During a day, solar panels don't produce any watts of energy. Watts are a compound unit, specifically joules per second. Joules are a measurement of energy, and what would be produced in a a time period. Watts represent the instantaneous rate of power generation.
A dual core desktop is a different environment than a 128-way ccNUMA system. NUMA systems need to account for local and far memory, even though it's all one address space. There's a lot of optimization that could be done for desktops simply by trimming out all that complicated tuning logic that's used for running on larger systems.
Just a vendor's incompatible me-too implementation. I'm sure there are some semantic differences and maybe some new features, but it's the same thing. This product may also be aimed more at multicore desktops than SMP big iron like openmp is.
I'm partial to MPI (Specifically, OcamlMPI) myself. 20 cores at 4.3 cpu-days and it was trivial to achieve >99% CPU utilization on all nodes.
It's basically a guided thruster. I didn't mean it could be launched and operated for 10,000, but that it could come off an assembly line in asymptotically large quantities at that price. It doesn't take a hell of a lot of thrust per se to deorbit something, depending on your schedule. Use a high specific impulse system like an ion-drive, for instance, and you could probably de orbit hubble in a coupla years.
The bitch of the problem is that we don't have a good thruster that's both high thrust and high specific impulse. The shuttle's main engines, for instance, are high thrust. The ion drive is an example of a much better propulsion system that just doesn't scale (yet anyways) to decent amounts of thrust.
As I said, most of this debris is harmless. We just need to worry about debris (at all levels) that gets on a collision course with missions that we care about.
Didn't somebody design a really cheap system of kamikaze satellites that would grapple the dangerous pieces and de-orbit them into the atmosphere? By really cheap I mean ~10,000 dollars. Surely we could put a couple of those on the ISS in case it looked like something was coming for it.
I know it's expensive to launch the things, but AFAIK they're about the size of a propane tank for a BBQ and could be launched in vast numbers on a single rocket.
The space is so large we only need to worry about the stuff in the space we WANT to be in or go through. All the geosynchronous stuff is in a much higher orbit, so we only need to worry about the stuff in LEO and the stuff going through it. It shoudn't be a problem to plot a course through it, and we can clear the orbits as we go.
I'm pretty sure the GP was talking about paying 1 k$ for the box + hardware warranty + software support. That's a pretty damn good price for an opteron workstation, especially one with a name like Sun on the front.
You won't have to. Intel macs need this bootcamp stuff because they don't have a BIOS, but use Intel's EFI. AFAIK, you can easily use elilo to boot linux on them.
Some folks swear by 'em, some folks hate 'em. Check out http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dbhardware2/ Covers a range of embedded devices from PICs to DSPs and talks about the various buses you'll see.
Sure, it's not as dangerous as a used 'depleted' uranium shell (mmm... U-235 oxide
Depleted uranium is mostly U-238. There is some U-235 left in it but it's much less than even naturally occurring uranium. That's why it's called "depleted." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
They did that on Sleeper Cell a couple of nights ago. Granted, they were just getting the radioisotopes to test their lead-lined cooler so they'd be sure it wouldn't set off the Geiger counters when they loaded it up with the real nuclear payload. On the show they went out and bought at least 50 of the things from different stores.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with operator overloading as other posters have indicated. One thing I do think C++ could do better is have operators in a family. For instance, == and != have well understood and complementary functions. When we define equality on a type, the definition for inequality is pretty obvious. In the spirit of C++, there should be a way to specify completely different functions for them of course, but generally bool operator!=(const X &x1, const X &x2) { return !(x1 == x2) }; Just like x x. Or we could go further and say that y >= x is the same as !(y x).
This is how Haskell handles its operators. Eq types can define equality, inequality, or both.
My girlfriend got a new macbook pro, low trim level, 512 mb of ram. My G4 powerbook from Apr 2004 ran circles around it. The swapping made it almost unusable with Safari + Mail + Finder + Adium + that iphoto app. Upgrading to 1 GB improved the responsiveness by orders of magnitude.
I'm also in the unique position of having had a motherboard failure in my own powerbook. The lower ram slot stopped being used, necessitating a replacement (under warranty.) That dropped me from 1 GB to 512 MB, and believe me, it did not take long to notice the vast increase in suck.
512 MB is an absolute minimum for having a useful mac. 1 GB seems to be quite adequate. Let's make a fallacious and unfounded assumption and say 768 is the minimum ram req for OS X, 10.4.
CS.
While Data (ST:TNG) isn't a scientist, certainly Dr. Noonian Soong is.
Another very memorable scientist Spiner protrayed was the Area 51 scientist from Independence Day, Dr. Okun: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/
I'm not sure what you've heard quantum computers promise to do. I agree with you that optical computers, or rather, some form of classical computer will be the predominant type.
As far as we know, quantum computers can do (a) few things better than a classical computer:
Factoring numbers (this is why they'll kill public key encryption as it stands now)
Computing discrete logarithms (another function of cryptographic interest)
Search unstructured data (a quantum computer can do this in O(sqrt N) time as opposed to O(N) for a classical computer to run through every element)
Simulate quantum systems (fairly obviously)
Other than that, there's no asymptotic advantage to using quantum computers. For doing your taxes or even hosting the Transgalactic Wikipedia, classical computers are here to stay.
PowerPC is not Harvard architecture. It has seperate L1 instruction and data cache, but that's it. Harvard implies that the instruction memory is in a distinct address space from the data address space, and that no instructions exist to allow one to write to the program memory.
The real problem for me seems to be the differential. On the kind of snow we get here in canada (south western ontario, lots of heavy wet snow) i find that the tires tend to over spin. Once the differential releases, I basically have to let it go back down to idle speed and slow to a crawl before I can get any more gas. The engine braking in low gear helps with this. Not exactly the sort of thing I like to do to any vehicle built after 1980, but it's only about 300 yards.
I drive a 1999 Toyota Solara SLE V6. There is a switch beside the transmission to disengage the traction control systems.
I absolutely agree with you that their traction control is awful on snow. Getting from my house to the main roads through the residential neighbourhood requires disengaging the traction control and manually shifting the transmission between 1st, 2nd, and automatic. Probably because I'm too cheap to buy snow tires.
A 2006 Lexus IS I looked at recently had a 3 way traction control switch: On, Off, and Snow. Apparently, Lexus agrees with us you about their performance on snow.
CS
Slashdot Mirror
TFS refers to watt hours
Missed that all important "hours" when I read TFS. Oops.
During a day, solar panels don't produce any watts of energy. Watts are a compound unit, specifically joules per second. Joules are a measurement of energy, and what would be produced in a a time period. Watts represent the instantaneous rate of power generation.
Still, we have ATi (AMD) specifications at least. For many users, closed drivers are as good as no drivers.
A dual core desktop is a different environment than a 128-way ccNUMA system. NUMA systems need to account for local and far memory, even though it's all one address space. There's a lot of optimization that could be done for desktops simply by trimming out all that complicated tuning logic that's used for running on larger systems.
Just a vendor's incompatible me-too implementation. I'm sure there are some semantic differences and maybe some new features, but it's the same thing. This product may also be aimed more at multicore desktops than SMP big iron like openmp is. I'm partial to MPI (Specifically, OcamlMPI) myself. 20 cores at 4.3 cpu-days and it was trivial to achieve >99% CPU utilization on all nodes.
Apparently some people have some issues with the language.
Take with a grain of salt.
The bitch of the problem is that we don't have a good thruster that's both high thrust and high specific impulse. The shuttle's main engines, for instance, are high thrust. The ion drive is an example of a much better propulsion system that just doesn't scale (yet anyways) to decent amounts of thrust.
As I said, most of this debris is harmless. We just need to worry about debris (at all levels) that gets on a collision course with missions that we care about.
Computer companies have special deals every other week. I'm sure you could pick one up for the same price if you didn't mind waiting a month or so.
Didn't somebody design a really cheap system of kamikaze satellites that would grapple the dangerous pieces and de-orbit them into the atmosphere? By really cheap I mean ~10,000 dollars. Surely we could put a couple of those on the ISS in case it looked like something was coming for it. I know it's expensive to launch the things, but AFAIK they're about the size of a propane tank for a BBQ and could be launched in vast numbers on a single rocket. The space is so large we only need to worry about the stuff in the space we WANT to be in or go through. All the geosynchronous stuff is in a much higher orbit, so we only need to worry about the stuff in LEO and the stuff going through it. It shoudn't be a problem to plot a course through it, and we can clear the orbits as we go.
I'm pretty sure the GP was talking about paying 1 k$ for the box + hardware warranty + software support. That's a pretty damn good price for an opteron workstation, especially one with a name like Sun on the front.
You won't have to. Intel macs need this bootcamp stuff because they don't have a BIOS, but use Intel's EFI. AFAIK, you can easily use elilo to boot linux on them.
Some folks swear by 'em, some folks hate 'em. Check out http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dbhardware2/ Covers a range of embedded devices from PICs to DSPs and talks about the various buses you'll see.
Depleted uranium is mostly U-238. There is some U-235 left in it but it's much less than even naturally occurring uranium. That's why it's called "depleted." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
They did that on Sleeper Cell a couple of nights ago. Granted, they were just getting the radioisotopes to test their lead-lined cooler so they'd be sure it wouldn't set off the Geiger counters when they loaded it up with the real nuclear payload. On the show they went out and bought at least 50 of the things from different stores.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with operator overloading as other posters have indicated. One thing I do think C++ could do better is have operators in a family. For instance, == and != have well understood and complementary functions. When we define equality on a type, the definition for inequality is pretty obvious. In the spirit of C++, there should be a way to specify completely different functions for them of course, but generally bool operator!=(const X &x1, const X &x2) { return !(x1 == x2) }; Just like x x. Or we could go further and say that y >= x is the same as !(y x). This is how Haskell handles its operators. Eq types can define equality, inequality, or both.
Tubeless internet tubes.
My girlfriend got a new macbook pro, low trim level, 512 mb of ram. My G4 powerbook from Apr 2004 ran circles around it. The swapping made it almost unusable with Safari + Mail + Finder + Adium + that iphoto app. Upgrading to 1 GB improved the responsiveness by orders of magnitude. I'm also in the unique position of having had a motherboard failure in my own powerbook. The lower ram slot stopped being used, necessitating a replacement (under warranty.) That dropped me from 1 GB to 512 MB, and believe me, it did not take long to notice the vast increase in suck. 512 MB is an absolute minimum for having a useful mac. 1 GB seems to be quite adequate. Let's make a fallacious and unfounded assumption and say 768 is the minimum ram req for OS X, 10.4. CS.
While Data (ST:TNG) isn't a scientist, certainly Dr. Noonian Soong is. Another very memorable scientist Spiner protrayed was the Area 51 scientist from Independence Day, Dr. Okun: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/
I'm not sure what you've heard quantum computers promise to do. I agree with you that optical computers, or rather, some form of classical computer will be the predominant type.
As far as we know, quantum computers can do (a) few things better than a classical computer:
Factoring numbers (this is why they'll kill public key encryption as it stands now)
Computing discrete logarithms (another function of cryptographic interest)
Search unstructured data (a quantum computer can do this in O(sqrt N) time as opposed to O(N) for a classical computer to run through every element)
Simulate quantum systems (fairly obviously)
Other than that, there's no asymptotic advantage to using quantum computers. For doing your taxes or even hosting the Transgalactic Wikipedia, classical computers are here to stay.
compact_support
PowerPC is not Harvard architecture. It has seperate L1 instruction and data cache, but that's it. Harvard implies that the instruction memory is in a distinct address space from the data address space, and that no instructions exist to allow one to write to the program memory.
The real problem for me seems to be the differential. On the kind of snow we get here in canada (south western ontario, lots of heavy wet snow) i find that the tires tend to over spin. Once the differential releases, I basically have to let it go back down to idle speed and slow to a crawl before I can get any more gas. The engine braking in low gear helps with this. Not exactly the sort of thing I like to do to any vehicle built after 1980, but it's only about 300 yards.
I drive a 1999 Toyota Solara SLE V6. There is a switch beside the transmission to disengage the traction control systems. I absolutely agree with you that their traction control is awful on snow. Getting from my house to the main roads through the residential neighbourhood requires disengaging the traction control and manually shifting the transmission between 1st, 2nd, and automatic. Probably because I'm too cheap to buy snow tires. A 2006 Lexus IS I looked at recently had a 3 way traction control switch: On, Off, and Snow. Apparently, Lexus agrees with us you about their performance on snow. CS