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AMD FirePro W9100 16GB Workstation GPU Put To the Test 42

Dputiger (561114) writes "It has been almost two years since AMD launched the FirePro W9000 and kicked off a heated battle in the workstation GPU wars with NVIDIA. AMD recently released the powerful FirePro W9100, however, a new card based on the same Hawaii-class GPU as the desktop R9 290X, but aimed at the professional workstation market. The W9100's GPU features 2,816 stream processors, and the card boasts 320GB/s of memory bandwidth, and six mini-DisplayPorts, all of which support DP1.2 and 4K output. The W9100 carries more RAM than any other AMD GPU as well, a whopping 16GB of GDDR5 on a single card. Even NVIDIA's top-end Quadro K6000 tops out at 12GB, which means AMD sits in a class by itself in this area. In terms of performance, this review shows that the FirePro W9100 doesn't always outshine its competition, but its price/performance ratio keep it firmly in the running. But if AMD continues to improve its product mix and overall software support, it should close the gap even more in the pro GPU market in the next 18-24 months."

Comment Re:better than what we have now (Score 1) 249

Yeah, right.

Obviously you have some problems grasping the concept that in a complex urban society is not only the (none-)care-givers that are involved.

This child's death could have been entirely avoidable if the system hadn't completely failed him.

This statue, as well as this faux controversy, helps to keep the story in the fore-front, and that is an entirely good thing.

Comment Golden Method? (Score 1) 157

1 - Write an automated take down script :
        For each $contentProvider
        {
                For each $content in getCatalog($contentProvider)
                {
                          if(true)
                                  sendDMCATakeDownNotice( $contentProvider, $content, getRandomClientName() );
                }
        }

        For each $counterNotice
                send( $contentProvider, "My apologies, it is the automated script which made the mistake. Your feedback will help improve its detection rate'); // Do not change anything...

2 - Sell the service to hundreds of these large companies.
3 - Profit!

Comment Stallman's "blessings" are for software freedom (Score 1) 101

[...] not everything has to be blessed by Stallmann to be acceptable

Regarding this point, Stallman certainly does endorse Free Software. And so much of what is in OpenBSD is Free Software—software that respects a user's software freedom—and the same goes for OpenSSL. Stallman (and his organization, the Free Software Foundation(FSF)) are known for standing up for a user's software freedom. Non-copylefted Free Software is Free Software. Furthermore, in 2004 the FSF gave Theo de Raadt an award for the Advancement of Free Software, "[f]or recognition as founder and project leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects, Theo de Raadt's work has also led to significant contributions to other BSD distributions and GNU/Linux. Of particular note is Theo's work on OpenSSH". A free system need not include GNU software or be licensed under a GNU license (such as the GPL) to respect a user's software freedom.

The FSF is quite clear why it doesn't list OpenBSD (or the other BSD distributions) in their list of Free system distributions:

FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all include instructions for obtaining nonfree programs in their ports system. In addition, their kernels include nonfree firmware blobs.

Nonfree firmware programs used with Linux, the kernel, are called "blobs", and that's how we use the term. In BSD parlance, the term "blob" means something else: a nonfree driver. OpenBSD and perhaps other BSD distributions (called "projects" by BSD developers) have the policy of not including those. That is the right policy, as regards drivers; but when the developers say these distributions âoecontain no blobsâ, it causes a misunderstanding. They are not talking about firmware blobs.

No BSD distribution has policies against proprietary binary-only firmware that might be loaded even by free drivers.

Including nonfree software and pointing users to nonfree software is quite common among those who endorse the open source philosophy, as the FSF has long pointed out (older essay, newer essay). The open source movement's philosophy is a development methodology built to toss aside software freedom for practical convenience in an attempt to be "more acceptable to business". So this philosophical difference sets up a radically different reaction in the face of reliable, powerful proprietary software. Quoting the newer essay:

A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. Instead I will support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

Comment Re:Sure, double liability solves the problem... (Score 1) 389

A sole proprietorship or partnership has unlimited liability which certainly makes it more difficult (though not impossible) to raise funds or start new businesses. Under current rules a corporation has single liability which both reduces total liability and more importantly makes it quantifiable. Double liability raises the liability cap without throwing out the quantifiable part. Under that scenario reactor funding would be slighty more expensive and the shareholders would doubtless demand extra safety measures but it would hardly kill the entire industry. Frankly, I think we should move to double liability for all shares of stock, but that's a different conversation altogether.

Comment Re:Or (Score 1) 389

Compared to the known problems with coal, I think it's a worthy trade off and a manageable risk, but perhaps you'd prefer to demand perfection instead of incremental improvement and keep burning coal for the next 50-100 years while we figure out Fusion. I'm sure the coral reefs will thank you for the continued acidification.

Comment Re:Or (Score 1) 389

Nuclear has some operational issues (storing waste being the biggest) but the failure issues are the big ones. They occur infrequently but unlike every single other source of fuel, render 100s of square miles uninhabitable for decades. Nothing else has that problem.

There is a pretty straightforward market based solution to that sort of problem, double liability. It was used in the past when we had a more private banking system to ensure that institutions and shareholders would take risk seriously. Combined with moving to Gen III and newer reactor designs the overall problem should be quite manageable for the 100 years or so we need till Fusion is widely deployed.

Comment Re:Or (Score 2) 389

Climate change isn't an important externality, it's bullshit. And that fact is becoming increasingly clear to the public.

Even if that were true there are plenty of other externalized costs for coal. Here is a short list: Health problems caused by coal dust and fly ash, radioactive carbon-14 being spewed all over the place, atrocious mining practices that pretty much destroy the entire area, mercury pollution and sulfur dioxide emissions just to name a few.

True, there are no completely clean power sources but coal is pretty much the worst. The correct answer would be to create an externalized costs tax and apply it to all sources of power generation based on their various impacts then let the market sort it out.

Comment No... (Score 2) 144

That's kindof BS...

Mass doesn't expand infinitely nor is there a speed threshold of energy as far as our current understanding of physics goes... This is a simplistic bookkeeping trick that attempts to account for limited acceleration near the speed of light (since F=ma, for a given force, you get less "a" if you somehow fudge 'm' to increase as you approach the speed of light). General relativity explains this much better by having any mass or energy actually distort space time so that you don't ever need this overly simplistic bookkeeping trick (which has unfortunate anomalies like rest-mass and photons having no rest mass, but momentum).

In your own frame of reference, you can accelerate as long as you have the energy to do so. The problem is that from an external observer's frame of reference despite your apparent acceleration from your frame of reference (you think you are going faster and faster), your time dilation factor relative to the observer means it doesn't observer you exceeding the speed of light, The observer thinks your acceleration (dv/dt) is asymptotically approaching zero as you approach the speed of light. Even though you have been accelerating all the time, you don't teleport relative to the observer (although the observer will think you were moving very, very fast, but not faster than light), but if you were to get back to the same frame of reference as the observer, you will have noticed your observer has experience quite a bit more time than you have (this is the origin of the twin paradox of special relativity).

From your special relatively frame of reference, you moved very fast (because you experienced less time for the distance you appeared to travel), but from the observers point of view, more time was experienced, so the velocity never exceed the speed of light. The way this is book-kept for is usually lorenzian length contraction. As you approach the speed of light the distance you observer to traverse over a unit of your time is shorter, so when you divide the distance by your time, you also don't observe that you went faster than the speed of light.

Of course if you could somehow create say a warp drive (or some other FTL transport), to a third party observer, you might appear to be in two places at once, and/or it would appear like time transport, but many folks thinks it is really possible to do this. Creating such a warp disturbance (actually warping space time around you) would likely require a very, very large, but not infinite amount of energy to maintain a negative energy-density around you. It is hypothesized you could not do this w/o some sort of pervasive zero-point energy source or creation of a type of exotic matter to sustain the required region of negative energy-density.

Comment Re:yes but (Score 1) 302

I agree that's what the supreme court decided in a close 5-4 decision. I don't agree that's the correct interpretation. A corporation is much more than just a tax classification, it includes limits on liability, easier financing and a separation of ownership & management that makes it very different from a private institution. I agree with the primary dissenting opinion in this case where Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes "The exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities".

Comment Re:yes but (Score 1) 302

Civilization itself requires that we give up certain rights and accept certain constraints. For example, if someone kills my dog I'm not allowed to go next door and shoot him. Instead I'm required to report it to the police and allow the justice system to prosecute him instead. It's all a matter of which trade offs are reasonable and ethically consistent.

Your argument is based on the idea that the government is taking away the rights of an individual to express his religious freedom. My argument is that incorporation means the business is not an extension of it's individual owners but a public institution. Public institutions are governed in a much different fashion than private ones and rightly so. I'm not arguing that they should have to surrender their rights in order to participate in commerce, I'm merely arguing that they should have to be formed as a sole proprietorship or partnership to express this particular right under the current set of laws.

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