living in huge mansions and own large sections of land. The 'need' for that would be rooted out.
You s
Oops, I don't remember checking the AC box but apparently I did.
But, one side getting a free benefit doesn't deprive the author of anything that they previously had. The author was not harmed in the least.
The author is deprived a potential sale.
If you've truly read my other comments, you'd see that I didn't avoid the question about what is broken. Here's one thing that's broken.
I've seen and read some of them and in all of those you've dodged the question.
Supposedly, in order for artists of digital media (perhaps other media, too) to make a profit in the current system, they must introduce artificial scarcity
I'll read that tomorrow and possibly get back with a response if I remember. :)
Currently I assume you're bitching about a highly regulated capitalist model as being insufficient to get you and others free stuff.
You neglected to mention the almost infinite amount of other ideas that haven't even been thought of yet. Reducing that amount to a choice between two different systems is illogical.
No, it's ignorance. As I said, those are the only 2 I can think of that will net you free stuff. Since you've refused (unless it's in that link) to give alternatives, I'm ignorant to what they might be. If you can name or describe any of those almost infinite ideas, please do.
In a system that doesn't utilize artificial currency, people would be motivated by the love of their profession, not by their desire to get more money at all costs. Gone would be the people who only work for money. The people that work for money now only because they have to, however, would not be gone.
Very few people are, will be, or can be motivated simply by love of their profession. Most people hate their jobs and hate working period. Until you can guarantee with absolute certainty that there will be just enough or an excess of farmers, road builders, factory workers, etc. to provide the basics for modern human society, you can keep your utopia far away from me. If all those things can be created in abundance only by people that love their jobs, why would the people that only work because they have to still be around? There's a breakdown in your logic. The majority of increases in efficiency have arisen by people trying to increase their profits, by lowering their costs not gouging their customers. The ultimate manifestation of the desire to make more money "at all costs" has been lowered prices and thus more widespread availability of goods and services to those of a lower economic status.
Humans as a general rule are not altruistic creatures. Many say they are but do not put their energy into any such task unless they're certain they can be seen doing it. That's simply vanity, not compassion.
The broken system is capitalism. Again, my inability to think of a viable alternative does not make my criticism of the current system moot. I only know that it is broken.
No, but it does make the discussion quite pointless. If you can't find a better solution to even a highly specific detail, it's hard to support an argument for or against it. You're basically just saying "this sucks" over and over and somewhat moving on. Actually what you have said over and over is "no harm", "harm no one", etc. and it becomes tiresome. The harm is in the violation of the authors rights. Whether you can see that harm or not makes it no less real.
Everyone who decided not to buy a product or not to give someone else money. Everyone who told others not to buy a product.
That's not a logical argument at all. When you produce something, no one has an obligation to purchase it. There's also no expectation of that when the developer created it, but there should be a good faith expectation (think before rampant piracy) by t
Heh, for you free speech argument, it seems these developers have the perfect solution for your scenario. Let's say a person buys the game and is disappointed with the purchase. They can give or possibly sell their copy of the game to their friend since "owners will be able to install it as many times as they like on any number of computers." As long as they stop playing the game, and thus no longer receive the benefits from the product, the transfer would appear to fall under fair use and the spirit of selling software without DRM. In that scenario there is truly no harm being performed and no loss being made as there is still 1 copy of the game sold and 1 copy of the game being played. Do you really see 1 copy sold and 1 million copies being played as an ethical and proper situation?
The copy merely existing doesn't affect anything.
Merely existing doesn't, but "making available" can be seen as "interfering with their flow of profit." Using bittorrent contributes to the availability of the pirated software even while just downloading "your" copy.