Re:What about the customers?
on
R.I.P. Iridium
·
· Score: 1
Well, most concerned Iridium customers now must be two Swedish guys, who are currently trying to get to the North Pole by foot. I've read in a newspaper today, that due to Iridium shutdown they might loose two-way communication with outside world.
Well, I think that the estimate of the price for SC like this done as "# of processors times price of one processor" is pretty rough. If they want real parallel cluster, they'll need some gigabit ethernet (like, say, Myrinet), which can add about 1000 bucks to the price of each node all by itself.
Are these (poor) people really called "hamburgers"? Must be pretty annoying for them *snicker*. They should come up with something better... "Hamburgians", probably;-)
What are You talking about?;-). "not even reached 1:1" - this sounds a bit confusing to me. If it would be possible to create a device, which would output more energy, then we put in, all problems would be solved instantly - we would have a nice perpetuum mobile. Our current ways to get energy involve only its transfer from one form into another and usually we are lucky if efficiency of the process is more than 10%.
I think, it is really time to become concerned about Linux future. Definitely, the long time development strategy is lacking. Remember, what happened, when Qt and GTK appeared? Tons of buggy and unneeded applications started to appear, because every kid, who has read one book on C++, decided to become "k3wl" and "code for Linux". With the appearance of Windows API it will get much worse. I think, that Linux should be split into two branches - one, supporting limited amount of extensively tested hardware, containing only stable native linux applications, manifestly open-sourced, server-oriented - a robust, free, extremely stable working tool. Another - supporting all modern and unstable hardware, all the "bells and whistles", non-open-source stuff and other BS - desktop-and-newbie-oriented. While all the commercial Linux distributions will tend to become the second type, someone should care about enforcing this separation. Otherwise Linux risks to lose a lot of people to other free operating systems.
Hehe, it is not that easy. Prize in physics, for example, was given for what you call "fundamental research", i.e. research which does not have any immediate practical application (one cannot make better refrigerators based on quantum theory of electroweak interactions;-) ) and thus is quite tricky to explain to a mere mortal. Even working in physics (in a different area though) I have only general idea, what is it about. I've been on the press-conference, where prize winners were announced and you should have seen poor journalists running around and asking desperate questions about "practical significance" of their theory, because "electroweak interaction", "quarks" and "leptons" are not the words to appear in the evening news;-).
Ok, let's go scientific... They mention optics and quantum stuff, which probably means, that they are using photons as information carriers. Now the photons are "wave packets" with corresponding wavelength/frequency. The frequency of visible light is approximately 10^15 Hz (cycles per second), and the corresponding wave period is proportional to 10^(-15) sec. Thus in 12 usec one can radiate something like 12*10^(-6)/10^(-15)=12*10^9 (12 billions) periods of wave corresponding to visible light. Even if they are not using visible light, this will correct the number only by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude (one should also keep in mind, that photon is not exactly one period of the wave but rather a wave packet. Conclusion: something is definitely wrong here, because it should be pretty damned hard to crack 512 bits key, having only 12 billion information carriers in posession;-). Just my $0.02
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Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel: tsk->mm->context = ffffffff ,. \`@" /_| \__/ |_\
Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel: tsk->mm->pgd = f0005000
Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel: \|/ ____ \|/
Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel: "@'/
Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel:
Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel: \__U_/
Apr 16 18:38:19 bach kernel: apt-get(5697): Oops
Well, most concerned Iridium customers now must be two Swedish guys, who are currently trying to get to the North Pole by foot. I've read in a newspaper today, that due to Iridium shutdown they might loose two-way communication with outside world.
Well, I think that the estimate of the price for SC like this done as "# of processors times price of one processor" is pretty rough. If they want real parallel cluster, they'll need some gigabit ethernet (like, say, Myrinet), which can add about 1000 bucks to the price of each node all by itself.
Are these (poor) people really called "hamburgers"? Must be pretty annoying for them *snicker*. They should come up with something better... "Hamburgians", probably ;-)
What are You talking about? ;-). "not even reached 1:1" - this sounds a bit confusing to me. If it would be possible to create a device, which would output more energy, then we put in, all problems would be solved instantly - we would have a nice perpetuum mobile. Our current ways to get energy involve only its transfer from one form into another and usually we are lucky if efficiency of the process is more than 10%.
I think, it is really time to become concerned about Linux future. Definitely, the long time development strategy is lacking. Remember, what happened, when Qt and GTK appeared? Tons of buggy and unneeded applications started to appear, because every kid, who has read one book on C++, decided to become "k3wl" and "code for Linux". With the appearance of Windows API it will get much worse. I think, that Linux should be split into two branches - one, supporting limited amount of extensively tested hardware, containing only stable native linux applications, manifestly open-sourced, server-oriented - a robust, free, extremely stable working tool. Another - supporting all modern and unstable hardware, all the "bells and whistles", non-open-source stuff and other BS - desktop-and-newbie-oriented. While all the commercial Linux distributions will tend to become the second type, someone should care about enforcing this separation. Otherwise Linux risks to lose a lot of people to other free operating systems.
Hehe, it is not that easy. Prize in physics, for example, was given for what you call "fundamental research", i.e. research which does not have any immediate practical application (one cannot make better refrigerators based on quantum theory of electroweak interactions ;-) ) and thus is quite tricky to explain to a mere mortal. Even working in physics (in a different area though) I have only general idea, what is it about. I've been on the press-conference, where prize winners were announced and you should have seen poor journalists running around and asking desperate questions about "practical significance" of their theory, because "electroweak interaction", "quarks" and "leptons" are not the words to appear in the evening news ;-).
Ok, let's go scientific... They mention optics and quantum stuff, which probably means, that they are using photons as information carriers. Now the photons are "wave packets" with corresponding wavelength/frequency. The frequency of visible light is approximately 10^15 Hz (cycles per second), and the corresponding wave period is proportional to 10^(-15) sec. Thus in 12 usec one can radiate something like 12*10^(-6)/10^(-15)=12*10^9 (12 billions) periods of wave corresponding to visible light. Even if they are not using visible light, this will correct the number only by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude (one should also keep in mind, that photon is not exactly one period of the wave but rather a wave packet. Conclusion: something is definitely wrong here, because it should be pretty damned hard to crack 512 bits key, having only 12 billion information carriers in posession ;-). Just my $0.02