Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust
nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu
REDMOND, Wash. -- [Groves and "software spiral". Challenge of
multicore chips....]
The challenges have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the
new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the
arrival of manycore chips -- processors with more than eight cores,
possible as soon as 2010 -- will transform the world of personal
computing.
[Yes, that way the chips will barely be able to keep up with the bloat
in Windows 2010.]
[Microsoft investing in parallel processing...]
"Microsoft is doing the right thing in trying to develop parallel
software," said Andrew Singer, a veteran software designer who is the
co-founder of Rapport Inc., a parallel computing company based in
Redwood City, Calif. "They could be roadkill if somebody else figures
out how to do this first."
Mr. Grove's software spiral started to break down two years ago.
Intel's microprocessors were generating so much heat that they were
melting, forcing Intel to change direction and try to add computing
power by placing multiple smaller processors on a single chip....
[Tough software problem...]
Indeed, a leading computer scientist has warned that an easy solution
to programming chips with dozens of processors has not yet been
discovered.
"Industry has basically thrown a Hail Mary," said David Patterson, a
pioneering computer scientist at the University of California,
Berkeley, referring to the hardware shift during a recent lecture.
"The whole industry is betting on parallel computing. They've thrown
it, but the big problem is catching it."
To accelerate its parallel computing efforts, Microsoft has hired some
of the best minds in the field and has set up teams to explore
approaches to rewriting the company's software.
[MS people think maybe 100x increase in processing speed possible...]
[Microsoft executives talk about hand-held devices...]
[MS hiring experts from academia, industry...]
In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
assistant.
"My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were
probably the most important, but it could go a step further," he said.
"It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I've ever
corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic
context, it could draft three possible replies. [Right before it
crashes.] And when I came in in the morning, it would say, hey, I
looked at these messages, these are the ones you probably care about,
you probably want to do this for these guys, and just click yes and
I'll finish the appointment." ...
"I'm skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope," said
Gordon Bell, one of the nation's pioneering computer designers, who is
now a fellow at Microsoft Research.
Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer
industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a
program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little
interest.
[Straight from NSF to Microsoft---how convenient.]
"They told me, 'You can't tell us what to do,'" he said. "Now the
machines are here and we haven't got it right."
</Quote>
Tim Smith
> "I'm skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope," said
> Gordon Bell, one of the nation's pioneering computer designers, who is
> now a fellow at Microsoft Research.
>
> Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer
> industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a
> program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little
> interest.
>
> [Straight from NSF to Microsoft---how convenient.]
Huh? It was many years after NSF that he went to MS.
nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu
Roy Schestowitz
> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
> assistant.
Wow. What a visionary.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | (S)oftware (U)nd (S)ystem(E)ntwicklung
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Tasks: 108 total, 1 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
http://iuron.com - knowledge engine, not a search engine
Jerry McBride
> ____/ nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu on Monday 17 December 2007 18:32 : \____
>
>> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
>> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
>> assistant.
>
> Wow. What a visionary.
>
Yeah... what is this rubbish? Is micoslop innovating parallel programming
now? This stuff is amazingly stupid... and yet windows lemmings will suck
it up like it's gospel!
--
Jerry McBride (jmcb...@mail-on.us)
Hadron
So you have the algorithm for scheduling massively parallel processor
clusters with work from a pool of random processes accessing non
predetermined storage do you?
Oh good.
Another first for COLA.
Jerry McBride
It's a cinch you don't have one... And YES! Another one for COLA...
--
Jerry McBride (jmcb...@mail-on.us)
Hadron
The only cinch here is probably the one you thing you can plug in and
suddenly the system is "parallel".
DFS
> [Yes, that way the chips will barely be able to keep up with the bloat
> in Windows 2010.]
More silly and dishonest "Linux advocacy" - par for the cola course.
> "My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were
> probably the most important, but it could go a step further," he said.
> "It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I've ever
> corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic
> context, it could draft three possible replies. [Right before it
> crashes.]
Signed,
A Windows User By Day
DFS
> Yeah... what is this rubbish? Is micoslop innovating parallel
> programming now?
Of course not. Rex Ballard created it years ago.
Tim Smith
> ____/ nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu on Monday 17 December 2007 18:32 : \____
>
>> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
>> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
>> assistant.
>
> Wow. What a visionary.
Shall I dig up some of your visionary statements for comparison?
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> So you have the algorithm for scheduling massively parallel processor
> clusters with work from a pool of random processes accessing non
> predetermined storage do you?
I did but I lost it in the sofa cushions. ;) Seriously, if anyone
is on the track of that, my money is on the brainiacs at Argonne
National Labs. There is some seriously cool super-computing and
parallel processing research going on there.
Thad
--
Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had
all the ingredients on the label.
Linonut
Better not. Two can play at that game.
--
Tux rox!
Linonut
> nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu wrote:
>
>> [Yes, that way the chips will barely be able to keep up with the bloat
>> in Windows 2010.]
>
> More silly and dishonest "Linux advocacy" - par for the cola course.
Can you do us a favor, and mark such posts as "[Humor-deprived]"?
>> "My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were
>> probably the most important, but it could go a step further," he said.
>> "It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I've ever
>> corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic
>> context, it could draft three possible replies. [Right before it
>> crashes.]
>
> Signed,
> A Windows User By Day
Can you do us a favor, and mark such posts as "[Idiocy]"?
--
Tux rox!
Hadron
Erm, again, you seem to throw a random quip out without paying any
attention to the context.
That is exactly what Tim meant.
Roy Schestowitz
> * Tim Smith fired off this tart reply:
>
>> On 2007-12-17, Roy Schestowitz <newsg...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>>> ____/ nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu on Monday 17 December 2007 18:32 : \____
>>>
>>>> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
>>>> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
>>>> assistant.
>>>
>>> Wow. What a visionary.
>>
>> Shall I dig up some of your visionary statements for comparison?
More fine Linux advocacy from Microsoft partner, "been on UseNet since before
Roy was born" known as tim.the...@gmail.com, aka "Tim Smith,
aka "harlowmonkeys".
> Better not. Two can play at that game.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | while (!0==1) echo 'Bill Gates' > /dev/null
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
raylopez99
> Hadron <hadronqu...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > So you have the algorithm for scheduling massively parallel processor
> > clusters with work from a pool of random processes accessing non
> > predetermined storage do you?
>
> I did but I lost it in the sofa cushions. ;) Seriously, if anyone
> is on the track of that, my money is on the brainiacs at Argonne
> National Labs. There is some seriously cool super-computing and
> parallel processing research going on there.
>
What will solve the parallel programming challenge is not the
brainiacs at Argonne National Labs, but the implementation of parallel
programming as a routine part of any software project as implemented
by the tens of thousands of mom-and-pop code shops around the world.
Once parallel programming is taught in universities, and implemented
the same way people now think object oriented instead of procedural or
spaghetti "GOTO" statements, then parallel programming will be
"solved". But that's 20 years down the road I'm afraid, though Intel
does have somebody who'se full time job is to go around teaching
parallel programming practices to industry.
RL
Hadron
> ____/ Linonut on Tuesday 18 December 2007 12:54 : \____
>
>> * Tim Smith fired off this tart reply:
>>
>>> On 2007-12-17, Roy Schestowitz <newsg...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>>>> ____/ nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu on Monday 17 December 2007 18:32 : \____
>>>>
>>>>> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
>>>>> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
>>>>> assistant.
>>>>
>>>> Wow. What a visionary.
>>>
>>> Shall I dig up some of your visionary statements for comparison?
>
> More fine Linux advocacy from Microsoft partner, "been on UseNet since before
> Roy was born" known as tim.the...@gmail.com, aka "Tim Smith,
> aka "harlowmonkeys".
You're showing your true colours again Roy. Better not.
DFS
> * DFS fired off this tart reply:
>
>> nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu wrote:
>>
>>> [Yes, that way the chips will barely be able to keep up with the
>>> bloat in Windows 2010.]
>>
>> More silly and dishonest "Linux advocacy" - par for the cola course.
>
> Can you do us a favor, and mark such posts as "[Humor-deprived]"?
ha! eff-off buddy :)
Besides, nessuno was being serious - well, as serious as a cola idiot can
be.
>>> "My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones
>>> were probably the most important, but it could go a step further,"
>>> he said. "It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether
>>> I've ever corresponded with these people, it could determine the
>>> semantic context, it could draft three possible replies. [Right
>>> before it crashes.]
>>
>> Signed,
>> A Windows User By Day
>
> Can you do us a favor, and mark such posts as "[Idiocy]"?
Signed,
A Windows Developer For Life
Johan Lindquist
Hadron was all like, "Dude,
> So you have the algorithm for scheduling massively parallel
> processor clusters with work from a pool of random processes
> accessing non predetermined storage do you?
What, you mean you don't? Time to get cracking on that then!
--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
15:55:04 up 23 days, 8 min, 2 users, load average: 0.25, 0.41, 0.44
Linux 2.6.23.8 x86_64 GNU/Linux Registered Linux user #261729
Linonut
> Linonut wrote:
>>>
>>> Signed,
>>> A Windows User By Day
>>
>> Can you do us a favor, and mark such posts as "[Idiocy]"?
>
> Signed,
> A Windows Developer For Life
Don't be silly. You might as well call me a "Lawn Mower For Life",
because the time spent is proportionately about the same.
And, even if I spent 80% of my time writing Windows software, and 20%
writing Linux software, that would not make me a "Windows Developer for
Life". It would make me a "Windows/Linux Developer for Life".
But, instead of acknowledging the distinction, you are content to rag on
me in a pointless, nay! borderline-lying! fashion.
You Linux-user you.
--
Tux rox!
Tim Smith
>>>> Wow. What a visionary.
>>>
>>> Shall I dig up some of your visionary statements for comparison?
>
> More fine Linux advocacy from Microsoft partner,
If I'm a Microsoft partner, please explain why I was on the plaintiff's
side in a lawsuit against them for a very large amount of money.
AOL sure didn't get their money's worth out of you, did they?
> "been on UseNet since before Roy was born"
Roy's age, according to his website: 22.
I've been on usenet at least as far back as Feb 28, 1984:
<http://groups.google.com/group/net.unix-wizards
/msg/bdd2d3b2889d6c5c?dmode=source>
That's almost 24 years. That puts me on usenet before Roy was born.
Linonut
1. I'd like to know how the hell that stuff got archived 24 years ago,
and survived to this day, when you can't even find a good rebuttal to
this:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.computers/msg/99ce4b0555bf35f4
QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of
memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you
said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but
not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a
certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
(Note the weasel wording. He adds "for all time". Why?)
2. "&& and || do not mean the same thing to sh and csh. In fact
they mean exactly the opposite! This can be annoying."
You seem to have gotten a little more strict about your meanings as
you aged <grin>.
3. {decvax,ucbvax}!ihnp4!sdcrdcf!trwrb!wlbr!callan!tim
Ahhhh, the old bang-paths.
4. Around that time, I was a grad student, and our access to the UseNet
was through distillations retrieved and posted by some sysop at
Vandy.
--
Tux rox!
Rex Ballard
No. But it's been around for over 20 years. The INMOS transputer is
a good reference to start with. Transputer type technologies have
been used in graphics, telecommunications, and even internet search
engines.
Although I didn't invent parallel programming, I did work on several
such projects at a company called Computer Consoles Incorporate
(CCI). CCI made plug compatible IBM terminals for BSC connections,
but when IBM switched to SDLC and 3270. CCI was not licensed, so they
decided to make their own "Mainframe" by strapping together 8 PDP-11
computers. In order to get them to play nicely together, they created
a cage that held up to 24 8085 based computer cards that also included
connectivity and display circuitry. In addition, controllers attached
to the PDP permitted connectivity to 32 of these cages. In addition,
each of the PDP boxes had another service processor that connected the
storage to up to 16 storage control units, which could connect
multiple storage control units.
In on of our projects, we had over 1000 processors interconnected,
complete with load optimization and distribution across PDP, Cages,
and Storage units.
The Cages most often drove displays, but could also be used to connect
to other cages (Communications Group Controller), or other system
control units (System Interface Controllers).
The systems were deployed at most of the Bell Operating Companies for
Directory Assistance systems, including 411/555-1212 service, 911
emergency services, and intercept systems (when numbers change).
CCI also upgraded the CPUs to Power 5/55 series, which were based on
68020 processors, and the Power 6/55 series, which was based on a
custom processor similar to the MIPS and PA_RISC, with optimizations
for UNIX.
In 1988, British Telecom bought CCI. A few years later, they sold the
directory services division to Northern Telecom. The Directory
Services division is still there in Rochester New York, at 97 Humboldt
street. I'm not sure if they still have the Penfield location.
CCI had their own terminology, much of which existed because there
wasn't any previous terminology. However, CCI did have the technology
for Clusters, Grids, RAID, and parallel processing, and all of this
when MS-DOS was still depending on TSR for primitive multitasking that
often didn't work very well.
I didn't invent any of this, but I did have to learn a great deal
about all of these technologies. I was part of a "Special Forces"
team that was responsible for resolving breakdowns when doubling or
quadrupling capacity caused failures, often due to deadlocks or race
conditions. It took almost a month to find a race condition between
cards using logic analysers that enabled us to find a 1 microsecond
window and narrow the problem down to the correct pair of instructions
on two cards out of 24 cards. To reproduce the defect, I had to build
up a full system every night, and have it back to normal by 6 AM.
Tim Smith
<f4991179-b989-488f...@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
Rex Ballard <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Yeah... what is this rubbish? Is micoslop innovating parallel
> > > programming now?
> >
> > Of course not. RexBallardcreated it years ago.
>
> No. But it's been around for over 20 years. The INMOS transputer is
Much longer than that. Read Feynman's description of how they did the
bomb calculations at Los Alamos during WWII.
--
--Tim Smith
Mark Kent
If Mr Mundie cannot see the fundamental flaw in this whole analysis,
then I suspect that Microsoft have even bigger problems than I'd
anticipated. If email is truly only worth an automatic response, then
it was worthless, but worse, it will be sent to another machine which
will also automatically respond, the responses will be gradually
prioritised down since no creative content will be added, so the system
will contribute to stagnation and ineffectuality in environments where
people think handling lots of emails makes one important.
From Microsoft's perspective, though, they could charge a licence-fee
payment for every suggested response, every stored email, every
electronic exchange and so on. In the end, they could have thousands of
machines emailing each other constantly, with no input from people, and
charging the owners millions for the privilege.
>
> "I'm skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope," said
> Gordon Bell, one of the nation's pioneering computer designers, who is
> now a fellow at Microsoft Research.
>
> Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer
> industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a
> program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little
> interest.
>
> [Straight from NSF to Microsoft---how convenient.]
The hope is that electronic responses to email will be seen as, err,
daft?
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
Mark Kent
> ____/ nes...@wigner.berkeley.edu on Monday 17 December 2007 18:32 : \____
>
>> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
>> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
>> assistant.
>
> Wow. What a visionary.
>
See my reponse to the same point!
Roy Schestowitz
> From Microsoft's perspective, though, they could charge a licence-fee
> payment for every suggested response, every stored email, every
> electronic exchange and so on. In the end, they could have thousands of
> machines emailing each other constantly, with no input from people, and
> charging the owners millions for the privilege.
They already do this with documents. Future versions of Office are likely to be
given for free and the charged for as you go, per document. They already
experiment with that business model in some countries. IBM uses that vision to
get people scared of Office and choose Symphony.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | One, Two, Free Open Source Software (FOSS)
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
roy pts/2 cg093a.halls.man Sun Dec 30 18:40 still logged in
Tim Smith
Mark Kent <mark...@demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
> > that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
> > assistant.
> >
> > "My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were
> > probably the most important, but it could go a step further," he said.
> > "It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I've ever
> > corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic
> > context, it could draft three possible replies. [Right before it
> > crashes.] And when I came in in the morning, it would say, hey, I
> > looked at these messages, these are the ones you probably care about,
> > you probably want to do this for these guys, and just click yes and
> > I'll finish the appointment." ...
>
> If Mr Mundie cannot see the fundamental flaw in this whole analysis,
> then I suspect that Microsoft have even bigger problems than I'd
> anticipated. If email is truly only worth an automatic response, then
> it was worthless, but worse, it will be sent to another machine which
> will also automatically respond, the responses will be gradually
> prioritised down since no creative content will be added, so the system
> will contribute to stagnation and ineffectuality in environments where
> people think handling lots of emails makes one important.
Wow. Mark is predicting that AI will *never* get to the point that it
can recognize a request for an appointment, check your calendar, and
draft a suggested acceptance of the appointment!?
--
--Tim Smith
Hadron
I take my hat off to you. I have no idea what Mark Kent was waffling
about. But whatever it was, one can be sure it was the outpourings of an
egotistical windbag.
I mean, how priceless is this?
,----
| >> If Mr Mundie cannot see the fundamental flaw in this whole analysis,
| >> then I suspect that Microsoft have even bigger problems than I'd
| >> anticipated.
`----
Hadron
> ____/ Mark Kent on Monday 31 December 2007 15:58 : \____
>
>> From Microsoft's perspective, though, they could charge a licence-fee
>> payment for every suggested response, every stored email, every
>> electronic exchange and so on. In the end, they could have thousands of
>> machines emailing each other constantly, with no input from people, and
>> charging the owners millions for the privilege.
>
> They already do this with documents. Future versions of Office are likely to be
> given for free and the charged for as you go, per document. They already
> experiment with that business model in some countries. IBM uses that vision to
> get people scared of Office and choose Symphony.
Link? Cite? Anything that agrees with you in the *slightest* would be
good. Or are you telling lies again?
Linonut
> In article <q6gn45-...@ellandroad.demon.co.uk>,
Wow. Your reading skills were apparently degraded due to a an early
commencement of New Year's tippling! <grin>
--
Tux rox!
Mark Kent
Timmy's brain is an amazing machine.
I mentioned the Microsoft suggestion to Mrs Mark, who was equally
stunned that anyone could regard email as so worthless as to be only
worth automated replies. It probably says a lot about the nature of the
people coming up with this stuff that they think a bot is something new,
something for Microsoft to "innovate".
I can imagine a world where, when writing emails which /actually matter/,
one will have to run the email through a filter to remove all the keywords
and phrases which Microsoft's idiotic bots incorrectly recognise as
requests for oil refils, printer toner cartridges or permission to knock
off 5 minutes early to attend Granny's funeral.
Then, there will be the pinging emails... what happens when a loop for
an "appointment" is entered - in fact, I can see incredibly easy DOS
attacks where a few requests for overlapping "appointments" are sent,
which spill across a huge organisation, bringing the calendaring system
to its knees.
I've seem some foolish ideas, but this one is surely one of the most
foolish.
DFS
> I take my hat off to you. I have no idea what Mark Kent was waffling
> about. But whatever it was, one can be sure it was the outpourings of
> an egotistical windbag.
>
> I mean, how priceless is this?
>
> ,----
>>>> If Mr Mundie cannot see the fundamental flaw in this whole
>>>> analysis, then I suspect that Microsoft have even bigger problems
>>>> than I'd anticipated.
Nothing wrong with being egotistical - if you have the large nads to support
it. Kent does not.
The funny thing about lusers like Roy Homer Kent Ballard - hell, all of
Linuxdom - is they propose to be able to tell MS how to run their business
and how to develop their products, but virtually every one of them is a
low-level flunkie that wouldn't stand a chance of being hired by Microsoft.
Linonut
> Nothing wrong with being egotistical - if you have the large nads to support
> it. Kent does not.
>
> The funny thing about lusers like Roy Homer Kent Ballard - hell, all of
> Linuxdom - is they propose to be able to tell MS how to run their business
> and how to develop their products, but virtually every one of them is a
> low-level flunkie that wouldn't stand a chance of being hired by Microsoft.
If you even got in, you wouldn't last a month there.
--
GNU/Linux rox, Tux!
Mark Kent
I wouldn't work at Microsoft for anything. I do not work for criminal
organisations of any kind.
Linonut
> Linonut <lin...@bollsouth.nut> espoused:
>> * DFS fired off this tart reply:
>>
>>> Nothing wrong with being egotistical - if you have the large nads to support
>>> it. Kent does not.
>>>
>>> The funny thing about lusers like Roy Homer Kent Ballard - hell, all of
>>> Linuxdom - is they propose to be able to tell MS how to run their business
>>> and how to develop their products, but virtually every one of them is a
>>> low-level flunkie that wouldn't stand a chance of being hired by Microsoft.
>>
>> If you even got in, you wouldn't last a month there.
>
> I wouldn't work at Microsoft for anything. I do not work for criminal
> organisations of any kind.
If I thought I could stand it and thought some *good* would come of it,
I would work there.
However, like many other idealists, I would no doubt leave there after a
short time.
--
This sig has expired. Please reactivate your sig by paying $0.25
and entering the 30-character activation key that will be emailed to
your account.
DFS
> I wouldn't work at Microsoft for anything. I do not work for criminal
> organisations of any kind.
Can't fool us, don't fool yourself. If the money was right you'd stampede
for the MS front door next Monday morning.
Roy Schestowitz
> * Mark Kent fired off this tart reply:
>
>> Linonut <lin...@bollsouth.nut> espoused:
>>> * DFS fired off this tart reply:
>>>
>>>> Nothing wrong with being egotistical - if you have the large nads to
>>>> support
>>>> it. Kent does not.
>>>>
>>>> The funny thing about lusers like Roy Homer Kent Ballard - hell, all of
>>>> Linuxdom - is they propose to be able to tell MS how to run their business
>>>> and how to develop their products, but virtually every one of them is a
>>>> low-level flunkie that wouldn't stand a chance of being hired by
>>>> Microsoft.
>>>
>>> If you even got in, you wouldn't last a month there.
>>
>> I wouldn't work at Microsoft for anything. I do not work for criminal
>> organisations of any kind.
Some people try hard to convince themselves that the Kool-Aid is good and they
swallow the poison along with the cash. Bullet biting... there's always some
crook-to-be who is willing to join some dark forces somewhere. Just look at
Germany circa 1935. They were "only following orders".
> If I thought I could stand it and thought some *good* would come of it,
> I would work there.
>
> However, like many other idealists, I would no doubt leave there after a
> short time.
--
~~ Best of wishes
One person' diction is another's verbiage
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Mem: 515500k total, 443976k used, 71524k free, 3028k buffers
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms
Mark Kent
> ____/ Linonut on Thursday 03 January 2008 21:11 : \____
>
>> * Mark Kent fired off this tart reply:
>>
>>> Linonut <lin...@bollsouth.nut> espoused:
>>>> * DFS fired off this tart reply:
>>>>
>>>>> Nothing wrong with being egotistical - if you have the large nads to
>>>>> support
>>>>> it. Kent does not.
>>>>>
>>>>> The funny thing about lusers like Roy Homer Kent Ballard - hell, all of
>>>>> Linuxdom - is they propose to be able to tell MS how to run their business
>>>>> and how to develop their products, but virtually every one of them is a
>>>>> low-level flunkie that wouldn't stand a chance of being hired by
>>>>> Microsoft.
>>>>
>>>> If you even got in, you wouldn't last a month there.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't work at Microsoft for anything. I do not work for criminal
>>> organisations of any kind.
>
> Some people try hard to convince themselves that the Kool-Aid is good and they
> swallow the poison along with the cash. Bullet biting... there's always some
> crook-to-be who is willing to join some dark forces somewhere. Just look at
> Germany circa 1935. They were "only following orders".
I was once told that "...es kam von oben..." (it came from above) had
been one of the most commonly used defences in the Nurnberg trials.
I don't know if it's true, but it's quite likely, and since then, there
has been a lot of research from about the 1950s on, mainly from the US
but some elsewhere, which has shown that authority and group pressure can
make quite ordinary people do the most unpleasant things to others. It is
quite sickening to see that in spite of the US scientific establishment
having lead this work, the US government and military has either ignored
it, or worse, relied on it, in order to promote the active torture of
prisoners in Guantanamo bay, Iraq and elsewhere.
Interestingly, a little bible quote: "Und es kam eine Stimme oben von
dem Himmelsgewölbe her", which I'd translate as something like "And a
voice came from the vaults of heaven above". Peter K can probably do
something much better!
>
>> If I thought I could stand it and thought some *good* would come of it,
>> I would work there.
>>
>> However, like many other idealists, I would no doubt leave there after a
>> short time.
>
>
You cannot reform the mafia from inside.
Thufir
> Can't fool us, don't fool yourself. If the money was right you'd
> stampede for the MS front door next Monday morning.
>
You see everyone as a prostitute, the rest is just haggling?
-Thufir
DFS
That's one way to look at it (doing a job you hate just for the money), but
many cola "advocates" have ethical standards far below the lowliest
streetwalker. By night MS is 'evil' and 'criminal' and 'incompetent' and
their products 'crap'; by day the hypocrites willingly use their products
just to make money.
See [H]omer
See Linonut
See Rex Ballard
See Roy Schestowitz
See spike1
See Peter Kohlmann
See Sinister Midget
See Mark Kent
See Ian Hilliard
See 7
See Ghost In The Machine
William Poaster
Because D00fu$ has no morals or ethics, just like his beloved M$.
--
<Holly>: It takes time, this. One slight error in any of my thirteen billion
calculations and we'll be blasted to smithereens. Here we go, then: 10, 9,
8, 6, 5--
<Rimmer> Holly, *where's* 7?
--Red Dwarf--
Linonut
>>> Can't fool us, don't fool yourself. If the money was right you'd
Idiot.
Rex Ballard
wrote:
> > "I'm skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope," said
> > Gordon Bell, one of the nation's pioneering computer designers, who is
> > now a fellow at Microsoft Research.
I never cease to be amazed at how quickly and completely executives
seem to forget the accomplishments of any but Microsoft. My mom got
electro-shock therapy every day for 30 days and they erased 2 years.
But to zap out an entire decade must take a much months of EST.
> > Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer
> > industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a
> > program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little
> > interest.
What, he was there two weeks? The National Science Foundation did a
lot of work around parallel computing, the definitions just changed
over time. And of course there was the Thinking Machines projects to
by Brewster Kahle to create parellel search engines, the Wide Area
Internet Search (WAIS) engines.
And Linux was also part of the picture, with it's Beowulf cluster.
The early clusters were small, as few as 5 processors, 2 gateways and
3 worker nodes. Modern clusters such as Blue Gene L (L stands for
Linux) have created some of the fastest computers in the world.
Even further back, a little company called Computer Consoles was using
parallel processing to create some of the world's largest directory
assistance systems. The company was later purchased by British
Telecomm, and then sold to Nortel.
Microsoft seems to have no knowledge of this, or at least Mr Bell
seems to have no knowledge because all knowledge of anything not
accomplished by Microsoft has been systematically purged from his
brain.
UNIX has been doing parallel processing for almost 30 years. They
used pipelines, parallel search and sort engines, and smart
peripherals to produces huge performance gains. Even a simple BSD 4.2
system, running on a Vax 11/780, had smart hard drive controllers that
provided parallel processing in the form of smart access, drive
controll, and storage buffering, and the communications controllers
which provided coordination of dozens of smart terminals, each with
intelligent displays that could be commanded to perform complex
functions through a simple serial stream. This made it possible for
the VAX, with only 1 million instructions per second, 6 300 megabyte
drives, and some simple terminals that were often as smart as PCs.
This simple combination made it possible to service 100 to 150
concurrent users.
IBM was doing parallel computing when they introduced SNA. Smart
terminals did the formatting, cluster controllers collected requests
and queued them up, and the requests could be sent to processess
running on various processors which read from the queues by "polling"
for requests. The result was that each processor was optimally
loaded. The terminal controllers delivered optimal traffic, and the
smart terminals relieved the mainframe processors of much of the
effort of screening and managing the input.
> > [Straight from NSF to Microsoft---how convenient.]
Microsoft has made a number of "convenient" recruitments. John
Shirley, a major share-holder in Microsoft was the one officer at
Tandy with direct knowledge of Microsoft's dealings with Tandy/Radio
Shack. He also seems to have a terrible case of amnesia related to
Xenix which ran on one of the Tandy computers.
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/50/3837.html
> Huh? It was many years after NSF that he went to MS.
Seems to be a gap in his knowledge.
Rex
DFS
Ho'
Thufir
>>> Can't fool us, don't fool yourself. If the money was right you'd
>>> stampede for the MS front door next Monday morning.
>>>
>>>
>> You see everyone as a prostitute, the rest is just haggling?
>
> Because D00fu$ has no morals or ethics, just like his beloved M$.
It's an odd world view that oversimplifies and paints with such a wide
brush. He seems to view OS's in, sometimes, a religious fashion. Here,
it's more of a moral take -- a twisted view of morals, but there you are.
-Thufir
Rex Ballard
> Thufir wrote:
> > On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:05:05 -0500, DFS wrote:
> >> Can't fool us, don't fool yourself. If the money was right you'd
> >> stampede for the MS front door next Monday morning.
> > You see everyone as a prostitute, the rest is just haggling?
Reference, Winston Churchill asked a Lady (titled) if she would go to
bed with him for $1 million (which today, would be more like $100
million), and she said "well, that's a lot of money for one night, I
supposed I would". At which point, Churchill asked "Would you go to
bed with me for a shilling?". The woman, quite offended, said "What
do you think I am, a prostitute?". At which point, Churchill said
"Madam, that fact has been established, now we are just haggling over
price".
The story has also been attributed to George Barnard Shaw, Benjamin
Disraeli, and even Ben Franklin, (who knows who actually did it
first?). The point was that all of us have a point at which we will
do something we otherwise wouldn't do.
> That's one way to look at it (doing a job you hate just for the money), but
> many cola "advocates" have ethical standards far below the lowliest
> streetwalker.
> See Rex Ballard
To begin with, I'm not a whore, I'm a courtesan (I really enjoy my
work). I also get very well paid, and even though I could probably
make more in other ways, the combination of job satisfaction and good
income is hard to beat.
I've never kept it a secret that I do use Windows, AND I use Linux.
Although I would love to see the day when I could install Linux and
would never need Windows again, it's not the case today. On the other
hand, I do have Linux on all of my laptops, either as the primary or
secondary (VM) operating system. I also have Linux on several
servers. Most of my engagements are primarily using Linux and/or
UNIX, usually AIX or Solaris, and Windows plays a minor role in
integrating some third party vendor of a Softwware As A Service
offering.
I've been using UNIX since 1982, and Linux since 1993. I made my
first "PC" (microcomputer) in 1977, sold one of the first TRS-80
Computers in late 1977 (before it was officially released), I used
CP/M, MS-DOS from 1.0 to 6.0, Windows (from Windows 286 to XP), and
I've even taken Vista for an unpleasant test drive ($2700 computer
that was Vista compatible, and it couldn't run Aero-Glass).
In my 30 years in computers I have had a number of remarkable
opportunities to be at the leading, and even sometimes the bleeding
edge of technology. My particular talent throughout the years has
been the commercialization of bleeding edge technology (moving from
reseach project to production deployed product).
There have been a few versions of Windows that were completely
painful.
Windows 3.1, very cute and easy to understand, but it crashed all the
time. At one point, I had a team of 12 people working where we could
see each other, and every time Windows would crash, we would raise our
hands and say "Crash" in a voice loud enough so that all of the other
members of the team would hear. I kept a tally, and calculated the
averages over a month. It seemed that Windows was crashing an average
of 4 times per day per person. Sometimes the crash was a general
protection fault, other times, it was a deadlock caused by running
applications in overlapping windows.
Of course, I had also managed to obtain second PCs, such as an
80386/16 at Dow Jones, and an 80486/66 at McGraw-Hill, which I used as
secondary workstations. Those were as reliable as a craftsman
wrench. About the only time I would use Windows was to pretty up
documents that needed to be given to an external partner or executive
in Word format.
Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5. The only reason I got it was
because the Vice President misunderstood the license, and thought that
Client Access Licenses meant that I could install it on a Client PC
from NT server. It took about 2 days to lock the machine up so badly
that I couldn't get back into it. I had to reinstall it twice, and
when I tried running 3rd party Windows 3.1 applications, nothing
worked. Clearly this was not ready for "Prime Time", but the VP
didn't like hearing that.
Windows 95 (first edition). Windows 95 wasn't too bad, but still had
a bad habit of crashing. The first PC I used it with only had 8
megabytes of memory. When I added another 8 megabytes, things
improved slightly, but not enough to trust it. When Windows 95B came
out, it was much more stable, and worked pretty well on PCI hardware
( was still buggy as hell on VLB hardware).
Windows NT 4.0 prior to service pack 3. This was another painful
experience. I had installed NT 4.0 on a machine with a Cyrix
processor, and only 32 megabytes of RAM. After numerous Blue Screens,
I finally upgraded the memory to 64 megabytes, and about 2 weeks
later, installed Service Pack 2, and melted my Cyrix processor.
Eventually, I saw coverage of similar problems in ComputerWorld, and
replaced the Cyrix processor with an AMD processor, but it still
wreaked. When Service Pack 3 came out, the processor was at least
tolerably useful.
Windows ME. This is one of the few times when I actually paid extra
money to purchase an "Upgrade" to the previous product (Windows 98).
Several members of my family hated it so badly they replaced it with
Linux (as did I on all but one of my Windows machines)..
Windows 2000 was great. I still think it was the best operating
system Microsoft ever made. For some reason though, they couldn't
resist the temptation to f*ck it up by trying to squeeze more money
out of users by forcing them into XP. I guess the big problem was
that Microsoft had already promised free upgrades to NT 5.0 (Windows
2000) to any corporate customer who purchased NT 4.0 corporate
licenses. Many corporate customers were threatened with cancellation
of all support unless they upgraded to XP, at a substantial increase
in the support contract rate (triple). Eventually, Microsoft did back
down, but not until after several large corporations ordered their
CIOs to come up with a plan for migrating to Linux.
Windows XP was a downgrade from Windows 2000. I doubled the RAM and
it still wasn't enough. Even when I quadrupled the RAM it was still
painfully slow. I don't know how Microsoft managed to make Windows XP
such a pig, but I was sure they couldn't do any worse.
But I was wrong, Vista was worse. I've heard that a dual-core 2 ghz
processor with 4 gigabytes of RAM, it performs almost as fast as
Windows XP with a single 1ghz processor and 512 megabytes of RAM. I
tried it with 4 gigabytes, but it seems that there is a complex
installation patch and upgrade sequence required to get it to
recognize the 4 gigabytes, without declaring you a pirate and
disabling your PC. Worst $200 I ever spent.
Fortunately, I have been able to use the previous version of Windows,
AND a workstation loaded with Linux, to remain productive while we
waited for the gap to close. Still, I'm not holding my breath on
Vista. Vista seems to rank up there with Windows NT 3.1 and Windows
ME as one of Microsof'ts big time turkeys.
I'm pretty clear about what I advocate. I want to see Linux displayed
on Retail shelves. Let people make an informed decision between the
two by comparing both in a retail environment, where they can freely
try both, and choose whichever works best for them.
I also want to see corporations use desktop virtualization to put
Linux and Windows on the same PC. They can't always scuttle Windows
completely, but giving every employee the ability to choose and use
their favorite will at least open the door to competition in the long
run.
I want to see users given the information required to make an informed
choice. Let the OEMs tell consumers which computers will, and which
won't, support Linux. Let them provide that information in their
advertizing, in their order forms, in the information displayed at the
retail store, and even on the computer itself. Give us this
information down to the component level.
Rex Ballard
http://www.open4success.org
DFS
> The point was that all of us have a point at which we will
> do something we otherwise wouldn't do.
Yep, and virtually every cola "advocates" point is very, very low.
>> That's one way to look at it (doing a job you hate just for the
>> money), but many cola "advocates" have ethical standards far below
>> the lowliest streetwalker.
>
>> See Rex Ballard
>
> To begin with, I'm not a whore, I'm a courtesan (I really enjoy my
> work). I also get very well paid, and even though I could probably
> make more in other ways, the combination of job satisfaction and good
> income is hard to beat.
Imagine if you had to do your job with only Linux/OSS software. Job
satisfaction would plummet.
> I've never kept it a secret that I do use Windows, AND I use Linux.
You also haven't kept secret that you're looney tunes, and that you think MS
is evil and criminal and forces 20% of headcount layoffs and has admitted in
court to fraud, extortion, sabotage, blackmail, etc. Yet you willingly use
and promote their products in your client engagements. This makes you a
greedy, ethically-challenged, evil- and criminal-supporting hypocrite of the
worst sort. Luckily you're not alone on cola; most other "advocates" here
do the same.
> Although I would love to see the day when I could install Linux and
> would never need Windows again, it's not the case today.
It won't ever be the case.
> On the other
> hand, I do have Linux on all of my laptops, either as the primary or
> secondary (VM) operating system. I also have Linux on several
> servers. Most of my engagements are primarily using Linux and/or
> UNIX, usually AIX or Solaris, and Windows plays a minor role in
> integrating some third party vendor of a Softwware As A Service
> offering.
Oh how I wish I could see with my own eyes how much you use Windows on the
job. I don't trust anything you say. I'm quite sure you use Windows 99.9%
of the time on your job. I say you *rarely if ever* boot into Linux for
work-related matters. I say all your emails and project documentation and
project plans and communication and testing is done from Windows.
> I've even taken Vista for an unpleasant test drive ($2700 computer
> that was Vista compatible, and it couldn't run Aero-Glass).
How's that possible? My $500 computer runs Vista Aero just fine.
> In my 30 years in computers I have had a number of remarkable
> opportunities to be at the leading, and even sometimes the bleeding
> edge of technology. My particular talent throughout the years has
> been the commercialization of bleeding edge technology (moving from
> reseach project to production deployed product).
Unfortunately there's no 3rd party record of your doing this. Ever.
> There have been a few versions of Windows that were completely
> painful.
>
> Windows 3.1, very cute and easy to understand, but it crashed all the
> time. At one point, I had a team of 12 people working where we could
> see each other, and every time Windows would crash, we would raise our
> hands and say "Crash" in a voice loud enough so that all of the other
> members of the team would hear. I kept a tally, and calculated the
> averages over a month. It seemed that Windows was crashing an average
> of 4 times per day per person. Sometimes the crash was a general
> protection fault, other times, it was a deadlock caused by running
> applications in overlapping windows.
That was 15 years ago. 15 months ago, KNode on Slackware 10.2 crashed on me
every 3 minutes.
> Windows 2000 was great. I still think it was the best operating
> system Microsoft ever made. For some reason though, they couldn't
> resist the temptation to f*ck it up by trying to squeeze more money
> out of users by forcing them into XP.
Nobody was forced, or attempt-forced, onto anything, by MS, ever.
> I guess the big problem was
> that Microsoft had already promised free upgrades to NT 5.0 (Windows
> 2000) to any corporate customer who purchased NT 4.0 corporate
> licenses.
How do you know what MS promised, and to who?
> Many corporate customers were threatened with cancellation
> of all support unless they upgraded to XP, at a substantial increase
> in the support contract rate (triple).
Here you go again with the falsified information.
Q: Which corporate customers? How do you know? What was the exact support
rate increase?
A: You have no idea. You concoct these claims out of thin air.
> Eventually, Microsoft did back
> down, but not until after several large corporations ordered their
> CIOs to come up with a plan for migrating to Linux.
Q: Which corporations? Which CIOs? How do you know they had "Linux
contingency plans"?
A: You have no idea. You concoct these claims out of thin air.
> Windows XP was a downgrade from Windows 2000. I doubled the RAM and
> it still wasn't enough. Even when I quadrupled the RAM it was still
> painfully slow. I don't know how Microsoft managed to make Windows XP
> such a pig, but I was sure they couldn't do any worse.
I think 1gb is a good sweet spot for XP running a handful of apps.
> But I was wrong, Vista was worse. I've heard that a dual-core 2 ghz
> processor with 4 gigabytes of RAM, it performs almost as fast as
> Windows XP with a single 1ghz processor and 512 megabytes of RAM.
Depends on the app and system config, I guess. Vista ran fine on my P4,
2.0ghz system w/ 1gb RAM and a cheapy $50 video card.
Though here I think 2gb is a good sweet spot for Vista running a handful of
apps.
> tried it with 4 gigabytes, but it seems that there is a complex
> installation patch and upgrade sequence required to get it to
> recognize the 4 gigabytes, without declaring you a pirate and
> disabling your PC.
There's no excuse, if that's true.
> Worst $200 I ever spent.
Doubtful. Plus, how did you spend $200 for Vista?
> Fortunately, I have been able to use the previous version of Windows,
> AND a workstation loaded with Linux, to remain productive while we
> waited for the gap to close. Still, I'm not holding my breath on
> Vista. Vista seems to rank up there with Windows NT 3.1 and Windows
> ME as one of Microsof'ts big time turkeys.
Nah. It's a big seller. And it's a nice OS that makes Linux look, as
always, like amateur-hour.
But Vista is a memory and diskspace hog. Fortunately, 2gb of fast memory is
$50 or less. And 15g of diskspace is $5 or less.
> I'm pretty clear about what I advocate.
Windows and proprietary systems by day (when it matters, for work), Linux
and open source by night (when it doesn't, for playtime and toy tinkering).
> I want to see Linux displayed on Retail shelves.
It has been, for 10-12 years or so.
> Let people make an informed decision between the
> two by comparing both in a retail environment, where they can freely
> try both, and choose whichever works best for them.
A group of Linux lovers should start a chain of Linux-only computer stores,
where you can display Linux on a broad range of computers.
It worked for Windows for years, why not for Linux? If Windows is as crappy
as cola idiots claim, and it sells like hotcakes, a Linux-only store has to
make money. Right?
> I also want to see corporations use desktop virtualization to put
> Linux and Windows on the same PC.
This is nutty. This is a surefire way to double a company's time and cost
for desktop support, and add extreme confusion and time-wasting to most
users' workdays. And there is exactly no benefit.
> They can't always scuttle Windows
> completely, but giving every employee the ability to choose and use
> their favorite will at least open the door to competition in the long
> run.
The door to competition was never closed in the first place. Linux needs
more and better marketing, and control over its image and trademark so it
doesn't only get sold on the cheapest computers.
> I want to see users given the information required to make an informed
> choice.
Q: Why do consumers need to be spoon-fed Linux info? Why can't they figure
it out on their own, the way they figure out on their own which make and
model auto they want, or which photo-imaging software they want?
A: Because one of the cola nuts' favorite excuses for pitiful Linux adoption
is "users and consumers are stupid".
> Let the OEMs tell consumers which computers will, and which
> won't, support Linux. Let them provide that information in their
> advertizing, in their order forms, in the information displayed at the
> retail store, and even on the computer itself. Give us this
> information down to the component level.
That information is available at a moment's notice on the Internet.
Consumers are responsible for their own research and comparisons.
Paul Hovnanian P.E.
>
[snip]
> [Microsoft investing in parallel processing...]
>
> "Microsoft is doing the right thing in trying to develop parallel
> software," said Andrew Singer, a veteran software designer who is the
> co-founder of Rapport Inc., a parallel computing company based in
> Redwood City, Calif. "They could be roadkill if somebody else figures
> out how to do this first."
Road kill.
SMP, multi-threaded programming, cluster computing and many other
flavors of parallel computing have been in production for years now.
[snip]
>
> In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks
> that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal
> assistant.
>
> "My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were
> probably the most important, but it could go a step further," he said.
> "It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I've ever
> corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic
> context, it could draft three possible replies. [Right before it
> crashes.] And when I came in in the morning, it would say, hey, I
> looked at these messages, these are the ones you probably care about,
> you probably want to do this for these guys, and just click yes and
> I'll finish the appointment." ...
I worked with semantic processing apps about a decade ago. Forget
'overnight'. I could watch the thing crunch engineering documents in one
window while I was doing other work on the same system. That was on a
crappy old 166 MHz Dell. With a couple of GHz, it isn't even worth
watching the progress anymore.
> "I'm skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope," said
> Gordon Bell, one of the nation's pioneering computer designers, who is
> now a fellow at Microsoft Research.
>
> Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer
> industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a
> program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little
> interest.
>
> [Straight from NSF to Microsoft---how convenient.]
>
> "They told me, 'You can't tell us what to do,'" he said. "Now the
> machines are here and we haven't got it right."
Mr. Bell has the wrong machines.
> </Quote>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/technology/17chip.html
--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Pa...@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Dyslexics have more fnu.