Posts by John Brookes
43 posts • joined Thursday 23rd August 2007 14:19 GMT
Re: The bloody egg
Firstly, no, that's not what it refers to in the minds of the majority of people.
Secondly - if it did - then it's still the egg, unless you're arguing that the modern chicken is the ur-bird from which all other birds are descended.....
Posted in Supersymmetry takes an arrow to the knee
Re: labor prices in different countries
Ah yes, I see exactly what point you are making and why....
48 racks of space for storage?!
48U of rack space, maybe.....
Think you're a little confused....
the 72TFl/s machine is the Iridis supercomputer at Southampton Uni, not the pi cluster. 72 is well in top500 range and _definitely_ a supercomputer.
Re: Piracy??
Possibly, but at least that puts him one up on Bob Dylan in the self-awareness stakes..... ;-D
Re: Too true
It isn't.
I know doctors, lawyers, builders, etc. and they all report the same.
Working in a certain profession means that you *will* (or, at least, *should*) know more than the general milieu about the subject. The problem is that most people (in whatever profession, or none) underestimate the diversity and complexity of other people's professions. People ask eg criminal lawyers for advice about their ongoing dispute with their neighbour over property boundaries (it happened to a friend: he told him to punch his neighbour in the face. "How will that help?" "It won't, but then I'll be able to tell you how you stand legally.")
There's even a joke about it:
A doctor and a lawyer are at a party. The doctor asks the lawyer, "People are always bothering me with questions about their health; should I bill them?"
"Absolutely!" replies the lawyer, "They're asking you for services, based on years of training and your standing as a medical professional. Of course they should be prepared to pay for your insight!"
Two days later, the doctor received an invoice from the lawyer.
Re: the dinosaur is staggering
I'm more than happy to slate MS for a lot of things, but it's more than a little harsh - not to mention wildly inaccurate - to say Redmond ruined Nokia, don't you think?
Re: really?
This *is* satire, isn't it?
Re: self contradictory
I can't see any particular reason for neutrino beams not being radiation, but the rest of his point still stands. I guess that if it is not considered radiation, it could only be because of its vanishingly small interaction cross-section....
Sticking the experiment in a mine is required to (hopefully) keep the SNR manageable. On the surface, you would just have a really rubbish cosmic ray air shower detector.
Nonsense!
If I buy duty-free etc, then I am not liable for tax on that purchase. Voda *were* liable for £6bn, but unilaterally decided not to pay it. The tax office then just let them off for the vast majority of it.
Despite their claims that their tax bill should've been zero, they'd set aside £2.2bn to pay it, so they knew - or strongly suspected - they'd lose if it went to litigation.
I can understand the tax office being wary of a fight with Voda, given the latter's willingness and ability to fight the claim, but we didn't even ask for the £2.2bn they'd set aside.
"Give me that £60 quid you owe me!"
"Or else what?"
"Er, call it a tenner, then..."
"Oh, go on. Got change of a twenty?"
So basically....
....we should all convert and become Amish? No thanks - not keen on curtain beards....
Seriously, the whole "have fewer babies and you'll be better off" thing devalues anything else they say. Such a lack of awareness of the difference between correlation and causation utterly discredits their claim to be scientists.
http://xkcd.com/552/
So they make you pay for the device....
...tell you how you may, or may not, use said device, then whinge about the cost and the security implications?
Who actually wins out of BYOD? The employee gets to buy their employer a deliberately-crippled device, the employer doesn't save any money, but does add to its count of disgruntled BOFHs, RIM circles ever closer to the drain, Apple/Samsung/HTC etc don't get any additional revenue (unless the used-for-work device becomes so crippled that the employees have to carry two phones anyway). What's it all for?
Posted in BOFH: Dawn raid on Fort BOFH
Re: not...
If it's to make you look cool, get marketing or sales to pay for it. Or perhaps marketing and/or sales only care about their departmental budget, rather than the company bottom line....
Posted in Jabra Halo 2 Bluetooth headset
Yay - decent stereo headset!
It's been irritating me for ages that there seems to be little traction on stereo headsets. Yeah, there are a few about at any given time, but half fo them are crappy in-ear things with dangly bits (not that sort :-) And I've never seen any in mobile phone shops / general electronics shops / Tescos etc
Most phones these days have A2DP, most PMPs are, in fact, mobile phones, yet most headsets are mono... Why? I genuinely don't get it. If you have a mono headset, you have to have a pair of plugins as well, if you're going to listen to music.
It's nearly as weird as being as bothered about it as I clearly am :-D
Re: Re: I'm not sure about this
As a wise friend once said to me, "Just because you are sure, doesn't mean you're right"
It doesn't imply any such mass wipeout of tall people: that *would* be a nonsense. What it means is that over many generations, taller people would be less likely to reproduce, leading to a gradual reduction in the average size of members of the species. Obviously,
How might this come to pass? Well, given the self-evident tendency of surface area per unit volume to decrease with increasing volume, larger animals find it more difficult to remain cool if the temperature increases - not impossible, just more difficult.
That implies less activity for larger animals, since activity produces heat that - unless removed - might cause dehydration/heatstroke/.... Less activity implies a reduced ability to support a family than a smaller but otherwise identical animal (less foraging time, smaller hunting range, or ...). Smaller families for (genetically) larger members of a species leads to a gradual diminution of the average size of a species as a whole.
Doesn't sound too implausible to me.
Nope
No mass (according to theory - it'd break gauge symmetry). Momentum, yes (hence radiation pressure), but no mass.
What's hasn't been done....
Is a beam of a matter/anti-matter bound state, which is what they're doing here. Badly-worded sentence, but the distinction is made clear in the article....
Sort of....
There are three parts to this*:
1) We don't know whether gravity treats matter and anti-matter identically (eg whether they're identically affected by the Higgs field, or <insert gravitational theory here>)
2) We know that electrons and positrons have very similar masses, but not that they're identical.
3) In a direct annhililation, the tiny fractional differences in mass would be utterly swamped by uncertainties in the measurement (both experimental and fundamental). In the proposed experiment, if the lifetime (and hence beam length) of the positronium can be made sufficiently large, it may be possible to reduce the uncertainties to such an extent that the differences are measurable.
* I don't see how the proposed experiment could disentagle the effects of 1) and 2), but maybe that's why I can only call myself a physicist if I add the prefix 'failed'.
Posted in Samsung Remote
5/10 on Android (dunno about iOS)
Auto-detection is _very_ hit and miss for me (despite the fact that it always has the same ip address) and the remote is for a slightly lower spec TV, so misses a couple of nice features.
The latter issue isn't so bad, but a remote is worse than useless if it may, or may not, be able to use it. You should be able to manually input an IP address, or save the configuration between sessions.
Posted in Jimbo Wales ponders Wikipedia blackout
I think they should turn WP off for a bit....
....just to try and make journalists remember how to research stories.
Posted in Jimbo Wales ponders Wikipedia blackout
I read 'meaningful' as....
not Hobson's choice, not punch-in-the-face-or-kick-in-the-swingers type choice etc... A choice between options that have real (meaningful) differences in outcome. Esp. as it wasn't given as a modifier at all, but rather as an additional, orthogonal property of the choice.
I've got some of these running.....
And they do exactly what it says on the tin. Bulked out my memory from 192GB to 288GB and got a speed boost too.
Clever tech, well executed.
I think I'll stick with rockstar physicists.....
...over muppets who advertise their own self-contradictory mumbo-jumbo. I've just read your articles. Yeesh
You do realise that many of the denizens of this place are scientists, engineers and other sorts of folk you can't abide?
Some standard steps in science according to the world at large:
1) Make a new observation. Check it.
2) Get other people to see if they can see it too
3) Postulate an explanation for what you've seen. Check it.
4) Get other people to see if your postulated explanation works with their related, or independent observations
5a) Try and make a prediction using your explanation that differs from prevailing explanations - see if it happens
or if 5a not possible
5b) Use your explanation and existing data to attempt to accurately post-dict real events
6) Repeat 5 until dead, retired or bored of the topic
If you fail at any point, go back to 1)
Scientific method according to Louis Savain:
1) Have a particularly vivid dream
2) Convince yourself that it is both right and obvious
3) Have a quick google to see if you can find any off-the-cuff remarks from long-dead philosophers, natural philosophers or scientists that don't entirely contradict your dream
4) Publish (NB self-editing for blatant contradictions is not only optional, but to be discouraged)
5) Slag off anyone who contradicts you
If you fail at step 2, you're not trying hard enough, if you fail at 3, just skip it.
Posted in El Reg in SHOCK email address BLUNDER
How incredibly embarrassing!
... I've been outed as a reg reader!
Bad Reg, naughty Reg - wash your mail server out with soap and water, then stand in the corner of the datacentre and think about what you've done..... FACING THE WALL!
RIP dmr, VIP
He was the last of my all-time heroes and then there were none :-(
I wonder which side....
...of the creepy line they'd think they were on if - after drinking it - all the ads google sent you were for prostate exams....
Yup, silly you
From Nobel's will:
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics ...”
"... as judged by El Reg commentard TkH11", it fails to continue.....
The importance of discoveries and inventions is judged by the prize committees. That's why they exist.
Posted in HP parks Airbus supers in containers
"Oi, mistah - giz firty quids...."
"...an' I'll make sure yer container's ere when youse get back...."
Just like matchday parking ;-)
Posted in HP parks Airbus supers in containers
Not a GOOD test.....
...an easy test.
How can I say that?
1) Go to top500.org
2) go to a list - any of them
3) go to the statistics for that list
4) view the stats by interconnect/interconnect family
Basically, you can set a reasonably accurate lower bound on HPL efficiency for your particular arch/interconnect/topo pretty easily. Run it, see what you get, compare and contrast....
Posted in HP parks Airbus supers in containers
Deep breath, Todd, deep breath
Firstly, when HPL was designed, it wasn't pointless. It was pretty much the only portable benchmark that tested the capability of contemporary supercomputers to run an important class of problems.
Secondly, it's still not pointless, unless CPU speed has suddenly become irrelevent.
Thirdly, it's an excellent sanity check when throwing a cluster together:
- HPL efficiency a bit low? Hmm, let's run some interconnect tests
- Good check for excessive single-bit errors? Run HPL cluster-wide, as big as will fit on each system and see what gets reported.
Fourthly, EVERYONE knows the list is primarily used for business/marketing/dick-waving purposes. So? "Is vendor X's response to our RFQ any good?" "Yes, but they haven't built a machine on this scale since 2009." or "Yes, and I can see from the Top500 that they've got many machines in our sector at the scale we're looking." or.....
Fifthly, Jack Dongarra (et al) are perfectly aware that HPL isn't the be-all and end-all of benchmarking. That's why HPCC exists (and JD is the chair of its pretty stellar committee). Oh yes, and HPL is part of that improved benchmarking suite.
Sixthly, all benchmarks that aren't your application are - to a greater, or lesser degree - pointless. So let's not benchmark anything, eh?
Still, I'm sure your achievements dwarf those of Prof Dongarra....
Posted in Stars say relativity still works
Alfven was an electrical engineer and (part-time) plasma physicist....
He proposed electromagnetic processes as the solution to virtually every problem he looked at.....
This partly explains why the 'physics establishment' were a little sniffy with him.
I think most physicists at Gran Sasso already know that....
They're comparing to the host-to-goodness, full-fat, speed-limit-o-the-universe in vacuo speed....
A better comparison would be with the apparently super-luminal velocities of the plumes of active galactic nuclei 'observed' a while back... Further (non-trivial) research showed that actually, all was right with the cosmos and it was illusory.
Hmm, I could either pull up a reference for this, or down tools and head to the pub.... Guess which is likelier
Posted in Blade servers 101
Thermals
@Mikel - You're right in your area of interest, but the point of the article was that how appropriate blades are for you is application- and datacentre-specific. If you're hammering the cores and memory constantly, small deltas can mean significant spot heating, leading to throttling, leading to crappy performance - if one of 1000+ cores is throttling during a tightly-coupled parallel job, you're wasting half your machine. Which might only last half as long - or, equivalently, require twice the maintenance -because you're pushing the envelope. Datacentre (thermal) environment is therefore a crucial, expensive and non-trivial consideration.
@danolds,the cube - you're both right: water-cooled rear doors CAN do a great job, but you DO have to be damn sure that the fans can pull (at the very least) sufficient air through. If they can't, they're worse than useless due to internal recirculation.
Oh, and speaking of doors: for maximal-density, heavily-hammered blades, front doors considered silly.
Posted in Blade servers 101
Double that density!
Actually you can get 32 servers in a c-class chassis - 16 2x220 blades....
Other than that, you've got the pros and cons bob-on
Football chant
Apparently, when Chile play Bolivia at football, the Chile fans delight in singing, "Vamos A La Playa" ("Let's all go to the beach") at the Bolivians.
Harsh. Funny, but harsh
@mark149
Not necessarily. Instead of meaning:
a) They will only buy things that they are convinced will not improve performance
they might mean:
b) They will only buy things that they are not convinced will improve performance
or (and this is my personal favourite):
c) They definitely won't buy things that they are convinced will improve performance.
As you say, got to love triple negatives :-))
Anyway, it's half six
They know nothing about security!
If they wanted it to be REALLY safe they'd have used a substitution cipher on it too!
Mine's the diamond-studded one made of gold thread in the unlocked, papier mache safe... Oh, and watch out for the guardsnail!!
@alistair
.....Corner Alert.....Pedants Corner Alert.......Pedants Corner Alert.......Pedants Cor...
The example given isn't so much a density thing as a scale thing.
Mass increases with the volume (that is to say (extent measurement)^3) whereas surface area goes with (extent measurement)^2.
Terminal velocity = sqrt(mg/<rho>AC) (where m=mass; g=accln. due to grav.; <rho> is the density of the medium; A is the presented area and C is the coeff. of friction)
All other things being equal, therefore, the terminal velocity increases with sqrt(r), as (m/A) is proportional to r^3/r^2 = r....
@ solomon 3 + anon coward
Further to previous responses that explained how companies can make money out of OSS....
Reasons why people develop software:
1) It's their job to develop that piece of software, hence: Money
2) They don't get paid to develop software, but developing _this_ piece of software will make it easier for them to do whatever it is they get paid to do.
3) They want their computer to be able to do a particular, non-work-related thing, but either there is no software available, or they can't/won't pay for software already on the market.
4) Somebody mentioned an interesting problem to them, they've grown out of Meccano, jigsaw puzzles seem pointless and they don't have the time, funds or hangar to build an F15 from scratch.
5) They see a piece of OSS in an area in which they'd like to work (eg games, graphics, technical computing), but in which they have insufficient experience. They do it to familiarise themselves with the concepts/gotchas/techniques.
In the 1st case, there would obviously be no question of sharing the code and the Mill Owner might not be keen in the 2nd case.
For the others, though, what is to be gained by _not_ sharing? If the software becomes popular, the OSS developer gains kudos - kudos is a saleable quality - and you will probably know more about the software than anyone else (at least initially). If no-one but you ever uses it, you can view it as having gained development experience rather than rueing it as a failed get-rich-quick scheme.
PS Paris because she's living proof you can make millions by showing everyone your bits ;-)
Recording calls: tea, or nay?
iirc, when the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Ian Blair?) was found to have recorded some phone calls, it turned out he hadn't broken the law, as either party is allowed to record a phonecall for their own personal records. The logic is, I imagine, that - as you've already heard the conversation - there can be nothing wrong with you hearing it again. It's only when you want to play the recording to others that permission from the other party must be sought.
@ISP - Pretty sure your company is breaking the law unless the recordings are covered in the T&Cs(?).....
Re: Social workers
I know a few people who work in social services and they're all conscientious, well-meaning and smart. They're also massively underpaid for the burdens their jobs entail, so it doesn't surprise me one bit that some social workers are lazy, power hungry and/or stupid.
Any role that gives you power over others is bound to attract the minority of people who just want to have power over others; it's human nature. Add in the fact that a person's most keenly-felt responsibilities are to themselves and their loved ones and the need for accountability is a no-brainer. How far you are prepared to go to make them accountable is a matter for your own conscience, but if you are prepared to go beyond what is permissible under law you can hardly be surprised when the law comes and bites you in the ass.
Just my 2p-worth.
