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Tuesday, April 30, 2002 |
 The PowerMacintosh 6100 looks like this, in case you weren't familiar with the beast. Here you actually see a Workgroup Server 6100, Apple's first Web server, and PowerMac 6100 AV, which had video in and out capabilities. Introduced in '94, when Intel featured 486 technology. Unlike most 486 PCs, these are still useful - gulker.com's DNS servers...Comments 9:38:28 PM 
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$79 Supercomputers: Shreve Systems, a used Mac merchant, sells PowerPC 6100s for $79 plus shipping. So a Mac Beowulf cluster like Michael Roeder's would cost $790, and a 5-node machine would be less than $400. Shreve offers a used 500 MHz G3 iMac for $799, which probably has a bit more horsepower (and a monitor), but think of the fun you can have installing Linux (with a custom NuBus kernel), MPI et al. on the cluster. There are a number of used Mac shops (know any used PC shops?): Sun Remarketing, Small Dog, Herb's, Galaxy Hardware Publishers and many, many more... full list at Low End Mac. Comments 8:49:12 PM
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'Exact uncertainty': theoretical physicist Michael Hall uses statistical methods to quantify quantum uncertainty. You can't eliminate the uncertainty, but you can quantify it reasonably accurately, according to a New Scientist story about Hall';s discovery. Hall's result is an equation rather than an inequality, and he and Marcel Reginatto have been able to derive many fundamentals of quantum mechanics, including the Schroedinger equation, from it... Comments 3:14:23 PM
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Beowoof is a Beowulf Cluster of Power Mac 6100s running Yellow Dog Linux built by Michael Roeder. The 10 6100s, running 66MHz 601e PowerPC processors probably have less processing power than a 350 MHz G3, but the motivation was to learn how to build and configure a parrallel machine. The 6100, the least powerful PowerMac, had a wonderful form factor. I loved the one that sat on my desk at the old SF Examiner... I still have 2, which are currently gulker.com's DNS servers... Comments 11:46:38 AM
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Unstable systems: does media, at least American media, constitute an inherently unstable system? Spouse Linda sent a note that got me thinking about this. I read a piece somewhere that said the failing of American media is that it's a positive feedback loop: when one outlet jumps on a story - the Gary Condit scandal, for example - all the other outlets, fearing a scoop and lower ratings if they miss it, also jump on it. The story, however worthy or unworthy, then becomes a safe choice for editors, and basically spins out of control in a classic positive feedback loop - more coverage begets more coverage on more channels - to the exclusion of other news - and pretty soon Americans are fixated on scandal rather than more substantive issues. Many Americans may have known intimate details of Chandra Levy's life, but missed the presence of 1.1 billion pissed-off Muslims on the same planet as themselves.
The Internet has just made it possible for relatively uncredentialed and undisciplined observers - Matt Drudge comes to mind as do even more unheralded sources - to spark the feedback loop. Even before the Internet, the plethora of news operations - cable channels mainly - had made it possible for some pretty questionable operations to influence general media. Maybe I'll write an essay... |
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Venture funding falls to 5-year low: VCs raised only $2.3 billion in Q1, no surprise since they're sitting on cash estimated at $20 to $100 billion. Funding amounted to $5.1 billion, lowest number since Q4 1998. From the San Francisco Chronicle this A.M.... Comments 8:28:23 AM
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Updated 4/16/04; 11:55:13 AM
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Chris Gulker'sUpdated 4/16/04; 11:55:13 AM
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