Personal computing discussed

Search found 1950 matches

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 65
by bitvector
Wed Jan 02, 2019 10:24 pm
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: Almost 20 years
Replies: 120
Views: 19848

Re: Almost 20 years

I'm gonna hit 35 next month, and I still take the stairs 2 at a time, and insist on 1 trip from the car to my fridge on grocery days. I've gotten lazy the last few months with my workout regimen, but I always return. The biggest difference for me from 10 years or so ago when I started taking my phy...
by bitvector
Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:53 pm
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: Buttersafe
Replies: 4
Views: 1028

Re: Buttersafe

I think this old one was always one of my favorites:
Image
by bitvector
Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:12 am
Forum: Linux, Unix, and Assorted Madness
Topic: For those of us n00bs...
Replies: 41
Views: 6727

Re: For those of us n00bs...

Yeah, the main issue is that it was one of the first "full screen" editors (dates back to... what... mid-'70s?), and therefore still retains some of the modal UI paradigm of an old school line-by-line editor designed to be used on hardcopy Teletype terminals! I think modal editing is anno...
by bitvector
Thu May 26, 2011 11:28 pm
Forum: Developer's Den
Topic: Network Game Programming
Replies: 9
Views: 4956

Re: Network Game Programming

Generally you'll want to aggregate small data items together to reduce the per-packet overhead penalty. - If there are parts of the protocol which require low latency, and other parts which require efficient operation to move large amounts of data, you will need to make intelligent decisions about ...
by bitvector
Wed May 25, 2011 10:14 pm
Forum: Developer's Den
Topic: Network Game Programming
Replies: 9
Views: 4956

Re: Network Game Programming

Right now it's set up to just serialize anything that's serializable and the deserialize on the other end. This is kind of annoying if you're only sending 1 float and it's 1+ KB in size. Is there any resources out there on working with this kind of information efficiently? We're willing to use othe...
by bitvector
Sat Apr 09, 2011 8:22 pm
Forum: Developer's Den
Topic: Making a string from variables
Replies: 11
Views: 4105

Re: Making a string from variables

I actually drop back to C idiom and use sprintf/snprintf/vsprintf/vsnprintf whenever I need to do stuff like that in C++, just because I find the C++ stream libraries so utterly detestable. You'd probably appreciate the Google C++ string-printf utility functions (this post is a bit late because I d...
by bitvector
Mon Feb 21, 2011 9:41 pm
Forum: Linux, Unix, and Assorted Madness
Topic: Migrating family members to Linux
Replies: 60
Views: 10880

Re: Migrating family members to Linux

There are times when Ubuntu can be a real pain in the butt to get working properly. Yes, this also happens with Windows - but it happens a lot more often in the Linux world, and, generally requires more time and effort (and expertise) to fix when it does happen. Whether Linux problems require more ...
by bitvector
Mon Jan 24, 2011 1:16 am
Forum: Developer's Den
Topic: Bizarre While() Behavior in Java
Replies: 21
Views: 6661

Re: Bizarre While() Behavior in Java

bitvector, do you happen to know how a compiler would treat an inspector that controls a loop? It doesn't seem like there would be any consistent way to optimize away the function call, unless it was recognizing the fact that the inspector was returning a member variable and caching that, but that ...
by bitvector
Sat Jan 22, 2011 1:43 pm
Forum: Developer's Den
Topic: Bizarre While() Behavior in Java
Replies: 21
Views: 6661

Re: Bizarre While() Behavior in Java

Sounds like you may be violating Java memory model rules with concurrent modifications to shared object fields. What does isRunning do? What is the definition of sequencer? If it reads a field on an object and that field was modified in another thread, you need to either make the field volatile or u...
by bitvector
Fri Jan 21, 2011 9:20 pm
Forum: Linux, Unix, and Assorted Madness
Topic: Flash on Linux = Disaster
Replies: 18
Views: 4043

Re: Flash on Linux = Disaster

End User wrote:
I run with Chromium nightly builds across all my Ubuntu machines/VMs. Flash is stable and does not have a noticeable impact on performance (even on my Eee PC 1201N).

I wouldn't go so far as to call Flash stable, but Chrome's handling of it at least makes it much less objectionable to me.
by bitvector
Sun Jan 16, 2011 3:06 am
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: Foods you like that you're ashamed of...
Replies: 147
Views: 8753

Re: Foods you like that you're ashamed of...

The "trashy food" theme of this thread reminds me of the entertaining Trashy Eats: Luscious and Low Rent . For example: * Tater tots, ranch dressing, Frank's RedHot and shredded cheese. * Popcorn shrimp pizza * Mashed potatoes with Ragu, chickpeas, beets and avacado blue cheese...tons of b...
by bitvector
Fri Dec 10, 2010 3:22 pm
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: Google programmers are amateurs?
Replies: 94
Views: 8071

Re: Google programmers are amateurs?

Listing C and C++ separately is a little silly, since C is essentially a subset of C++. While it's true that C is nearly a subset of C++ and there's probably a lot of "two languages for free" credential inflation going around, idiomatic C code and modern, idiomatic C++ code arguably share...
by bitvector
Wed Dec 08, 2010 11:39 pm
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: Google programmers are amateurs?
Replies: 94
Views: 8071

Re: Google programmers are amateurs?

Glorious wrote:
Google, Microsoft, IBM, whatever, all of their products are not made by the same people. They've all put out products at one time or another with issues that make you want chuck a keyboard.

Seriously; I guess he's never heard of IE6 or Lotus Notes.
by bitvector
Mon Dec 06, 2010 5:29 pm
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

Shining Arcanine wrote:
Wikipedia calls it the P versus NP problem:

Oy. I'll put in my vote for the lock, morphine. It's clear he's going to continue to repeat the same misinformation (in an infinite loop which, if you believe the implication's of SA's blather, can be detected by brute forcing 3-SAT).
by bitvector
Wed Dec 01, 2010 12:52 pm
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

Allocation of registers is modeled as graph coloring and graph coloring is NP-Complete. Therefore the calculation is NP-Complete. That's great. And had you originally said that, I wouldn't have taken issue with that particular statement. But everything else you said in the quoted reply reads like g...
by bitvector
Wed Dec 01, 2010 4:30 am
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

There's a difference between mathematically undefined and undecidable. Once you start talking about solving undecidable problems in general, you no longer are talking about things that are possible. In the case of compilers, doing true optimization by solving the halting problem in general means obt...
by bitvector
Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:54 pm
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

Also, talking about optimization is a misnomer when discussing compilers, because having something be optimal means that it cannot become better and what a compiler does is implement heuristics that are known to make code better in general. Doing complete optimization is a NP-complete problem and u...
by bitvector
Mon Nov 22, 2010 1:11 pm
Forum: Linux, Unix, and Assorted Madness
Topic: Hey, why can't I.....
Replies: 13
Views: 3844

Re: Hey, why can't I.....

Do any of these existing multiseat solutions allow a single multi-head graphics card to be shared, or does each user need a physically distinct GPU? I think most/all do. Xephyr does: http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2009/06/multiseat-in-ubuntu-904.html Userful does too (look at the supported cards): ht...
by bitvector
Mon Nov 22, 2010 11:06 am
Forum: Linux, Unix, and Assorted Madness
Topic: Hey, why can't I.....
Replies: 13
Views: 3844

Re: Hey, why can't I.....

The terms is "multiseat" and there are various products that do that for X (nComputing, Userful, Xephyr, etc.):
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Docu ... /Multiseat

They're most commonly used in schools/internet cafes in South America (and Africa).
by bitvector
Mon Nov 15, 2010 12:29 am
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

The BSD 4.3 kernel used floated point arithmetic in its scheduler and later versions of FreeBSD likely inherited that. I have seen snippets of the source code and you can access the scheduler's internal floating point values by executing "uptime". Why do you make claims that you could eas...
by bitvector
Sun Nov 14, 2010 4:54 pm
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

If you look hard enough, it would be difficult to find a program that does not use floating point instructions. Operating systems use floating point intructions in their CPU schedulers. No they don't. In general, operating systems specifically try to avoid use of floating point inside kernel space:...
by bitvector
Fri Nov 05, 2010 12:08 pm
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

Great, all those 1U-4U rack mounted computers are not servers anymore. :roll: Pardon my lack of IT experience to make the distinction, but 1U-4U rack mounted computers are all blades to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_(disambiguation) " Blade server , a self-contained computer server , ...
by bitvector
Thu Nov 04, 2010 11:28 pm
Forum: Processors
Topic: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs
Replies: 178
Views: 22506

Re: Floating-point units in server-grade CPUs

GMoreover, GPUs are very brittle tools and perform poorly for software that has irregular control flow, data structures or communication between threads. On any of those cases, CPUs tend to win. And most efficient algorithms for FP workloads tend to use a lot of communication to reduce computation ...
by bitvector
Tue Sep 14, 2010 3:41 pm
Forum: Storage
Topic: Matlab/Simulink Storage Choice
Replies: 30
Views: 5348

Re: Matlab/Simulink Storage Choice

just brew it! wrote:
Try to take a step back and look at the forest, instead of focusing on the trees... or leaves.

... or, perhaps in this case, bear droppings.
by bitvector
Wed Sep 08, 2010 6:53 pm
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: What's up with the Google balls today?
Replies: 36
Views: 3938

Re: What's up with the Google balls today?

I pity those that are on dialup's or other slower connections. How is that going to work for them? http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=186645 Connection speed If you're searching from a particularly slow Internet connection, you won't see results as you type because we don'...
by bitvector
Tue Sep 07, 2010 11:48 pm
Forum: The Back Porch
Topic: What's up with the Google balls today?
Replies: 36
Views: 3938

Re: What's up with the Google balls today?

DancinJack wrote:
It's Google's 12th birthday. They're balloons.

It's actually not that, but you'll find out soon. :D
by bitvector
Tue Sep 07, 2010 9:36 pm
Forum: Networking
Topic: Building a File Server
Replies: 76
Views: 9807

Re: Building a File Server

Oh god. I would never recommend throwing a LVM on RAID 0. I wasn't implying that you would. But doing a simple spanned volume has the same reliability issues (if one disk dies you lose the whole logical volume), without the performance advantages. Not really. Doing a RAID 0 without parity or mirror...
by bitvector
Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:10 pm
Forum: Networking
Topic: Switching from Tomato to DD-WRT?
Replies: 34
Views: 16125

Re: Switching from Tomato to DD-WRT?

Some examples of features in DD-WRT that I appreciate that may or may not be in stock firmwares: * SSH (to router) & SNMP support * Very extensive filtering, logging, monitoring and traffic graphing support * Advanced QoS & traffic shaping * VLAN support & Ethernet Over IP Tunneling * Br...
by bitvector
Thu Sep 02, 2010 1:27 pm
Forum: Networking
Topic: Router suggestions: verifired working with 3rd party FW
Replies: 11
Views: 1956

Re: Router suggestions: verifired working with 3rd party FW

Captain Ned wrote:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320038

I've had one of these (Asus RT-N16) loaded with DD-WRT for a few months. No complaints so far.
by bitvector
Tue Aug 31, 2010 3:26 pm
Forum: Developer's Den
Topic: Regular Expression Builder
Replies: 5
Views: 2658

Re: Regular Expression Builder

Well to be a bit pedantic my code does not do any parsing. It fluently produces a series of continuations (functions) that test portions of an string. As to your question, I am trying to learn and develop new techniques for lexical analysis that involve pure functional programming. My end goal is t...
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 65
GZIP: On