Slashback: Benchmarks, Sobig, Blob 285
A good excuse to file purchase orders, too. Eug writes "Writing in this Ars thread, Craig Hunter of NASA gives details about his much-quoted dual-G5 Power Mac benchmarks listed here. This should answer some of the questions posed around the net about the methodology and potentially the validity of his benchmarks."
The lines between viruses and spam is thin enough already. Joe Stewart writes "There have been a lot of news stories lately about how Sobig and spam are tied together. I actually revealed this in a paper two months ago. Now with the widespread Sobig.e, it seems to have become a topic again. However, the major antivirus companies have once again left out the whole story - most of them currently rate Sobig.e as 'low damage.' This is because they haven't fully understood how the real payload of Sobig.e is delivered. I've written a followup paper describing the entire mechanism that Sobig.e uses to facilitate spam, identity theft and bank fraud. Sobig has evolved, and it is much harder to stop than before."
Is this the beginning of a long goodbye? inertia@yahoo.com writes "Microsoft has updated their Mactopia Web Site to include a section on Virtual PC. It's taken them since February 2003 to do this. On the site, they mention, 'In August 2003, Virtual PC for Mac will be available through standard Microsoft channels of distribution.' So it looks like they aren't killing it after all."
Simplicity itself is a nice ideal. webword writes "Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark is now available online. As you might recall, Joe was interviewed on Slashdot back in December. Good stuff if you care about accessibility."
Not yet billions and billions served, but getting there. nzilla writes "The Internet Book List, which announced its creation earlier this year on /. has now reached 10,000+ entries and is still going strong. The Internet Book List (IBList) strives to be the IMDb of books. IBList is maintained exclusively by volunteers around the world."
Girlfriends drive strange endeavors. ceejayoz writes "This interesting article on MSNBC.com details the Degree Confluence Project - a project to gather a photographic record of the points on Earth where latitude and longitude lines meet. The article has links to some of the more interesting points. The project's website also has an interesting map showing all the completed confluence points."
We mentioned this project quite some time ago, and it's progressed quite a bit since then.
Uh, sir, you have some blubber on your collar there. Scoria writes "Chilean scientists have determined that a 12-meter mass of flesh discovered recently on a Pacific beach is actually a sperm whale, not an obscure 'giant octopus' as many researchers speculated. Scientists performing research at the Museum of Natural History in Santiago were the first to develop this conclusion after observing the presence of dermal glands unique to the species."
Code that pays tribute to the money in television. mondainx writes "Following(?) in the footsteps of Linksys, Tivo has made their source available for versions 2.0 through 4.0. Get the GPL source here. Sweet!"
Poor Sperm Whales (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:5, Informative)
The sperm whale has a huge reservoir of liquid in its head, with an oily sheen and a translucent, pale white color. The liquid solidifies under pressure (when the whale dives); current scientific thinking has it that the change in the liquid's density helps the whale adjust its buoyancy.
When early whaling crews first killed one of the beasties and slit it open, they encountered the oily stuff in its head but didn't know what it was....being sex-starved sailors, they jumped to conclusions, called the substance spermaceti, and named the whale after his unique feature: gallons and gallons of sperm in its head!
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I'm sure it was natural philosophers who coined the actual term "spermaceti"; the sailors called it jizz or cum or whatever one called the male ejaculate, circa 1600.
From Thomas Beale's "The Natural History of the Sperm Whale," 1840:
"What spermaceti is," (says Sir Thomas Brown, in his work published in 1686, third book, chap. xxv. p.139,) "men might justly doubt, since the learned Hofmannus, in his work of thirty years, saith plainly nescio quid sit, and therefore need not wonder at the variety of opinions, while some conceived it to be flos maries, and many a 'bituminous substance floating upon the sea.' That it was not the spawn of the whale, according to vulger conceit or nominal appellation, philosophers have always doubted, not easily conceiving the seminal humour of animals should be inflammable, or of a floating nature.
So you see, even before sperm were known to people, spermaceti (though probably not known by that name) was considered to be somehow involved with the reproduction of the whale, in much the same way that human semen was known to be involved with the reproduction of humans even though its exact nature was unknown.
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:2)
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:3, Funny)
I find this highly doubtful. Surely they must have noticed the stuff before that.
Re:Poor Sperm Whales (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. (Score:3, Funny)
(waits for a goatse link)
And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
{crash}
Re:And in other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Informative)
VPC (Score:5, Funny)
No, they're just going to mediocre it to death.
Re:VPC (Score:3, Insightful)
One can't help but wonder if it will use some of VPC's functions to help port software.
Doesn't MS-Word actually already run in a semi-interpreted Java-like language they developed back in the early 90's? I seem to recall something like that. Of course I think that Mac Zealot's complaints about MS-Word are vastly overstated. Especially when one compares to to the horrible status of AppleWorks which is a half-heart
Re:VPC (Score:2)
Re:VPC (Score:2, Interesting)
Doesn't MS-Word actually already run in a semi-interpreted Java-like language they developed back in the early 90's?
If I recall correctly, the whole MS Office suite of apps (or at least the Word/Excel/Powerpoint portion thereof) do fork off from a set of shared code that was the evil incarnation known as Word 5 (or was it 6?) et al. You know, the version most Mac users still refer to in horror as "Office for Windows for Mac". From what I understand, the codebases for the respective platforms are now p
MFLOPS/$ (Score:2)
Well, the funniest statement I could about NASA...
IBlist & IMDb (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:IBlist & IMDb (Score:3, Interesting)
That to me shows that book does indeed denote the form in which some sort of information is published, and not the nature of the information. Thus, comic books, poems, and plays that are all published in bound dead-tree format qualify, though internet books probably won't.
Re:IBlist & IMDb (Score:2)
Zealots! All of you! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wonder no longer! (Score:2)
If I was an alien species monitoring and evaluating the Earth, I'd have to say humans would never achieve space travel.
Luckly, I'm human, waiting for NASA to ask for volunteers to be colonists on Mars.
Hey, it could happen in my lifetime.
Re:Wonder no longer! (Score:4, Funny)
just like last time...
And they said, "what are the odds of *THAT* happening twice?"
Where is everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess it just goes to show that no matter how overpopulated the world seems, there is still a lot of wide-open space out there.
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
Cuba's area is 110,860 km^2 [cia.gov], or 1.1x10^11 m^2, which is enough to give each person on Earth a luxurious 17.6m^2 of space, or around 158 sq ft -- about the size of a bathroom or small bedroom.
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
The whole world's population could be moved to Texas and have a population density about that of Tokyo.
So I hear.
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see, California covers 163707 square miles.
census.gov reports that the world population clock for 7/1/03 is 6302486693
6302486693 / 163707 = 38498.57 people per square mile (of california).
1 mile = 5280 feet
1 square mile = 27878400 square feet.
27878400 / 38498.57 = 724.14 square feet per person.
Although that doesn't give much space for growing food.
The United States covers 3618770 square miles...
That puts us at 1741.6 people per square mile, or give each person a measly 16007 square feet. Anyone think that they could be entirely self-sustaining inside of a box 400 feet by 400 feet? Including food production and sewer? That isn't much larger than the average city block.
Now, this is assuming that the entire world is stuffed into the area of the united states, and all of the area, including Alaska is used, so much of that area is not very habitable.
Saying that everyone can FIT into a place is much different from saying that we have too large a population for the natural resources to sustain. And the sustainability all depends on how we use those resources....do we buy computers that use 9 square meters of raw materials per ounce of silicon wafer (if I remember right), or do we use products that can be produced with minimal environmental impact?
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
Don't most of the problems you list actually get easier to solve as population density goes up? The expensive and difficult part of building a network to handle needs such as electricity, water, transportation and even waste disposal is getting your network to cover the people way out in the boo
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
> overpopulated the world seems, there is still a
> lot of wide-open space out there.
You have an urbanite's notion of "wide-open space".
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
Driving across the US, you drive through some rather isolated area, where you think you'll never get out of the desert.
I flew across the Atlantic once. I was staring out the window of the plane at the reflection of the moon on the water, and after a few hours realized how isolated we then were..
I've lived in
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
It's an interesting idea that we could handle a lot of people if we had an uber efficient way of getting food.
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:5, Funny)
In Mary Pride's book The Way Home, she calculated that you could give every person in the world 2,000 square feet (which is larger than most homes) and everyone would fit into the state of Texas.
Yeah, but you'd really, really have to hate everyone in the world to put them all in Texas.
Re:Where is everyone? (Score:2)
George Lucas continued the tradition of megaplanets wit
Well of course ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they do, they didn't make this one. It's almost obsurd to think that there isn't some tie between anti-virus and virus creators. It may seem a little far fetched, but what better way to keep yourself in business than to make new business. Just like the mob ... some places would call this extortion, here we call it "Virus Protection"... guess if you call it something more than "Protection" it makes it okay.
The motive behind this virus was simple, spam blocking has actually gotten to be a threat to spammers, so what better way than relaying spam through innocent windows boxes on the internet. Though who knows maybe there's an unmarked envelope of cash sitting waiting for them. Or hell, maybe symantec didn't think they weren't making enough money and decided to take a little something from the spam industry to get a bonus for new sales.
Just because you pretend to not to see things in the world doesn't mean this world isn't the most evil cruel place immagineable.
Re:Well of course ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What about Virtual PC for Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they kill it, or more likely, make it so I can't run non-MS OS's, I will be severely bummed.
OTOH, if they kill it, I will be tempted to pay the big bucks and go with VMWare and host it using Linux.
And then deal with the fact that I don't get to play as many games. Sigh.
Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows? (Score:2)
Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows? (Score:2)
Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about Virtual PC for Windows? (Score:2)
Wow.. it took MS as long as they said it would! (Score:5, Interesting)
From the Connectix Aquisition FAQ: [connectix.com]
Imagine that. Microsoft said it would take six months and it took *looking at my calendar* six months! So what was there to complain about?
Reading comprehension, gang. It's a good thing! Just think, if JWZ had that ability, he wouldn't have had that nasty little toothbrush problem [jwz.org]!!
What? Microsoft honest? (Score:2)
Uhhh, no they did not say they would take six months to update their web site. They said they would take six months to " bringing on board key members of the Connectix team" They also said that Connextix would continue to "sell and support" their stuff for the six months, but the whole page you link too was obviously a
That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:5, Informative)
Here are Craig's final numbers, as posted on Ars's website:
dual G4-1GHz Xserve (single CPU only): 105
dual G4-1GHz Xserve (both CPUs): 207
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 129
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 256
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 254
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 498
single P4 2GHz: 192
single P4 2.66GHz: 255
single P4 3.2GHz (extrapolated): 307
These numbers seem entirely reasonable to me. A single G5/2GHz G5 is approximately equivalent to a single P4/2.66GHz. This rings true to me -- Intel has never been known to squeeze every last bit of performance out of every chip, instead opting to continually push for higher and higher raw MHz. Thus, on a purely MHz/performance basis, Apple wins (as has been the case for years.)
However, in the dual-processor arena, things get muddier. Intel should have dual 3.4GHz Xeons by the time Apple's G5s are shipping. In raw performance, based on these numbers, the Xeon will have an edge over the G5. Plus, it will be priced lower... I priced a dual Xeon 2.4GHz with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive for a company that is buying a game server from us, and even with a 1U form factor (which is more expensive than a standard desktop case), the price came to $1705... a bit more than half the cost of the dual G5/2.0GHz. There is no question that the dual Xeon will outperform the G5 both in terms of raw performance and cost. The P4, however, doesn't have much edge over the G5 except for the cost.
For most of us, who are probably sitting on machines around 1-2GHz, almost all of the machines above, including the P4/2.66 and a single G5, will be a healthy upgrade. Despite Apple's high price point, I for one am happy to see them get back into the game... and I'm happy to see Intel have some real competition. A big thanks to Craig for doing the benchmarks... I'm sure this is just the first of many arguments about which machine is better!
about your cost comparison ($.02 warning) (Score:3, Interesting)
The dual Xeon 2.4Ghz you speak of, what are its other features? Firewire? USB2? Serial ATA? What video card? Apple sells a package, so you can't really compare it to that server setup.
They compared it to a Dell Xeon workstation which I agree with; it had the other peripherals and graphics power that someone doing rendering or other apps may need. For server uses and clustering, it would probably make sense for research orgs and renderfarm owners to wait for XServes, which will hopefully cost less th
Re:about your cost comparison ($.02 warning) (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you can. The problem with "packages" is that the package is only good if it contains exactly the set of features that you need. It might well be that a machine used for computations doesn't need firewire, usb2, serial ata, or a video card. It probably does need networking (and both the apple and many xeons include gigabi
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to be a fanboy. But you're implying that AMD hasn't been real competition?
Seems like for roughly 3 of the last 4 years AMD was stomping Intel on a regular basis. Now they are in a lull between product lines and people completely write them off....
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:3, Insightful)
AMDs 64 bit offering is an attempt to finally challenge Intel's dominance in those markets, but its very late, and apart from (again) the hobbyists and perhaps a few scientists who are low on funds, nobody is planning to support it (Microsoft? Yeah, right. L
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:2)
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:2)
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:3, Interesting)
In Vector FP math the G5 is going to mop the floor with just about anyth
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:2)
for audio and video and image effects and processing, however, altivec works wonders!
--jeff++
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:2)
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:2)
--jeff++
Re:That's about as fair as it gets re: G5 speed. (Score:3, Informative)
Whales (Score:2)
Rus
Re:Whales (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Whales (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whales (Score:2)
I vote for something more sinister. :) It probably died of old age.
sobig and danger ratings (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sobig and danger ratings (Score:4, Insightful)
It may not damage the computer itself, but it will seriously damage the reputation of the computer's owner, who will be falsely branded a spammer and get cut off the net. This should be of serious concern to computer owners and, as such, the virus should be rated as highly dangerous.
Schwab
IBList Automation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IBList Automation (Score:2)
Re:IBList Automation (Score:2)
That almost certinaly would be illegal. See eBay vs. Bidder's Edge for what is probably the closest thing to precedent in this area. (A Google search turns up all you'd need to know.)
All but the most rabid Slashbot should find this reasonable; compute the cost in bandwidth and processing power to suck down all of Amazon.com's book listings and you'll find it to be decidely non-t
Re:IBList Automation (Score:2)
VPC/Entourage (Score:2)
After that comes out I'd like to EOL OS 9 and Outlook 2001 at my university and move everybody over to OS X (finally). Plus, perhaps I can convince my boss-man to let me use a mac at work instead of a PC! (crosses fingers)
Bad Compilers for Apple G5 (Score:5, Insightful)
When you read his latest comments he notes that several Fortran compilers gave faulty results, some depending on optimizations selected. THIS IS SCARY, to say the least. Even years ago I knew of C code that broke for no known reason when optimizations were selected.
What does it take to start a /. article about faulty compilers. This ought to be a big deal.
Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5 (Score:2)
Re:Bad Compilers for Apple G5 (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a SCADA system running on DEC MIPS-based superminis and Sun workstations some years ago. I no longer have access to that source code. Performance was a problem and some tests I ran showed that full optimization could improve one of them by 2X and the other by 4X, but when the whole system was compiled with optimization it simply didn't run. Like many software projects, there was no time at the moment to track down the fa
The IBlist is kind of poor (Score:3, Insightful)
Time heals all wounds (Score:2)
Re:The IBlist is kind of poor (Score:3, Informative)
Hopefully this will.
Actually, the hobbit was listed as 1937. I would think if they were gonna make an IMDB kinda thing, they would have added some more of the cool stuff from the start.
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
(Anyone who knows Microware's OS-9 knows about the BLOB)
why *would* they kill VPC? (Score:2)
Re:why *would* they kill VPC? (Score:2)
MS is now making media player an itune clone where they make revunue off every windows desktop. To them your computer is their vending machine. Its best for Microsoft since the whitehouse is in bed with them to kill the mac and raise prices for Windows and Office once all competition is gone.
ISBN.nu (Score:5, Informative)
hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Hey! (Score:3, Funny)
A reading from the holy book, as written by the prophet Adams, you insenstive clod!
VPC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:VPC (Score:2)
That alone would kill VPC.
Re:VPC (Score:2, Interesting)
How about that.... (Score:5, Funny)
of flesh discovered recently on a Pacific beach is actually CmdrTaco.
See [misterhouse.net]
What [studentplanet.com]
I [narod.ru]
Mean? [ispep.cx]
available for a nominal fee (Score:3, Funny)
And how would you enforce that part of the GPL in court? This haziness isn't the fault of Tivo, but rather of the FSF. Maybe as far as the company is concerned it takes several hours of labor at $50 an hour to get you that c.d. of code, so would have to pay $300?
Anyhoo, I think that everyone will just download the code off the website as it's there for free.
The IBList (Score:5, Funny)
The only problem is that 9,500 of the books are about unicorns or elves.
Re:The IBList (Score:2, Funny)
TiVo following Linksys? (Score:2)
Nasa G5 Benchmarks (Score:2)
dual G4-1GHz Xserve (both CPUs): 207
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 129
dual G4-1.25GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 256
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (single CPU only): 254
dual G5-2GHz PowerMac (both CPUs): 498 single P4 2GHz: 192 single P4 2.66GHz: 255 single P4 3.2GHz (extrapolated): 307
Not only did the score of the G5 with both CPUs make me say "Holy shit" out loud in front of my comp (seriously!), but it also kicks the
Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically, these numbers tell me that for the test run, P4's are roughly equal to a G5. Of course, it's the P4 at 2.66GHz that's equal to the 2GHz G5, but t
Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks (Score:2)
Lets wait for better compilers before we judge.
Re:Nasa G5 Benchmarks (Score:3, Informative)
Not only did the score of the G5 with both CPUs make me say "Holy shit" out loud in front of my comp (seriously!), but it also kicks the piss out of the P4! So, Apple does have one of the fastest machines around!
so two 2.0 GHz cpus are faster than a single 3.2 GHz cpu? i fail to see why this is surprising.
Fastest G5 SPEC Scores (Score:2)
Intel has given us SPEC_INT/SPEC_FP of 1261/1267 using ICC for a P4 @ 3.2GHz, can Apple beat it with any compiler?
Re:Fastest G5 SPEC Scores (Score:2)
Beyond all of that, SPEC is largely irrelevant and has serious design flaws in how it is put together and implemented, but that's irrelevant to the discussion.
In other news... (Score:2)
In This Space.com article on Space Shuttle Weather Scrubs [space.com], there's a selection of an interview from NASA's deputy administrator:
Gregory also dropped a strong hint in Dayton that the so-called Orbital Space Plane, not targeted for 2008, could be a capsule.
The very name of the program, Gregory cautioned, is not meant to imply that the final design will be a winged vehicle. He also said that the chosen d
TiVo a leader, not a follower (Score:3, Informative)
TiVo has been a leader in releasing the required source and a little more; they also provide the compiler toolchain used to build the kernel (which is not required, but a nice touch, since it allows users to easily build additional binaries with the same toolchain).
Wrong on Tivo (Score:3, Informative)
Although they give you the source code for the kernel, that doesn't mean that you can change it -- not and still expect your Tivo to work, anyway. The boot PROM (think "BIOS") in the Series 2 checks that the kernel it's booting is signed with Tivo's key. Then, a program in the initrd checks everything on the root partition to see that it's not modified, either. With the initial software that came out with the Series 2, it was possible to get around this by setting BASH_ENV as a kernel option in the drive's boot page, but they "fixed" that in the next revision.
Now, to hack a Series 2, you have to either stick to old software, play two-card monte with the kernel, or reprogram the PROM -- which requires desoldering it from the motherboard, since it can't be done in software from the Tivo.
I've done the kmonte thing, and it works well -- in that context, the kernel source is actually useful, since you can boot anything you like as the second kernel. But you still have to devote a couple partitions to the old software (after first getting a copy of it) that allows the BASH_ENV hack. Doubtless this will not work once there's a Tivo Series 3.
Oh, and it probably goes without saying, but Tivo's GPL'ed software doesn't include the main applications -- the bits that actually handle TV.
Re:Sobig (Score:2)
Sorry, I won't do it again, promise!
Re:I shouldn't moan about a rejected story but... (Score:2, Interesting)