Posts by CFtheNonPartisan

The 'west' led by the Americans obviously does not have the same capability against Chinese and other so-called hostile interests and never deployed any of it.

Stuxnet was just fake news.

Top500 and Linpack are Technoporn

If only all applications only ran Linpack and nothing else. A colleague decades ago stated 'I can vectorise to 99.5% and I can parallelise to 99.5% but I cannot do both at the same time'. Make systems dependent on GPUs and voila, it is a 'poor man's parallel vector system'. Software matters more than hardware and scalability makes for a fascinating problem including the necessity of redundant computations burning FLOPS and watts, keeping it over simplified.

s/a dinosaur from the days HPC was called supercomputing

We had an issue with a construction crew starting to saw, sand and paint inside a computer room and had a serious chat with them. Next day we found all the server cabinets on the verge of overheating because each was encased in plastic wrap to keep the dust out. Lucky we found the wrapped equipment fairly quickly. The computer room was operating in an ongoing building construction site but was supposedly cordoned off from ongoing works without special arrangements.

What's New Folks?

Everything old is new again. Liquid (freon, water) cooling was supplanted by air that is being supplanted by liquid (various) cooling. Vector processors have been supplanted by GPUs that are vector processors. RISC once ruled and economics put CISC in the driver seat - but ARM is starting to wave. Big whoopee on all this 'new stuff'.

For thought. A bit of arrogance will be the west's downfall. It was only a few decades ago that Chinese technologies were almost prehistoric. The west was dismissive. Slowly Chinese steps from behind became louder, their sophistication improved, and their underlying infrastructure such as supercomputing capability grew to equal and exceed the west. The capitalistic west will sell anything for a few dollars and the Chinese are happy to buy it or appropriate (steal) it if the west is not selling. Know how and doing it are intertwined but 'doing it' wins against 'knowing how to do it' when they are not one and the same side.

With so much manufactured in China and 'Chinese Taiwan', if or when there is reunification or even if not, who 'owns' the underlying capability of the electronics industry? Globalists have taught there is a common good and a common profit motive and global inter-reliance will temper political interests. Ukraine, Russia and Cuba (in spite of US sanctions) disprove it at least in a century time window. China is today's 300 tonne gorilla and the west seems to be slow marching in response.

3 PCs, 2 being clone whitebox desktops although with different applications, and the 3rd a new LG Gram notebook. 1 desktop installed no worries. 2nd desktop installed after about 3 hours of googling and trying this and that and finally eureka.

The notebook never would install and the errors kept changing as I did one thing and then another; I finally did an in place Win 11 upgrade atop Win 11 and after the 'upgrade' it claimed the notorious update was included.

FWIW I had 40+ years in ICT and have been around the block many times, but out in far orbit trying to deal with Microsoft. On one hand it is amazing so much complexity works as well as it does, but on the other the errors system is almost juvenile/novice most of us in other companies got over decades ago. Simplistically if you know what an error code is about and what probably caused it you automatically fix it in the software and keep going, not send the user bonkers.

Linpack is techno-porn on its best day. Even Jack Dongarra was and might still be fascinated by the attention it has attracted over decades. He was able to make a side career of it. Last I met Jack his reply was, to paraphrase, 'At least the computer has to stay up long enough to run it' as a defense of its usefulness. That was still in the times when uptime could be in hours or a day or two, not with modern resilient hardware.

Another celebration of arm waving in computerdom. Not impressed by that, nor on the amount of misinformation from the esteemed academics, or possibly as mangled by the reporter who misreported it?

Last I was involved (a decade ago) the models could get down to grids a few km square but the amount of compute power to run a climate model at that resolution was unattainable. That was saved for localised weather forecasts requiring obtainable compute power. Physics of land, ocean, atmosphere, cloud, and a bit of air pollution got included.

It is about compute power not language, and Fortran has always been about optimal efficient computing for mathematical models. Nobody needs to read the code excepting the programmers and scientists, and if they are that incapable?

Some think it looks like MacOS, I think it reeks of Android's management scheme.

Circa 1980 I took a systems job at a computer facility that was in the top 5 most powerful non-government installations globally. Getting the tour I was led to the systems room adjacent to the main computer room, full of tapes and manuals. My first observation was there was a big red unshielded 'panic button' just above the light switch; I commented it should have had a plexiglass or other protective device so it did not get pushed unintentionally. My concern was dismissed since only we systems types, some management, and cleaners had access to the room. A few weeks later a new cleaner went into the room and expecting to turn on the lights, pushed The Button. The fallout took months before it was over and all the kit returned to its normal stability - in those days stability was a failure every week or two, that became every few hours for a few days. The day after, a plexiglass box materialised to protect the button.

Politics at their finest

The joys of being a toady to the US government. The evidence in the wild is that Huawei has some sloppy processes and sometimes misses best practices, but the supposed 'smoking gun' is the founder has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, eg the government. The Americans don't seem to care about open malfeasance or anything else on their own turf as long as those dollars keep flowing, but let a competing system have a go? Not on to them and the long arm of the US will do whatever it takes to keep its vassals in line. If the US is not at the helm it will change the rules in whatever way is required to put the competition out of business. Been there, seen that in other high tech industries.

Oracle is well known to send out the license police every time their profit softens. It is what they are as a company and reflective of the modern lack of civility and integrity in dealings with others.

A few years ago a salesman bragged data loss on his product was impossible. I asked him if his company would sign a contract giving me control of the company if we had data loss on his product. Never heard back from him or the company.

Supercomputer Shmoopercomputer. These are almost a joke because there is only so much parallelism in the universe of modelling. To quote an old colleague, I can vectorize the code (problem) to 99%, I can parallelize the code to 99%, but I cannot do both at the same time so all those processors and GPUs reflect prurient interests for the buyers and sellers, and serious challenges for the users.

Conclusion, these so-called supercomputers are essentially big, fancy time sharing systems where the application could be equally served by smaller systems, and the workload by a number of smaller systems. As for the huge file system(s)? Where is my data, how did it get there, and how do I get it back - need another few thousand processors for that :D ?

Microsoft has long been envious of Oracle and their license police where anytime revenue and profit needs a kick up the Oracle (and now Microsoft?) license T&C change or customers get audited to be sure every last seat is accounted for at the highest per dollar cost possible. Hitting non-commercial institutions because they can is what they do these days. Capitalism at its finest where there is no common good, just dividends and bonuses in play. They could gradually kill their customer base and survive on Xboxes. (/snark)

Cray Inc is not really Cray Research. After the SGI takeover Cray 'assets' (ie much of what was left of Cray Research) was sold to Tera Computer who then changed their name to Cray Inc and moved 'HQ' from Minneapolis and Chippewa Falls to Seattle. It has been a long windy road for the Crayons who persevered.

The Hot Shot Database Team

3 fine high priced consultants from the sub-continent were doing some database development. They would 'put data in the database' and then demonstrate 'retrieving data from the database'. Management was impressed by the speed of their database implementation, until it was rebooted and for some reason every time the system was rebooted the previous session's data disappeared. A mere hack of a programmer on-staff realised the hot shots did not know the difference between putting data on the stack as compared to storing it in the database. The hot shots were not sacked and the staffer got no recognition.

Reckon he is a best mate with Sol Trujillo? Grabbing the money and running is what their ilk is best at.

IBM has more ownership of failures across government than any single company has a right to own, yet instead of being barred they keep getting contracts. Therein lies the problem - procurement failures. You cannot blame your customer for your own failures that you should have had the capability of working out prior to the fail - unless you did not understand your own business vis a vis the customer requirement.

There is a certain amount of karma that America's failure to enact workers rights gives cause for confrontational situations such as this when one loses his position. There is often no due process or fairness required, just a kick out the door with 2 weeks pay.

If you have rights in the US it is because you have a contract or a union has one on your behalf. It is rarely because you have legislated anything. Without that the employer can fly lose and fast if s/he wants.

Decades ago I proposed an inexhaustible file system. It was based on the premise of (write, data) without any pesky (write, data, status) worries. The data always went into its repository with 100% reliability. Looks like the idea might have been stolen by Apple. I am contacting my lawyer.

America, where everything has a price and selling is job 1 through 1,000. Watching commercials on TV is the hard sell. "Medicine One is new. It treats mental illness and stupidity. See your doctor and ask if it is right he/she prescribe it for you!" It is a socially failed experiment no matter how many billionaires it makes through lop sided taxes.

I am aghast! Does this mean politicians worry about votes? When did this start? Is this heralding the end of governments and politicians as we know them?

Without reference to the case in point, how many companies have ever freely said they don't give a stuff about sexual harassment, rape, or anything else they should have a moral compass about. They are always 100% concerned and proactive according to them, except when they are not.

The USA under Trump has found a new level of self indulging foolishness that attracts its core support base who are mostly sans filaments, let alone being dim bulbs. Donald Trump is the best Donald there is.

Ziggy oversaw Telstra losing its grip. For him it is business as usual because he does not comprehend how a technically underpinned business needs to operate. As for him being a Liberal Stooge, what is new? He was, is, and always will be, and is at least as (in)competent and arrogant as any of them.

Compatibility?

I have an older Canon scanner. After XP Canon abandoned the drivers that Win7 refused to load, and arrogantly told me I needed a new scanner. Google discovered another model's scanner driver worked for my scan ner just fine on Win7 and now Win10 although I have to manually select-load it. What a great business IT has become. Microsoft is just one of the group.

My guess is restricting admin privileges enough to pass an audit. It is the only choice that involves little work. Patches do over some users because patches break or change things. Whinging about loss of admin privilege or slower turnaround for resolving simple problems is less onerous than having something fall over.

They lost me after 2002, that is pretty similar to LibreOffice :)

This would be a surprise because? This could be one of their best efforts, even falling flat on its face.

Windows complexity reminds one of 100% of all government employees having to agree on what to order for lunch, and from where. Their management seems to think the more complex the better. I see Windows is an Intel-Microsoft arrangement to force everyone to buy newer more power computers every few years, just to run Windows.

What a self serving arrogant clown. He reflects those who appointed him. The business model is as faulty as the preponderance of not fit for purpose technologies. NBN gets guaranteed revenue and the RSPs take all the risk while the customers just suck it up. Does it ever get better even in a ponzi scheme?

When an update fails the pilot can just call 1-800-OH-SH1T. "Thank you for calling. Your call is very important but we are experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls. Please visit our web site or stay on the line to talk to a support representative. You are number 137 in the queue."