Slashback: Vaidhyanathan, Oregon, Opteron 629
'It would become impossible to have Open Source implementations of key pieces of the infrastructure. This would be harmful, perhaps fatal, to the grand plans of those who want to deploy Web services everywhere,' Bray is reported as saying, in XML Industry Newsletter ."
Waiting for the low-power version. Jethro writes "Ace's hardware Opteron review was a very interesting read which shows some real Java webserver benchmarks on SUSE and Debian Linux, and real world database performance in MySQL and MS SQL server 2000. A lot better than those synthetic mysql benchmarks that Tom's hardware served up."
And Distinguished Hero writes "[H]ardocp.com ([H]ardNews 1oth Edition) is reporting that the Opteron processor does not actually have an integrated dual channel controller. This explains why all the Opteron reviews only used a single channel configuration. While the integrated memory controlled is not dual channel, it can be bypassed by an external (Northbridge) memory controller connected to the processor via the HyperTransport bus."
One more: EconolineCrush writes "Yesterday's Opteron launch gave us all glimpse at AMD's new 64-bit platform, but the Opteron is a server and workstation chip that will be out of reach for the majority of consumers. AMD's upcoming Athlon 64, however, will bring 64-bit computing to the desktop. Drawing heavily from what we've seen of the Opteron's performance thus far, Tech-Report has posted its thoughts on what it will take for the Athlon 64 to succeed. It's an interesting read for anyone salivating at the thought of an affordable 64-bit desktop platform."
Ma'am, can you please ask those anarchists in the carrels to pipe down a bit? BrianWCarver writes "Readers may recall a Slashdot interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor at NYU, and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs. Vaidhyanathan is working on a new book, The Anarchist in the Library, and was interviewed on the blog, Eyeteeth. This is a brilliant and amazing interview where Vaidhyanathan discusses how creative communities share, the DMCA, the American industrial production of culture, the USA Patriot Act, the importance of libraries and librarians, and the policies of the FCC. It is a must-read for those who care about the future of creative and democratic culture."
Technically, Oregon is not Washington. Daniel Phillips is among the many folks who have been following the progress of a bill in Oregon (HB 2892) to encourage open source software, and he points out this Register story (picked up from NewsForge, actually), writing "Apparently, moving Oregon's open source bill forward comes down to convincing the house speaker."
Reader PotatoHead fleshes that out just a bit: " Despite reports detailing the demise of HB 2982, this bill continues to be a topic at the Oregon Legislature. We have broad support for HB 2892, but need everyone to continue showing support in the form of your phone calls, e-mails, faxes and snail-mail to your Oregon Representatives. We have the attention of the Oregon Legislature in a pretty big way and need to keep up the good work if HB 2892 is to move forward against the constant efforts of the usual industry lobbyists. If you don't already know, here is how you contact your representative. Please take a moment --right now-- and show your support for HB 2982. Every contact matters as we continue to move forward with HB 2892!"
Sir, can you direct me to the nearest buggy whip store so I can beat this dead horse? If $98 billion seems to you a bit much for the music cartel to charge students for even the most indiscriminant file swapping, you may be interested in following the chilling effects that it generates, too: PL_2003 writes "A follow up on a previous slashdot article. It really seems like the recording industry is determined to continue its fight.Check this NYTimes article (free reg. required). My Take: Couldn't they use their brains for a better business model?"
OK, here are the rules ... Grub (mentioned previously) is apparently causing consternation among many webmasters. Though they claim the client honors robots.txt , it seems that only the central servers check it (and don't honor it properly) and that grub clients don't don't check it at all. Ooops.
Time to round up and segregate the arrogant. jtheory writes "There's an AP story today here on Yahoo news) that the Justice department has dropped its probe into the recommendation policy of a Texas Tech bio professor. It's encouraging that all he had to do to stop the investigation was make some very minor changes in his policy, but it's still horrifying to me that he got into trouble in the first place. Is it even safe to encourage strict Creationists (or others with strong anti-scientific beliefs) to become doctors? Would they ignore animal research results, etc?"
Opteron memory controller details (Score:5, Insightful)
The various motherboard photos seem to indicate that their are DIMM sockets to accomodate 128-bit memory. I would hope that the various benchmarks have been done with this configuration, since it obviously increases the memory bandwidth considerably.
Reference: page 15 of the AMD Opteron Processor data sheet, AMD document 23932 rev 3.00 dated April 2003.
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:3, Informative)
Thats not really true. For one...not all pins on the die are in use. Some of the dead ones could be relocated over to pick up the slack. And if I remember reading correctly Opteron is initially being released this way but in late 2003 or early 2004 they are completely switching memory to DDR2, but since DDR2 is as hard to come by as Jesus in a Bottle, it kinda doesn
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:5, Informative)
So a useful additional memory controller will NOT fit the same package.
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where this crap is coming from. Certainly not from the document [amd.com] referenced in the parent post.
A DIMM is 64-bits wide. The Opteron has a 128-bit wide memory bus, which means you need to use pairs of DIMMS much like the older P4's with Rambus memory.
There are plenty of pins for this in the 940 package. The block diagram on page 11 of the the data sheet [amd.com] even shows the 128 MEMDATA pins.
The memory controller is configurable to support a 64-bit memory bus (probably for desktop or mobile versions of the part), but in all the systems I've used you can't even boot with an odd number of DIMMS.
Now you can decide for yourself if a 128-bit wide DDR bus is "dual channel" or not. I'm not going to argue semantics. I am, however, going to do the math and tell you that the Opteron paired with DDR333 provides 128*333/8 = 5328 MB/s of some seriously low-latency bandwidth. Oh yea and it scales with the number of processors too.
DISCLAIMER: I work at AMD but I am not speaking on behalf of the company.
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that does give you a lot of memory bandwidth. No, that doesn't make it "dual channel".
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a direct answer, but perhaps a lantern on the path
Re:Opteron memory controller details (Score:3, Insightful)
But claiming that it has two channels is like claiming that a Ferarri is two cars, because it's twice as fast as a Honda. If it were two cars, it could go to two different places at once.
The RIAA better win... (Score:5, Funny)
Could you imagine the counter-suit? I'd call a $98 BILLION lawsuit against "poor" college students "malicious prosecution."
--ZS
Re:The RIAA better win... (Score:2, Informative)
Let's see if we can list all of the cries that the RIAA has committed against them.
Libel, for one. Calling them criminals and pirates when they've done nothing wrong is most certainly defamation.
Malicious prosecution would most certainly apply. The RIAA has instigated just about the most unjustifiable and unreasonable civil litigation in this case that I've
Unprecedented levels of confusion... (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps we might actually get this bill through if we managed to figure out what the correct number is for once.
Opteron (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Opteron (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Opteron (Score:2)
Re:Opteron (Score:3, Informative)
Via is also doing an Opteron workstation chipset (including AGP), and it will support dual CPUs. Sorry, I don't have a link handy.
Opteron will be a very popular workstation CPU, IMO.
Re:Opteron (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Newegg.com has them for $300 (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong (Score:2)
Or so they say.
Three Times Quickly... (Score:4, Funny)
It's saying it one time correctly that's the challenge.
Re:Three Times Quickly... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Three Times Quickly... (Score:3, Insightful)
How is Siva Vaidyanathan any more difficult than Norman Schwarzkopf, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Condaleeza Rice?
I expect disparaging condescension from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Not here.
Magnus.
Alienating their customers (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would the record industry want to constantly go after their own best customers and future customers? Im no longer in college myself, don't buy much music anymore cause I prefer 80s music. I do buy a ton of DVDs though. The reaso nbeing there is great value in DVDs. I get superior picture quality and sound, a nice keep case, art work, special features, comentaries, interactive content, all for $14-$21.
If the record industry could offer such great content at a reasonable price, sales would skyrocket.
Instead they charge far too much for far too little, and on top of it, they constantly attack their own customers with threats and lawsuits and bullshit like CDs that wont play on their computer. Then they lobby for laws that punish not just music pirates but all people who wish to use the internet without restrictions. It's really quite amazing how a group of billionaires can be so ass backwards.
Im hoping their is a major backlash from the millions of students in this country.
Re:Alienating their customers (Score:4, Informative)
Lode [mtulode.com]
and Tompkins(MTU President) and Texas Congressman spar over copyrightsLode [mtulode.com]
The RIAA is just kicking itself in the butt. So sad..Re:Alienating their customers (Score:2)
I love U2. Thats one of the few mainstream releases I've bought this past year. I already own all the songs and B-sides on CD, but I bought that because it was a particularly good value. I download a lot of music, much of it out of print, much of it hard to find because its not popular or not good. I do not download music that I can just as easily buy.
When I can find a good CD for a fair price, I will b
I see... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's right to exclude someone from medical practice just because they don't ascribe to the theory of evolution. They're still capable of observation and understanding the scientific process, perhaps even more so than those who blindly adhere to a theory because they keep their minds open to the possibility that it is wrong. Science isn't about religious prejudice.
No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people I know who don't believe in biological macro-evolution still believe in an old earth, and they don't deny that the fossil record shows an increase in complexity in life over time. However, they simply don't believe random genetic mutation combined with natural selection is enough to drive the evolution of life to what we have today. How is that being unscientific? How is that person going to be a "dangerous" doctor?
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an idea. you want to be a programmer but, you don't believe in Arabic numerals. I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
Re:No kidding (Score:2)
That is true to a point and I would agree. Most people I know who don't believe in evolution simply refuse to believe in a lot of scientific proof that the earth is very old, for instance.
However, if the person has a good knowledge and understanding of how current biological processes work in human beings and how viruses, bacter
Re:No kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
But that is the very definition of evoluion. Any change in the allele frequency of a population over time is evolution. "Species" is a useful concept for taxonomy but has little meaning at the genetic level. In addition, your claim "evolution on the otherhand would have generated a new species" gets it backward, evolution needn't necessarily do any such thing: evolution does not imply speciation. Rather, speciation implies
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Informative)
If you think the argument from design is some sort of proof, you need to read Richard Dawkins [amazon.com], Stephen Jay Gould [amazon.com], and Daniel Dennett [amazon.com]. I don't expect them to convince you that you are wrong, but they should convince you that the argument from design doesn't stand by itself.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Banging on a tree is a good method to get the insect inhabitants out. It works marvelously for termites and ants. Don't believe me? Try it sometime on a bees nest.
I'm sure you've seen videos of monkeys hanging out, they are nearly always doing one thing in particular, picking fleas/ticks off of each other. Humans don't have the same difficulty becuase fleas have a hard time hanging onto hairless beasts.
Why does a giraffe have a long neck? Because thats where the leaves are. There are many reasons for walking upright, most notably it frees your hands up. I've seen videos of monkeys walking around holding something in one hand. It's rather awkward looking. Carry any more and you have to walk upright.
I am not listing this as proof of anything, the fact is that there are many possible reasons for your questions. It doesn't seem like you've looked very hard for answers.
When you say that no one can describe how the evolution of any creature has occured (which is false), I'm sure you really meant to say that no one can describe how even the simplest microbe was created from non-living material. That is a much more difficult question and the theory of evolution does not hinge on this question.
Evolution is not equivalent to random motion. I've also heard this as "tornado hitting a junkyard and making a 747". Evolution has a selection process and you do not start from scratch, you always build on what came before you. If evolution was only random, then it would be like browinian motion, it would never make any progress in any particular direction.
Also the burden of proof probably would not matter to you. If I told you which book to read that would prove evolution to you, would you read it? Have you ever read anything about evolution that was not written by a religous person?
I think it does affect your ability to study or understand because you do not look for "why" since you assume the answer to "why" is because god made it that way. Have you ever honestly tried to research why a woodpecker would begin banging its head on things? You have already assumed that certain aspects of this world are beyond your grasp as a non-god being. That type of attitude clearly shows that you will never have the level of understanding of other people who are going to try, even if it takes them their whole lives to understand the world around them.
This is still the case, except you have to remove the references to God. People are still exploring the beauty of the world with all its intricacies. Speak for yourself, I do not think I am nothing, I will continue to try to create something that will last forever. If the only people who are affected by what I have done in this world are my future children, then that will have been enough to make it all worthwhileRe:No kidding (Score:2)
You didn't actually read my post, did you? Oh well...
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
That's simply not true. There are scientists out there, who are not "creationists" who don't believe in biological macroevolution. They don't disbelieve it because of religious dogma. Here's one example: there are many biological constructs that are complex to the point that intermediate steps would not be beneficial to the organism. Now I realize there is effort underway to explain such constructs, but that is one example of the type of scientific thinking that one can use to argue against biological macroevolution. You may want to look into the theory of "intelligent design".
Pure flamebait, but I'll respond anyway. I've had plenty of doctor's that I know were Christians. Now, I don't know if they believed in evolution or not, but they were extremely caring and knowledgable doctors who took care of me and my family. And as for prayer, I know there has been at least one recent study that was showing that prayer does have affect on health. I believe it was in Wired. I unfortunately don't have the link, nor the time right now to look it up.
Re:No kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you name one?
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
Peter Sadler, Simon Conway Morris, Derek Biggs, Harry
Whittington, Jeffrey Schwarz, Douglas Erwin, David
Jablonski, James Lake, Ravi Jain, Maria Rivera,
Carl Woese, W. Ford Doolittle, Malcom Gordon...
When a Chinese paleontologist lecturing on problems
with macroevolution in the U.S. was advised that
criticizing Darwinism was politically incorrect
in the U.S., he laughed, saying "In China, we can
critize Darwin, but not the government; in
America, you can criticize the government, but
not Darwin."
Re:No kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, so that is why the Dixie Chicks have recieved death threats [bbc.co.uk]?
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Interesting)
who was not a creationist, but did not believe in
classical macroevolution. I provided numerous
examples, but now you criticise my reply because
they were not creationists?
I don't think I'll bother to reply to you in future.
It seems you are so blinded by ideology that you can't
think coherently! Sorry to be so frank, but I'm
not one to beat around the bush.
Re:No kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
The placebo effect. Psych 101, boy. And it doesn't work if someone else prays for you, only if *you* pray for you. God has nothing to do with it.
Of course, if you can produce a empirical, scientific study published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal supporting the idea that prayer affects the health of others, please do so.
Max
Re:I see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Creationists often try to pass themselves off as scientists and their dogma as yet another scientific theory which should be given a fair shake, but because creationism does not lend itself to testing and thus prediction, that tells the world that they either willfully misunderstand the scientific process or don't get it at all.
It boils down to the fact that we have an obligation to protect the ignorant from pseudoscience.
Oh, and religion has no place in science whatsoever, not until god manifests himself as something observable/testable at any rate.
Re:Ok (Score:5, Interesting)
You put on a mask and go and watch it happen to cichlids in Lake Malawi. I tried to find a good single reference online, but unfortunately, I couldn't. I knew some friends of friends who are writing up the PhDs on speciation they WATCHED happening in cichlids, over the course of their studies. A google search might be interesting, if you are willing to read a lot of marginal links. There is some mention of it online, but no silver bullet.
To be picky, generally most scientific theories are disproved. That is because they are useful models that get thrown away as soon as there is enough data to show they need modification.
This is the difference between science and creationism, and why I do not respect creationism as an intellectual endeavour.
Other posters in this thread would call me "ignorant" and say that there is more than one legitimate way to evaluate knowledge. To them I say "Yes, and creationism isn't one of them". Science works because it accepts that pet theories get put down. In the grand menagerie of ways to examine an idea out there, the scientific method is still the best I've seen.
As for sudden changes in species, it has been hypothesised that the activation of long dormant genes in a species can produce mutants that are drastically different from the parents, and could be a good contender for a mechanism to produce large changes in a species in a single generation. ie. The activation or mutation of a long dormant (or even virally borrowed) gene in a species can produce a dramatic change that is potentially useful (A bit like commenting in a function call in a program, randomly). This is a testable hypothesis, and people are trying to do so.
Another avenue is that of homeobox genes. Small changes in these selector genes cause dramatic changes in a species because they select for large features in a species. A bit like adding random function calls into main() if you are a C programmer. Here [rcn.com] is an example link of the neat things you can do to test these sorts of theories.
This post isn't intended specifically as a reply to you. It's a sort of general meander inspired by all the stuff in this thread. Hope you find it interesting.
-Nurf
Re:Ok (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes there is an increase in information used to generate the creature. Sometimes not. I think you are confusing your perception of trends with actual rules. You could arrange genes in a different order to produce a different result that is sexually incompatible with a pre-existing species. Thus there would be a new species, but no loss
Re:I see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I see... (Score:5, Insightful)
My views are tempered by the knowledge that before we had the means to detect microwaves or X-Rays, as just a couple of examples, for all intents and purposes they were as "real" as 'God' or 'Allah', nevertheless they have existed since way before humans did. Likewise, if I get up in the morning and there is snow on the ground, I don't have to have seen it snowing to believe it.
Suckers Lining Up For The "New Religion" [xnewswire.com]
Re:I see... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've realised there are only two techniques that work. One is to ignore them. The second is to insult them. There is no value in reasoning with them. You are wasting your time if you try.
About 8 years ago I used to argue/reason. I then realised the futility and went into "lurking mode" unt
Answer from a creationist (Score:3, Interesting)
Hope this helps!
Re:Answer from a creationist (Score:4, Interesting)
But theistic evolution is not a scientific theory, because the theistic portion is not falsifiable. Evidence may be found to support or falsify evolution, but no evidence would disprove that a supreme being was responsible for evolution. Thus it is no more appropriate to teach theistic evolution as science than to teach creationism as science. Both are more properly part of religion.
Note that I'm not at all opposing teaching of theistic evolution or creationism. I only object to them being taught as science, which they clearly are not.
James P. Hogan wrote a good science fiction short story describing the celestial events leading up to theistic evolution instead of creation. I don't recall the title, though it was probably collected in either "Minds, Machines and Evolution" or "Rockets, Redheads, and Revolution". He also wrote a good essay explaining more eloquently than I can why evolution and theistic evolution are not scientific theories.
Re:Answer from a creationist (Score:3, Insightful)
> because the theistic portion is not falsifiable.
That depends entirely on where you set the bar for
falsification. For example, if you were to say that
the generation of a theory adequate to explain all
observed facts of the fossil record without reference
to design, with a demonstrable high degree of
probable success is a falsification of the theistic
model, then it is falsifiable in principle.
If it is not falsifiable in practice, that may
be because it
Re:I see... (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all I must confess that I am always surprised by these topic. I never met anyone in a public European school that was taught Creationism as a theory up for studying (but they probably exist. Somewhere. Maybe in a barn or something). I was done with it in 5 minutes in one class, I spent more time studying the flaws in Lamarck. So it's r
Re:I see... (Score:2)
Well, maybe politicians are a bad example.
Re:I see... (Score:2)
Re:I see... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I see... (Score:2, Funny)
Well, reading it on Slashdot comes to mind...
Oops, forgot the sarcasm tags.
Re:I see... (Score:2)
Re:I see... (Score:3, Informative)
No, it's not. That's natural selection, which is a subtly but distinctly different thing.
If you'd said that you came back the next summer and suddenly the rabbits in your field had been unable to successfully breed with other rabbits, that would have been something like evolution. (Speciation, anyway.) And if you'd said that all the rabbits had become leopards or something, that would have been evolution in action.
The point is that it's silly to deny that natural selection happens. L
Re:I see... (Score:2)
The study of the origins of life, the universe and everything simply does not fall within the realm of empirical science. You can't prove how we came to be here, because once you form a hypothesis, you can't test it. You can't repeat something that took millions of years, or happened millions of years ago.
A) Humans and chimpanzees share common traits, and can be affected by some of the same medicines in the same way, because both have evolved from a common ance
Re:I see... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand the last line. Do you mean that there's no proof that the earth is 4-5 Billion years old? [talkorigins.org] Or do you mean there's never been an observed instance of speciation [talkorigins.org]?
64 bit desktops... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:64 bit desktops... (Score:2)
They call there workstations workstations but they are servers with great i/o but shit poor performance for any workstation related task.
grrrr (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. For example, it would be completely beyond the pail were a state-run university to require that medical students believe in... medicine.
creationists (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a slippery slope you're suggesting.
Should we exclude people from becoming doctors because they believe that Jesus came back from the dead - a belief which is both unscientific and contrary to our understanding of medical science?
Re:creationists (Score:5, Insightful)
I work with plenty of devout Hindus, and their beliefs are complete foreign to me (don't eat cows because they are sacred animals, they believe in not just one god, but many different gods, etc). Personally, I don't subscribe to any of it, but that's just my own personal belief, they are completely free to believe whatever they want, and who knows, they could be right and I could be wrong!
Why is it that creationists are so looked down upon, but other religions that, for example, believe that the world is sitting on an elephant that is sitting on a turtle are okay? Is it because it is expected that white people in North America should know better, but non-whites are free to believe whatever they want?!? That to me seems at the very least bigotted.
Re:creationists (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe because those who believe the world is sitting on an elephant on a turtle aren't making nuisances of themselves. I haven't heard turtle believers arguing loudly and often in front of legislatures that we need to throw out all of the astronomy and geology books. Incidentally, biology isn't the only science on the creationists' shit list; even physics would have to be...ah....modified to not state inconvienient facts.
This isn't Western bigotry. If large numbers of turtle believers in our midsts were doing their damndest to drag us back to the 14th century, they'd be looked down on too. Every culture on this planet has problems with religious luddites. The creationists just happen to be ours.
Because they're thought of as heathens? (Score:2)
Damn. If I had any mod points, you'd have gotten one. I'd have liked to have given you two or three, actually.
I was always apalled at the do
Re:creationists (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have to say that I don't care what my doctor's beliefs are... As long as his/her beliefs do not affect the job. Someone can freely believe that the world was created 5000 years ago, that dinosaurs never existed, and that there is no such thing as evolution; yet still believe enough of modern biological thinking to believe in germs, virii, and assorted other medical beliefs.
But, the moment that a persons beliefs interfere with scientific thinking (such as denying the existence of ge
Re:creationists (Score:2)
No, because as a miracle, the resurrection is supposed to defy what medical science would predict.
Faulty reasoning? (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly do you make that connection between Creationism and ignoring animal research? I hate to break it to you, but the people who typically believe that animals should not be researched upon are the ones who believe they evolved (and thus, are no differnt from humans and deserve the same treatment). Creationism by its very nature puts humans above and beyond other animals, and thus animals are to be utilized by humans.
Re:Faulty reasoning? (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, vegetarians kill plants.
Re:Faulty reasoning? (Score:2)
Besides, vegetarians kill plants.
Give me a break. Plants don't have nervous systems like animals. Therefore don't feel pain or suffer like when you
Re:Faulty reasoning? (Score:2)
More to my point, murdering is malicious, and unprovoked.
Give me a break. Plants don't have nervous systems like animals. Therefore don't feel pain or suffer like when you pour chemicals in their eyes or cut their throat.
Yeah, you got me on that one, but i coudlnt resist
Re:Faulty reasoning? (Score:2)
HOW and WHY they are like that, is where Creation vs. evolution comes into play.
I Know an Astronomer Who's a Creationist (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't seem to interfere with his work.
Re:I Know an Astronomer Who's a Creationist (Score:2)
Re:I Know an Astronomer Who's a Creationist (Score:3, Interesting)
Oregon Legislation Listens (Score:4, Informative)
---
I am fully supportive of the bill, and as a member of the committee
(General Government) assigned the bill, I am working with the proponents
and a few other legislators to move this bill.
We had a very successful hearing on it that attracted a great deal of
opposition from some of the big high-tech lobbyists. They turned out in
force and are now trying to prevent those of us on the committee who
support it from bringing it up for a work session. Unfortunately on
their side, the lobbyists have the committee chair, most committee
members of the majority party (Republicans), and a few influential
members of the House leadership. The fact that the bill has so much
muscle against it means we are giving them a fight they did not expect
to face!
Thanks for contacting me about this. If you have not already, please
feel free to send your email to other legislators as well.
Sincerely,
Kelley Wirth
State Representative
District 16
Melissa P. White
Legislative Assistant
Representative Kelley Wirth
District 16
900 Court Street NE
Salem, Oregon 97301
503-986-1416
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam XXXXX [mailto:XXXXXXXX@attbi.com]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 10:47 PM
To: REP Wirth
Subject: Internet email for Legislative Member, TO: Kelley Wirth
Dear Representative Kelley Wirth:
I'm very disappointed to hear that House Bill 2892 is being stalled
because large corporations fear it's implications. Open Source software
should be consider equally along with other costly software! If the
Open Source software is more cost effective and achieves the same
purpose it should be used in Oregon government applications. This would
be a perfect oppurtunity for Oregon lawmakers to show their commitment
to maximize taxpayers money! Thanks and please consider my thoughts.
Sincerely,
Adam XXXXXX
XXX NW 5th #XXX
Corvallis, Oregon 97330
XXXXXXXX@attbi.com
HB2892 Alive? Dead? (Score:4, Interesting)
My Oregon House Representative, Mitch Greenlick (Democrat-033), wrote back to me:
Now, I don't mean to be a naysayer, and I'd hate to quit too early, but when the man says it's dead...
Doomed feelings aside, I'm off to write the speaker of the house, Ms. Minnis... As I said to Rep. Greenlick, I'd rather not have my taxes raised when the alternative could be to use open-source software providing Oregonians with jobs (installation, design, maintenance) and saving money by eliminating the need to pay economic rent to Washingtonians (Microsoft Licensing Fees).
SLM
Alive! (Score:3, Insightful)
You all must remember, the process is fluid. There are many ways this bill can continue to move through the legislature.
If this is something we *really* want, and they understand that, then the bill stands a chance. They can move any issue they want to in any number of ways. If this were a sweetheart bill, you can bet it would find a way to move thr
Grub Fools and Slashdot Editors (Score:5, Insightful)
"People who choose to download and run the client will assist in building the Web's largest, most accurate database of URLs."
Already I find myself rolling my eyes.
Then I click through to the site. Aha. I will volunteer my machine on a non-profit basis for a for-profit company. This is just like distributed.net and SETI? Give me a break, these guys were bought out by Looksmart, a paid for placement ad company.
Google didn't succeed by getting slashdot editors to post stories saying they are building the most useful search engine out there, they succeeded by actually building it.
I just hope grub keeps the fools who want to regulate google away. Google succeeded because they didn't have to listen to self-important analysts.
Opteron's ECC supports scrubbing! (Score:5, Informative)
It appears that the Opteron can report the actual address of any detected errors. Plus, it can report details of ECC errors in its caches.
But the coolest feature is that it supports memory scrubbing, a feature I'd previously not seen in a microprocessor or chipset since the iAPX 432 memory controller back in 1983.
When a SEU causes a single-bit error in a word of memory, the ECC is capable of correcting it when the word is read. But if that word doesn't get read again for a long time, it's possible that a second SEU might happen in the same word, which would then be an uncorrectable error. With memory scrubbing, the memory controller uses a small portion of the memory bandwidth to scan the entire memory, correcting any single-bit errors that are found, so that the probability of a two-bit (or more) uncorrectable error is greatly reduced.
My last several computers (including a dual Athlon using the 760MPX chip set, and a DEC Alpha) had ECC, but not scrubbing. I considered writing a Linux program to scrub the memory by direct access to /dev/mem, but this has the disadvantage of thrashing the processor's caches. By implementing scrubbing in hardware, the Opteron avoids that problem.
The Opteron has a Scrub Control Register that is used to enable or disable scrubbing and control the rate. There are independent scrubbing controls for the L1 data cache, L2 cache, and main memory.
Those of us that want high reliability really welcome this feature. Well done, AMD!
By the way, it should be noted that it is typical for a PC with 128 megabytes of memory to get a single bit error several times a week. On my Alpha, I routinely saw corrected error log messages in the syslog, which gave me much more confidence in the system than the way that most PCs simply fail to even detect memory errors, let alone correct them. The log messages are also useful in that you can determine whether you have some memory that is getting marginal. For instance, at one point I started getting a much higher rate of corrected errors on one particular SIMM. There may have been a slight amount of oxidation or corrosion on the contacts, or they may have just worked themselves loose a bit. Cleaning the contacts and reseating the SIMM solved the problem with only a few minutes of down time, instead of what probably would have been hours of down time had the errors gone unnoticed.
The results of an undetected error vary considerably; it may be in memory that is not in use at the time, or it could be in the midst of the operating system, an application, or user data.
Re:Opteron's ECC supports scrubbing! (Score:4, Informative)
The AMD MPX (dual Athlon) chipset also supports memory scrubbing.
Re:Opteron's ECC supports scrubbing! (Score:3, Informative)
It's good to see the AMD Opteron finally adding this level of reliability to IA-32/64 hardware.
On another note... I think you're mistaken when you say it's normal for a PC to get single bit errors several times a week. On all the Sun boxes I work on if I'm getting single bit errors on any DIMM I replace it right away. A DIMM that
OT but... (Score:2)
And it's not some browser specific bug... It's displayed in both Mozilla and IE.
They're everywhere (Score:3, Informative)
The winner, hovever, seems to be this [slashdot.org] one about the GPL vs. the XP licence: it has Tux on top of Bill of Borg, both above the Justice lady. Hrm...
Why are Opteron's out of reach? vs Athlon64? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because it says 'server' on the box the chip comes in?
thad
"what it will take for the Athlon 64 to succeed" (Score:3, Interesting)
This would also solve the memory controller bandwidth problem. People who need the additional bandwidth can use two clawhammers; they'll want SMP anyway. This was my plan all along, my understanding was that sledgehammner had a superior (dual channel) memory controller and an additional HT link (three total) and that clawhammer had only a single channel memory controller but still had two HT links, so you could get dual processor SMP out of it for "free" (only the cost of supporting the pins and bus connections on the motherboard.) I don't see why you wouldn't be able to build linear-connected SMP machines with it either, up to 32 nodes or whatever HT supports, though I'm not sure how useful a machine set up with those kind of interconnects would be, or what kind of OS it would take to do anything meaningful with it.
Anyway, AMD really did promise those things in their marketing literature -- 1-2 way clawhammer and 2-8 way sledgehammer (that always looked funny to me, like they were implying you had to run at least two chips) and the processors in the sledgehammer would be cross-connected, with two of them each employing a dual channel memory controller at once. Then they changed their minds. Doubtless they felt that they had to remove it to bring the chips down to some magical price point, and maybe they're right, but I was expecting a really classy CPU and what we're getting is cool and all, but they missed the geek factor pretty much entirely.
Now it's not like itanic is there mind you, the new PowerPC is pretty geeky but that can't make it a leading processor just because of the weight behind x86 (which if you think about it, AMD is helping to preserve. we laud them for their backwards compatibility, and we hope their new extensions are better-implemented than, say, the i386's. :) They certainly look better, it looks like a great chip in every way, but it really does appear to need another hypertransport link. Come on, AMD.
Re:"what it will take for the Athlon 64 to succeed (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, such a configuration using the Athlon 64 will not be supported by AMD, since the Athlon 64 will n
robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
What punishment is there for not honoring it?
Instead there should be a technological solution, rather than a legal or social solution (the current solution, I believe, is social).
The answer? Look to Slashdot. Create artificial "delays" in access times. Slashdot has 2 minutes between posts and 20 seconds between clicking "Reply" and "Submit".
The web sites could have an artificial 2- or 3-second delay between accesses, so for instance if a "robot" was scanning the site it would experience slow-downs. And it could increase the delay upon multiple accesses, by (say) 1 second each access within the limit, so that the spider would end up taking a very long time to get each page.
This would require no change in laws, or in "social" behavior to punish the spiders. People generally don't click on a new link that quickly anyway (they tend to read some of the page before clicking on a link on that page), so this would be very non-intrusive for regular users but would slow down a spider.
Of course, then the spiders would be written such that they scan multiple sites, so a slowdown on one (or every) site wouldn't slow the spider down much. But that's the price we pay for putting information on the internet.
I seriously think the practice of using "robots.txt" is silly.
Re:robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
If it becomes commonplace that spiders break the social contract, then web sites will have to get better weapons. This means development time spent on something that ultimately benefits noone. Some of the measures that could be used would in fact h
Simple Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Absurdity of the Creationist's Case (Score:4, Informative)
Original:
"How do you think the human species originated?
If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences"
New:
"How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species? If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation."
Read the statement: http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/letters.ht
He explains his requirement and *still* says that he will not recommend people who reject evolution.
2) Professors have the right to choose who they will and will not write a recommendation for. Should they be required to put their recommendation behind anyone who asks them?
3) The student in question never asked Dr Dini for a recommendation at all.
4) Dini also requires the student to have earned and "A" in one of his classes. Spradling had not done this.
5) Dini requires that "I should know you fairly well." Dini says he had no idea who Spradling was.
Basically the whole situation is a publicity stunt dreamed up by a creationists. The Spradling didn't meet *any* of Dini's criteria for recommendation.
What did your Rep say about Open Source in Oregon? (Score:3, Informative)
So, what does your Rep say? Here is mine:
(Positive)
Dear Mr. Potatohead,
Thank you for your email in support of HB 2892. Rep. Dingfelder supports
the concept of this bill and realizes the cost savings that it would
bring about. At present, the bill is undergoing a few amendments so I am
unable to commit to her vote for the bill until the final versions come
out. However, my guess is that she will support it. I have passed along
your comments to her. In addition, I will place a copy of your email in
the bill file. This will assure that she again sees your comments prior
to voting on the bill on the house floor.
Thanks for taking the time to contact our office regarding this issue.
The representative greatly appreciates your input! Please feel free to
contact out office at any time we can be of assistance to you.
Sincerely,
(name)
Legislative Assistant to Rep. Jackie Dingfelder
House District 45
(Phone)
US Christian Fundies and NeoCrusades (Score:3, Insightful)
From the Republican Senators (the racist/homophobe), Ashcroft's prayer meetings, Ashcroft's draping a nude statue w/ a drape (!), bush's "faith based" BS... etc etc etc.
The seperation between church and state, and the ability for people to understand that ALL these things are instances of Fundemental (Reconstructionist even) Christian goals/acts/efforts is very scary.
Even Bush believes God is on his side [bbc.co.uk] in Iraq - you'd think someone in his position, a leader of a secular USA, wouldnt be a delluded cultist.
From that article above:
One in three American Christians call themselves evangelicals and many evangelicals believe the second coming of Christ will occur in the Middle East after a titanic battle with the anti-Christ.
Does the president believe he is playing a part in the final events of Armageddon?
If true, it is an alarming thought.
But he would not be alone, as 59% of all Americans believe that what is written in the Bible's Book of Revelation will come to pass.
Re:Where do they come up with these names? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where do they come up with these names? (Score:2, Informative)
si = shift (approximate)
va = vulnerable
vai = why
dya = the + yummy
naa = banana
than = thumb + noun
Re:To pronounce it (Score:4, Informative)
Shiv-uh (Siv-uh is fine too)
VYE-Duh-NAT-hun
Vaidya means 'physician' in Sanskrit, FWIW.
Re:Where do they come up with these names? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Where do they come up with these names? (Score:2)
Re:Sad news ... Stephen King dead at 55 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sad news ... Stephen King dead at 55 (Score:2)
Get used to it...people say people are dead. Don't worry, they're not.
I disagree (Religion, Science, and Philosophy) (Score:3, Insightful)
Creationsist (and inteligent design believers) do not play by these rules, hence they are not in the business of science.
What you have
Blacklisting? Hardly (Score:3, Interesting)
Modern inquisition? Give me a break.